Protocol for Responding to Allegations of Illicit or Illegal Practices in Intercountry Adoption

What to do if you think your, or your child’s, intercountry adoption was illegal or illicit

In Australia, intercountry adoptions are facilitated under the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (the Hague Convention)(link is external). This helps preserve the safety, rights and interests of children. The rights and best interest of the child are central to any decisions made about a child’s adoption.

The Australian Central Authority (ACA) and State and Territory Central Authorities (STCAs) are aware of the risks involved in intercountry adoption and only partner with countries who adhere to the Hague Convention.

If concerns or allegations about illicit and illegal adoption practices are raised we have the Protocol for Responding to Allegations of Illicit or Illegal Practices in Intercountry Adoption (the Protocol). It has been developed by the ACA for intercountry adoption under the Hague Convention, in consultation with STCAs. The protocol is reviewed periodically to make sure it adheres to best practice in preventing and addressing illicit or illegal practices in intercountry adoption.

All 5 petitions were filed last year by BJP leader & lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. In all of them, SC has issued notice, asking relevant govt authorities to respond.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court currently has five petitions pending before it that demand uniformity in civil laws in the country on five aspects — age of marriage, divorce, succession, maintenance and adoption.

All the petitions were filed last year by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. And in all of them, the apex court has issued notice, asking the relevant government authorities to respond.

The petition seeking uniform age of marriage demands that the marriageable age for both men and women should be increased to 21 years.

The remaining four PILs have the same demand — either the Supreme Court should direct the government to “remove anomalies” in different laws, or it should frame guidelines itself to declare such “discriminatory grounds” of succession, adoption, maintenance and divorce as unconstitutional.

Reconnecting Haitian families separated by adoption is the mission of Voie D'Espoir.   At the initiative of Michel Joseph, several hundred parents took part in a census day organized on Radio Télévision Caraibes on Saturday, March 7, 2021. 

After more than twenty reports that have helped reunite families, Michel Joseph wants to continue to produce hope by launching his organization called “Voie d'espoir”. 

Indeed, between emotion and testimony, the presenter of 19-20 takes pleasure in being an artist of these meetings which provide a lot of happiness. 

 More than 700 families are registered in the organization's database, with the hope of finding their offspring, who have been given up for adoption. 

Around fifty volunteers were available for this big first. 

Thousands of Sri Lankan babies were put up for adoption between the 1960s and 1980s - some of them sold by "baby farms" to prospective parents across Europe. The Netherlands, which accepted many of those infants, has recently suspended international adoptions following historical allegations of coercion and bribery. As that investigation unfolds, families who never stopped thinking about the children who vanished hope they will be reunited.

Indika Waduge remembers the red car driving off with his mother and sister, Nilanthi, inside. He and his other sister Damayanthi stayed at home and waited for their mother to return. When she came back the next day, she was alone.

"When we said goodbye to each other I never thought Nilanthi was about to go abroad or it was the last time we'd see each other," he says.

This was in either 1985 or 1986, when Indika's father had left his mother Panikkarge Somawathie to raise three children alone. As the family struggled to survive, he remembers a man his mother knew convincing her to give Nilanthi, who was four or five, up for adoption.

Indika Waduge

About Me

Annick Boosten

I was adopted from India at the age of four. My parents already had a son David, who is four years older than me. There was another son but unfortunately he had a metabolic disease that killed him when he was eight months old. Due to the disease being hereditary (David appeared to have it too, only to a lesser extent) my parents decided to adopt a child. My parents are hardworking people who are always busy, the type who always say, “Don’t whine, just get on with it.” That’s how they raised me.

My mother worked furiously to teach me the Dutch language so that I could go to school as soon as possible because I came to them in December then by January, I had to go to school. When I used to object and say, “I’m sure they do that very differently in India,’ my mother replied, “You’re not in India, you’re in Belgium and that’s how we do it here.” I am very happy with my parents but sometimes I would have liked them to have known me a bit better, to have been a little more empathetic. As a child, I was overloaded with expensive clothes and all kinds of electronic toys as compensation because my parents worked so hard. During the holidays, I was sent to all kinds of camps so that my parents wouldn’t have to take off from work. I would have much preferred if we had been closely involved as a family and my parents made time for us to do fun things together. I’d have preferred a day at the beach than an X-box or Playstation.

Now that I have a son of my own, I give him a kiss every day and tell him how very happy I am with him. I do this even in those moments when I might be a bit angry because he doesn’t want to sleep. I missed that sort of interaction with my parents.

Thousands of Sri Lankan babies were put up for adoption between the 1960s and 1980s - some of them sold by "baby farms" to prospective parents across Europe. The Netherlands, which accepted many of those infants, has recently suspended international adoptions following historical allegations of coercion and bribery. As that investigation unfolds, families who never stopped thinking about the children who vanished hope they will be reunited.

Indika Waduge remembers the red car driving off with his mother and sister, Nilanthi, inside. He and his other sister Damayanthi stayed at home and waited for their mother to return. When she came back the next day, she was alone.

"When we said goodbye to each other I never thought Nilanthi was about to go abroad or it was the last time we'd see each other," he says.

This was in either 1985 or 1986, when Indika's father had left his mother Panikkarge Somawathie to raise three children alone. As the family struggled to survive, he remembers a man his mother knew convincing her to give Nilanthi, who was four or five, up for adoption.

Indika says this man was a broker for a "baby farm" in a suburb of the capital, Colombo, called Kotahena. He claims that while a female clerical officer at a court and her husband ran it, it was the broker who arranged the adoption for foreign parents - mainly Dutch couples.

Often adopted children go missing without a trace

Precariousness pushes thousands of Haitians to entrust their children to reception centers, or to have them adopted. Most of these children leave the country, without their parents having any possibility of tracking them down or hearing from them.

Many parents do not know how international adoption works. “The 'madan sara' are sometimes victims,” says journalist Michel Joseph. Having no one to look after their child, they [sometimes] entrust them to a crèche so that they can go about their business activities. When they return after eight or fifteen days, it is announced that the child has already been adopted and that he has traveled ”.

In other situations, birth parents fall victim to false promises. "Sometimes [nurseries, orphanages or foreign missions] promise them a house or money, under the pretext of sponsorship, in exchange for the child."

Michel Joseph's reports on Radio Caraibes have made it possible to link some twenty Haitian parents with their children scattered around the world. To systematize this work, the journalist has just launched on March 6, Voie d'Espoir. Several hundred parents made the trip, documents yellowed by time in hand, to launch research on children who have sometimes disappeared for decades.

Iresha, 32, was born in India and adopted as a baby by Dutch adoptive parents. Iresha is 12 years old when she dares to confide in someone and talks about how things really go at home. She is removed from home at the age of 15. She spends her teenage years in various youth care institutions.

Years later she has her life on her own. She lives in Antwerp where she is educated at the art academy and works on her artworks with great passion. This is her story.

Where I come from

I grew up in a family with Dutch parents. After my arrival in the Netherlands, my parents adopted my sister from Colombia. My mother got pregnant twice more. She interrupted one pregnancy and when I was 7 years old, they had another son. I've always felt different. I looked different from the people around me.

When I was 5 years old I traveled to India with my adoptive parents to meet my biological mother. This was a traumatic experience. I was too young to be confronted with my background; the different culture in India and the poverty that I saw. When I got off the plane and was confronted by the people living on the street, I threw up.

For the opening of investigations into illegal adoptions and illicit practices in intercountry adoptions since 1950 in Europe

In recent years, more and more of us in Europe have called for an investigation into the illicit practices observed in intercountry adoption for several decades.

Indeed, today, it is clear that :

In view of the difficulties encountered by adoptees in obtaining information on their origins, despite the right to access information which is supposedly a fundamental right ;

In view of the growing number of adoptees living in European Union countries who discover that their international adoption has been the subject of illegal practices (falsified documents, erroneous accounts, child trafficking, kidnappings, false contentment’s, etc.) and some of whom find, against all odds, their biological family ;

A woman who was adopted in Liverpool in 1953 has discovered that her birth mother is still alive 67 years after she gave her up for adoption.

The 67-year-old daughter of an Irish woman who traveled from Ireland to England to give her up for adoption in 1953 has made the shocking discovery that her mother is still alive.

Margaret, who lives in Warwickshire, was adopted in Liverpool when she was just six months old. Her mother Bridget had given birth to her when she was unmarried and traveled to England to give her up for adoption, leaving Margaret wondering about what happened to her every year on her birthday.

Margaret appeared on Tuesday night's episode of BBC2's DNA Family Secrets in the hope of tracking down her biological mother and was stunned when she discovered that Bridget was still alive and living in an Irish care home.

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