Mary wanted to raise her three children, but they were all taken from her. She died before she got justice.

A WOMAN PLANS to take legal action against the State over her mother’s exclusion from the planned redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby institutions.

Evelyn*, who was born into the system, has criticised the fact survivors who participated in the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (COIMBH) but died before the State apology in January 2021, will be excluded from the scheme.

She is currently in discussions with solicitors and said she will “take whatever legal action is necessary”.

Evelyn told The Journal that many women like her mother, who were not allowed to keep their children, died before they ever got justice.

TRAFFICKING in persons, or human trafficking, thrives rapidly due to the growing usage of social media and desperation to increase financial stability in the post-pandemic age we live in.

This crime has been defined under Article 3 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children 2000 (Trafficking Protocol 2000), which requires three main elements.

Firstly, an act by the traffickers is required. This can be seen through their method to bring vulnerable persons to their preferred location either by recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons.

Secondly, there must be a means to be trafficked. In this regard, the traffickers may use coercion, abduction, deception, giving or receiving of payments, or benefits, to achieve the consent of a person for bringing them to their preferred location.

Thirdly, the purpose of such an act must be for the exploitation of the person involved.

In September 2019, a weeks-old baby girl was found badly hurt but -- miraculously -- alive in the rubble of a raid by U.S. special operations forces. The military had targeted a home in central Afghanistan, looking to capture or kill suspected foreign fighters associated with al-Qaida.

The baby was left orphaned. Both of her parents were killed in the operation and she was placed under the temporary medical care of the U.S. military to recover from burns and physical trauma.

Today, the 3-and-a-half year old, known as Baby Doe, is an orphan no longer. She is claimed by two families who are fighting a complex legal battle over the right to raise her.

On one side are her paternal uncle and cousins in Afghanistan, with whom she was placed by the Afghan government in early 2020. Her uncle's son and his wife, referred to in court as John and Jane Doe, cared for her for 18 months.

On the other side is a U.S. Marine lawyer who was in Afghanistan at the time of the raid and who successfully petitioned a local Virginia court to grant him an adoption order. An attorney for the Marine, Maj. Joshua Mast, has contended in court filings that the girl had no surviving biological relatives, which the U.S. government says isn't true.

Since a few months you can again adopt a child from abroad in the Netherlands. That child will have a promising life here, but what does the adoption actually do to someone's identity? We ask influencer Lara Mallo (34), she was adopted as a baby from Brazil and made the YouTube series Looking for Lara in which she goes in search of where she comes from. “I couldn't find inner peace.”

At the age of one, Lara Mallo (34) from São Paulo was adopted by a Dutch family. She grew up in Het Gooi, where she was bullied as a child because she looked different from her classmates. Although she has actively searched for her biological parents, it has yielded little to this day.

Hey Lara, thank you for sharing your story. When did you find out you were adopted?

“I never really realized I was a different color because I always felt white. Just like my adoptive parents. But at the age of four, classmates already showed that they thought I was 'dirty' because I have a different skin color than them. As a child I didn't understand that. I thought: why am I brown and my parents are white? Then my parents explained to me that they adopted me because my biological parents could not take care of me. They said it honestly and directly, without making a fuss.”

What was it like growing up in your adoptive family?

Jyoti Weststrate and Regina Schipper have been looking for their biological parents in India for years. Correspondent Aletta André followed part of their search.

Aletta André18 January 2023, 01:00

A middle-aged woman is standing in Jyoti Weststrate's hotel room with some relatives. It is a cheap four-storey hotel in the town of Bettiah in the northern Indian state of Bihar. The music of a wedding in the courtyard can be heard through the window.

The woman looks awkward and confused, and after a while drops off. "It doesn't get through to them, but I'm not who they're looking for," says Weststrate, unsure how to deal with the situation. In her own search for her biological family, she is used to some disappointment. The fact that she also sees the other side of the coin in Bihar, with families of missing children, touches her, but does not take her any further.

'I don't want to die searching'

Will lengthening adoption wait and new surrogacy-artificial reproductive assistance laws push couples closer to black market adoption?

On a flight from Mumbai to Delhi last week, this writer happened to sit next to a young couple who became parents for the first time in the pandemic. During the small-talk that followed, they revealed that the baby wasn*t their biological offspring. After unsuccessfully trying to conceive for six years, they got "lucky" when their friend*s sister-in-law, who couldn*t afford to raise her third child, sought a home for her son. "After much consideration, we took her baby boy," the mother shared. The couple hadn*t even given adoption or surrogacy a thought, because of how "tedious the process has become".

With adoption in India being routed by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the government recently notifying new laws to regulate surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology, several Indian couples are deferring their dreams to become parents. Experts, however, fear that many desperate couples might go the illegal way.

Infertility is at the heart of the problem. According to research conducted by Inito, a Bengaluru-based medical technology company, around 27.5 million couples who want to conceive, currently suffer from infertility. The World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision report estimated that the fertility rate of Indians (measured as the number of children born to a woman), had plummeted by more than half in the short span of 40 years - from 4.97 per cent during 1975-80 to 2.3 per cent in 2015-20. By 2025-30, the report projects that the rate would have nosedived further to 2.1. A fertility rate of about 2.2 is generally considered the replacement level - the rate at which the population would hold steady. When the fertility rate dips below this number, the population is expected to decline.

With lowering fertility, adoption and surrogacy seem to be the next best options for couples. But recent protocol and laws have complicated the state of affairs.

According to the latest reports (February 2022), 234 children have been adopted by Maltese parents so far. Sangeeta Bahadur, the Indian High Commissioner to Malta, told TVM News that Maltese parents adopting children from India is another link in the chain that is strengthening ties between India and Malta. Ms. Bahadur also stressed that the relationship between India and Malta is excellent and that India received support from Malta during the pandemic and on other occasions as well.

The Minister for Social Policy and Children’s Rights of Malta, Dr. Michael Falzon, at a conference on Adoption National Strategy revealed that a record number of children were adopted by Maltese families in 2018, and more than 70 % were from India. In the year 2018, it was considered the best year for adoption in the last 10 years. He noted that the best interests of the children are always the priority in this process of adoption. Furthermore, Dr. Falzon stated his focus on furthering the adoption strategy in Malta. Different countries follow different rules of adoption in Malta. With India’s adoption procedure being less intricate and highly accessible than most other countries, it has greater records of adoption from India.

The process of adoption is convenient in India with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), which was established by the Ministry of Welfare, Government of India in 1990. CARA regulates, monitors, and promotes the adoption of orphans, abandoned, or surrendered children, with the principal aim of finding loving families for children who need care and protection. An international webinar held on the occasion of International Adoption Month 2020, “Adoption across Borders: Sharing of Experiences,” was chaired by the Minister of Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani. It was attended by esteemed dignitaries and diplomats from India, along with 12 central authorities of foreign countries, 14 Indian diplomatic missions, and 3 foreign embassies who participated in the webinar. The Central Authorities of Malta and France also presented their views and best practices. A Maltese couple who pursued the adoption of a second child from India were stuck during the lockdown in 2020. However, a few weeks later, they traveled back to Malta, adopting and thanking each other during the adoption process in India.

On March 24th, 2021, the High Commissioner of Malta in India, H.E. Reuben Gauci, met Mrs. Smriti Irani, to discuss women’s rights and the adoption of Indian children by Maltese families.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2AFtVKoEu0

A local adoption agency that specialises in bringing children from India to Malta opted to cancel its party at L-Arka Ta’ Noe in Si??iewi after a public status by the establishment’s owner was interpreted as “xenophobic”.

Anton Rea Cutajar, the park’s owner, posted a status to his Facebook page, saying he “wishes that cowboys would come to Malta so that we stop seeing Indians around”.

“Workers at the grocers are Indians, workers at supermarkets are Indians, cab drivers are Indians, everywhere you look, it’s Indians,” he wrote in the now-deleted status.

A parent of an adoptive child informed Lovin Malta that the venue for the party was changed after the organisers saw his Facebook post and found it offensive and in bad taste.

“We had a Christmas party planned for our adoptive children from India booked there! Obviously, it was canceled after seeing this post,” the parents told Lovin Malta.

Bombay High Court

Bal Anand vs Shaun Farrugia, Maltese National ... on 16 June, 2022

Bench: B.P. Colabawalla

1. fap 9-22..doc

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