IV. Estranha

All my life I've felt like I don't really belong anywhere. Ever since I planned my trip back to my mother country and family, I put everything into this. This could be my home. After five days of doing my very best, I unfortunately have to come to the conclusion that this is not (yet?) the case. And that hurts indescribably.

On the contrary, just as I feel like a stranger in the Netherlands, I feel like a stranger here too. My stomach can't get used to the food. The smells overwhelm me again and again. I have a cold from the climate. My head explodes, either from the mountainous landscape or from constantly trying to understand and speak a foreign language. The rhythm of life here that doesn't seem to have a pause button gets on my nerves.

It's all just too much and I don't know what to do with it. Let alone that I can explain this in a foreign language to my very own family who goes to such great lengths to welcome me and my Curlyball to my motherland. I feel naive, disappointed, ungrateful, but above all, out of place.

.

In 2021-22, 2991 children were adopted by Indians and 414 by foreigners, while in 2020-21, 3142 children were adopted by Indians and 417 by foreigners.

NEW DELHI: As many as 1836 children have been adopted by Indians and 222 by foreigners, including non-resident Indians, this year till December 13, according to Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Z Irani. The number has dipped as compared to the previous three years.

In 2021-22, 2991 children were adopted by Indians and 414 by foreigners, while in 2020-21, 3142 children were adopted by Indians and 417 by foreigners.The highest number of adoptions occurred in 2019-20 when Indians adopted 3351 and foreigners 394 children.

Irani said that most of the grievances they have received are waiting time from prospective adoptive parents (PAPs). “While there is a long queue to adopt a normal young child upto six years of age, there is no waiting period for the PAPs who desire to adopt a child having special needs and a child from immediate placement category (mostly older children),” she said. Further, the waiting time is relevant for the PAPs only; the legally free children do not have to wait, she said in a written reply.

Based on feedback received from the stakeholders and experts, Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has framed the Adoption Regulations, 2022 in line with the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (as amended in 2021), which has been notified on September 23.

What you need to know:

In 2020, the US imposed sanctions on two Ugandan judges, a lawyer and her husband for their alleged involvement in activities that victimised young children in a corrupt adoption scheme. Retired judge Moses Mukiibi writes on the role of judges.

I do not think that I can scrap enough to remove the wrong impression that removal of children from their parents was a conspiracy between lawyers and judges. I feel I must make a few things clear for the present and posterity.

We live in a world where corruption has engulfed many sectors. So even without the slightest knowledge of how a process worked, one is quick to think it was because of money.

One of the reasons for this is a failure to understand the difference between the person carrying out the duties of a judge and the High Court.

Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh), Dec 19 (IANS): An FIR has been filed against a Malta-based couple and an orphanage official here for 'wrongful conversion' of an abandoned baby girl who was adopted by the foreigners.

Three years ago, the baby was found abandoned in an earthen pot here and was adopted by the couple.

Right-wing activists have now lodged an FIR against the orphanage in Bareilly and the Malta-based couple that has adopted the baby.

This comes a week before the child, named Sita, was supposed to travel to Malta.

The FIR has been registered under IPC sections 420 (cheating),467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (fraudulently using document as genuine which is actually a forged one) along with sections 3 and 5 (1) of UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 against an orphanage official, child's adoptive parents and an unidentified person on the complaint of Bareilly-based activist Anshu Kumar.

When Barbara Quee discovers that the Colombian family that the TV show Spoorloos found for her is not her biological family, she turns out not to be the only 'mismatch'.

“From a young age I already know that I come from Colombia and that they speak Spanish there. I was twelve when I started Spanish lessons. I didn't want to be tongue-tied if I ever found my Colombian family. When you meet for the first time, don't you want to be able to communicate?

I already knew then that I wanted to look for my biological family one day. I had a nice and stable childhood, but I was always curious about my origins and who I look like. From whom would I get my curls, my looks and my character? Other than my biological mother's name and age, I had no information about her. No picture, nothing at all. Now, 26 years after my first Spanish lesson, I still haven't found my biological mother.

The television program Spoorloos went looking for me in 2005 and came back with the story that they had been in contact with my mother, but that she had to go into hiding because she was in trouble. Drug criminals would have used her identity. If she could prove her innocence, she could go public again and contact me. That didn't happen, of course not, because I now know that this story, and therefore the search via Spoorloos , is not correct.

LOVING HOME

No place was found in a foster family for 130 babies between 0 and 1 year old who had to be placed in the past year. So says the non-profit organization Famille d'accueil, which covers 16 foster organizations in the French community.

Of the 166 applications for long-term shelter, only 36 have resulted in a suitable solution in the past year. The other babies, ie 130, could not be taken care of in a family context, the non-profit organization regrets.

The children are then placed in a nursery or moved from one emergency service to another while waiting for a place in a suitable foster home, says Famille d'accueil. In some cases, healthy babies have to stay in a hospital for months or even end up being returned to the family where they were taken and may be in danger.

The organization emphasizes that the children's rights treaty stipulates that children who have to be removed from their families can grow up elsewhere in a family environment. Famille d'accueil is therefore actively looking for more foster families.

alarm bell

India

Adoptions have been taking place since the 60s from India. During the 70s, some children came to Sweden privately and the rest through AC. One of the private routes was our Poona contact, when Eva Minton placed children with the help of SOFOSH and Dipika Maharaj Singh. That contact came to FFIA during the mid-80s.

The FFIA's first authorization in 1979 was for the Juvenile Court in Mumbai (Bombay). It was about children who were placed partly in state orphanages and partly in private orphanages, but who were responsibly sorted under the court. The court assigned us children who had been fully investigated and declared abandoned, usually foundlings.

FFIA received 90 children from the Juvenile Court during the years 1980 - 1985.

A judgment of the Supreme Court of India in 1985 changed and systematized the adoptions. It was regulated how the orphanages should handle children who were placed with them from the courts. After this time, children of this category came directly from the orphanages.

History

FFIA's start in Bombay 1980

The business started when a Mr. E. Raman Rao made contact in 1979. It was with the then KFA, the Association of Adoptive Children with children adopted from Thailand, where Britt-Marie Nygren (formerly Hembert) was a member. Britt-Marie was tasked with investigating whether it was a serious contact and, if so, how it would be organised.

One man who helped Rao make contact and who then became involved in the FFIA was Christer Fält. He was then the contact person for many years and supported the prospective adoptive parents. Rao was in Sweden selling Bibles on behalf of the Adventist movement to which he belonged. He received inquiries from Swedes about adoption and decided to help them. He contacted the Juvenile Court and established good relations with them. With that, they began the procedure of placing children for adoption after the "on remand" investigation instead of sentencing the child "court committed" to an orphanage as before. The problem with such a judgment was that in order for such a child to be placed for adoption, the judgment had to be set aside with a "release order". This was a matter that included the Ministry of Social Affairs and could take a very long time,.

Eventually a procedure was established in Bombay which followed our procedure.

In the 80s and 90s, Henri Tiphagne was a lawyer in the FFIA adoption cases

had in South India. His wife Cynthia served for a time as FFIAs

contact person. Since the mid-90s, Henri has built up

the human rights organization People's Watch in Madurai,

South India. FFIA Aid has been supporting Sudhanthra for many years, which is a

Adoptive couples’ only hope is High Court, which could hand them the custody again.

Four families which accepted lifelong responsibility of unwanted babies and nurtured them for months have been torn apart by a hurried police inquiry into suspicions of interstate child trafficking that have proved unfounded.

In December, the Mankhurd police snatched from the families four babies — whose biological parents didn’t have the resources or will to raise them — assuming the infants had been abducted from Mumbai and sold in Goa, Karnataka, and Gujarat.

The infants, now aged between 5 months and 10 months, were placed in a government-approved shelter’s care only for cops to conclude that no real crime had been committed: the biological parents had willingly consented to their children being raised in a new family.

The realisation came too late as the infants’ immediate future is now ensnared in legal complexities, which do not favour the four adoptive families.