Reporting from Manila — The Manila North Cemetery, where Michelle Sambalilo was abandoned as a young child, is a sprawling, trash-strewn squatter camp where thousands of people eat, sleep and play among acres of colorful crypts.

Rescued from life among the dead, Sambalilo then lived for years among the Philippine capital’s notoriously negligent state-run shelters.

Throughout, she dreamed of someday belonging to a family of her own. But in the end, all it took was one document — one blow from the country’s adoption authorities — to send her dreams crashing down to earth.

The Philippines has an abandoned children problem. About 1.8 million children in the country, more than 1% of its entire population, are “abandoned or neglected,” according to the United Nations’ Children’s Rights & Emergency Relief Organization. Some are victims of extreme poverty; others of natural disasters and armed conflicts in the country’s riven south.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development is responsible for ensuring that many of these children find homes. (Some end up overseas — American families adopted 1,350 Filipino children between 2009 and 2015, according to the U.S. State Department).

Landgericht Karlsruhe

Pforzheimer Stadträtin Oana Krichbaum klagt wegen übler Nachrede

Eine 50-jährige Frau bezichtigt die Pforzheimer Stadträtin Oana Krichbaum des illegalen Kinderhandels und bombardiert sie mit Nachrichten.

Gunther und Oana Krichbaum als Delegierte beim Bundesparteitag der CDU in Hannover

Sollen mit Nachrichten konfrontiert werden: Gunther und Oana Krichbaum wehren sich gegen den „Terror“. Foto: Oana Krichbaum

A cruel injustice was inflicted on thousands of Queensland women who found themselves young, unwed and “in trouble” at a time of strict social mores. JO CRANSTOUN investigates the enduring impact of forced adoption on the young mothers who are now grandmothers.

From the 1950s until the mid-1970s the babies of young mothers were forcibly removed at birth and adopted by married couples.

Those mothers are now broken-hearted seniors living with the trauma, some never speaking again of a stolen baby, others struggling to reconnect decades later with their estranged adult children.

These women consider their babies the “other stolen generation”.

Tireless campaigns for justice led to apologies from the Queensland government in 2012 and the federal government in 2013. Several churches and hospitals involved in forced adoptions have also apologised.

By Lina Vanegas

I am a transracial and transnational displaced person. I was separated from my country, language, and culture and taken to Michigan, which has no connection to me or my ancestors. I was taken there to create a family for strangers who had the privilege and resources to buy me. I had family in Colombia and I was far from being a true orphan. I was bought in Bogota, Colombia and sold to a white couple living in the Midwest in 1976.

I use the word “displaced” intentionally, because the word “adopted” does not define my lived experience in an accurate way. The word “adopted” is language that was created by the child welfare-industrial complex, also known as the adoption industry. I do not subscribe to any of the constraints or barriers that they attempt to put onto my life with their language choices. Using the word “displaced” defines the intentional separation from my family by the child welfare-industrial complex.

My lived experience has informed who I am and has inspired and motivated the work that I do online and in the world. It is very rare that adopted and displaced people’s lived experiences are seen, heard, validated, centered, and believed, so my mission is to do that online, on my podcast, Rescripting The Narrative, and in the work that I do as a social worker and with the organization Adoptees for Choice.

Currently, the voices on adoption that are centered, listened to, and amplified come from adoptive parents and the child welfare-industrial complex. The message that they proclaim is that we are lucky and chosen and should therefore be grateful for being given a better life. This is a very well-crafted marketing campaign; it is propaganda. This adoption propaganda narrative ignores our reality, which is that our lives began in trauma, grief, and loss when we were separated from our mothers and families. Adoption must be recognized as an adverse childhood experience (ACE), as it puts us at risk for addiction, homelessness, suicidal despair, suicide attempts, death by suicide, eating disorders, self harm, anxiety, depression, identity issues, and more. Adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopted people.

Newborn found abandoned in a bag in Lucknow, given to adoption centre

A newborn baby, found abandoned in a bag near the Apna Ghar shelter home in Lucknow’s Motinagar area, has been handed over to an adoption centre.

Lucknow: A newborn baby, found abandoned in a bag near the Apna Ghar shelter home in Lucknow’s Motinagar area, has been handed over to an adoption centre.

According to orders from the Child Welfare Committee, the baby has been handed over to the care of Lilawati Munshi Orphanage and Adoption Centre.

The baby was first discovered by a local women who then contacted Safalta Singh, in-charge of Apna Ghar Ashram, for help.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Amy Klobuchar D-Minn., today introduced a bill to help save adoption agencies serving American families. The legislation, titled the “Voluntary Specialized Accreditation for Background Studies and Home Studies Act,” would help to remove barriers to intercountry adoption by increasing flexibility for adoption service providers and providing a new track for accreditation for agencies providing specialized services.

“There are countless children around the world with no parents or family to care for them, yet Americans who want to adopt these children are finding fewer adoption agencies available to help,” Wicker said. “This bipartisan bill would lower barriers for intercountry adoption, making it easier to welcome children into loving families.”

“Local adoption agencies help children around the world find the loving homes they deserve. But too often, families struggle to find accredited adoption service providers to assist them during the adoption process,” said Klobuchar. “By creating a specialized accreditation for small and medium-size providers that offer background and home studies, our bipartisan legislation ensures that families have trusted local agencies to help them navigate the adoption process and give children safe, stable homes.”

Current regulations require any organization wishing to provide adoption services to be accredited under a single standard. This rule means that specialized agencies that provide only a limited range of services have to pursue a costly accreditation that goes far beyond the scope of their work.

This bill would enable agencies that only offer “home studies” or “background studies” to be accredited in their area of expertise without having to be certified in other areas. This would allow specialized adoption agencies to continue operating and would lower the cost and time needed to stay accredited.

On October 10, 2022, it was announced that TV program Spoorloos linked at least two participants to non-biological family. Following this news, we can imagine that you have questions about how Fiom conducts searches in Colombia. You can read more about this below. Do you have any questions? Feel free to call or email us on 088 126 49 00 or info@fiom.nl .

1. Who do we work with when it comes to searches in Colombia?

For searches in Colombia, Fiom collaborates with the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF, Colombian Institute for Family Welfare). The ICBF is a government agency concerned with the protection of the rights of minors. The ICBF has 33 branches in the various departments and conducts searches for biological families at the request of adoptees.

2. How does the ICBF search?

The ICBF searches through formal channels. Once the identity number of the wanted person is known and checked in the national register, the ICBF requests various organizations, such as health and benefit organizations, to provide up-to-date contact details of the wanted person. After receiving these data, a social worker from the ICBF will contact the person sought by telephone or a home visit will take place. The ICBF never contacts the wanted person via social media.

In fact, it was through the ministry’s push that hard to place children were also adopted, with 42 such children finding safe homes.

NEW DELHI: Of the 905 adoption cases pending with the various courts in the country, as many as 361 adoption orders have been issued in just two months since the amended Juvenile Justice Act (JJ Act), 2015 was notified in September, officials said on Tuesday.

The amended JJ Act, which shifted the power to issue adoption orders from the courts to the district magistrate, helped fast-track the adoption procedure from over three years to two months, officials of the Women and Child Development Ministry (WCD) added.

“There were 905 adoption orders pending with the court on September 23; now, it has come down to 644. A total of 361 adoption orders have been issued,” the official said, adding that constant efforts are being made to reduce the pendency of adoption orders, keeping in mind the welfare of the children.

After the notification was issued on September 23, a total of 589 children have been adopted till today.In fact, it was through the ministry’s push that hard to place children were also adopted, with 42 such children finding safe homes.

Adopted children can face many challenges, such as the impact of early trauma. What can parents do to support them? Author and adoptive dad Ben Fergusson investigates.

In 2018, my husband and I were one of the first married same-sex couples to adopt in Germany. Before we were approved, we had to complete a long process of interviews, financial and medical checks, as well as extensive preparation classes. In these classes, we were often confronted with the myriad challenges that many adoptive children face. Some of them are to do with a fundamental sense of separation and loss: what the Scottish writer and adoptee Jackie Kay, in her memoir, Red Dust Road, describes as the "windy place right at the core of my heart". Others are rooted in traumatic experiences that occurred before the adoption, which can include neglect and abuse, prenatal alcohol exposure, or spending early childhood in institutional care.

While individual experiences of adoption can vary hugely, these underlying traumas can pose long-term risks for the child. According to an analysis of 85 studies on the mental health of adoptees and non-adoptees, the risk of adoptees experiencing psychiatric disorders, having contact with mental health services, or treatment in a psychiatric hospital was approximately double that of non-adoptees. Similarly, a Swedish study on international adoptees found a higher risk of severe mental health problems and suicide in adolescence and young adulthood among children who had been adopted.

However, although being adopted is associated with these risks, a successful adoption placement can help vulnerable children overcome the early adversity they faced. Adoption has been shown to help close the developmental gap between children who have been in care and their peers, having a measurably positive impact on, for instance, their cognitive development.

For children who have faced abuse or neglect in their birth families, adoption and foster care can bring a range of long-term benefits that continue to have an effect well into adulthood – the most important arguably being an enduring sense of safety. But this journey can vary greatly depending on individual circumstances, notably the child's age at adoption. One study has shown that children adopted at a very young age were as securely attached to their permanent families as non-adopted children, while children adopted later tended to struggle more with attachment.

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States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.

Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to speedily re-establishing his or her identity

What does article 8 say?

Article 8 protects children's right to preserve their identity, including their nationality, name and family relations, without unlawful interference. In addition, States are required to help children regain any aspect of their identity that has been taken away from them illegally.