To the President of the House of Representatives

of the States General

Box 20018

2500 EA THE HAGUE

Date

Terre des Hommes Nederland supports the conclusions of the Joustra Commission report on intercountry adoption and argues that the temporary stop should lead to abolition of the practice. Terre des Hommes spoke with the Commission about adoptions from Bangladesh in the 1970s and also shared its views on intercountry adoptions.

In the 1970s, Terre des Hommes Netherlands provided emergency medical assistance, schooling and assistance with the construction of emergency shelters in Bangladesh, ravaged by civil war and natural disasters. Our then local director in Bangladesh, in addition to his employment at Terre des Hommes, was also paid by the Dutch adoption organization BIA (Bureau Interlandelijke Adoptie). In that role he coordinated adoptions. Terre des Hommes NL was aware of this but had no role in the adoption procedures. In 1977 he was accused of convincing parents to give up their child for adoption under false pretenses. The allegations implied that he had abused the confidence that these parents had in the BIA and in Terre des Hommes.

In response to renewed questions about this issue by the adoptees of this period and the investigation of the Joustra Commission, Terre des Hommes has researched and made available as much historical information as possible about our work in Bangladesh in the 1970s. We shared the report on this in September 2020 with the interest groups of the adoptees and the Joustra Commission.

Forty years later, it is difficult to determine exactly how each adoption came about. We have however found no evidence that our country director at the time misused his position as representative of Terre des Hommes. The various investigations at the time also did not confirm this. However, what we have seen is that due to the interdependence of all aid organizations and the chaotic humanitarian emergency in Bangladesh, the various international and local aid organizations worked together to assist each other at times. In a sense, Terre des Hommes was intertwined with these adoptions. For example, employees of Terre des Hommes would on occasion escort children to the Netherlands.

As a children's rights organization, we feel very involved with the adoptees who are now, more than 40 years later, struggling with uncertainty about their origin and the circumstances of their adoption. We are also aware of the families in Bangladesh who have similar questions about the fate of their adopted child, brother or sister. That is why we offered support to the interest groups of the adoptees last year. Over the next two years, we will provide financial and - if desired - practical support to their initiatives to restore contact between adoptees and their relatives with a targeted search program. We hope to be able to report more about this together with these organizations in the short term.

The government immediately suspends international adoptions. There is structural child theft, child trafficking and unethical behavior in adoptions, concluded the Joustra Committee.

Our director-manager Ina HR Hut calls on the government to compensate adoptees and biological parents if possible.

With the temporary suspension, the cabinet is following the advice of the Joustra committee, which has come up with hard-hitting conclusions. On behalf of Minister Sander Dekker, the committee investigated the role of the government in adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka between 1967 and 1998. However, the committee notes that before 1967 and after 1998 and also in other countries was and is from adoption abuses. The committee concludes that the system of intercountry adoption is still susceptible to fraud and that abuses continue to this day. The committee has serious doubts whether it is possible to design a public law system in which the identified abuses no longer occur. See here the report.

Outgoing Minister of Legal Protection Sander Dekker admits that the government has looked away for too long: 'The Dutch government has failed by looking away from abuses in intercountry adoption for years and not intervening in this.'

Our managing director Ina Hut is pleased with the conclusions. she too was heard by the committee. In 2003 she made the switch from board member of Nyenrode University to Wereldkinderen, an adoption and project aid organization. At the time, she still thought adoption was a noble thing, but soon discovered that the demand side stimulated the supply. This was also a reason for her to stop her own adoption procedure after she was director of Wereldkinderen for a year. She thought she could improve the system from within, but that was fighting a losing battle. For example, she wanted to do further research into adoptions from China, because she was getting more and more suspicions and evidence of child trafficking. But in this she was opposed by the Ministry of Security and Justice (Central Authority Office). If she were to conduct research in China, The permit of Wereldkinderen would be revoked, it was threatened. She could no longer support intercountry adoption and publicly resigned as a whistleblower in 2009. See here thedocumentary by EO Network. Parliamentary questions and a General Consultation about her departure followed. See here the report that Ina Hut wrote for the Lower House for the General Consultation dated 6 October 2009. However, this did not lead to a stop. However, the number of applications for adoption decreased considerably, because the image changed.

New corporate due diligence law could put an end to profit from forced labour and child labour

Brussels, 8 February 2021

We are on the brink of a major opportunity to advance and protect human rights for people all over the world. In the next few months, the European Union will further debate a proposed business and human rights law that would require companies operating in the EU to prevent and address human rights abuses and environmental damage in their global supply chains. This commitment to responsible business could help tackle forced labour and child labour in supply chains around the world.

On Monday 8 February, the European Commission closed a public consultation on the proposed law. We took part in this consultation, together with partner organisations in more than 20 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nepal, South Africa and Turkmenistan. We also actively encouraged our supporters and allies to do the same, and we want to thank everyone who took part: this consultation proved to the European Commission that people all over the world look to the EU to show leadership, courage and compassion for oppressed people everywhere.

Real action needed to combine business and human rights

The Joustra Committee has advised the outgoing cabinet to suspend the adoption of children from abroad for the time being. The report of former director Tjibbe Joustra will be presented on Monday morning. The report refers to "serious abuses" in the Dutch adoption culture.

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Commissie presenteert rapport over misstanden adoptiecultuur

De commissie-Joustra heeft het demissionair kabinet geadviseerd de adoptie van kinderen uit het buitenland voorlopig stil te leggen. Maandagochtend wordt het rapport van oud-bestuurder Tjibbe Joustra gepresenteerd. In het rapport wordt gesproken over "ernstige misstanden" bij de Nederlandse adoptiecultuur.

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Statement Adoption Association Gereformeerde Gezindte (AVGG) in response to the report of the Joustra Committee. [1]

On February 8, 2021, the Commission Investigation into Intercountry Adoption handed over the report with the results of its investigation to the Minister for Legal Protection. The committee has investigated the actual course of affairs regarding intercountry adoptions and the role and responsibility of the Dutch government in this regard. Commissioned by the committee, Statistics Netherlands has conducted research into the living situation, well-being and search behavior of intercountry adoptees. This covers the period 1967-1998, before the introduction of the Hague Adoption Convention. During the execution of the original investigation assignment, the Committee, in consultation with the Minister, expanded the investigation into known abuses outside this period and outside these five investigated countries of origin.

The adoption community is deeply shocked by those adoptions where abuses occurred in the 1970s-1990s. Recognition is appropriate here for the suffering inflicted on those involved, the adoptees and their biological family. Our association also thinks of the adoptive parents, who entered into a procedure in good faith, which later turned out to be based on lies. They see the pain their children struggle with. We realize that questions can arise about God's providence, doubts about God's way of which adoptees and their parents were previously firmly convinced. Could not then arise the complaint from the book of Job: Shall God pervert justice, and the Almighty pervert justice? (Job 8:3)

The AVGG was founded in 1979, in the middle of the period under investigation. (Former) members of our association have also had to deal with abuses. Although the AVGG has not mediated in adoptions and has not committed any culpable acts, the association has not always reacted as alertly and empathetically. If anyone was hurt in doing so, even if it was done in ignorance, we hereby apologize.

We support the following recommendations made by the committee and adopted by the minister:

Abii was adopted from Zimbabwe by Australian parents when she was a baby. She always wanted to know where she came from - but the answer was wilder than she imagined.

Early one morning in August 1983, lives are about to change forever. A baby was dumped in a gutter outside a Zimbabwe hospital, wrapped in a towel.

That tiny, abandoned baby would one day become Australian - a true blue Aussie. But who left her in a lonely stretch of African wasteland - and why - has remained a mystery for 36 years.

36 years have passed since that little girl was found dumped by an African roadside.

The young baby, Abigail Prangs, is now a happily married mother of four living on the Sunshine Coast.

When I decided to adopt orphaned twins from Ethiopia, it felt like the most natural thing to do. But it raised many questions about motherhood and the bond we have with our children

I assumed I would conceive naturally when John and I decided to start a family. I didn’t. We turned to fertility drugs with ambivalence. Reports of the mood swings the drugs sometimes caused worried me. I had only gone through one round when I broke a wooden dish-drying rack over John’s head. I don’t remember what he said, but I’m sure it was something I’d otherwise have considered innocuous. Instead, a growling, uncontrollable rage emerged from nowhere and then overcame me like an emotional tsunami. We decided the drugs weren’t for us.

I had gone along with fertility treatments for the same reason I went along with other non-decisions I’ve made in my life, like having an enormous wedding, because people whom I loved wanted it for me. I thought I was supposed to want it, just like I was supposed to want to get pregnant by any means. Yet I cried genuine tears when, month after month, I was unable to conceive. I felt like a failure.

My friend Lisa, a scholar of the Bible, sat with me once as I confessed that another fertility treatment had failed to take. “This is your pain,” she said. “You must bear witness.”

Her words gripped me physically. I stopped crying. I was erect, alert and full of purpose. From that moment, I paid attention to the more important presence in my insides: not the drugs but the little door in my heart that had always been closed to them. Behind that door was my truest self and she didn’t want to conceive that badly.

Adopted child According to Chamila Seppenwoolde, who was adopted from Sri Lanka, something is lost forever with every international adoption. "You can't go back to how it should have been."

It would have been close if Chamila Seppenwoolde (34) had ended up in another family. Her adoptive parents had ticked a girl on the form, but had been assigned a boy. In the van on the way to the lawyer in Colombo, it was other adoptive parents who convinced them not to agree. "They said, you have ordered a girl, so you must have a girl too."

Sri Lanka was a popular adoption country in the second half of the 1980s, as many newborn babies were offered here. Often this was not done voluntarily. Chamila's mother thought she would give up her daughter temporarily, until she could be financially independent again. "Only when she saw in court that I was being picked up by two white people did she realize she had lost me."

The Sinhalese baby that was handed to the couple Seppenwoolde was called Dilrukshi Chamila, but the Seppenwooldes did not like the first name and was deleted. Her passport therefore states Chamila Chandrani - the middle name is that of her Sinhalese mother. A loss, says Chamila. "My real names are all my mother gave me."

In the Seppenwoolde family not much was said about Chamila's origins. It wasn't until she was in high school that she was shown a picture of her mother. "I was always told: your mother could not take care of you and gave you up out of love."

The cabinet must put an end to adoptions from abroad as soon as possible. That is one of the recommendations from the upcoming report of the Joustra Committee on the abuses in foreign adoptions. "What we have known for years is now finally being recognized," victims respond to Hart van Nederland .

Parents who gave up children without knowing it, children who subsequently received a false adoption report and can therefore no longer find their biological parents. Much went wrong in the adoptions between 1967 and 1997. Monday the report of the committee headed by Tjibbe Joustra that has investigated the role and responsibility of the Dutch government in Indonesia, Brazil, Colombia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka will be published.

Ghost parents

One of those adopted children is Amanda Janssen from Nieuwegein. "I have ghost parents," she tells Hart van Nederland . "I know I was born of something, but from what?"

Amanda's life was turned upside down when she and her adopted sister set out to investigate her origins. But at the hospital she found out that her whole life, her name, her date of birth, belonged to someone else. "At the hospital they said: your document is false." The sister, who had always been told to be a thoroughbred sister, turned out not to be related.