---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Helpdesk Adoptie Fiom

Date: Thu 9. Jan 2020 at 19:29

Subject: Nieuws van Fiom

To: info@againstchildtrafficking.org

Duty of investigation

Soul traffickers (Investigation of suspicions of fraudulent adoptions between Guatemala and Belgium)

)

Detailed research by the Adoption Authority shows that there were 4,989 inter-country adoptions approved in Ireland, between January 1991 and September 2019.

In the first decade under examination, from January 1991 to October 2010, there were 4,282 inter-country adoptions from 33 countries. The vast majority of the overall figure, therefore, took place in the years to October 2010.

And, 83% of these children came from just five countries – Russia, Romania, Vietnam, China and Ethiopia.

Steep decline

From November 2010 to September 2019, there were 707 intercountry adoptions from 23 countries – comparatively a steep decline in numbers.

SALT LAKE CITY — The feeling of anticipation was eating through Belle Barbu.

It was Nov. 14, 2019. The 25-year-old Washington, Washington County, resident had traveled to Italy and was moments away from meeting her birth family.

The last time Barbu’s birth parents had seen her was the day she was born in a Romanian hospital. But even after their baby girl vanished, the family never stopped praying or believing that God would bring her back to them.

Belle Barbu was recently reunited with her parents about 25 years after she was kidnapped from a Romanian hospital. Operation Underground Railroad

The special reunion, decades in the making, was made possible with the help of Operation Underground Railroad.

"Soul traffickers" investigates suspicions of fraudulent adoptions between Guatemala and Belgium

"Where do I come from? Who am I? Who is my birth mother? It’s all on file but… it’s not true"

When Sophie pronounces this sentence, she is 30 years old. It is at this age that the landmarks on which she has relied since she was a child, collapsed.

Sophie left her native Guatemala in 1984 and has lived with her adoptive mother in Belgium ever since. A story of successful and assumed adoption: Viviane never hid anything from her daughter.

Sophie has been leafing through her adoption file since she was a child, and she has written many letters in an attempt to find her biological mother. In vain.

Private actors make child trafficking adoptions

Debate As more irregularities come to the surface, more adoptees begin to demand that both the past and the present adoptions be examined. The requirements are paradoxically supported by the same treaty that the adoption agencies are leaning towards - the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since the turn of the year, it is the law in Sweden and now we must start working to prevent trafficking in children in real terms, writes Maria Fredriksson, adoption debater.

From 1 January this year, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is law in Sweden. The Children's Convention was adopted in 1989 and came into force the following year. Sweden was one of the first countries to ratify it and for several years various forces have worked to raise it to Swedish law. Now this is reality.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes the right of children to be registered at birth. Furthermore, children have the right, as far as possible, to know their origins and to be cared for by their parents. The State party to the Convention undertakes to respect the child's right to identity and, upon deprivation, shall provide appropriate support to quickly restore the child's identity. In addition, the State Party shall take all measures to prevent trafficking in children, regardless of purpose and form.

The Swedish adoption organization Adoptionscentrum, which is the world's second largest and one of the world's oldest, is one of the actors that has long been pushing the issue of the Children's Convention as a law under the slogan "Children's right to family" and international adoption has since been formalized with similar altruistic slogans.

Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark

Images

Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.

The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu.

Now experts say that despite the children having been adopted into loving, nurturing families in the early 1990s, the early neglect appears to have left its mark on their brain structures.

I was 38 when I adopted my daughter Richa in 1997. Richa’s birth mother was 18 when she gave her up in 1996. I have often thought about the loss this woman (child, really) must have experienced, and have felt so much compassion for her situation and gratitude for her choice.

Richa has always talked about her birth parents, primarily her mother. Sometimes it was to say she wanted to write them letters or set up an apartment in India so they could live there and she could visit them. At other times, she cried bitterly that they didn’t want her. She wrote in a school diary in 4th grade that she wanted to run away and find them. My daughter’s pain was heartbreaking for me. I would try to acknowledge her pain, let her cry and then distract her, and ensure that I never made it about us. In fact, she is totally bonded with everyone in the family, so I never felt her need to know her birth parents meant she didn’t view us as her parents.

We survived some tumultuous teenage years. We had a letter from her birth mother (let’s call her K) and a photo of her holding Richa as a baby (back view, so face is not visible). We gave these to Richa when she was 16. When she was 19, she wanted to try to find K. I wrote to her orphanage several times over a period of 3 months, without hearing anything. Finally, I just told them that the two of us were going to be there January 8, 2016, and hoped they had some information for us.

On January 7th, I got an email from them saying to come in the next day to talk about meeting Richa’s birth mother. We went in, and the director called up K in front of us, and set up a meeting for the next day! Apparently a social worker had gone to a 19-year old address they had where her mother and sister still lived, and the sister agreed to put the social worker in touch with K. K’s situation was that she had got married without telling her husband about the baby she had conceived out of wedlock and given up for adoption.Thus if her husband found out about her meeting, it would have been dangerous for her. Nevertheless, she agreed to travel to a different location and meet us.

I don’t think I have ever felt more anxious or stressed as I was in those two days. Even more than the day we went to meet Richa for the first time! My stress was completely about making sure things didn’t blow up for Richa, leaving her more scarred than helped by the experience. I worried that K would agree to come and then back out, or come and demand money. I worried that Richa had woven these fantasies about her birth mother, and that the reality of a rural, Maharashtrian woman would be completely alien to her.

Eight-year-old Harsha (name changed) was recently adopted by a couple in Hyderabad from an adoption agency in Bengaluru. The prospective parents were eager to take the child home and

hence he had to be pulled out of school mid-year. Like any other child of his age, Harsha was active

and mischievous. While the father, a school teacher, found this behaviour normal for a child of that

age, the mother found it diicult to cope. She grew exasperated with him. Regretting the adoption,

she approached the agency to take the child back, even as the agency members tried to reason

‘The online form for adoption has only two options, male and female’

Though Kerala came up with a transgender policy in 2015, many socio-legal problems of sexual minorities are yet to be addressed, according to LGBTQ activists.

“Marriage and adoption of children are still a huge issue for sexual minorities,” says Vijayaraja Mallika, transwoman poet and winner of the Vayalar Ramavarma Poetry Award 2019, who got married recently. To get married, transgenders have to cross many hurdles. Even if they are transman or transwoman, they have to procure the identity cards of ‘cismale’ and ‘cisfemale’ to get married. Otherwise they can live together, but the relationship will not be legal, she noted.

“The online form for adoption does not even have a third option, other than male and female. Leave alone the huge financial burden for such legal adoptions, the rules do not allow sexual minorities to legally adopt children,” Ms. Shyam noted.

Illegal adoptions