KANPUR: Two brothers have reportedly been arrested and sent straight to jail for allegedly raping their sixteen-year-old "adopted" sister in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur district.

As per reports, during police investigations, it came to notice that the parents of the accused had illegally adopted the victim from the orphanage in 2013 but no documents related to it have been shown. The accused brothers had also reportedly made an obscene video of the minor.

The girl used to receive threats from both of her stepbrothers that they would go viral with the footage. The victim was frequently subjected to rape attempts through extortion.

The victim informed the authorities that she was from the Banda district, that her mother had died in 2013, and that her father had abandoned his three daughters in the care of their mother.

Her maternal relatives placed the child in an orphanage.

The established adoption process should not be bypassed to increase the numbers

Policy intervention without knowledge of the ground realities often ends up as an exercise in self-gratification for those in authority and results in little or no benefit for the intended target group. Wanting to do good must be matched by knowing the right thing to do in the circumstance, and in the case of children, be guided by child-centric policies. Whether the recent recommendation of a parliamentary panel to bring more abandoned children into the adoption process will fulfil these parameters is an issue that warrants further discussion. A recent report, “Review of Guardianship and Adoption Laws”, by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice has pointed to the huge mismatch between the number of people wanting to adopt children and the number of children legally available for adoption, and suggested that the way to remedy that would be to ensure that “orphan and abandoned children found begging on the streets… are made available for adoption at the earliest”. To do so, it has suggested periodic district surveys to identify children who are orphaned/abandoned. The report argued that in a country with millions of orphans, only 2,430 children were available for adoption. It is true that there are always more people wanting to adopt children than the number of children actually available for adoption; it has been so historically, but the increasing chasm, as the report indicates, will undoubtedly have to be addressed. According to the report, there were 27,939 prospective parents registered with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) as on December 2021, from nearly 18,000 in 2017. There were 6,996 orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children residing in childcare institutions considered adoptable, but only 2,430 were declared legally free for adoption by Child Welfare Committees. It claimed that the waiting time for adoption had increased to three years from one year, in the past five years. The total number of children adopted in 2021-22 was only 3,175.

But the process of adoption in the country was tightened — procedurally and legally — in response to rampant malpractices and inter-country adoption rackets. CARA was installed as the nodal body for in-country and inter-country adoptions, to monitor and regulate the process, ensuring through stringent rules that the adoption is in the best interests of the child, and no illegality is involved. While the parliamentary committee has interpreted that there is automatic happiness when a child in an institution is placed in a home, it is important to exercise caution. No doubt, the country should take care of its children orphaned due to circumstances, but even as it acknowledges that institutionalisation may be detrimental over the long term, it should pay equal attention to the finer aspects of child care, and allow itself to be guided by a child-centric philosophy. There are no shortcuts in ensuring orphaned children come to no harm.

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The illegal and unethical forced adoption practices that commonly occurred in Australia through maternity homes, hospitals, adoption agencies and privately from the 1940s through to 1980s has affected thousands of people.

Research shows forced adoption can have long-term psychological impacts ranging from complex and pathological grief and loss to self-identity and attachment issues, anxiety and attachment disorders, personality disorders, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 2012, the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) conducted research into past adoption practices.

More than 1500 people participated in the study, including 823 adopted persons, 505 mothers, 94 adoptive parents, 94 other family members, 12 fathers and 58 service providers.

The study found mothers in labour had been tied to beds or held down while pillows or sheets were held up to obscure any view of their newborn baby.

Rootsreizen

Thema-avond, donderdag 23 mei 2019, 19.45-22.00 u, Rhenen

Steeds meer ouders willen met hun kinderen een rootsreis maken. Iedere reis is

anders. De één gaat op zoek naar zijn of haar biologische ouders, de ander wil

alleen kennis maken met het land. Welke behoefte heeft je kind? Wat kun je doen

Disabled children are being abused and neglected in institutions across Ukraine, UN experts have warned.

The human rights officials said the war had made their situation even worse and called on the Ukrainian government to right its "historic wrongs".

Their statement comes after a BBC News investigation uncovered widespread abuse in the country's orphanages.

There were more than 100,000 children and young people living in institutions before the war.

When Russia invaded in February, thousands of disabled people were removed from the institutions and sent back to their families.

The effervescence that surrounds us at the start of the school year only revives painful memories for Julienne Mpemba. On several occasions, she was expelled from the public school where she was enrolled in the Congo: her mother did not have enough to pay the school fees. The financial situation of the DRC having further deteriorated, there are thousands of children, not attending school, who hang around in the streets today. In 2008, with other people aware of the plight of the Congolese, she launched the non-profit organization Tumaini. Tumaini means "to hope" in Swahili. By paying 125 € per year, the price of a sponsorship, a child is guaranteed to go to school for a whole year. In October, Julienne Mpemba will leave Namur where she lives for a few months for the Congo. She is going to settle in Kinshasa, a relay office with the association. On September 11, the non-profit association Tumaini is organizing a dinner in Belgrade. This is also about raising funds to help children.

Julienne Mpemba has been living in Namur for several years now. There are memories that she is not ready to erase from her memory. Fatherless when she was still a child, she experienced the harsh reality of life. She says: "Until the death of dad, I was enrolled in a posh school where I learned a lot of things. The teaching there was excellent, that's how I had a very good foundation in French as in mathematics." A paying school of course. When the mother finds herself alone with her children, it is no longer possible for Julienne to follow her schooling in such a privileged establishment.“I was enrolled in a less famous but still good quality public school. We were more than 40 children in a class. Several times I was expelled from school because mum had not paid school fees. functioning. I would come home and the next day I would go back to school with the money. I have classmates who have never been able to return to school for lack of means and today they had in primary school. It's revolting. In my time, at the end of the 1980s, children in my situation had five or six in a class. Now it's much worse: it's the half of a class that is affected."A class where 60 children attend classes. There are so many of them that some school children take lessons from 7:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and others from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The following week, we reverse.

Buy your bench

"Not to continue your studies for lack of financial means, it's horrible, says Julienne Mpemba. I had a friend who was a hit during the preparation for university but he was so poor that his parents could not pay the school fees. He would have been a perfect lawyer, his case still haunts me today."But it is well before the university that the door of the school is difficult to cross. Thus, a child can only be registered, in kindergarten, in private and it is of course paying. Many therefore only enter school at the age of 6 without having learned the basics.

We still come to situations that could be laughable if behind there was not such disarray. So that her daughter can follow her schooling, Julienne's mother will go to a carpenter whom she will ask to build a bench. The school accepted Julienne but there was no more seating! She went to school with her bench stuck it in front of the teacher's desk and she took her lessons.

Eight years ago, Oldenburg bus driver Jasbir Singh Dhot and his wife adopted a baby in India. To this day, the authorities do not recognize this adoption and the family has to live apart.

A fully furnished children's room has been waiting for eight-year-old Anoopjot in Wahnbek for eight years. For eight years, Jasbir Singh Dhot has only seen his wife twice a year. And for eight years, the 59-year-old has not given up hope that his family can still live together.

He himself came to Germany 31 years ago. Many people in Oldenburg know him – Jasbir Singh Dhot has been a driver in the VWG city bus fleet for over ten years. His wife Charanjit has lived with him since 2003. "We always wanted children, but it didn't work out," he says. The couple was all the happier in 2014 when the chance arose to have a baby. “My nephew and his wife were unable to provide for another child and wanted to put him up for adoption. We wanted to accept it.” They adopted Anoopjot as soon as he was born, and since then the boy has been living with Dhot's wife and family in north-west India, 80 kilometers from the Pakistani border.

All requests denied

Contrary to what was planned, the couple has not yet been able to bring their son to Germany. In 2015, the youth welfare office had already inspected the apartment and the surrounding area in Wahnbek and classified it as suitable and forwarded the so-called home study report to the authorities in India and Germany. The Joint Central Adoption Office (GZA) in Hamburg nevertheless refused to recognize the adoption in 2017. Another application was rejected at the end of last year. The family court in Oldenburg and the higher regional court also rejected the recognition of the adoption. A court in India has already confirmed the adoption twice, in 2015 and again in 2017. However, the procedure there is not internationally recognized.

The history of the war must be dealt with and Russia must be given a hand again, says ex-EU Commissioner Verheugen.

"An understanding will only be possible if both sides observe the principle that has existed since Helsinki 1975 that everyone has to respect the legitimate security interests of the other," said Günter Verheugen on April 3 in an interview on the left-wing platform "nd" (formerly New Germany). As EU Commissioner, Verheugen was in charge of the eastward enlargement of the EU. Until 2010, the former SPD member of the Bundestag was Deputy President of the European Commission.

"EU eastward expansion was right, but..."

The Strategic Partnership with Russia followed the 2002 strategy of creating a "ring of friends" around the EU. Russia, on the other hand, wanted a prominent status in this ring that corresponded to its importance. This partnership with Russia also worked very well for a while, until a new East-West confrontation broke out. According to Verheugen, this was due to the fact that “the EU was following the US line more and more”. Washington has set itself the goal of weakening Russia in the long term so that it can never become a rival again.

In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 , Putin made it clear that he would not accept a course that disregarded Russian security interests. Putin saw the main problem in the eastward expansion of NATO, but the eastern partnership of the EU after 2007 without Russia's participation also irritated him: "In 2010 Russia still wanted to implement trilateral projects - EU, Russia, countries of the eastern partnership. So there were clearly opportunities for Russia to be constructively involved in a partnership, but unfortunately these were not used." Neither side seriously considered Russia's EU membership. It was always about cooperation and partnership, under the keyword "from Lisbon to Vladivostok".

We launched an investigation into allegations of possible criminality involving Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses on 6th October 2021. Since then, we have received reports from a number of people including mothers who gave birth in these institutions, those who were adopted from different named institutions, people who worked there, and residents. We are pleased that people are having the confidence after all these years to come forward, however we believe there are still people out there who have suffered and not yet made a report.

Help and support available

If you come forward, you will speak with a specialist detective from our Historic Child Abuse Unit within our Public Protection Branch, and will be offered the opportunity to have your account recorded so that a criminal investigation can take place. You will also be offered to be signposted to other services for help and support.

How do I make a report to Police?

If you have been the victim of non-recent abuse or any criminal act arising out of these institutions, or have any information likely to assist an investigation into a criminal act committed, please come forward and report this to us. We care about what you have to say, will listen and support you, and will act to keep you and others safe