A parliamentary standing committee has expressed serious concern over the decline in the number of children coming to adoption agencies over the years, saying it points to trafficking or a thriving illegal child adoption market.

The committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice tabled its report on the review of guardianship and adoption laws in Parliament in the recently concluded Monsoon session.

The committee stressed the need to increase surveillance, especially on unregistered child care institutions and adoption agencies/hospitals with the past record of trafficking.

The committee also expresses serious concern about decline in the number of children coming to adoption agencies over the years. This decline, by and large, points to trafficking or a thriving illegal child adoption market, the report stated.

The committee stressed it is important to get a true picture of the number of children who are orphaned/abandoned through a district-level survey and the data needs to be updated on a regular basis.

Lydia (39, occupational therapist in elderly care) and Jaco (39, training advisor in a hospital) have two children: Rebekah (10) and Sam (4). The children were both adopted when they were 2.5 and come from the same orphanage in Johannesburg.

something wrong

Lydia: 'After trying for a year and a half to get pregnant, we went to see the doctor. Maybe something is wrong, we thought. This turned out to be the case after research: we had a zero percent chance of a pregnancy. A hard message. The door was closed, but that quickly gave us room to think about other options. Like adoption.

this is me

Jaco had a colleague who was in an adoption process. Not long after our conversation with him, we also signed up. From that moment it took five years, with both children, before we could hold them in our arms.

This figure of the Belgian banking world who worked within the foundation for the protection of children, died on July 26, at the age of 91.

Baron Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer, who had a leading role in the creation of Child Focus and its European counterpart, Missing Children Europe, which he both chaired, died on July 26 at the age of 91. , announced Child Focus in an obituary published on its site. A great figure in the Belgian banking world, the man was notably at the head of BBL, which later became ING Belgium.

Born November 16, 1930 in Brasschaat (Antwerp), Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer grew up in a French-speaking bourgeois environment. With a doctorate in law and a degree in applied economics from UCL, the man continued his career at the European Coal and Steel Community and then at the European Economic Community as chief of staff between 1957 and 1974.

In 1973, he became a director of the Banque de Bruxelles, then a member of the executive committee of this financial institution the following year. Two years later, he became managing director and member of the management committee of the merged bank BBL (Banque Bruxelles Lambert) before taking over the management of the latter in 1992.

After an aborted plan to create a “Great Belgian Bank” which would have brought together BBL, Générale de Banque (future Fortis Bank) and Crédit Communal (which became Dexia then Belfius), Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer left BBL in 1997, just before its takeover by the Dutch company ING.

NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel in a report on the review of guardianship and adoption laws has highlighed that with few children available in the adoption pool, average time taken for prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) registered with the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) to get a referral for children in the age group of 0-4 years is approximately two years.

The report tabled in the just concluded monsoon session of Parliament on Monday noted with “grave concern” that as per the adoption statistics of CARA, the number of children adopted in the country declined from 5,693 in 2010 to 3,142 in 2020-21. Also the number of children taken in inter-country adoption showed a sharp fall from 628 in 2010 to 417 in 2020-21.

As per the information furnished by CARA, as on December 16, 2021, as many as 26,734 PAPs had registered with CARA and are waiting for referral for in-country adoption and 1,205 prospective adoptive parents were awaiting inter-country adoption. As per the information furnished to the department related parliamentary standing committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice, by the ministry of women and child development, the average time taken for PAPs to get a referral for children in the age group of 0-4 years is approximately two years. Data provided by CARA, as on December 16, 2021, shows that a total of 6,996 orphaned/abandoned/surrendered children are residing in child care institutions linked with specialised adoption agencies, out of which 2,430 were declared legally free for adoption and 4,566 children were in process at different levels prior to being declared legally free for adoption by the child welfare committees.

The committee took note of the “paradoxical situation” where on one hand there are a large number of parents willing to adopt a child, on the other, there are not many children available for adoption.

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In the age of 'Instagram adoptions', sophisticated con artists are defrauding prospective parents of large sums of money by digitally posing as viable birth mothers. With the scope of this fraudulent industry only just emerging, Sarah Green speaks to victims of the burgeoning crime, and those who are fighting it in the dark.

Christmas Day 2021 should have been one of the happiest of Breanne Paquin’s life. After almost a decade of disheartening doctor visits and diagnoses, Paquin and her husband boarded a last-minute flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Houston, Texas for what they thought was their Christmas miracle.

The hopeful couple were expecting a baby boy, and they were flying almost 1,300 miles to meet him. Leading up to their trip, Paquin had been in near-constant communication with a pregnant woman named Ingrid Hernandez — their online relationship developed through daily good morning and good night texts, picture updates, video messages and FaceTime calls, along with an expectant promise that grew with each passing day.

Five months prior, Hernandez had promised the Paquins her unborn baby boy via social media. In the months that followed, they had spent dozens of hours and thousands of dollars perfecting every detail for his homecoming — from building and furnishing his nursery, to stocking frozen breastmilk and baby supplies.

The young couple never could have predicted the trauma that waited for them in Texas. Instead of spending their Christmas with Hernandez in a hospital delivery room, the Paquins found themselves in an emergency meeting with their lawyer on a deserted restaurant patio.

Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220 - 235)

THURSDAY 3 MARCH 2005

Mr Nigel Cantwell, Ms Gill Haworth and Ms Naomi Angell

Q220 Chairman: Is there, or could there be, a set of criteria which would find general agreement? In a way you are both saying these are the sorts of things which would make us worry about the country. Is there a set of criteria? Could there be a set of criteria which would lead you to conclude that a particular country was not one in which adoption should be considered outside special cases?

Ms Angell: I think they would have to be reasonably general, because it is a huge range of concerns that have been raised. I would add to that I feel there should be a dialogue with countries where there is concern about their procedures. If there is a failure to respond in a reasonable way to those concerns over a period of time, that would cause concern. Different countries raise very different issues. As an illustration of that, for instance, in Guatemala the concern was on the provenance of relinquished children, that the people giving the children up for adoption may not be the mothers but were saying that they were, and what was put in place there was DNA testing by the British Embassy to provide those sorts of safeguards. In Cambodia children are not relinquished on the whole; it is mainly that they are abandoned, and it is very difficult then. DNA testing would not work, so one is having to look at very different solutions. I think any criteria would have to be broad and general.

Romania has agreed to extend the ban on international adoptions until 15 November following criticism from the EU that the system is still tainted by corruption. Romania has been told that it should reform its child welfare system before it can join the EU.

The Romanian government also came under pressure from the United States where thousands of families are waiting to adopt Romanian children. The US want Romania to liberalise international child adoptions. According to the French daily Le Monde, an internal memorandum written by the US Mission to the EU in Brussels directly connects the issue of child adoptions to Romania’s integration into NATO.

According to Le Monde, the Commission’s Directorate General for Enlargement responds to the US non-paper stating that “American experts are not well suited to Romania’s needs in this area”. “The United States are the only country in the world, apart from Somalia, which has not signed the UN Convention on Children’s Rights and the Hague Convention. The US has not developed the administrative capacity to apply this convention,” according to the Commission’s response.

The Romanian government is now preparing a reform of laws that will encourage domestic adoptions and place children in foster families or private child-care centres. Four draft laws, creating a new legal environment for child protection, are to be adopted.

POSITIONS

Editorial Reviews

Review

An intelligent and insightful book that examines the special problems of the post-institutionalized child. Dr. Federici's personal and professional experience with this population adds a dynamic dimension to this work which reaches well beyond a dry medical text. -- Lois Hannon and Thais Tepper, Co-Directors, Parent Network for Post-Institutionalized Child

For most adoptive parents, the addition of a new child to the family is one of life's high points. Sadly, this joy is not a universal experience. Children who have suffered extreme deprivation and/or abuse within institutional care settings often arrive with a spectrum of problems that overwhelms most parents. As a drowning person reaches for a lifeline, parents of severely disturbed post-institutionalized children should reach for this book. Guided by his extensive professional and personal experience with these "hopeless" children, Dr. Federici helps parents navigate through the complexities of medical and behavioral services for children with complex problems to help their child reach his or her full potential. -- Dana E. Johnson, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Division of Neonatology, Co-Director, International Adoption Clinic, The University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinic

I feel privileged to call Dr. Ronald Federici my friend. I have traveled with Ron to Romanian orphanages on two occasions this past year and his work is remarkable. His drive to save the lives of the "the forgotten" is inspirational. After reading his book I am convinced that families and adoption professionals all over the country will get the passion that flies off of every page. Ron's efforts to save children who ordinarily would have been abandoned is truly unique. His depth and breadth of experience with older adopted institutionalized children has served to help thousands of families over the last 10 years. No one knows the effects of institutionalization on the neuropsychological development of children like Dr. Federici. His guidelines for evaluating and managing newly adopted institutionalized children are invaluable to adoptive parents and adoption professionals. We thank you Ron! -- Dr. Jane Ellen Aronson, Director, International Adoption Medical Consultation Services, Chief, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Health Sciences Center-Stony Brook, Winthrop-University Hospital

The pontoon does not often go to the water

PATRICK ANDRÉ DE HILLERIN THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2021, 1:02 AM

Zoom

The pontoon does not often go to the water

Raluca Turcan found time, in her busy schedule, to participate on September 22, 2021 in the fast cutting of the inaugural ribbon of a pontoon / itinerant center for treating children with disabilities in the Danube Delta. The pontoon in question was arranged by the SERA Foundation, with money from the sponsor Penny (Rewe Group), about 120,000 euros, and from European funds. The pontoon was also included in the documents of the European-funded project "Always in the family - a project to reduce institutionalization, the risk of separation and to ensure local recovery services for children in Tulcea County", a project with a total value of 5,954,979.39 lei.

The timeline of the case that took 28 years to bring justice to the victim was recently shared by Uttar Pradesh police.

Gang-raped at the age of 12, a woman’s remarkable journey to justice come to fruition recently. The timeline of the case that took 28 years to bring justice for the victim was recently shared by Uttar Pradesh police.

The young girl was raped by two individuals in 1994 at the age of 12. She had been living with her sister and brother-in-law in Shajahanpur when the accused barged into her home and gang-raped her.

The rape led to her becoming pregnant and she gave birth to a child at the age of 13. She was forced to part ways with her child in 1996 who was taken in by a couple in another district. The family migrated to Rampur.

The victim tried to restart her life and married another man. However, he divorced her after 10 years when he became aware of the gang-rape that she had been subjected to.