In Summary

The multi-million-shilling child trade industry has been thriving for years and poor households, especially in the slums and villages, have been the target of its scheming directors.

Babies are not only being snatched off the streets by strangers in passing cars, but also being stolen right after birth by nurses and midwives and passed on to social workers.

The distraught mother was kept waiting in a room for seven hours last Saturday, her stomach in knots as she waited to be reunited with her son.

But those seven hours were nothing to her, because the last time she had seen her son was almost five years ago.

April 2019

Reactivation of the India-Australia intercountry adoption program

Australia is reactivating the India-Australia intercountry adoption program using a careful, staged approach.

During the initial stage of the reactivation, two jurisdictions – Queensland and Northern Territory (NT) – will be assessing a small number of people and forwarding files of suitable applicants to the Indian adoption authority for consideration and action.

The remaining state and territory governments will monitor processes and be guided by key learnings before determining their future involvement.

FEBRUARY 7, 2019 BY ROBIN MUNRO

Holt International & WACAP Merge to Strengthen Resources, Impact for Families Worldwide

Phil Littleton, president and CEO of Holt International, shares about the merger of Holt International and World Association for Parents and Children (WACAP).

Today, we are making an exciting announcement that will better position Holt International to do the mission-critical, child welfare work at the heart of our organization. Holt will merge with World Association for Parents and Children (WACAP) — a highly respected international adoption and child welfare agency — under the name Holt International Children’s Services on April 1, 2019.

Holt International first pioneered international adoption in 1956 and today remains the global leader in adoption. Founded in 1976, WACAP has united thousands of children with families in the U.S., and has also developed strong foster care and foster care adoption programs in the state of Washington. But while both Holt and WACAP have remained leaders in international adoption, the recent downward trend in adoption has called for a different strategy—one that creates a united front and a merging of efforts to ensure every child has a loving and secure home.

'My birth mother deserves an apology': Forced to give her up for adoption, Liz Wilde's mum Valerie was told it would spell the end of her status as a 'fallen woman'

Forced to give her up for adoption, Liz Wilde’s mother Valerie was told it would spell the end of her troubles as a ‘fallen woman’. But decades later, Liz would discover it was just the beginning of a lifetime of heartbreak

My birth mother Valerie was never meant to see me cradled in my adoptive mother’s arms.

This was very much against protocol.

As agreed, at 2pm on Wednesday 26 February 1964, she had brought me to the London offices of the National Children Adoption Association to meet my new parents. I was dressed immaculately in one of the many outfits she had knitted for me. ‘We could tell that you were loved,’ a friend of my adoptive mother told me many years later.

Madras High Court

2(2) And 17(1) Of The Adoption ... vs Unknown on 31 March, 2019

O.P.No.657 of 2021

O.P.No.657 of 2021

ABDUL QUDDHOSE, J.

Adoption in Romania in the international context of 1980-1990

Put adoption back in the international context of the time

Since the 1980s, the demand for children to adopt from rich countries is 10 times higher than the number of children given to adoption by poor countries.

Adoption represents a powerful lobbying, which in Western Europe as in the United States, Canada and Israel is able to exert regular pressure on the countries providing child through their governments.

- Between 1981 and 1987: Romania allocates to French families barely more than 500 children. [1]

Hello everyone. Will briefly tell you about my trip to Bangladesh. I have visited the orphanage in Chittagong where I lived before I came to DK. I was very surprised when I had not expected to get information about my biological mother. The orphanage had the names of my mother and father. My father died before I was handed over to the orphanage. From the surname, my family is Hindu. There was also an address, but it does not exist. The orphanage told that it is not unusual to write a false address. I met a lovely family who is very well known in the Christian environment and has helped with adoptions for many years. They want to help, so the search is still ongoing. Unfortunately, we have no more time for this time in Bangladesh. We hope the next trip will yield results. As my husband says, now knows where my talkability and stubbornness come from

Danish:

Hej Alle. Vil kort fortælle om min tur til Bangladesh. Jeg har besøgt børnehjemmet i Chittagong, hvor jeg boede inden jeg kom til DK. Jeg blev meget overrasket, da jeg ikke havde forventet at få information om min biologiske mor. Børnehjemmet havde navnene på min mor og far. Min far døde inden jeg blev overdraget til børnehjemmet. Ud fra efternavnet er min familie hindu. Der var også en adresse, men den eksisterer ikke. Børnehjemmet fortalte, at det ikke er unormalt at man skriver en falsk adresse. Jeg mødte en dejlig familie, som er meget kendt i det kristne miljø og har hjulpet med adoptioner igennem mange år. De vil gerne hjælpe, så eftersøgningen er stadig i gang. Vi har desværre ikke mere tid for denne gang i Bangladesh. Vi håber næste tur giver resultat. Som min mand siger, nu ved hvor min snaksaglighed og stædighed kommer fra????????????

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Special Advisor for Children’s Issues Suzanne Lawrence hails ‘good relationship’ with Argentine authorities during visit to Buenos Aires.

Last year, in the 2018 Annual Report on International Child Abduction, pub l i s h e d b y U S S t a t e Depar tment’s Office of Children’s Issues, Argentina was listed as a country demonstrating a pattern of noncompliance with international protocol.

According to the study, Argentina failed to adhere to the International Parental Child Abduction (IPCA) Convention, a treaty that falls under The Hague Convention, a private international law instrument. Both the United States and Argentina are signatories to it, as well as 100 other countries worldwide.

The topic was on the agenda for Suzanne Lawrence, the Special Advisor for Children’s Issues for the US State Department, as she visited Argentina this week. The US official met with national authorities in Buenos Aires to discuss issues relating to international child abduction, as well as to intercountry adoption.

According to the2018 report, published last April by Lawrence’s department, there were five child abduction cases in total, involving six children, between the two nations in 2017. Three were continuations of incidents from the year prior. By the end of the year, two cases were resolved and none were closed.

The relevance of the Hague Children’s Conventions in the African context will be under the spotlight this week and key to discussions will be the Child Abduction Convention and the Inter-country Adoption Convention.

International mobility and the opening up of borders linked to increasing globalisation have given rise to serious risks for children caught up in cross-border situations. On one hand, there is the risk of cross-border trafficking of children for economic, sexual or other exploitation. On the other, there are children caught up in fractured relationships within transnational families, with disputes over custody and relocation, the hazards of international child abduction, and the problems of maintaining contact and enforcing claims for child support across international borders.

Then there is the phenomenon of inter-country adoption. This expanded slowly after World War II until the 1970s, when the numbers increased considerably. By the 1980s, this phenomenon was causing complex social and legal problems in the absence of existing domestic and international regulatory legal instruments. In more recent years, Africa has become the new frontier for inter-country adoption, with the much publicised inter-country adoptions by the likes of Madonna and Angelina Jolie being only the tip of the iceberg.

The general norms that should apply to the protection of children in these cross-border situations in Africa are to be found in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 (CRC) and in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 1990 (African Charter). All African countries have ratified the CRC, while the African Charter has been ratified by 47 African states, including South Africa.

These norms consist of the general principles of the child’s best interest, non-discrimination, and the child’s right to be heard. In addition, there are the more specific principles applicable to cross-border situations, such as the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, and the principles governing inter-country adoption.

Tourists and volunteers have always been deeply touched by the plight of orphans in Nepal. The orphanage business has experienced exponential growth since the 2015 earthquake, which devastated Nepal. However, recent findings point to illegal trade in some of the orphanages in which many Australians unknowingly fund. Australia has now launched an enquiry with an aim to establish a Modern Slavery Act. Jessica Cortis reports.

“We never spoke about how much we missed our parents with people from the orphanage. They [the carers] scolded us and threatened to beat us so we were afraid to ask about them,” says Alisha, 12.

Softly spoken and shy in nature, Alisha says she thought about her parents all the time. She is among hundreds of orphans in Nepal who have been taken into the care of Forget Me Not.

Established in 2005, Forget Me Not is a non- government organisation in Australia that has helped fund and run an orphanage in Nepal. It was founded by Australian volunteer Andrea Nave, who realised through her own volunteering experience that raising orphans like Alisha with the help of volunteers was unethical. These orphans needed continuous care, leading her to employ local Nepalese carers who could ensure a culturally appropriate upbringing for the children. By 2011, the number of orphans in the care of Forget Me Not grew to 21.

Back home in Australia, people were excited to undertake the new responsibility of sponsoring Forget Me Not’s orphans. From paying educational expenses, living costs, the up keep of caregivers and medical care, Australian sponsors thought they were doing these orphans a world of good.