There are claims that thousands of disabled Ukrainian children have been forgotten and abandoned in institutions that can’t look after them.

The human rights organisation, Disability Rights International, has carried out an investigation and found children with severe disabilities tied to beds in overrun children’s homes unable to cope.

The BBC has been given exclusive access to an institution in western Ukraine, where disabled children from the east have been left by their carers who fled to neighbouring countries.

Reporting by Dan Johnson

Filmed by Jonathan Dunstan

“Adoptees are told to just be grateful that we were chosen. And yet so many of us are struggling.”

When Alé Cardinalle first met her biological mother and siblings, she was surprised by how familiar their love felt. Born in Brazil, Cardinalle was adopted by a New Jersey couple when she was an infant. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Cardinalle found and contacted her birth mother on Facebook, and the two women arranged a reunion in Brazil.

The flight to Brazil tested Cardinalle’s nerves. She was traveling thousands of miles to visit a home full of strangers in a country she did not remember. “But my mother pulled me into her house and pulled me onto her couch and into her lap, even though I was probably almost twice her size,” Cardinalle tells Teen Vogue, laughing. “She looked at my fingers and looked at my toes and, like, it was just so primal to me. Like how you would look at your baby.”

More family members poured into the living room, half-siblings, and a stepfather who all greeted Cardinalle breathlessly between hugs. “It was just such an abundance of love,” she recalls.

Later, Cardinalle asked the question that had burdened her for entire adult life: Why did her birth mother choose adoption?

Recently, the apex court issued a notice in a matter seeking simplification of the adoption process in India. The current laws pertaining to adoption make it difficult for couples or individuals to adopt orphans and provide them a better life.

The Supreme Court last month issued a notice in a matter seeking simplification of the adoption process in India. A bench, comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant, heard the petition in which the counsel for the petitioner highlighted the ground reality with respect to the adoption process in India and the kind of impact it has had on the country over a period of time.

The petition and the apex court’s notice was long overdue. Laws pertaining to the adoption process in the country has definitely made it difficult for couples or individuals trying to adopt orphans and provide them a better life. This despite the fact that the treatment and facilities for orphans is woeful and open to abuse and mistreatment.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, Section 2(42), defines an orphan as a child:

(i) Who is without biological or adoptive parents or legal guardian; or

Patrick Stuebing, from Leipzig, is continuing his fight to make incest legal

Was adopted as a child and didn't meet his sister Susan Karolewski till his 20s

Started having sex a month after meeting and now have four children together

Previously speaking of relationship, Patrick said they 'do not feel guilty' about it

By HARRIET JOHNSTON FOR MAILONLINE

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The attorney for a couple whose adopted 3-year-old son is at the center of a legal fight told state Supreme Court justices that the family is the only one he knows.

Attorney Liisa Speaker said that the boy, who is nearly 4, must stay with his adoptive parents. They have the same rights as any biological parents, she said.

“They are his family,” she said.

The court is reviewing an appeals court finding that birth father Peter Kruithoff’s parental rights were wrongly terminated – potentially giving him a chance at obtaining custody.

Justice Richard Bernstein said: “This is a very difficult case.”

Susanne Sahlgren has been adopted from Greenland, but people's prejudices made Susanne distance herself from her origins. Until she received a letter from her biological sister.

- Where are you from?

Or worse:

- Do you drink?

55-year-old Susanne Sahlgren has no figures on how many times she has been asked those questions.

Scandal at Foster Parents Netherlands

Type

newspaper

Publisher / broadcaster

The standard

If the Democratic Republic of Congo is better known for its political instability and its incessant wars, in particular, in the east of the country, there is one of the terrible consequences of which we speak little, it is the trafficking of minor children.

There are countless children reported missing in the DRC to date. Worse, the authorities do not seem to be taking drastic measures to fight against this scourge which nevertheless affects many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. But foreign networks (homosexuals and pedophiles) act discreetly and with impunity, with the complicity of the Congolese, attracted by the sums of money offered. They organize human trafficking, children, in this case, for wealthy Western clients.

In 2013, around 20 children aged 2 months to 5 years were found in an orphanage in Mbuji-Mayi, capital of the eastern province of the DRC, by residents who ransacked the place. They suspected the “pseudo” orphanage of selling children to gay Americans, cover from an NGO called FAGEDAS.

Seven supervisors of this orphanage had been arrested, while the representatives of the NGO are still not found.

Another terrible affair that began in 2015. A dozen Congolese children aged 3 or 4 had been taken from their biological parents, supposedly sent to summer camp by the NGO Planet Junior. In reality, they had been sent to an orphanage in Kinshasa, before being put up for adoption in Belgium with false papers. At least 3 children were affected in Belgium.

SINGAPORE: Four years ago, Mr Christophe Montane welcomed an adopted baby into his family – only to have the child taken away after 10 days.

Speaking to CNA about changes to adoption laws that were tabled in Parliament recently, Mr Montane was emotional as he recounted his family's ordeal.

A permanent resident who has lived in Singapore for about eight years, he and his wife went through months of applications and a home study before qualifying to adopt a local child.

The newborn came to live with them before the adoption was formalised. It was the “greatest joy”, he said, and he didn’t think too much about the paperwork at that point.

Then five days later, the birth mother texted Mr Montane saying that there was a “problem” with the payments to the hospital where she gave birth. But there were no issues with the payment, he said.

BIOETHICS PROJECT

Cloning

Egg Bank

Embryo Adoption

Embryonic Stem Cell Research