It was easier to be helpless in Calcutta than in Reykjavík, Hasim Ægir Khan says. He was born in India but adopted to Iceland at 11 years of age, and then abandoned a year later. He drifted between foster homes in Iceland after his new Icelandic family decided to cancel the adoption, and even ended up renting a room in central Reykjavík with tramps while he finished high school.

Hasim’s story is alarming. When he was six, his new step-grandmother put him alone on a train without explanation in Old Delhi, where they lived. He ended up scared and alone in Calcutta, where he lived as a street child—eventually ending up in an orphanage, suffering awful conditions and terrible abuse.

When he was 11, he was thrown a lifeline of hope: he was being adopted by a family in the village of Þorlákshöfn, southwest Iceland.

He lived with his new family for one year, until they cancelled the adoption. He was the only child in Iceland who had been adopted and then returned to the system.

“I had really looked forward to it: I was getting a family and whatnot, but then after just a year I was rejected, and that was quite hard. I felt like I was back on the streets in India again,” he says. “I never had a permanent home and different people were around trying to help me and I was always looking for a place to stop and stay with one family,” he adds.

When thinking of child migration, certain forms of mobility come to mind: children seeking refuge, child soldiering, or trafficking in children. Who would think of international adoptees as migrants? Yet, they are. An overview of U.S. adoption history.

Deutsche Version des Artikels

International adoption from foreign countries to the United States officially began right after World War II. A new phenomenon, U.S. citizens adopted an estimated 35,000 children from overseas from 1947 to 1975. Although numbers were low compared to those of domestic adoptions that occurred in this period, these adoptions were widely publicized and highly visible. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[1] Over this era, children came from a wide variety of nations in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, with most adoptees arriving from South Korea, South Vietnam, Germany, Greece, and Italy. Wars in Europe and Asia had left thousands of children orphaned, many the offspring of American soldiers. Fearful that communist powers would frame the crisis as a failure of democracy, U.S. policymakers relaxed immigration laws for these largely nonwhite orphans and allowed them into the United States as refugees. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[2] War orphans and “GI babies”—the offspring of U.S. soldiers and foreign women—received the most press in the United States. Yet from the onset American couples were eager to adopt all types of foreign children, regardless whether they had surviving parents or connections to the military. While Western European countries and Australia did conduct some foreign adoptions from Korea and Vietnam, the numbers were small compared to the U.S. program.

Factors Leading to Increase in Adoptions

International adoption’s rise was the result of many factors. Relief organizations and private citizens first considered the adoption of French and Belgian orphans to the United States during and after World War I, but restrictive immigration laws and isolationist foreign policies quickly stymied such efforts. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[3] Unlike policies during World War I, Cold War foreign policy enforced a domestic cultural mandate to embrace other nations, especially those vulnerable to communist takeovers. Destitute young children pricked the collective conscience of post-World War II America. In the view of many lawmakers and politicians, orphans made ideal immigrants and citizens because “of their youth, flexibility, and lack of ties to any other cultures.” Such traits bolstered officials’ conviction that children could be transplanted with great public success, since “a child in need does not know or care about national boundaries,” as one social welfare official commented. Christened “the best possible immigrants” by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, international adoptees were so highly desired by American families that U.S. immigration law would broaden the definition of orphan in 1948 to include children with two living parents. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[4]

When thinking of child migration, certain forms of mobility come to mind: children seeking refuge, child soldiering, or trafficking in children. Who would think of international adoptees as migrants? Yet, they are. An overview of U.S. adoption history.

Deutsche Version des Artikels

Mother Teresa nuns back in India's adoption system

Sister Mary Prema Pierick (center) and two Missionaries of Charity nuns meet federal minister Maneka Gandhi on Oct. 29. The congregation has agreed to join India's system of baby adoption. (Photo from the Twitter page of Maneka Gandhi)

ucanews.com reporter, New Delhi

India

November 5, 2018

DNA database, NCRB, Indian Penal Code, DNA fingerprints, DNA collection, DNA testing, sexual assault cases

Representational Image.

Amid a growing clamour for setting up a DNA database in India and bringing legislation for the purpose, experts are now coming out in the open to dispel the myths on privacy breach to pave way for enactment of a law in the country.

This issue of bringing a legislation was taken during a workshop ‘Where is the DNA’ that was recently held in Shimla with the aim to sensitise the police as well as raise a voice for adopting globally accepted technology.

Experts say forensic DNA is the world’s greatest crime-fighting technology as it is highly accurate and globally accepted as a gold standard for human identification from biological evidence. So far, many countries are effectively using forensic labs and protocols to collect, test and compare DNA at crime scenes with promising results.

WCD Ministry orders closure of adoption agencyWCD Ministry orders closure of adoption agency

New Delhi: The Women and Child Ministry Friday has directed the Madhya Pradesh government to immediately shut down a specialised adoption agency that was involved in giving a girl for adoption to a Spanish couple who later abandoned her, saying the Bhopal-based institution deceived them over her age.

The Spanish couple abandoned the 13-year-old girl after they were allegedly deceived by the institution, which reportedly told them that she was seven-years-old at the time of adoption early in 2018.

The institution has been accused of defaulting under various provisions and not responding to show-cause notices. An inquiry was initiated and its in-charge, Apoorva Sharma, was asked to appear before the ministry on September 6, an official said.

The inquiry committee found gross violations by adoption agency Kilkari (Udaan) of the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and the Adoption Regulations, 2017.

BENGALURU: A tear-jerker of a video for Vicks’ #TouchOfCare campaign, which has over 20 million views, traces the journey of Dr Aloma and David Lobo, a city couple who adopted a child with special needs, Nisha. The video briefly traces Nisha’s journey, with the 18-year-old talking about the bond she shares with her parents.

“It’s a beautiful video, emphasising on the fact that every child needs love and a family. We were just a little worried about the amount of publicity Nisha would get, but she just said, ‘I’ll be fine, guys’. I, on the other hand, tear up each time I see it,” says Dr Aloma, who was the former chairperson of the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA). Though her parents were hesitant initially about making the video, Nisha was certain that if it could help another child like her, she’d do it.

Dr Aloma and David have six children, the youngest being Nisha, who was born with a rare genetic condition called ichthyosis, which affects one in a million children. Nisha was abandoned when she was just two weeks old. Her condition made her skin thick and flaky, completely blind in one eye with little sight in the other, and her lack of eyelids made her prone to diseases. “It was a Sunday morning when we first first met Nisha, and were initially taken aback a bit, when our second daughter said, ‘Mumma, let’s take her home’.”

Before that, they discussed it with their other children, concerned about if they could actually take on caring for a special needs child. When everyone was on board, they went ahead with bringing Nisha home. “The initial few months were hard - she needed a lot of care and love.

Nisha with her mother Dr Aloma

SHARE ARTICLE 1 0 PRINT A A A

19 children adopted from three centres across Ernakulam district in four months

Indicating an increased demand for children from Kerala and speedy completion of adoption formalities, 19 children have been adopted from three adoption centres across the district during the four month period between June and October.

Thirteen boys and six girls were among those adopted, out of which eight were three-months-old, five were four-months-old, one was seven-months-old, one was one-year-old, two were nine-years-old, and one was three-years-old and one was 11-years-old.

‘Legally free’ children

Sarmishta Venkatesh and Venkatesh Gopalakrishnan with their son Abhi By Express News Service

BENGALURU: My husband Venkatesh Gopalakrishnan, who is a pastor, and I wanted a child for a while, and had tried different ways to get pregnant, says Sarmishta Venkatesh, who legally brought nine-year-old Abhi home earlier this year. “I had suffered two miscarriages earlier, and wasn’t sure if I was ready to adopt a child yet. In 2017, we started the process and registered as Prospective Adoptive Parents (PAPs) with CARA. We registered for a low-risk category adoption.

I would frequently go through their website, and read the profiles of kids with special needs. There were about 350 to 400 kids on that list, and over the months, I noticed that none of them were being adopted,” she says.

Their son, Abhi, was the eighth profile on the list of special needs children up for adoption, and Sarmishta says that his profile had been on the site for five years – no one had come to get him. Abhi suffers from a condition called spina bifida, where the spinal cord is malformed – he is paralysed from the waist down. He also suffers from hydrocephalus, wherein fluid builds up in brain cavities. He was abandoned as an infant in a hospital, and spent his first eight years in a children’s home in Andhra, during which he had eight surgeries.

“We were on the waitlist, and didn’t think we would see any results for the next two years. But when I saw my son’s face on the website, something tugged at my heart – we thought, maybe this is the child we should focus on. We then started to get more information on Abhi, and touched base with his foster dad and the adoption centre in Andhra,” she says.

WCD orders immediate closure of Bhopal-based specialised adoption agency

Press Trust of India | New Delhi

Last Updated at November 2, 2018 19:45 IST

Tiny URLAdd to My PagePrint Email

21