The LGBTQ+ rights group COC Netherlands wants Minister for Legal Protection Franc Weerwind to present a multi-parent law this year. The group advocated the law in a letter to the new minister on behalf of itself and four other organizations.

The multi-parent law would make it possible for children to have several legal parents––not just a maximum of two, as is currently the case. This law is part of COC Netherland's Rainbow Agreement, which the new Cabinet wants to incorporate into the coalition agreement.

"Children have the right to a good legal relationship with all their parents, whether there are one, two, three, or four," said COC Nederland chairperson Astrid Oosenbrug. "There is a wonderful opportunity for Minister Weerwind to arrange this quickly and we will be happy to help him with that," Oosenbrug said.

The letter also asked that every Dutch person be able to easily change the gender registration in their passport to an “X” instead of “M” or “F.” This option could be, for example, used by nonbinary people and those who do not want their gender included in their passport. Lisa van Ginneken from the D66 party recently submitted a proposal about this.

The interest groups represented in the letter also requested good surrogacy regulations and improvements on gender registration laws. In addition, the organizations propose to make intercountry adoption possible again from countries where no problems regarding adoption have been identified. The government stopped intercountry adoption in February 2021 due to severe abuses in several countries.

The couple has named their youngest daughter Naina Hope Mylius.

It is said that not all families are based on blood relations. Nothing embodies this more than Johonna Jo Mylius and her husband Shane Michael Mylius. The Texas couple faced lengthy paperwork, visa issues, and pandemic restrictions for more than two years to finish their daughter’s adoption process.

The Mylius’s wanted to adopt a second child after the birth of their daughter Kaila. Their search brought them to India where they matched with Naina in October 2019 when she was just 18 months old. Naina was a premature baby and was hearing-impaired. She was abandoned in a newborn intensive care unit. However, her medical complications did not stop Mylius from going ahead with the adoption.

They were set to obtain Naina’s custody in March 2020 but then the whole world went under a lockdown due to Covid-19 and all operations were put on hold. After anxiously waiting for many months, they got Naina’s custody in December 2020 and were set to travel to India in February 2021 to receive their daughter.

Unfortunately, a week before they were set to leave for India, it snowed too much in Texas that put all operations at a halt. The couple was yet to receive their visa from the Indian consulate. Explaining the precarious situation, Johonna Mylius wrote in an essay published on Love What Matters, “We were set to fly out of Houston on Wednesday. Saturday and Sunday, it snowed and no mail was delivered. Monday was President’s Day so, no mail was running. Tuesday, roads still icy, we were out of electricity at home, phone lines were down, and the Indian consulate wasn’t answering.”

Poverty had forced her mother to give Amuthavalli for adoption when she was just eleven days old. Now 23, Amuthavalli learned about her past recently and came down from the Netherlands to meet them.

SALEM: Tears of joy rolled down the cheeks of Amuthavalli on Thursday when she met her mother for the first time. Poverty had forced her mother to give Amuthavalli for adoption when she was just eleven days old. Now 23, Amuthavalli learned about her past recently and came down from the Netherlands to meet them.

Amuthavalli is the second child of R Amutha and Ranganathan, a resident of Dasasamuthram near Kadaiyampatti. Her elder sister Jeniffer is 25 years old.

Since Ranganathan was addicted to liquor which added to the family's financial woes, Amutha gave Amuthavalli to a missionary in Salem, in 1998, for adoption when she was eleven days old. A couple from the Netherlands adopted Amuthavalli and took her there. She completed schooling and is running a flower boutique. Recently she came to know about her past and expressed her wish to meet the biological parents. Her adopted parents gave consent, and Amuthavalli landed in Chennai on Tuesday.

Accompanied by a guide (she knows only Dutch language), she travelled to Salem and collected details of her parents from the missionary. She went to Dharmapuri and was told that her father Ranganathan died long ago and that her mother Amutha was staying at Dasasamuthram in Salem.

A girl child is not property that can be donated, the Bombay High Court (Aurangabad

Bench) observed during a bail hearing after it noticed a 'danpatra' according to which the

rape victim's father had allegedly donated her to a self-proclaimed godman.

Justice Vibha Kankanwadi directed the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to ascertain if

the teen was fit to be declared as a 'child in need of care and protection' as contemplated

In Flanders, 46 children were adopted last year, 27 of which were through so-called intercountry adoption. This is apparent from figures that Belga has requested from Kind en Gezin.

While nearly 30 children were adopted through domestic adoption in 2017, that number has fallen below 20 in recent years. Last year, nineteen children, including twins, were placed with eighteen adopters.

In 2021, 27 children were also placed with a family in Flanders through the mediation of an intercountry adoption service. It concerns children from nine countries of origin: the Philippines, Thailand, Chile, South Africa, Hungary, Portugal, Togo, Burkina Faso and Morocco.

The number of foreign adoptions has also been affected by the corona pandemic in recent years. For example, no air traffic was possible with a number of countries of origin and the adoption could not always be legally confirmed, because some foreign courts were closed, so that the actual adoption had to be postponed.

Future screening

COC Netherlands wants Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection) to present a multi-parent law this year. The interest group of the LGBTI community advocates this in a letter to the new minister, also on behalf of four other organizations.

The multi-parent law should ensure that children can have several legal parents and not a maximum of two, as is currently the case. This law is part of COC's Rainbow Agreement, which the new cabinet intends to implement in accordance with the coalition agreement.

"Children have the right to a good legal relationship with all their parents, whether there are one, two, three or four," says COC chairman Astrid Oosenbrug. "There is a wonderful opportunity for Minister Weerwind to arrange this quickly and we will be happy to help him with that."

Gender Registration

COC Netherlands also argues in the letter to Weerwind that every Dutch person should be able to easily change the gender registration in the passport to an 'X' instead of 'M' or 'V'. This is for people who, for example, do not feel like a man or woman or who do not want their gender to be included in their passport. D66 MP Lisa van Ginneken recently submitted a proposal on this point.

A desperate need to know her roots led a young woman from Netherlands to fly down to a nondescript village in Salem.

Coimbatore: What happened next was nothing short of a fairytale. The visit to Poosaripatti village in Kadayampatti Taluk in Salem district turned out to be life-changing for 23-year-old Amada (Amudhavalli), who, found her biological mother, who incidentally shares the same name as her daughter.

The circumstances behind her adoption tale were revealed to Amudha after the emotional reunion. Her poverty-stricken mother had to give her away when she was just 11 days old, in the care of a missionary in Salem in August 1998. Soon after, the baby was adopted by a couple from Netherland.

“It was the most painful decision of my life and one that I regretted throughout. I was constantly haunted by her memories,” the mother said. She works as a domestic help. She had to resort to the extreme step and give away her second girl child after her drunkard husband deserted the family.

The young Amudha, who grew up as a citizen of Netherland, was often plagued by identity crisis in a family of white people, and this triggered her need to look for her biological parents. “I only knew the name of my parents and my birth place through my foster parents. Determined to meet them, I came down to Chennai all alone from Netherland. With the assistance of a guide, I gathered information from Salem Government Hospital and managed to track down my family. It was difficult. But I am glad to have met them at last and am basking in love. It has been a dream come true moment,” said Amada, who runs a bouquet shop in Netherland.

The XII. The Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice had to answer the question of whether the biological father of a child also has a right of access if the child was adopted by the mother's registered partner with his consent.

The mother of the child, conceived by means of a so-called private sperm donation by the applicant and born in August 2013, lives in a registered civil partnership with the other person involved (life partner). The life partner adopted the child in 2014 with the consent of the applicant by way of the so-called stepchild adoption. The applicant initially had contact with the child until 2018, which either took place in the household of the (legal) parents or was accompanied outside by one of them. The child is aware of the biological paternity of the applicant. In the summer of 2018, he expressed to the parents the desire to have contact with the child in his home environment and for a longer period of time, which they refused. After two further meetings, the applicant's personal contact with the child broke off. The applicant has applied for a contact arrangement whereby he picks up the child from the day-care center at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesdays every fortnight and hands it over to his parents at 6:00 p.m. The district court rejected the application. The applicant's complaint was rejected by the court of appeal because there was no legal basis for a right of access.

In response to the applicant's appeal on points of law, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the decision of the court of appeal and referred the matter back to it.

Admittedly, there is no right of access according to Section 1684 of the German Civil Code because only legal parents are entitled to it and this is therefore excluded for the applicant who is only the biological father. There is also no entitlement under Section 1685 (2) of the German Civil Code (right of access for close associates). For this it is necessary that a social and family relationship with the child, characterized by actual acceptance of responsibility, was established, which, however, did not exist in the present case due to the time limit of the contacts, which were always accompanied by the parents.

On the other hand, a claim according to Section 1686 a, Paragraph 1, No. 1 of the German Civil Code (biological father’s right of access) is generally possible. According to this, the biological father, who has shown a serious interest in the child, has a right to contact with the child if contact is in the best interests of the child. According to Section 167 a (1) FamFG, applications are only admissible if the applicant declares in lieu of an oath that he or she was with the mother of the child during the period of conception. The fact that the child was conceived with the help of a so-called private sperm donation does not prevent the producer's entitlement to claim and the admissibility of the application, especially since the private sperm donor, in contrast to the "official sperm donation" in the case of medically assisted fertilization according to § 1600 d para. 4 BGB, also has the right to determine his paternity would not be barred by operation of law. Even the adoption carried out does not exclude the right of contact according to Section 1686 a Paragraph 1 No. 1 BGB. In this respect, there is no factual difference between a stepchild adoption by the mother's husband and the parenthood of the mother's life partner or wife - which is not expressly taken into account by law - through adoption. The fact that the applicant had consented to the adoption does not conflict with the right of access. Rather, the biological father's consent to the adoption only excludes the right of access if this also constitutes a waiver of the right of access. In any case, this is missing if the child should get to know the biological father and have contact with him, as agreed by the parties involved. This is also in line with assessments under adoption law. This is because adoption law increasingly provides for the possibility of maintaining contact between the child and the family of origin for so-called open or semi-open adoption. Whether and to what extent contact is to be regulated is therefore primarily judged by whether the biological father has shown a serious interest in the child and to what extent contact is in the best interests of the child. In doing so, the biological father must respect the legal parents' right to bring up children, without this giving the parents the right to refuse contact.

Women who were historically forced into giving up their children for adoption are being asked to share their experiences. An estimated 60,000 mothers in Scotland had babies adopted simply because they were unmarried.

Lisa Rolland was living in Edinburgh in 1982 when she became pregnant at the age of 16.

Still a schoolgirl, she remembers her GP's reaction to her pregnancy was to say: "Who's been a silly girl then?"

"I felt so shamed," she said. "[I thought] I have obviously been bad, I have done something bad. I felt very isolated."

She was unmarried and says the pressure on her to give up her newborn son for adoption was so great, she could not stop it.

The DNA database for missing persons is a success. The National Institute of Criminology and Criminalistics (NICC) reported this on Wednesday. Since the database was founded four years ago, 273 new profiles have been added and in 21 cases the database has contributed to the identification of unknown bodies or body parts.

The DNA database was established on July 1, 2018 with the aim of identifying unknown bodies or finding traces of missing persons. There are three types of DNA profiles, explains Bieke Vanhooydonck of the NICC. "First, there are the unidentified bodies. In addition, traces of missing persons, such as teeth, are also added to the database. Finally, the DNA of relatives of missing persons is added."

So far, the database has been able to contribute to the identification of an unknown body in 21 cases. It concerns five profiles of relatives and thirteen trace profiles of a missing person.

The database also works together with the Missing Persons Cell. "The database is relatively small, but very effective, as it turns out," says Vanhooydonck. For example, the database would also have led to a breakthrough in files with few indications.

Operation Graveyard