This is the concluding column in a three-part series on child trafficking in India. Also read parts one and two.

“What is to be done? It makes us feel very sad that children are treated only as numbers. They too have a soul, they too have heart. How long can we continue like this? It is very disturbing,” Justice Madan Lokur observed during a Supreme Court hearing in August 2018. “If the provisions of the law were being implemented in letter and spirit, then child abuse incidents like those in Muzaffarpur and Deoria would not have happened,” he observed.

Justice Lokar was responding to information presented by amicus curiae Aparna Bhat on discrepancies between two government-commissioned surveys conducted a year apart, which indicated that over two lakh children residing in child care homes were now “missing”.

A 2016-17 survey, commissioned by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, indicated that 4.73 lakh children resided in care homes nationwide. However, the number came down to 2.61 lakh children in the data submitted by the Centre before the Supreme Court in March 2018.

The survey also pointed out that of the 9,589 childcare institutions across the country, 1,596 were overcrowded. The children who lived in these homes were subjected to corporal punishment and other kinds of abuse. The court then asked Ministry officials present how many more children were missing in the country, “besides these two lakh”.

‘Nagaland stepping out of customary to legal adoption’

Advisor, Department of Social Welfare, Child Services, Noke Konyak launching the video on adoption and Radio Jingles on Friday. (Morung Photo)

Department of Social Welfare, Child Services launches video and Radio Jingles on legal adoption

Our Correspondent

Kohima | August 31

Illustration: J.A. Premkumar.

Illustration: J.A. Premkumar.

50 destitute children were forced to sleep 10 to a bed, fed just two meagre meals

Fifty children, many of them six years or younger, were rescued from an illegal orphanage-cum-school in Pasighat town of Arunachal Pradesh.

Though the illegal home in a ramshackle bamboo-and-thatch structure had been in operation since February this year, it was only after former employees complained to the East Siang district’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC) last month that its presence was noted by authorities.

Image for representational purpose only.By Preeja PrasadExpress News Service

BENGALURU: According to the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), there are only 40 children registered for adoption in the city, but 202 couples waiting to bring a child home. Speaking to City Express, these future parents share their tiresome journeys of waiting and hoping.

For Sheela Bhatt (name changed) and her husband, the journey to adopt a child has been long and tiresome. A business analyst by profession, Sheela decided to take a break this year and focus on her goal of legally adopting a girl child.

Unfortunately, with the delay in the procedure and legal formalities that has already taken two-and-a-half-years, Sheela is almost on the verge of giving up and going back to work. "We've had a social worker come in and file a home study report, but the wait got to us, especially when there is no support from other members of the family," she says. "We've been longing for a child forever," she adds.

With a preference for a child under the age of two, Sheela and her husband are now in a state of confusion, as the girl they had seen in pictures is now over the preferred age. A similar situation had happened with Uma Shankar (name changed), but she finally was able to adopt a child last week after two-and-a-half years of waiting, but court proceedings are yet to be completed. "Yes, the wait is a big struggle, it would be easier if the system did not push away genuine parents seeking to give a home to a child," she says, adding that this may prevent prospective adoptive parents from backing out.

Bjelave children: research continues

On July 18, 1992, a convoy of children left Sarajevo under siege. 46 of those taken from the Bjelave orphanage, they never returned to Bosnia: they were given up for adoption, despite living biological parents. A tragic story, re-emerged from the dark

06/09/2018 - Nicole Corritore

"I do not know anything about my mother, I know who generated me, it's all the life I want to see you, at least one person in my family". E 'Luca, in Skype Skype from Milan talking with his cousin Kenyan Kenan in Sarajevo, all taken up and then included in the service created in collaboration with OBCT by Rai journalist Andrea Oskari Rossini for the transmission "EstOvest" and with which he won the Luchetta 2018 prize .

The story of Luca starts from afar, in 1992 in Sarajevo at war, and has seen other children involved like him. A story that OBC Transeuropa has been following for years and which last summer has resurfaced again from the dark thanks to a 2006 article signed by the undersigned and subsequent and recent investigations.

A 12-year-old girl runs away from a shelter home in Deoria, Uttar Pradesh. She tells the police of the other girls at the home being taken away in cars in the night and returning the next morning in tears. Her testimony helps uncover a years-long sex trafficking racket being run from the shelter home.

A Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) audit of shelter homes in Bihar brings to light the sexual abuse of the inmates of a Muzzafarpur institute. The girls at the home have been subjected to brutal physical and sexual violence. The main accused in the case — Brajesh Thakur, who ran the shelter — is believed to have powerful local connections that helped him elude arrest for years.

In Telangana, a child sex racket is discovered in the temple town of Yadagirigutta, when an anonymous caller tips off a child helpline about a bruised 10-year-old girl wailing on the doorstep of a house. The police find out that the child’s guardian had ‘bought’ her from an agent, and a crackdown on other houses in the same colony leads the cops to more cases of underage girls — some as young as five — being trafficked for sex work.

Last month, Union minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi introduced the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill 2018 in Parliament. However, those who work in the field of women and child welfare have pointed out that the Bill is problematic: for one, its approach seems overly bureaucratic, and two, it’s heavily dependent on surveillance and enforcement through a nodal agency — a scary proposition given the track record of such agencies.

It is in encountering the individual stories of trauma that one begins to comprehend what survivors of trafficking go through. REUTERS

Child abuse at madrassa: Victims finally meet their parents with the help of district collector and NGOs

The parents of the victims, who were staying put in Pune for the past one month, were struggling to get united with their children who were kept in the custody of the child welfare committee (CWC). However, with the intervention of Pune district collector Naval Kishore Ram and parents’ firm stand to take back their children, won the latter their fight and the issue was resolved.

PUNE Updated: Aug 30, 2018 16:25 IST

Nozia Sayyed

Hindustan Times, Pune

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Related TopicsIndependent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse

Date: 2018-08-29

No news from the inquiry about Chile adoptions

The Chilean investigation is currently under way in the media that claims that Chile's adoptions were in the 1970s and 1990s. The investigation, which has been highlighted in the media in the media today, is led by a particular judge and concerns adoptions to several countries.

The Adoption Center welcomes the investigation and is always available to the investigator. With respect for adopted adoptive families and biological parents it is very important that everything is done to clarify whether there were any irregularities or not.

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