Minister pledges to get to the bottom of allegations that adoption officials have been effectively selling off babies for large fees.

Macedonian officials have ordered an investigation of the country’s adoption agency, following last week’s dramatic sacking of the entire national commission in charge of adoption, a source from the Ministry of Social Affairs said.

The same source told Balkan Insight that preliminary findings had boosted suspicions that adoption officials “may have been stripping babies of their identities and selling them to rich couples for a fat fee”.

Last Friday, the Minister of Social Affairs, Spiro Ristovski, replaced all 15 members of the commission for adoption. He then offered no explanation for the act and said only that all ongoing adoptions had been stopped.

He has not since specified what is going on, but, tellingly, said that the ministry would be “ruthless” towards possible wrongdoers.

With the arrest of 10 people in the alleged child trafficking racket operated from an adoption centre in Kolkata, police have invoked the rape charge, among others, in the case.

The case has kicked up a political row with the BJP alleging the involvement of a TMC leader and demanding a fair probe.

Police on Saturday arrested the accused — including the daughter-in-law of a former top civic official, and a senior government official — in the case.

The former civic official has been questioned.

Police said the government official is the main accused, while the woman had been running the adoption centre for the past five to six years.

Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero has enacted one bill related to rules and regulations for licensing Guam adoption agencies while vetoing another.

Bill 206-36, introduced by Sen. Mary Torres, is now Public Law 36-68.

Meanwhile, Bill 179-36, introduced by Sen. Telo Taitague, did not gain the governor's approval.

Both bills shared the same general goal by mandating that adoption agencies or child placement agencies be licensed by the Department of Public Health and Social Services but differed in specific timelines.

Bill 179 would have required adoption agencies to be licensed by June 1, 2022. DPHSS is mandated to promulgate rules and regulations for licensure subject to the Administrative Adjudication Law.

The Centre said it didn’t approve Missionaries of Charity’s (MoC) Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) renewal application “for not meeting eligibility conditions” and over certain “adverse inputs” received when it was considering the application.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee was one of the first to protest after the news reached Kolkata. “Shocked to hear that on Christmas, Union ministry FROZE ALL BANK ACCOUNTS of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in India! Their 22,000 patients & employees have been left without food & medicines. While the law is paramount, humanitarian efforts must not be compromised,” she tweeted.

Missionaries of Charity superior-general Sister M Prema

issued a statement on Monday evening confirming that its

FCRA renewal application had been refused. But there “is no

When the devastating Covid second wave hit India in April 2021, there was barely a family in India left untouched by the virus. The wave, one of the worst experienced by any nation, may have abated, but it has left in its wake a saga of trauma and death.

As 2021 comes to a close, while many are consumed by memories of loss and despair, some look forward to a new beginning. News18.com? brings to you stories of those people who have lost and gained a family this year.

The ‘nowhere’ children

According to a Lancet study, around 1.16 lakh children in India may have lost a parent to Covid from March 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021. The breakdown showed an estimated 25,500 children losing their mothers, some 90,751 their fathers, and 12 both parents to the disease. An assessment by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) suggests around 3,620 children lost both their parents, some 26,176 lost one of them and 274 have been abandoned in the country since the pandemic struck.

The plight of the orphaned or ‘nowhere’ children led to an increased chatter around ‘adoption’. While it was thought of as a viable option, many also feared the threat of child trafficking, often in the form of social media messages calling for the direct adoption of children.

Israel's health ministry has released a report for the first time, revealing that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Israel lost babies born to (mainly) Yemeni immigrants, who were then offered up for adoption to Ashkenazi adoptive parents. . That reports the newspaper Haaretz. However, the ministry refuses to publish the report. The responsible minister Nitzan Horowitz of the Meretz party also refused to answer questions about the report. One reason could be that the government is preparing a compensation scheme for the families of children who have disappeared, and publication of the report would thwart that scheme because it would reveal the guilt of the Israeli state.

The report was prepared by the former director-general of the ministry, Prof. Itamar Grotto and two other employees of the ministry. Haaretz has seen it. It doesn't provide any new details or numbers, but it does suggest the very first time doctors, nurses and other caregivers acted as intermediaries in removing the babies, who were then offered up for adoption – for money or not – to Ashkenazi (Western) people. parents in and outside Israel. The idea was that Yemeni (and to a lesser extent other Jews from Middle Eastern or North African countries) were underdeveloped and could not take good care of their children. At least this way they could receive proper care and education.

The scandal of the missing Yemeni babies has caused a stir for years. The babies disappeared without a trace after medical treatment – ??or immediately after birth. The parents were told that the child had died, but no death certificates were issued, no places were designated where the babies were buried and medical records were later often found to be disappeared. It is estimated that around 5,000 babies may have disappeared this way. There were protests (one of them around Yemeni Rabbi Meshulam in the 1970s became nationally known – also because they handed out prison terms). In addition, there were no fewer than three official commissions of inquiry that, from the 1990s, examined the case but never gave a definitive answer. Newspapers wrote about the case, but did not clarify either. Only the rebellious newspaper Haolam Hazeh of Uri Avneri and the Mizrachi Shalom Cohen reported that it was pierced, but that was without consequence.

The current report quotes a woman who was a student and aid worker at the time, Shoshanna Shacham, at the Rosh Ha'ayin transit camp: “We saw cars coming and nurses feeding the occupants babies who then disappeared in their cars. I said wait, where are they taking it? And they replied: we improve their situation, give them to people with whom they have a better chance of survival. We accepted that then. But when the parents came, they were lied to that the children had died.” The report also cites medical articles from the time describing Mizrachi, and especially Yemeni, parents not being hygienic and unable to properly care for their children.

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Suddenly he appeared on the screen. Linn's brother, who had been in despair when she had been adopted 35 years earlier. And soon she would also be talking to her biological mother.

Linn spent much of her childhood thinking about where she really came from. She had several siblings who were also adopted, but the desire to seek out her roots she did not share with them.

- I have had a great need to know my background, and my adoptive parents have always supported me in that, says 37-year-old Linn Sjöbäck from Kållered in Sweden.

She was adopted from Sri Lanka in 1985 when she was just 14 months old. Her biological mother was involved in the transfer to the adoptive family.

- There were real documents and case files. When I got the chance to read them, I was relieved that everything had gone right. I was a little uneasy after all the writing about kidnapped children in the 80s.

Rani was adopted when she was very small. In this book, she travels with her adoptive parents to her native village in India to learn more about her biological mother and her family. Her mother is no longer alive, but Rani wants to visit her two brothers, Palin and Sabal, to get an idea of ??who her mother was. Rani is very insecure about these encounters. With Palin it clicks right away. Rani feels good with this warm, friendly man. The meeting with Sabal is more difficult. But in the end, Sabal and Rani appear to have more in common than they dare to suspect at first sight.

During her stay, Rani is constantly confronted with the difference between her homeland and her native country. She worries if she will ever feel at home in her mother's country. When Rani decides to stay alone with her brother for a while, without her parents, this opens many doors.

In this book Rani gets an answer to the question why her mother gave her up for adoption. She discovers that her mother was a temple dancer who was forced into prostitution against her will, just like her sister. Her sister loses her life and her mother eventually dies of grief for not being able to protect her daughter. She wants a different future for Rani and gives her up for adoption.

Rani discovers how hard it is for her family, as Dalits, within the caste system in India. Ultimately, Rani and her family fight against the injustice caused by this system. When she travels back to the west at the end of the story, she feels like a real Dalit, who wants nothing more than to wake up the West for all the injustice that is happening in her homeland.

'Kiss from India' is the sequel to 'Barefoot Dancing'. However, you can read the book separately. The information you have obtained in the first book can sometimes be enriching, but you do not really need it to be completely absorbed in this story.

Looking for a home. The Story of Iresha

32-year-old Iresha was born in India and adopted as a baby by Dutch adoptive parents. Iresha is 12 years old when she dares to confide in someone and tells about how things really go at her home. At the age of 15 she is removed from home. She spends her teenage years in various youth care institutions.

Years later she has her own life on track. She lives in Antwerp where she is educated at the art academy and works on her artworks with great passion. This is her story.

Where I come from

I grew up in a family with Dutch parents. After my arrival in the Netherlands, my parents adopted my sister from Colombia. My mother got pregnant twice more. She interrupted one pregnancy and when I was 7 years old they had another son. I've always felt different. I looked different from the people around me.

In this summer column, six people tell us which summer will be etched in their memory forever. This week: Leena de Wilde (33) was seven months old when she flew from her native India to her adoptive family in Groningen. Twenty years later, she visited the children's home where she lived for the first few months for the first time. "If my disability had been discovered then, I would never have been adopted."

You might already know Leena de Wilde (33). At the age of nineteen she took part in the Mis(s) Election, an initiative of former presenter and CDA MP Lucille Werner, for women with a physical disability. Since then, Leena has made her job of posing for the camera and moving from casting to casting. As a result, she regularly appears in commercials, videos and campaigns.

"I want to make a positive contribution to the image of people with disabilities. I've had a wheelchair since I was three, so I've been sitting all my life. I don't know any better. I don't experience many disadvantages, I want to show that " says Leena cheerfully.

When Leena was eighteen months old and had been living with her adoptive parents in Groningen for a little over a year, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (a posture and movement disorder caused by damage to the brain, ed.). This limitation would be a result of oxygen deficiency at birth.

"I was born on the street in Mumbai, India. As far as I know, my biological mother took me to Bal Anand orphanage shortly after I was born, because she was unmarried and did not have the financial means to take care of me. My parents never I put a lot of emphasis on my physical disability and in my upbringing always looked at what is possible. I took that positive attitude from them."