Kaoru Tachibana’s journey in becoming an adoptive parent has been a race against time involving layers of legal hurdles, stacks of bureaucratic paperwork and considerable soul-searching as she waited for her child with an empty baby bed.

Before she received notice this summer that she should be expecting to welcome a newborn in October, the 40-year-old office worker was on the verge of giving up on the prospect of becoming a mother. A prior match had fallen through earlier this year when the birth mother decided against giving her child away. Tachibana’s husband was also about to turn 52, several years beyond the age limit many private adoption agencies have set for aspiring parents.

“We had rented a baby bed in anticipation of welcoming a child the first time around. It had a six month lease, so we decided to call it quits if we didn’t hear back from our agency before that expired,” says Tachibana, who asked to be referred to by her maiden name to protect her child’s privacy. She currently lives in Okinawa with her husband and adopted baby girl.

“Needless to say, we are grateful to be able to welcome a child into our family,” she says. “I know it didn’t have to be us — she could have been adopted by others — but we’d like to do everything we can so she feels glad she came to us.”

Tachibana belongs to a small but slowly expanding pool of couples adopting children in Japan, a patriarchal society with an emphasis on blood ties where the vast majority of adoptees aren’t kids — in fact, most are men often recruited as heirs to family businesses.

‘Did she feel guilty abandoning me in a parking lot? Did she wonder about me? For the first time in 30 years I thought, ‘I have to find her.’: Adoptee reclaims identity in search for birth family

“An endless black hole. Nothingness. Question marks. This is what marks my past, before I came to America as a 2-year-old orphaned Korean child to my new country, new family, new home, new name, and new identity: Kara Mee Bedell.

A Caucasian middle class Christian family in Michigan adopted me. They had 2 biological children of their own, but due to complicated pregnancies and desires for a larger family, they decided to adopt. This is when I came into the picture. Adoption has always been known as something good. There isn’t any question about it when someone mentions they are adopting. They are often times met with a smile, and praise for the good deeds they are offering to the world. Rescuing an ‘impoverished child,’ who wouldn’t see it as a good deed (I put ‘impoverished child’ in quotations as we’ll be coming back to that later). For many children who are adopted it becomes one, at least in the beginning; these children are given a home, education, healthcare, and most likely opportunities that would never afford them if they had been left in their countries of origin. However, was that the case for me? Let’s travel back to my childhood and adoption story…

I was, as I said, adopted when I was 2 years old from South Korea, found at a bus terminal in Goesan (a province 2 hours South of Seoul) crying, saying only my name Kang Misuk and my age 2 years old. I was brought to an orphanage in Cheongju on November 18, 1983. 10 months later, September 1984, I was flown to Detroit, Michigan to meet my new family, The Bedells. I have fond memories of my early childhood, as I was treated just as a sister by my siblings, in the shelter of my family protected from any ‘differences’ and only seen as one of the family. However, as I grew older and went to school is when the ‘differences’ became more prevalent. Kids would ask, ‘Why is your nose so flat? Why is your face flat? Where are you from? How did you get here?’ Some would even shout out, ‘Hey you, Chinese dude!’ I was a fighter though, and those kids didn’t usually win those arguments as I would retort, ‘Don’t you know an American when you see one?!’ This is how I saw myself, and I was proud to be able to say it.

Growing up in middle class rural America, the pride of being American is instilled in you at a young age. So even at the tender age of 4, I was yelling out these proclamations from the bottom of my belly. Being outgoing, and with a rather strong character, I was well liked among my classmates. Being different on the outside, in the end, didn’t affect my popularity in my early years of education. However, as the outside beauty changes and forms as a child grows older, I started to dislike my small eyes, short eyelashes, dark hair, and flat face. I tried out a perm in order to have the wavy caresses I saw in other girl’s hair, but it turned into a disaster as my aunt used the same type of perming solution as she did on her hair…I will leave this to your imagination, but yes, I looked like a poodle. I never understood why boys didn’t want to go out with me, as only when I looked in the mirror did I remember I was different – Asian.

SEOUL, Dec. 23 (Yonhap) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that grandparents can legally adopt their own grandchild, even though the child's biological parent is alive, when the arrangement is in the interest of the child's welfare.

The top court ruled in favor grandparents who filed an appeal to adopt their own grandchildren, and transferred the case to a district court in Ulsan, 415 kilometers southeast of Seoul, for a retrial.

The decision was the first Supreme Court ruling which allowed grandparents to adopt their grandchild even if the child has living parents, given that qualifications are met and the arrangement is in the interest of the child's welfare.

The suit was filed after the grandparents wished to adopt their daughter's son. The baby was born while the daughter was still in high school, and was left with the grandparents for upbringing.

The grandson has lived believing that the grandparents are his biological parents. His actual parents divorced while he was an infant.

Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter has never been able to find the family who put her up for adoption, but her pursuit of information has shaped her life since being adopted by a single mom in Minnesota

Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter will be celebrating her 49th birthday this November 28, but her exact age remains shrouded in mystery.

"We don't know if I was a week old or a couple of months old when they found me, so they just gave me a birthday," Kripa Cooper-Lewter tells PEOPLE.

That's because the mother of two was found as an infant in a cradle on the steps of an Indian orphanage started by Mother Teresa. The sisters there estimated she was born in 1972 and came up with her birthdate.

"That's the story I've been told my whole life," Kripa Cooper-Lewter says. "The sisters said they had a cradle outside the orphanage that people could leave children in, because it was common that babies would be abandoned on the street."

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has informed the Delhi High Court that

it shall consider permitting advocates to appear as 'authorized representatives' to

coordinate and facilitate various formalities that are required to be undertaken in the

process of inter-country adoptions.

It also said that if virtual meetings are required by either biological or adoptive parents,

November was adoption awareness month. The month is dedicated to celebrate families that have adopted children because they give the children emotional, social, legal, and kinship benefits of biological children. Adoptive families provide children an opportunity to be raised in a loving and stable home. Adoption enables caregivers to become parents or to grow their families by adding a child to their family as they give the child a home.

All positive conversations adults have with adopted children make a huge impact in their lives. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises a child’s right to family life and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents or, where applicable, by members of the extended family or community.

The 2019 UN General Assembly resolution on the rights of the child recognised and prioritised the role of the family as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and wellbeing of all its members, particularly children. Families have the primary responsibility for the nurturing and protection of children. In order for a child to achieve their full potential, he or she should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love, and understanding.

Sadly, 7.5 million children all over the world live in charitable children’s institutions, commonly known as children’s homes or orphanages, yet 80 per cent to 90 per cent of these children have a living parent or known relatives. In Kenya, an estimated 45,000 children live in charitable children’s institutions for various reasons such as the loss of a parent or primary caregiver, poverty at home, sickness and disability, violence, abuse, and neglect.

Some communities perceive life in a children’s home as “good” because the children have better meals, housing, and opportunities for schooling. Yet families play a critical role in a child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development that a children’s institution cannot give. The government through the National Council of Children’s Services is spearheading care reforms to promote the best interest of the child to ensure that children are cared for in families and communities.

Thiruvananthapuram: A mother who left her girl child at the ‘ammathottil’, the electronic

cradle Kerala State Council for Child Welfare (KSCCW) in which a child could be placed

anonymously, retrieved the baby after seeing an advertisement regarding the adoption

mother approached the committee after recognising her child through the advertisements.

She revealed to the officials that she was compelled to abandon her child after her partner

Mariela Sr Coline Fanon

Author - Book "Mom, I am not dead" Kennes Editions

1w

The Lost Roots Foundation - Raíces Perdidas submitted its request to

Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) to become an Observer. This will be accepted or refused after the vote of the signatory states of the #LaHaye convention

Hartini van Rijssel and MayaSari van Rijswijk, both adopted, searched in vain for relatives in Indonesia. After forty years, the two half-sisters find each other in the Netherlands. “A Christmas miracle.”

Hartini (40) cannot believe her eyes at the beginning of this month when she reads the results of the DNA test. After years of searching, she has a close family match. What? With her? I've known her for a long time, but I never expected this.

There was one woman who thought she was my mother, but a DNA test showed that we are not related at all.

Hartini of Lille

Alone on the world

Resolution file
The information here reflects the current status of the procedure
Printable PDF version
Identification
Reference RSP/2005/2590
Title Resolution on the trafficking in children in Guatemala
Legal Basis EP 122
Subject(s) 4.10.03 Child protection, children's rights
6.10.09 Human rights situation in the world
Stage reached Procedure completed
Stages
Stages Documents: references Dates
Source reference Equivalent references Votes and amendments Joint resolution of document of publication in Official Journal
EP: motion for resolution EP B6-0415/2005 RC-B6-0415/2005 05/07/2005
EP: motion for resolution EP B6-0419/2005 05/07/2005
EP: motion for resolution EP B6-0431/2005 05/07/2005
EP: motion for resolution EP B6-0435/2005 05/07/2005
EP: motion for resolution EP B6-0436/2005 05/07/2005
EP: motion for resolution EP B6-0438/2005 05/07/2005
EP: vote on B series resolution EP T6-0304/2005 07/07/2005 C 157 06.07.2006, p. 0413-0494 E

07/07/2005 - EP: vote on B series resolution
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on trafficking in children in Guatemala.

The text adopted in plenary had been tabled as a joint resolution by the EPP-ED, PES, ALDE, Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL and UEN groups.

The Parliament notes that, according to the UN special rapporteur's report on the sale and trafficking of children, Guatemala's laws on adoption are among the least stringent in the region, while trafficking in children is not even classified as a crime. Moreover, the abuses occurring in Guatemala include forced or surrogate pregnancies, removal of children from their real mothers, substitution of documents, alteration of public records, and the existence of clandestine'nurseries'. Abuses are also committed by those authorising adoptions, while an increasing number of international adoption agencies are offering children for sale.

Given that Guatemala is a source, transit and destination country for women and children from Guatemala and other Central American countries who are trafficked for purposes of sexual and labour exploitation, the Parliament condemns trafficking in children and the existence of an organised crime network with international connections and as well as the manipulation by the adoption agencies. The Parliament stresses that adoptions should only be carried by governmental bodies and non-profit organisations and calls on Guatemala to enact specific legislation on adoptions and to adopt suitable measures to prevent profiteering from international adoptions. It urges the Public Prosecutor's Office to take out penal proceedings against the criminal networks trafficking in children and calls for the launching of a global plan of priority actions aimed at children and adolescents in Latin America, in line with UNICEF measures.

Moreover, the Parliament notes that, in 2004, 527 women were murdered, with most involving firearms. It therefore calls on Guatemala to take the necessary measures to ensure that murders of women no longer go unpunished, and to take a proactive stand on women's rights.

Whilst the Parliament welcomes President Berger's declarations regarding abolition of the death penalty, it expects more from this government, notably measures against lynchings and to promote human rights.

Lastly, the Parliament reiterates its recommendation to the Commission, as made in its resolution of 10 April 2003, that the EU's future strategy for Guatemala for 2007-2013 should include social cohesion, the right to food, rural development and reform of the system of landholding and land use, as priority areas for future EU cooperation policy. According to the Parliament, this policy should also lay stress on eliminating illegal adoptions, firm support for human rights, ending impunity, respect for the rights of indigenous peoples, and promotion and protection of women's rights and the rights of the child.