The Department of Social Welfare (DSW), has introduced new reforms on adoption processes to safeguard the interest of orphans as well as children who cannot live with their parents.

The reforms were developed to formalise alternative care system and formal gatekeeping structures to prevent the unnecessary admission and readmission of children into residential care to stem abuses.

The DSW, disclosed this at a day’s sensitization workshop on adopting and foster care regulations in Ghana, organised by the Department in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Cape Coast for stakeholders in Central Region.

The Acting Regional Director of DSW, Monica Siaw, encouraged stakeholders to educate the public on the new reforms which would be implemented by the Department.

She said couples who were willing to adopt should provide a suitable, secure and loving family home for a child and visit any Regional office of the DSW to go through the various processes before the child could be adopted to avoid child trading and trafficking to a foreign country only to be maltreatment.

Around 275 adopted children were “returned” to the system over the past two years in India. What went wrong?

Data indicates that gaps in pre- and post-adoption counselling, which arose after the digitisation of the adoption process, could be one of the major factors for these disruptions.

Over the past three years, a group of social workers and counsellors from Karnataka, all working with non-government organizations (NGOs) in the field of child welfare and adoption scrutiny, started noticing a disturbing trend in the adoption cases they were handling. They realized that a fairly large number of adoptions were failing—the children were being “returned" by parents to the Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA) that had handled their case. Finally, with a sense of growing unease, a few of these social workers submitted an RTI application seeking information about the number of failed adoptions to the Central Adoption Resource Authority (Cara)—the main government body handling all inter- and intra-country adoptions in India.

When the responses to the RTI application came in earlier this year, their apprehensions proved to be overwhelmingly correct. It turned out that in the two years between April 2017 and March 2019, the period for which the data had been sought, 275 children had been returned to the system across states—almost 5% of the number of children adopted in India in the same period.

Though hard data on the number of disruptions that happened before 2017 is not yet available, after talking to several child welfare activists and former Cara office-bearers for this story, it seems clear, anecdotally, that the number of children being returned are on the rise. Social workers who have worked in this field for decades maintain that the number of children being given up by adoptive parents either during the foster-care period or even after the adoption has been finalized in a court of law is seeing an alarming rise.

Inside the horrifying trade exploiting Vietnamese women for their bodies

By Samantha Dick

Abandoned by her husband with a young son to feed on her own, Linh* was desperate.

Her family in a remote Vietnamese village had never had much money, and after a "very difficult" marriage to a local man ended in divorce, Linh fell deeper into poverty.

She needed a way out.

In the final days of the Vietnam war, Operation Babylift evacuated 3,000 children and took them to the West to be adopted.

Not all were orphans; many of them, now middle-aged adults, are still searching for their roots.

When David Matthew Redmon met his birth mother at Saigon airport, it was as if his own ghost were being laid to rest.

“For more than 40 years, my mother lived with the thought that she had killed her son,” says David, 47, as he recalls finally meeting the woman from his faded childhood dreams.

On that day in August 2015, David had flown to Ho Chi Minh City from Boston, where he was brought up by adoptive parents. He spent most of the 20 or so hours in the air rehearsing every possible scenario, yet still it was not enough to prepare him. As he passed immigration at Tan Son Nhat International he saw an elderly lady dressed in a purple ao ba ba , a traditional South Vietnamese garment, and suddenly it was as if those childhood dreams had come to life. “When that moment came, my emotions simply took over and I cried like a child.”

Distance and adoption in the Netherlands between 1956-1984

Many women renounced their child for adoption between 1956 and 1984 under pressure. The government is therefore conducting research into the situations of distance parents, distance children and adoptive parents in that period until the end of 2020. And the role of the organizations involved and the social environment such as family and social workers.

Do you want to share your story and experiences for the distance and adoption study 1956-1984?

Distance and adoption by pressure

In 2017, Radboud University conducted research into women who renounced their child for adoption between 1956 and 1984. According to this research, this happened under pressure. Often because the women were not married. Distance mothers felt pressured by their immediate environment and care providers. Such as family, doctors, social workers and the church. The distance between the mother, father and child was broken. This caused a lot of lasting sadness and shame for parents and children.

Europol smashes a gang that dealt with babies

A gang of criminals is accused of bringing pregnant Bulgarian women to Greece for their birth. According to Interpol, the babies were adopted for around 25,000 euros. The suspects are also said to have acted with egg cells.

Greek investigators have teamed with Europol dug up a gang of criminals who are said to have traded with newborn babies and with egg cells. Twelve people were arrested, Europol said on Thursday in The Hague.

As a result, since 2016, the gang has been soliciting young pregnant Bulgarian women and brought them to Thessaloniki, Greece. There, women in private clinics gave birth to their children.

According to Europol, the babies were then illegally adopted for around 25,000 euros each. More details on this did not mention Europol. Some of the young women were brought to Thessaloniki as surrogate mothers.

In this article we present a brief history and recent statistics of child abandonment and adoption in Romania. After a rise in international adoptions in the 90s, a moratorium on adoption was established and in 2004 international adoptions became virtually impossible. Based on statistics of the Romanian National Authority for the Protection of Children's Rights and Adoption, we noted that since 2004 international adoptions were rare, whereas domestic adoptions remained relatively stable with about 1,000 adoptions each year. To date, not all potential adoption placements are realized. We conclude with reflecting on possible changes to improve child welfare in Romania.

Keywords: Romania, domestic adoption, international adoption, child welfare, child abandonment

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€25 000 to €28 000 per illegal adoption

Active since 2016, the criminal network recruited vulnerable pregnant women from Bulgaria. The group transported them to Thessaloniki, Greece where they were placed under medical observation and sent to private hospitals to deliver their children. The newborns were then illegally adopted for between €25 000 and €28 000 each. The fees included paying the biological mother, all legal expenses, hospitalisation, delivery itself and the members of the criminal group. Some of the mothers brought to Greece were also used as surrogates.    

The same criminal group was also involved in ovum trafficking. The criminals recruited donors in Greece, mainly from Bulgaria, Georgia and Russia. The women were then transferred to Thessaloniki to undergo a series of fertility treatments to increase the number of ova.

At least half a million euros in profit

During the action day, officers from the Hellenic Police (Ελληνική Αστυνομία) conducted 12 house searches and arrested 12 individuals suspected of belonging to a criminal group. The investigation led to the identification of 10 more members of the criminal organisation. In total, the case involved 66 individuals, including a lawyer, an obstetrician-gynaecologist and employees of private clinics. Officers seized €13 000 in cash, three cars, mobile phones and electronic devices, various documents related to adoption and surrogate procedures, birth certificates and bank statements. 

It is estimated that the criminal activity generated at least €500 000. The money was laundered through financial institutions, luxury goods and properties. Europol conducted operational and financial analysis, which confirmed the involvement of individuals and corroborated other evidence collected in the investigation.

Europol supported the investigation since the early stages by facilitating secure information exchange, providing operational and analytical support, and intelligence and financing one operational meeting. One Europol expert was also deployed in Greece on the action day to perform live cross-checks of operational data against Europol’s databases. 

1 WP-28071-2018

The High Court Of Madhya Pradesh

WP-28071-2018

(APORVA SHARMA Vs CENTRAL ADOPTION RESOURCE AUTHORITY MINISTRY OF WOMEN AND

CHILD DEVELOPMEWNT GOVERNMENT OF INDIA)

Between 1980 and 2000, around 14,000 children from destabilized countries such as Sri Lanka or Lebanon were adopted in Switzerland. While the adoptive parents believed that all was right, the Swiss authorities knew that many documents were wrong.

In fact, in many cases there was a real baby trade - children were stolen from mothers, documents were forged. The adoptions took place mainly through controversial placement organizations - also in Switzerland - which responded to the great demand for childless couples. And the Swiss authorities did nothing about it. In March 2019, “DOK” showed how such a baby trade with adopted children for Switzerland came about in Sri Lanka during the civil war of the 1980s - the babies of that time are still looking for their birth parents today. In this report, the Sri Lankan babies of that time today as adults demand an apology from the Swiss government - and access to their dossiers, some of which are still inaccessible to them today. The film “International Adoptions - A Swiss Scandal” shows that adoptions were also carried out in a questionable manner with many other countries, for example in Lebanon. An even more perfidious approach came into play there during the civil war: doctors took away their babies from women immediately after birth and had them registered as children of the adoptive parents - making it practically impossible to find the birth parents today. A young woman who came to Switzerland in this way nevertheless goes on a search - and finds out incredible things. Doctors took away their babies from women immediately after birth and had them registered as children of the adoptive parents - so it is now practically impossible to find the birth parents. A young woman who came to Switzerland in this way nevertheless goes on a search - and finds out incredible things. Doctors took away their babies from women immediately after birth and had them registered as children of the adoptive parents - so it is now practically impossible to find the birth parents. A young woman who came to Switzerland in this way nevertheless goes on a search - and finds out incredible things.