Why international adoption should not yet be terminated

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Kolkata: The kidnapper or ‘chele dhora’ has been a device used by generations of families in West Bengal to scare wandering children into coming back home at a certain time or from straying. The other narrative that has survived generations of retelling is the snatching of unattended babies by sanyasis. In popular imagination, the suitably clad ascetic is both anonymous and dangerous.

The archetype of the chele dhora, a criminal disguised as a saffron robed sanyasi, is perhaps a variation of Ravana kidnapping Sita in the Panchavati forest. The reinvention of the trope, using disguise to nab the children is a reversal of roles and a sneaky, smart move that insinuates that there is a connection between the Bharatiya Janata Party and crime. After the arrest of Juhi Chowdhury, a local leader of the BJP’s women’s wing in North Bengal for alleged links to a baby adoption racket, the controversy has now brought within its ambit Kailash Vijayvargiya, general secretary of the BJP in West Bengal and, Rajya Sabha MP Roopa Ganguly. It had emerged that Chowdhury had met them after her name surfaced. Chowdhury had been on the run and was arrested a few days after allegations against her name were made.

Vile as the crime of trafficking in babies is, the political connection has brought into sharper focus the ‘huge networks’ that run these operations. The police also arrested the Darjeeling district child protection officer (DCPO), Mrinal Ghosh, exposing the underbelly of the network that includes errant officials, doctors, nursing homes and NGOs. The arrests were made after key accused Chandana Chakrobarty — who owned the children’s home and the shelter for the mentally ill and disabled, Bimala Sishu Griha and Ahsray — revealed details about how the nexus worked.

The crime has inevitably become entangled in the saffron groups versus Mamata Banerjee tussle over political turf. This one dramatic case, both, focuses public attention on the problem and also shields the size of it from closer scrutiny, because the ‘huge networks’ that operate to keep the trade going, continue to do so.

It points to a chilling reality. In West Bengal, which tops the list of Indian states for trafficking in women and children, acquiring or procuring people – babies for adoption, the young and the able bodied as labour, women, girls and boys for the sex trade, the healthy for organs, for organised for begging and for every other form of exploitation that the imagination can conceive – there is a well- established supply chain that procures what the market or trade in persons wants.

‘Orphans’ return sought

3 Mar, 2017 Phak Seangly

An impoverished mother, who allowed a non-profit to send her four children to Italy because she couldn’t afford to take care of them, is now pleading with authorities to intervene after losing contact with the kids.

Nine years ago, Kampong Cham resident Uon Nhor, 40, said she and her husband, Met Mao, 48, left their children with the Phnom Penh-based Children and Poor Community Development Organization because their standard of living was so low. Nhor said her salary from working on a rubber plantation wasn’t high enough to provide her kids with an education.

For a year, she visited them in the orphanage and occasionally brought food, she says. But in 2009, the same year Cambodia would put a freeze on international adoptions, the children were sent to Italy for adoption.

Millions of children around the world grow up in residential facilities despite not being orphans, and many more in ‘alternative care’ within their wider families or communities. There is worrying evidence of care systems’ failure to protect children’s rights in developing and middle-income countries, and open questions around accountability when care is provided by the non-government sector. The European Commission funded a study on alternative care systems to inform development cooperation.

“The idea behind the report ‘Towards the Right Care for Children’ was that we were lacking a lot of information about the issue,” said Jean-Louis Ville, Acting Director for Human Development and Migration at DEVCO, the European Commission’s Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development. “We know what’s happening in Eastern and Central Europe, and in former Soviet Union countries, as we’ve had a lot of projects in these countries in the past. But reaching out to Africa, Asia and Latin America was something we’d start from nearly scratch. So there was a need to start from evidence, to gather knowledge.”

Coordinated by SOS Children's Villages International, researchers at CELCIS (Center for Excellence for Looked after Children at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland) conducted a desk review of childcare systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, and in-depth studies of two countries on each continent. These were Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria and Uganda, a mix of middle-income and less developed countries with varying population sizes.

Key Terms & Findings of the report

Alternative care for children: any arrangement whereby the basic overnight care of a child is taken up by someone other than his or her parents.

Business & Finance | 02/03/2018 1:24:09 PM

Donaldson Law

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AFOOT OVER UK CHILD MIGRANT ABUSE

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AFOOT OVER UK CHILD MIGRANT ABUSE

An Australian law firm who specialises in historic child sex abuse claims has confirmed that it is already representing a number of child migrants who were sent to Australia from the UK.

Indian ruling party politician arrested over illegal adoption ring

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 01 March, 2017, 10:48pm

UPDATED : Wednesday, 01 March, 2017, 10:57pm

COMMENTS:

Agence France-Presse

GHAZIABAD: Child Welfare Committee (CWC) officials took a day-old baby boy into custody on Wednesday after his mother, a 19-year-old woman, said she could not keep him as she is unmarried. The woman submitted an affidavit to CWC requesting them to take custody of her son whom she delivered at a private hospital in Nandgram on Tuesday. Following her request, CWC member Shalini Singh directed officials concerned to take the custody of the child and ensure his rehabilitation.

“The administrator of St Joseph’s Hospital in Mariam Nagar on Tuesday evening called us to inform that a 19-year-old woman who gave birth to a healthy boy has requested us to take custody of the child as she cannot keep him because she is not married” said Shalini Singh, CWC member. “She gave an affidavit in the presence of her mother in which she stated that she is leaving her child in the hospital and requested us to ensure his safety and rehabilitation and that she will not lay a claim on him in the future.”

Singh then wrote a letter to child welfare officer and others to initiate proceedings to take the custody of the child. “I personally visited the hospital and after due paperwork the custody of the child was handed over to us and he has been sent to the Women’s Hospital” said Jitender Kumar, child welfare officer. “Our first priority is to ensure the well being of the child and afterwards he will be shifted to the orphanage. We may set him up for adoption in the future,” he added.

Kumar also said that under the provisions of Juvenile Justice Act, the administration takes the custody of child who will be technically treated as ‘abandoned.’

Sister Edina of St Joseph’s Hospital in Mariamnagar in Nandgram said, “On Tuesday afternoon this woman who was in the advanced stage of pregnancy was admitted to our hospital. She went into labour by the evening and delivered a healthy male child. After she was stabilised she requested an audience with me and when I met her she told me that she did not want to keep the child as she is unmarried.”

Police disguised as monks found politician Juhi Chowdury hiding near the Nepalese border after a 10-day manhunt.

A prominent Indian politician has been arrested for allegedly masterminding a child trafficking ring.

Juhi Chowdury, a leader of the women's wing of the country's ruling BJP, was found near the Nepalese border in West Bengal.

A CID source said four investigators disguised as monks, acting on a tip-off about her location, detained her after tracking her mobile phone.

Police claim she was the key player in a "baby trafficking racket" that sold children for tens of thousands of pounds to other parts of India and overseas.

Italie-RD Congo : « Il y a de la mafia dans les organisations d’adoption »

Jeudi 23 Février 2017 - 19:30

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La présidente de l’organisme officiel italien des adoptions semble décidée à mettre à bas un système où se côtoient, dit-elle, concussion et corruption.

There aren’t many success stories amongst the street children of Kolkata. Certainly not on the scale of Saroo Brierley, whose book was turned into the movie Lion, tipped for Oscar glory this weekend. It’s a story so moving that even hard bitten hacks at the private screening I went to were suspiciously red-eyed as the credits rolled. It has since captivated audiences worldwide - because it’s all true.

Starring Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel, Lion tells Saroo’s own incredible life story. Born into an impoverished family in rural India, his mother laboured in a quarry carrying rocks. They had barely enough to eat and as a small child he used to ride local trains with his older brother begging for food or a few rupees. One night, aged just five years-old he got separated and rode on a train to Kolkata, 1000 kilometers away, landing in the city’s Howrah railway station - the biggest in India and home to hundreds of the city’s abandoned kids.

He couldn’t speak Bengali, and didn’t know his village name, so faced the perils of life on the street alone, until he was adopted by an Australian family. Fast forward 25 years and Saroo, a young adult in Tasmania, uses newly invented Google Earth to search for the village he remembers as a child and eventually is reunited with the family he lost.

It’s not hard to see why this extraordinary tale has been made into a Hollywood movie, but for Theresa Godly, 42, an actor from Walton-upon-Thames, it struck a particularly heartbreaking chord.

Born on the streets of Kolkata on 26th December 1974, Theresa was handed to Shishu Bhavan, the Missionaries of Charity orphanage, just a few days later. She still has her adoption papers, signed by Mother Theresa. She knows a little about her Anglo-Indian birth mother, Yvonne, including, she thinks, her late husband’s last name: Fernandez. She had been widowed, she was destitute and living on the streets, she may have been forced to become a sex worker or been a victim of rape.