The Joustra Committee has advised the outgoing cabinet to suspend the adoption of children from abroad for the time being. The report of former director Tjibbe Joustra will be presented on Monday morning. The report refers to "serious abuses" in the Dutch adoption culture.

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Commissie presenteert rapport over misstanden adoptiecultuur

De commissie-Joustra heeft het demissionair kabinet geadviseerd de adoptie van kinderen uit het buitenland voorlopig stil te leggen. Maandagochtend wordt het rapport van oud-bestuurder Tjibbe Joustra gepresenteerd. In het rapport wordt gesproken over "ernstige misstanden" bij de Nederlandse adoptiecultuur.

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Romania

The Need

After the fall of communism in 1989, the former Eastern Bloc country of Romania opened its doors to outsiders – including those to its 650 state orphanages. Here, over 100,000 children were found living in horrifying conditions – the outcome of a workforce growth scheme instituted by former Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Ceausescu’s policies included denial of birth control and fines for childless women. As a result, many poor Romanian families ended up with more children than they could support. For these children, Ceausescu offered a place in state institutions.

Romania has made great strides in the past 20 years, including the closure of nearly 100 orphanages between 2002 and 2003. In 2005, Romania passed a law prohibiting placement of children under 2 in institutions, unless they were severely disabled. And in 2007, the formerly communist country joined the European Union. However, over 2 million people continue to live in poverty and thousands of children remain in institutions. With few employment prospects at home, many parents leave their children in alternate care while they seek work elsewhere in the EU.

In the late 1980s, several thousand institutionalized children contracted HIV through unscreened blood transfusions. Today, Romania has the largest population of HIV-positive youth in Europe.

Adoptions from abroad may continue when it comes to brothers and sisters of children who have already been placed in the Netherlands. Intercountry adoptions have been suspended, but an exception will be made for this group, the outgoing minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) has decided after a question about this from the SGP in the House of Representatives.

In a letter to the House, Dekker writes that he considers the importance of placing brothers and sisters together very important, because "this protects the original family relationship between brothers and sisters as far as possible". He does point out, however, that the usual rules and conditions for an adoption procedure do apply in these situations.

Dekker suspended the adoption of children from abroad in February after an alarming report from a committee that had investigated the adoption system. This revealed serious and structural abuses, such as child trafficking, fraud and corruption. Because this could possibly still be the case, Dekker immediately stopped the adoptions.

An adjustment of the adoption system is currently being considered. The number of adoptions has steadily declined over the past thirty years. In the 1980s there were still more than 1,000 adopted children each year, in 2019 there were only 145.

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Born in the midst of a violent African war, Michaela DePrince overcame her past to become one of the world's most famous ballerinas.

Michaela DePrince is the embodiment of what it means to fight for your dream. The 2017 TODAY Style Hero wouldn't let anything stop her from becoming a professional ballerina: not her childhood, race or vitiligo.

Without knowing her violent past, it might be hard for anyone to imagine that ballet dancer Michaela DePrince was once a hopeless orphan, nicknamed "the Devil's Child" because of the white dots that freckled her dark skin.

After all, the grace with which she pliés and pirouettes across world-class stages is a sharp contrast to a childhood marked by murder and fear.

"The only way I could survive was ... to prove everybody wrong," Michaela, today a dancer for the Dutch National Ballet, told NBC News.

A week after registration of FIR against a Meerut-based couple for their involvement in illegal adoption of a Karnal woman’s child last year, the Karnal police have failed to reunite mother with her son

A week after registration of FIR against a Meerut-based couple for their involvement in illegal adoption of a Karnal woman’s child last year, the Karnal police have failed to reunite mother with her son.

Jyoti, 28, who is a farm labourer living in a rented accommodation with her two kids in Kunjpura, has alleged that police is not taking the issue seriously.

“A week has passed since registration of the FIR but no efforts were made to bring my child back,” she alleged. “Since the last nine months, I am forced to live away from my son,” she added.

As per the FIR, Jyoti alleged that on September 18 last year, her baby was taken from her by a Meerut-based doctor couple on pretext of giving him better treatment as he was facing respiratory problems.

A total of 2,431 families want to adopt children, while there are only 161 children available for adoption in Georgia, reports local media outlet Interpressnews (IPN).

The Agency for State Care and Assistance For the [Statutory] Victims of Human Trafficking told IPN that 125 of the 161 children have severe disabilities.

The agency also notes that by June 2021 seven adoption cases had been successfully completed in the country. One of the seven was a child with disabilities.

An individual wishing to adopt a child must be a permanent resident of Georgia.

The age difference between the adoptive parent and a child must not be less than 16 years.

Clad in black and bursting with happiness, Jamila Qadir tightly hugs a baby girl wrapped in a white sheet. The child is bright pink and her head appears large in proportion to her scrawny little arms and legs that jerk back and forth. Qadir gently rocks her with one hand and tries to feed her from a bottle with the other.

Together, they made the perfect picture of mother and daughter.

Qadir seems unsure of how to express how much joy the child has filled her with; it is the first time her house has been transformed into a family home. She had been desperately wanting a child for more than 15 years, and her dream has finally come true through her new adopted daughter. In the space of a single minute, she kisses her baby girl more than ten times.

Over a decade of built-up anger and distress have now melted away with the child’s arrival, she says, remarking that she would otherwise by dead.

Their bond seems as strong as that between any parent and their biological child.

For decades, Americans largely regarded East Asians as unassimilable aliens unfit for American citizenship. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first American bill banning immigration of a racial or ethnic group. Thirty years later, a Japanese and Korean Exclusion League was instilled, followed by a treaty between America and Japan agreeing to deny passports to Japanese seeking employment in the US. Hatred toward Japanese during World War II resulted in the internment of roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans.

In 1955, however, a special act of Congress allowed a white couple, Bertha and Harry Holt, to adopt eight Korean War orphans. Evangelical Christian farmers based in Oregon, the Holts ultimately inspired thousands of American families to adopt children from East Asia. Oregon Senator Richard Neuberger even hailed them as incarnations of the “Biblical Good Samaritan.” Within several decades, white Americans went from perceiving Asians as “pig-tailed coolies” to endearing children in need of American help. Christians played a pivotal role in promoting this wave of pro-adoption sentiment.

World Vision and Everett Swanson Evangelistic Association

In 1910, Japan annexed Korea. Korea was under Japanese occupation until Japan surrendered to the Allied forces in 1945. Soon after Korean gained its independence, two opposing governments split the country in two, the south supported by the United States, and the north by the Soviet Union. In 1951, North Korea invaded South Korea and war broke out. By the end of 1950, American and Chinese troops had escalated the civil war into a global conflict.

The war devastated Korea. Casualties exceeded 2.5 million people—many of them civilians, and more than 10 million people were displaced which created countless widows and orphans. By the time the war halted with an armistice in 1953, Korea was one of the most destitute nations in the world.

You don't have to be brother and sister, you can also become one - as the book As brothers and sisters shows. It also allows a forgotten group to speak: the biological children in adoptive or foster families, who have their own problems.

Language can sometimes be revealing. For example, for Jadrickson (16) Koen (17) is just his big brother. And for Koen, Jadrickson is just as naturally his brother. But Koen's older sister, who has already left home, he calls his foster sister again. While Jadrickson is actually a foster brother too, but calling him that feels too distant. Koen: “We grew up together. Jadrickson came here every other weekend since I was five. I have a different kind of connection with him than with friends or with my foster sister; more familiar, more natural. I don't think it would feel any different if he were a biological brother. No, that would really be the same.”

Jelmar (17) and his adoptive sister Yulotte (15) also sometimes run into language issues. That's how people ask Jelmar: isn't that your 'real' sister? And when it comes to the other two Chinese adoptive girls in their family: are they all 'real' sisters? Jelmar: “That word 'real' feels judgmental and not so respectful – if I'm honest. Like having real and fake sisters. To me they feel like real sisters, but people don't mean it that way. We are not biologically related, no.” Yulotte adds: “That 'real thing' gives a certain distrustful feeling. Like it's not quite right. While: I've spent almost my entire life with this brother, what would be fake about that?"

When we think of a brother-sister relationship, we naturally think of two people who share the same parents and the same gene package. But you can also feel like brother and sister if you don't have that biological relationship, as the book Like brothers and sisters – growing up together in an adoptive or foster family shows.

Jelmar and Yulotte. Image Photo: Lilian van Rooij

The letter delivered to Måns Clausen brought startling news. It advised the Swedish actor that his biological mother in Ethiopia, long presumed dead, was alive and searching for him.

After a few months of correspondence and phone calls with newfound relatives, the actor flew from Stockholm to Addis Ababa to see his birth mother for the first time since his adoption as a baby by a Swedish couple.

“That was a surrealistic experience! It was wonderful, of course,” Clausen said of their reunion three years ago, starting at the airport in Addis Ababa. Now 46, he recalled his mother “was a stranger to me. But for her, I was, of course, her child. She had been looking for me for years.”

Headshot of Swedish actor Mans Clausen standing, hands in pockets, on a street.

Måns Clausen, a Swedish actor, reconnected with his Ethiopian birth mother and brother via the search program Beteseb Felega. (Photo by Mikael Melanson)