When Vanita Thomas met her future husband, Peter, for the first time, she asked if he would be interested in adopting a child with her.

It wasn’t a premature question—their marriage was arranged, and their first meeting was meant to see if they were compatible. Potential future children were important to discuss. But it was a weird question, because adoption was uncommon in India, where both were born. (“People believe that God opens and shuts wombs, so if you adopt, it means you didn’t have enough faith,” Vanita said.)

But Vanita was determined. “Growing up, my school took us to one of Mother Teresa’s children’s homes in Bangalore to visit the orphans,” she explained. “I remember begging Mum and Dad to take one of those kids home. They said that they already had three kids, and anyway, it wasn’t something normally done in India.”

Vanita and Peter with their adopted children Sandeep and Ruth / Courtesy of Sandeep Thomas

But she didn’t forget about it. Years later at their first meeting, she asked her future husband what he thought about adopting. Peter, who had just finished reading about God spiritually adopting believers into his family in J. I. Packer’s Knowing God, agreed immediately. Five years later, Peter had finished graduate school, the couple had immigrated to New York, and Vanita had lost a pregnancy. It’s time, they thought.

Department of Children's Services - Republic of Kenya 2019

This handbook is a key tool for supporting care reform in Kenya, promoting family-based alternative care for children, and moving away from institutional care.

This book is particularly written for formal and informal government practitioners: social workers, child protection volunteers, police, health workers, teachers, community health workers, child and youth workers, probation officers, and para-social workers, including:

Chiefs, Nyumba Kumi and Village elders, and Area Advisory Councils

Community-based organizations (CBOs), faith-based organizations (FBOs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in communities

The lawyer who went too far for the clients

Who : Henriëtte Nakad

Issue : improper practice

Where : Council of Discipline Amsterdam

Folkert Jensma

ECLI: NL: RBAMS: 2020: 5774

Authority

Court of Amsterdam

Date of judgment

04-11-2020

Goa Chronicle brings you the story of Priyangika Samanthie who is originally a Sri Lankan but was adopted by a Norwegian couple and was taken to Oslo. She helps individuals get reunited with their biological parents who were made victims of a sinister ‘adoption lobby’ running in Sri Lanka. And her own story of reuniting with her biological mother is worth giving a read.

Priyangika was three when she stumbled upon the fact of her being an adopted child. When asked about how she got to know the reality, she revealed, “Before I answer this, I would like to tell you that some of the articles that are online are misleading; some of the information is not correct. I tried to make them change it but it is poor journalism. So, when I was three, I got to know about my adoption because I started having questions when my family and I went to the stores or anywhere else. I could tell that everyone has a relationship with their biological parents because they looked alike. And I could sense that something was odd about our situation. And it got me thinking after which my adoptive parents started speaking to me about I having a second mom; which they did from an early age”.

She continued, “They always used to talk about me having three parents because they knew only about my biological mother and not my father. I specifically remember one instance when we went to the store, and I was lost because I went away from my adoptive mother. Then the cashier came over to me and asked me whether I needed some help. I had then asked her to help me find my mother. But after she took me back to my adoptive mother, I had started asking for my real mother. And I had stated that I felt like I had been kidnapped. I used to shout on the streets saying that my adoptive parents stole me and this was something I used to say all through the years I grew up in. And I felt I wasn’t supposed to be in Norway and that I wanted to go back home.”

Priyangika continued to narrate her tale, “We found mom in 2013, and then I had gone to Sri Lanka on Independence Day in 2014. But I had been searching for her since I was 7. So, I searched for over 12 years before I could meet her. The adoption law in Europe is that the adoptive parents are not allowed to assist the adoptees to reunite with their biological parents. And hence the adoptees have to find their families on their own. They can only give the adoptees the documents from the time they were adopted. But they may not reveal any kind of information about the whereabouts of the biological families or any tip-off which could help the adoptees to reunite with their actual parents. I am trying to get this changed now. By the age of 5, my adoptive parents used to tell me about my adoption in detail because I always had a lot of questions on my mind regarding the documents and my situation. We used to sit and talk about my family in Sri Lanka and the legal process required to be followed.”

“Listening to my follow-up questions, my parents fathomed I was keener to know about my adoption as compared to my adoptive brother. Both of us are not biologically related; we were adopted from Sri Lanka. Then my adoptive parents showed me the documents like birth certificates and films from the time they spent in Sri Lanka. But it wasn’t enough information about my biological mother. So, at 7, I went to my adoptive father’s office, and I asked him to help me write to the government to get access to my documents. My father could only help me write a letter to the reunification program authorities but my application was declined, and I was told that one has to be at least 16 to begin looking out for biological parents. And the government told me that I could not look into their files until I was 18. This was a huge problem,” mentioned Priyangika.

East Bogotá, March 2021. The cotton swab should be rubbed deep into the oral cavity against both sides. The Colombian half-sister of Stockholm-based Marta Persson, Hilda Grisales Blandon, takes a deep breath. Trying to swallow the nervousness away.

Ten more seconds. Clear.

Laura Mora puts the stick in a small plastic bag and marks it with her name and social security number. She works for the Dutch organization Plan Angel, which brings together adopted and Colombian families.

The sample must be sent to the Netherlands for analysis. Hilda Grisales Blandon hopes that at least one of her three missing siblings left their DNA in the same registry.

At the end of last year The family contacted Marta. She was adopted to Sweden, but Hermalina Grisales Blandon never gave her written consent.

On 12 April, the EU Delegation organised a public online conference to mark the recent adoption of the new EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child, map out synergies with the upcoming Council of Europe respective Strategy in this field and grasp the importance of international standards for the protection of the rights of children across Europe.

The conference brought together key speakers from the EU and the Council of Europe, engaged in the definition of strategies, policies and recommendations on the rights of the child: Ms Valeria Setti, European Commission Coordinator for the Rights of the Child and Ms Regina Jensdottir, Head of the Children’s Rights Division and Coordinator for the Rights of the Child at the Council of Europe.

The conference provided a very good opportunity to highlight the coherence and convergence between the EU and the Council of Europe’s respective standards of protection for the rights of the child, as well as the great willingness of both organisations to strengthen their cooperation and synergies in this field. The speakers made clear that the newly adopted EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child and the upcoming respective Council of Europe Strategy are in very close alignment and will complement each other along the way, building on their respective strengths.

You can find a recording of our conference on the Commission’s streaming platform or on our Facebook channel(link is external)

Two European-level Strategies for the Rights of the Child: What Added Value for us?

The Constitutional Court has ruled that a trust created by a donor for the benefit of his children and their descendants unfairly discriminated against children adopted by one of his daughters as it did not include them.

Louis John Druiff executed a deed of trust as well as a will “for the benefit of his children and their descendants”.

The deed of trust said any income should be for his four children and their children.

At the time of execution of the deed‚ Druiff had four children‚ three of whom already had children of their own.

One of his daughters‚ Dulcie Helena Harper‚ was married but did not have any children. She later adopted two children.

New Delhi: Ahead of next month’s proposed India-European Union summit in Portugal, European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee has called for both sides to work closely but also expressed concern over the “deteriorating human rights situation in India”.

On April 13, the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament adopted a report which has a set of recommendations on strengthening the bilateral relationship. The report, adopted with 61 votes in favour and six votes against, will be made public after the European Parliament approves it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to travel to Portugal to attend the India-EU summit on May 8.

According to a press release, the report calls on the EU and India to work together to “promote a shared vision of a rules-based world order in multilateral settings, reinforcing international security, fostering connectivity, fighting climate change and enhancing global economic stability”.

Quoting the committee’s rapporteur, Finnish member of European Parliament(MEP) Alviina Alametsä, the press release stated that India and EU “as the world’s largest democracies have all the possibilities to build a better planet”.

“To fulfil our potential, we need to be more ambitious in our cooperation on preventing climate crises, promoting human rights, building connectivity, sustainable trade and defending a multilateral international order,” she said.

A woman who spent almost five years battling to adopt a boy in Uganda said it was "surreal" to now be living in the UK.

Emilie Larter, 29, from Worcestershire, was volunteering for a children's charity in 2014 when she took care of baby Adam, whose mother had died.

She raised thousands of pounds to adopt him, and the pair have been back in the UK since January.

Adam has now started school and is making friends, she said.

Emilie Larter