Managing board

Ellen Giepmans Managing Director

Ellen Giepmans

Managing Director

Mirte Grauss

Adoption of child by single parents: “If a woman feels she is nothing without the support of a man that is the failure of the system” The Kerala High Court quoted during the hearing of a case in regard to surrendering a child for adoption.

Justices A Muhamed Mustaque and Dr Kauser Edappagath of the bench were faced with a petition by an unmarried couple who lived together, reclaiming their child who was surrendered for adoption previously. The court granted its’s decision in favour of the couple and handed them their child back. The decision was ruled against the Child Welfare Committee that inquired into their marriage status.

“Once it is found that the child is born to a couple, for all practical purposes of JJ Act, inquiry must be initiated as though the child belonged to a married couple” The Kerala HC said.

What was the case?

Anitha and John (names changed to preserve privacy) were in a live-in relationship when she got pregnant. Anitha claimed John to be the biological father. Their relationship was not accepted by their parents as they belonged to separate religions.

Teleza is Nicole van Elteren's daughter. She runs a children's home and development projects in Malawi. Teleza was pressed into her arms when she was a few days old. The biological mother was dead, the father unknown and Teleza herself turned out to be critically ill. She had four holes in the heart that would kill her without surgery.

Adoption

Because the life-saving operations were not carried out in Africa, but in the Netherlands, Nicole decided to adopt the child. That's how Teleza would become Dutch. But where Malawi recognized the adoption in June 2020, the Netherlands did not. Malawi was seen as a weak adoption country, because Malawi's law states that adopted children in principle keep the right to an inheritance from their biological parents.

Although Teleza has no biological parents, the Netherlands stuck to that rule. Teleza was denied a passport, so she was not entitled to health insurance. Because the baby was getting sicker and was in danger of dying in the meantime, Nicole decided to travel to the Netherlands in September to have Teleza operated on uninsured. Almost 110,000 euros was raised through crowdfunding to finance the very expensive interventions.

Judge

They don't cheer. But that adoptions from abroad have been stopped is the only right decision, say Kim, Sophie, Niranka and Kumar. They still have doubts about who they really are. "For years I had a picture on my nightstand of an unknown woman who is not my real mother."

I should be grateful?

Kumar (36): ,, I find some things incomprehensible. Then I hear people say that it is only a problem for a small number of people. And then I think: there are so many Sri Lankan children who have problems because of the adoption. The same people say: we must stop boats with refugees, but bring children from distant lands, that must continue?

“I had to look for my family for 32 years, but I found them. In the end I never met my mother. She passed away in 2010. That is a hard blow. I would have loved to take care of her. “I experienced a lot of racism in my youth, in Zevenaar. On the football field, but also during job interviews.

“There are so many things that you start to doubt. When I was 16, I heard that my date of birth was a completely different one. I suddenly had a different day for my birthday.

John Erik Aarsheim is contacted by many who doubt his adoption history. The organization Adopted demands a full investigation of adoptions carried out in the 80s from Colombia.

- I have received around 20 inquiries from people who feel that they are in the same situation, says John Erik Aarsheim.

Before Christmas, Aarsheim discovered that he was kidnapped in the 80s before he was adopted in Norway. This month he got to meet the biological family after 32 years.

- But with the knowledge I gained after being in Colombia now, I am not surprised by the number of inquiries. This is a huge problem there, and it should just be missing that there are no more cases like mine in Norway, says Aarsheim.

In 2019, Dagsavisen wrote about another boy who was kidnapped and adopted to Norway in the 80s.

Trafficking in Human Beings is not a faded, historical memory: it is a

social issue in today’s Albania, and it bears the seeds of a potential

threat to security. RS, a 20-year-old woman from Tirana, gave birth

in prison, following an arrest for theft. RS first reached authorities’

attention as a serial thief at 16. However, her story is not simply one of juvenile

Key Areas of Focus: Intercountry Adoptee Rights

What They Do:

InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV), previously known as ICASN (InterCountry Adoptee Support Network) began in 1998 in Sydney, Australia as a support network created by intercountry adoptees for intercountry adoptees, of any country of origin.

ICAV’s informal network has grown to include adoptees and adoptee led groups from around the world. Today, ICAV provides a platform for adoptees to connect in, share, educate, and advocate to the wider public about the issues they face – political, social and emotional, including the not so positive aspects of intercountry adoption.

ICAV is one of the major adult intercountry adoptee led platforms that brings together and encourages adoptees / groups to advocate for the needs and rights of intercountry adoptees.

TOM DIEUSAERT | 19 augustus 2016

De politieke strijd achter adoptie in Oeganda

Leestijd: 5 minuten

ONDERZOEK

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Mrs Mohini Raghunath

Founder & Secretary

Mrs. Mohini Raghunath, founder and secretary of CWD has had a long and distinguished career in the field of child welfare in India. Her scholarship, vision and commitment to the cause of the ‘disadvantaged child’ is the stuff of legends.

Since the 1970s, key policy initiatives, and path-breaking legislation ideas in the field of child welfare in India, especially adoption and sponsorship have been realized under her signature.

A Delhi School of Social Work graduate (class of 1952), Mrs. Mohini Raghunath started her career at the Maharashtra Government-run Beggar’s Home in Mumbai. In 1976, she joined the Indian Council of Social Welfare (ICSW) as advisor. There, under the guidance of Simone Tata, she authored trend-setting guidelines for inter-country adoption.

Ulla Essendrop, who has put "Aftenshowet" on pause and has hosted DR Nyhederne, was born in Calcutta and came to Denmark as an adopted child when she was almost three years old. Only after she herself has become a mother does the past she does not know begin to call.

Ulla Essendrop has one image.

That's all she has from her first three years of life, or exactly: From her first two years and ten months, which is the part of her life she spent in an orphanage in Calcutta until she was adopted by a pair of musicians from Aalborg district Skalborg and came to grow up in Denmark.

A picture showing herself as a little girl in a black and white picture.

With thin legs. A small, dear face that looks seriously into the camera. And wearing a short, nice dress with braces.