The appointment by President Obama of human rights adviser Samantha Power to the post of US ambassador at the United Nations was greeted with particular interest at Mount Anville girls’ school in Goatstown in South Dublin. It means that three past pupils educated there by the Sacred Heart nuns now hold some of the most important positions in the world. It is also the Alma Mater of the former Irish President Mary Robinson, now UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes in central Africa, and of the Secretary General of the European Commission, Catherine Day, who was a near neighbour of ours in Mount Merrion when I moved back to Dublin in 1967.

I was already familiar with Mount Anville from the 1960s as my aunt is a member of the Sacred Heart congregation (RSCJ) and entered the religious life there. She taught for a while in the Montessori school, where she ran soccer games for the children, as my former secondary school class colleague Peter Mathews TD once recalled! Over the years we have been privileged to celebrate a number of important family occasions with the community there. Now as in many towns and cities in Ireland, the nuns no longer occupy the convent, but tomorrow (June 7th) on the feast of the Sacred Heart, they will be gathering for Mass at the original convent building, once the home of engineer William Dargan. The school has a classical-style chapel, designed by EW Pugin and GC Ashlin in 1866. I understand they are hoping to open a heritage centre later this year, in which the history of the convent and the associated schools will be displayed.

One of the highlights of the calendar last year was the visit by President Robinson to deliver the Barat lecture, named after the founder (1826) of the Society of the Sacred Heart, St Madeleine Sophie. In her speech Mary Robinson spoke warmly and movingly about the main points of her career as a lawyer, Senator, President of Ireland (her greatest honour she said), UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and lately, her work for climate justice. She also participated in a questions and answers session with the secondary school students. She spoke about her time spent as a boarder in Mount Anville in the late 1950s (Mary Bourke from Ballina in County Mayo). She recalled reading in the school library about Eleanor Roosevelt, someone she said who had inspired her in her formative years. In March, she was in Belfast for a memorial service to celebrate the life of the former trade unionist and human rights activist, the late Inez McCormack.

Catherine Day

Catherine Day

An Irishwoman was yesterday appointed to head the European Commission's 500-strong environment directorate-general, one of the most important departments in the Brussels secretariat. Ms Catherine Day (47), from Mount Merrion, Dublin, is being promoted from her current post of deputy director general of the Commission's department for foreign relations.

The appointment was accompanied by announcements from the President of the European Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, intended to end the practice of reserving certain posts in Brussels for nationals from particular member states.

Ms Day said she hoped her appointment would be welcomed by other EU nationals on the grounds of her merit.

Certainly her appointment was largely expected in Brussels where she had been talked about as the strongest candidate for the environment post.

A graduate of the National University of Ireland and University College Dublin, Ms Day began her career in the European Commission in 1979 having previously worked for the Investment Bank of Ireland and the Confederation of Irish Industry.

CAN someone who dedicates nearly all her time to her job escape being condemned as a workaholic?

Catherine Day, who has just been appointed the European Commission’s director-general for environment, would probably be the first to admit it’s a description that’s been applied to her.

In fact, it’s an understatement to say she loves her work and still finds it exciting after 20 years in Brussels. After all, this is someone who’s been known to set up meetings at weekends and who replies to emails at all hours. If you enjoy your job so much, then what else do you need?

Even if it hadn’t been announced as part of the biggest staff shake-up in the history of the Commission,

Day’s appointment would still be newsworthy. She’s risen successfully through the EU executive’s ranks, from passing the concours at 24 to becoming a director general at 47.

On September 20th, Leiden University Child Law Department hosted a public lecture and Q&A session with Ms. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Mr. Nigel Cantwell, international expert consultant, and Prof. David Smolin on the sale of children and Illegal adoption. The public lecture was chaired by Prof. Ton Liefaard.

The discussion addressed the mandate of the special rapporteur in relation to illegal adoption, and focused on the systemic problems surrounding intercountry adoption, the responsibilities of ‘’receiving’’ and ‘’sending’’ states, and the need to combat illicit adoption practices that violate children’s rights.

The lecture was attended by students from Leiden’s International Children’s Rights advanced master, the Dutch Child law master program, as well as by representatives of leading children’s rights NGO’s committed to the cause of combatting illegal adoption practices, including Terre de Hommes, Defence for Children and PLAN International.

Every few years, Levvel, who provides specialist youth care in Amsterdam and surrounding municipalities, has to deal with a newborn foundling. After the discovery of a child has been reported, Levvel (formerly Spirit and de Bascule) immediately calls in crisis foster parents and care providers to receive the foundling.

Behavioral scientist Monicque van Kemp, also a child and adolescent psychologist, and Nathalie Schlattmann, clinical psychologist at Levvel have more than twenty years of experience in guiding and treating children and (foster) parents. They cannot comment on the situation of the baby who was found in a container in Southeast a few weeks ago for privacy reasons. They do want to say that they were touched by the article they read in Het Parool containing the reaction of the firefighter who saved the baby and bumped it against him.

Van Kemp: “That is the best response you could wish for. A baby that has been abandoned will initially receive a negative message: I am not wanted. It is very good for a firefighter to immediately bump a baby into his body, because he immediately feels that it is welcome, that it is allowed to be there. A child feels that. "

Schlattmann: “A remote child gets a false start to life. You hope that someone will immediately embrace such a child. The negative feeling of its start thus becomes less dominant. You hope that the positive will predominate, followed by an embrace by nurses and foster parents. You hope that a new story will begin. ”

What does a child hear about the difficult start to his life?

New Delhi: The Ministry of Women

and Child Development (MWCD) has

requested the foreign ministry to have

dedicated nodal oicers in Indian

embassies for monitoring adoption

Habtamu de Hoop from Easterein is the youngest member of the new House of Representatives at the age of 22. De Hoop, who comes into the Chamber for the PvdA, saves 46 years with the oldest member, PVV'er Harm Beertema , according to the NOS .

Habtamu de Hoop is not the youngest Member of Parliament ever. That honor belonged to Farshad Bashir, who was 20 when he entered the House of Representatives for the SP in 2008. Before that, Bashir was a member of the Leeuwarden municipal council for two years.

February 2021 was an awful month for intercountry adoptions. First, the Netherlands suspended them, then social development declared that children are better off in institutional care in South Africa than in family care outside the country. Without evidence, both decisions have been deemed in children’s best interests. But, has anyone asked the children?

It’s been almost two months since the Netherlands’ shock decision to halt all intercountry adoptions. The unilateral decision by then Minister of Legal Protection Sander Dekker, in response to the Joustra Committee’s report on the issue, is temporary and will not affect adoptions currently in process.

But experts warn that in an election year it may be months before a new government is able to re-evaluate the ban, and that because intercountry adoptions are so lengthy, delaying the screening of new adoptive parents may result in children spending much longer in institutional care.

The committee uncovered massive adoption abuse between 1967 and 1998 in five sending countries – Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka – including corruption, falsified documents, officials forcing birth parents to give up their children in return for payment or through coercion, child trafficking, baby farming and obscuring children’s identities.

It also drew the startling conclusion that the Dutch government and Dutch intermediaries were aware of and involved in the abuses, that the government did not effectively tackle them and that the abuses (unsurprisingly) had a negative effect on birth families, adoptive parents and, most importantly, adoptees.

Should adoption records be open? Several adoptees, birth parents and others offer their personal, often moving stories.

To the Editor:

Re “I Was Denied My Birth Story,” by Steve Inskeep (Op-Ed, March 28):

I was so moved by Steve Inskeep’s story because it was in many ways similar to my own. I, too, was born in 1968 and adopted as a 3-month-old baby but never knew who my biological parents were. Alabama’s records were closed until 2000. I was unaware that they had been opened until I went to order extra copies of my birth certificate and was given the option of obtaining my original birth records.

Needless to say, I was not prepared for the experience of opening those birth records. After a first hungry perusal I sobbed uncontrollably for a good five minutes. Here she was, named on a piece of paper, and only 16 at the time. How awful it must have been for her to be sent from her home in one city to another city where there was a Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers.

Taipei, April 1 (CNA) In order to seek a change in existing laws which forbid same-sex couples from adopting children, three gay couples and rights groups pledged to take their cases to court Thursday.

Currently, the same-sex marriage law only allows a homosexual person to adopt the biological child of their partner, said Jennifer Lu (???), executive director of the Taiwan Equality Campaign (TEC), at a press conference Thursday.

Married homosexual couples do not have the legal right to adopt non-biologically-related children, unlike heterosexual couples, Lu said.

Gay rights groups are seeking a change to this "unreasonable" treatment of gay couples by taking legal action, added Lu.

In addition to TEC, Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association and Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy also expressed solidarity.