A sample review of adoption agency records in which births were registered illegally will be published by the Department of Children in the coming weeks.

It includes findings of illegal adoptions from St Patrick's Guild in Dublin between 1946 and 1969.

The Department has confirmed that 151 cases of illegal birth registrations have been discovered.

This is an increase in the original finding of 126 cases when the review began three years ago.

Some of those whose births were illegally registered and who were adopted from St Patrick's Guild have recently been informed.

'Even if you only save one'. These six words mark the beginning of international adoption in the Netherlands. They are spoken by writer Jan de Hartog, in a television interview with Mies Bouwman in 1967. After the Korean War (1950-1953), thousands of American soldiers remained as occupation forces under the UN flag. De Hartog speaks about the inhumane conditions in which the children of these American soldiers and their Korean mothers find themselves. They are rejected by the family and have no future in their own country.

September 20, 2006

"Do me such a Korean!"

Just give me such a Korean

Watch Video

DOSSIER MIDI LIBRE - In 1975, an American airlift, bereaved by a fatal accident, exfiltrates 3,000 orphans from Vietnam. A survivor and a novelist, Audoises by adoption, recall this incredible episode.

Saigon, April 4, 1975, 5.30 pm Shortly after takeoff, an American military transport aircraft Galaxy C - 5A, aboard which nearly 300 Vietnamese orphans were crammed into the Mekong Delta. From the shattered carcass of the device, which shattered into several parts, only a few dozen children emerged alive. The others were ejected when the aircraft lost its rear door in flight, or drowned, in the shoe boxes slid under the seats where they were supposed to travel.

closevolume_off

Aude: a survivor tells us about the forgotten crash of the children of Vietnam

Just before the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975

APRIL 12th, 1975: Vietnamese orphans crossing the Pacific Ocean, on their way away from the horrific terrors of war. One of

these orphans will later be known as Ralf Lofstad, and is currently working as a journalist for the newspaper “Dagbladet”.

Photo: Robert Stinnett / The Oakland Tribune Collection / The Oakland Museum of California. Video: Thomas Rasmus Skaug.

Still photos: Thomas Rasmus Skaug, Arvid Bryne, NTB Scanpix, Tonje Finvold Lacher and Private.

39 years ago, Ralf Lofstad, “Dagbladet”,

In the 1950s, the world famous American-born entertainer Josephine Baker, who lived in France, toured the US. She was refused in 36 hotels in New York because she was black.

Back in France, Baker adopted twelve children from 10 different countries in order to prove to the world that people of all ‘races’ and religions could live together. She organised tours through the castle where she lived with her ‘rainbow tribe’ and made the children sing and dance. In the 1920s and 1930s the popular novelist Pearl S. Buck adopted seven children, four of whom were labelled ‘mixed-race’. By doing so she flaunted American restrictions on mixed-race adoptions. In the 1950s, Buck said she did so because she wanted to show that families formed by love – devoid of prejudices based on race, religion, nation, and blood – were expressions of democracy that could counteract communist charges that America’s global defence of freedom was deeply hypocritical.

The adoptions by Baker and Buck were political statements that illustrate that intercountry adoptions were frequently about much more than saving a child, as many people who defended adoptions claim. My Identities article, ‘Parenting, citizenship and belonging in Dutch adoption debates 1900-1995’, explains why debates on this issue continued, without ever reaching a conclusion. Celebrities (including Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt) followed in the footsteps of Baker and Buck. Non-celebrities copied behaviour and arguments. Adopters tried to show that children and adults not connected by blood ties could form a family, and that single parent adoptions or adoption by same sex couples could work. Critics pointed to child kidnappings, trafficking, ‘baby farms’ and a profit-driven industry based on global inequality. Adoption was not a solution to poverty, nor in the best interest of the child, in their view.

Adoption was and is a popular subject in women’s magazines and (children’s) literature, starting with the biblical story of Moses in his basket. It features in large number of TV sitcoms (e.g. Modern Family, Sex and the City), movies and books (Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Superman). Ancestry.com offers DNA tests to find ‘your liberator granddad’, there are numerous TV shows about searching birth parents, and heritage tours to birth countries are popular.

Overall, the public and media are fascinated by adoption stories, while the issue torments authorities. This has been the case for over a century. My Identities article tackles this question of continuity by placing intercountry adoption within the context of migration, to which it legally and administratively belongs. This is an uncommon approach. By placing it in the migration context, and addressing it from a historical and comparative perspective, the interaction between discourses, policies and practices are analysed, and the continuity explained.

Child Welfare Committee (CWC) has filed an appeal before the Bombay High Court stating that “such a precedent will affect future adoptions in the state of Maharashtra and the whole country”.

A few months after a city civil court granted the custody of five children to couples facing charges of purchasing them, the Mumbai suburban Child Welfare Committee (CWC) has filed an appeal before the Bombay High Court stating that “such a precedent will affect future adoptions in the state of Maharashtra and the whole country”.

At the centre of the legal process are five children, who were allegedly sold by their biological parents to the couples, then “rescued” by the Mumbai police, sent to adoption homes where they spent over a year, only to be reunited with their adoptive parents again last year.

In 2019, the Mumbai police crime branch had booked six couples, along with staffers of IVF centres, nurses, surrogate mothers for allegedly being part of a crime where six boys aged between 18 months and seven years bought from biological parents belonging to poor families were sold to the couples. The couples, some of whom were arrested, maintained that they were victims too and were made to believe by the other accused that they were legally adopting the children. The parents claimed that their alleged actions should not lead to trauma of separation and disruption to the children who were sent to adoption homes after being rescued.

The CWC, however, refused to grant them even temporary custody of the children in 2019, stating that it “cannot encourage the practice of illegal adoption”. In October last year, the city civil court said there is no evidence to show that the couples had sought to adopt the boys with any ulterior motive or bad intention and allowed them to be their legal parents.

Rasika Bos grows up in Sri Lanka. The family is very poor. When Rasika is three years old, her mother dies. Rasika's father blames her mother's death for reasons that are unclear. From that moment on, she is severely abused by him.

At the age of five, Rasika and her sister Niluka are adopted by the Dutch couple Bos. Everything seems to be changing for the better. But later she learns that her adoptive mother had not wanted her at all. She only wanted the younger sister, who was still a toddler at the time. Because her husband was too old to adopt just the younger sister, she had to take Rasika in.

Strict

Fortunately, Rasika gets along very well with her new adoptive father. But her adoptive mother is very strict and even mean to Rasika. She regularly has to eat with her back to the family because her mother does not want to look at her. Or she is sent to bed without food because her mother thinks Rasika did not try her best in swimming lessons.

Depression

EurAdopt Conference

VIGTIGT - EurAdopt Conferences udsættes til 2022

The 14th international EurAdopt Conference with the theme: “Bæredygtighed i international adoption”, the oprindeligt var planlagt til at skulle være afholdt i maj 2020, blev udsat til april 2021 pga. COVID-19, he atter udsat!

Efter the anden bølge af Covid19 har ramt Europa, har arrangørerne meets the vanskelige beslutning endnu en gang at udskyde begivenheden til afholdelse torsdag 28th and Friday 29th April 2022 at Hotel Scandic Sydhavnen, Sydhavns Plads, 2450 København.

Læs mere her: https://www.d-i-a.dk/euradopt/

YERSEKE - Following the news about a temporary adoption stop, Maya Kik from Yerseke has decided to release her story. She was born in Indonesia 40 years ago and adopted by a Dutch couple. Growing up in the Netherlands was not always easy for Maya. For a long time she struggled with a void that she thought she could fill with her family from Indonesia, which has remained unknown to this day.

“I wrote my story because I like to share it,” says Kik. “You hear so many negative stories about adoption, but for me it went very well. I wanted to illuminate the other side. Being adopted was certainly not always easy and finding my own happiness, discovering who I am and especially accepting myself was quite a journey. This is the case for many young people, but if you are adopted, this journey will take a little longer. ”

Emptiness

Kik has been looking for her biological family, but has now stopped this search. “I found out that not my family in Indonesia can fill the void I always felt, but that only I can do that myself. The love of God, my children, husband, my dear girlfriends and boyfriends, but especially my own strength that I have developed, have made me strong. I feel happy and happy with myself. I now know that I could feel at home anywhere in the world, because I always have myself with me. ”

Counterfeit

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS have passed a motion to push the government to set out a redress scheme for Mother and Baby Home survivors at its national conference this afternoon.

The motion sets out the party’s plan to call on the government to prioritise measures that address the concerns of survivors, including legislative change around access to personal information and records.

The Social Democrats voted to call on the government to set out “how they will introduce a proper redress scheme, in close consultation with survivors, and ensure the religious order contribute significantly and appropriately”.

The party has also committed to asking the government to set out how it will ensure proper investigations into the issues raised by the Commission of Investigation’s report, protection for burial sites, and the establishment of a dedicated criminal justice unit and human-rights compliant coroner’s inquests and exhumations.

The motion garnered strong support, with 235 members voting to accept it and no votes registered in opposition.