A damning study of inter-country adoption, Irish style

Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer

June 19 2007 04:43 AM

THE Trinity College report into inter-country adoptions is very glossy.

Pictures of beautiful smiling children beam out from the pages of the executive summary, and the text and accompanying press release match the happy images.

Bericht uit Bogota · We hebben onze “auto”

10 minuten leestijd

Sinds 19 december jl. verblijft ons Kamerlid Van der Staaij met zijn gezin in Colombia om de adoptie van hun dochtertje Camila te 'regelen'. Zij houden ons goed op de hoogte van hun belevenissen en via De Banier geven we dat graag aan u door.

23 januari, terug in Bogota

Vandaag zijn we hier weer teruggevlogen en is het precies vijf weken geleden dat wij zijn aangekomen in Colombia. We zijn nu in ons derde hotel aangeland: Casa Nueva, de dependance van het hotel Paris, waar we eerst gezeten hebben. Anders dan in Paris, zitten in Casa Nueva alleen maar Nederlandse adoptie-echtparen.

In 2018, the Mumbai Police had rescued six children, claiming they were sold by their biological parents to couples looking to adopt children through middlemen, including staffers of hospitals and fertility clinics

A MAN booked by Mumbai Police two years ago for allegedly purchasing a child has approached the Delhi High Court, seeking to make the legal adoption procedures comprehensible and stating that he fell victim to the illegal adoption process and faced separation from his son.

In 2018, the Mumbai Police had rescued six children, claiming they were sold by their biological parents to couples looking to adopt children through middlemen, including staffers of hospitals and fertility clinics. The man, a Delhi resident, had claimed that he was fooled into believing that he was adopting a nine-year-old boy through a legal adoption process and that many like him fall for the “lies of touts who offer adoption through illegal ways”.

Last year, a civil court in Mumbai granted him and four other couples the legal custody of the rescued children, who spent over a year in an adoption centre.

Following this, the man found an organisation named Yathartha Foundation to create awareness about the adoption process, in a bid to ensure that others like him do not fall prey. In the petition before the Delhi High Court through this Foundation, the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and others have been named as respondents. The petition seeks that the legal adoption process should be made lucid and comprehensible and awareness should be created among masses with regard to “rampant illegal adoptions in the country”.

‘Long procedure giving rise to grey market’

Lengthy and cumbersome adoption procedures of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the increasing number of childless couples have given rise to a “grey market” for adoption, an NGO told the Delhi High Court on Wednesday.

NGO Yatharatha Foundation told the High Court that as per information on CARA website, around 30,000 couples have registered for adoption. But only 2,989 children are available. Therefore, there was a “huge prospect for grey market of adoption, and which has been thriving due to cumbersome, lengthy, tedious procedure under the CARA”.

A Bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh issued notice to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Delhi government, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and CARA seeking their stand on the NGO’s plea seeking simplification of the adoption procedure.

Hotspot for middlemen

DCI Belgium \ Structure and team

Structure and team

MEMBERS OF THE TEAM

Benoît Van Keirsbilck

Benoît Van Keirsbilck

The government has been clear that it wants to promote the mental health of children and young people and announced in the spring amendment budget for 2017 an investment of SEK 100 million extra for this.

The Social Services Act also states that the municipality has a special responsibility for children who have been adopted.

But now the activities at the Erica Foundation are threatened as Stockholm County Council has decided not to extend the choice of care. The same applies to Duvnäs' parental support, open the Spira preschool and Resurscentrum when the City of Stockholm wants to save money.

Good businesses must be developed, not wound up! The knowledge and expertise on adoption issues that has been built up over many years is invaluable and should rather be more widely disseminated in the form of a national resource center. The activities show that it is possible to provide adoptees and their families with qualified support and professional help.

If you want to show how important these activities are for adoptees and their families with demands that the activities be developed instead of being wound up, sign this name collection today!

Children have been adopted away to Sweden against the wishes of their biological parents. Jenny Wirgart was told as an adult that she was one of the children who were abducted illegally from Chile. "I have tried to deal with all my life that I was unwanted, now I would deal with this as well," she says.

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Jyothi Svahn was sold as a child - and adopted to Sweden without the mother's knowledge.

Following a similar investigation, the Netherlands recently suspended all foreign adoptions.

Falsification of documents, lost files, victims of child trafficking: a group of people adopted abroad and adoptive parents is asking the French government for an investigation to shed light on "illegal practices" observed during international adoptions.

"We, adopted people and French adoptive parents, ask the government and parliamentarians to set up a commission of inquiry so that illegal practices in international adoption since the 1970s are noted", write the members of this recent collective for the Recognition of illicit adoptions in France (Raif) in a petition addressed to the National Assembly and published on the Change.org site.

Mali, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Peru: illegal adoptions? Stolen children?

In recent years, several children adopted in France, now adults, have testified in books or in the media of difficulties in accessing their origins, even of fraudulent procedures during their adoption.

Following a similar investigation, the Netherlands recently suspended all foreign adoptions.

Falsification of documents, lost files, victims of child trafficking: a group of people adopted abroad and adoptive parents is asking the French government for an investigation to shed light on "illegal practices" observed during international adoptions.

"We, adopted people and French adoptive parents, ask the government and parliamentarians to set up a commission of inquiry so that illegal practices in international adoption since the 1970s are noted", write the members of this recent collective for the Recognition of illicit adoptions in France (Raif) in a petition addressed to the National Assembly and published on the Change.org site.

Mali, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Peru: illegal adoptions? Stolen children?

In recent years, several children adopted in France, now adults, have testified in books or in the media of difficulties in accessing their origins, even of fraudulent procedures during their adoption.