Disconcerted I read the articles and the Commentary ( In case of intercountry adoption, all supervision and control failed, 11/2) on the report of the Joustra Committee on intercountry adoption. The one-sided negative conclusions would almost make you, as an adoptee, doubt the legitimacy of your existence in the Netherlands. As if you really shouldn't have been here retroactively. As if all adopted children have been 'channeled away' to the Netherlands through deception, lies, deception and forgeries. Although life as an adoptee will always remain overshadowed by questions about identity and biological origin, there is still mainly gratitude for a dignified existence in a free, prosperous Netherlands and for having escaped social exclusion, poverty or war. It seems as if this sound should not be interpreted in this debate. Incidentally, many children were abandoned or the child was consciously renounced because of poverty or because of illegitimate birth. My Urk parents told me after my probing questions that shortly after my birth I was abandoned on the sidewalk of an orphanage in Isfahan (then Persia). You miss the bottom of your existence, but my Dutch parents are not to blame for that. By throwing everything into one negative heap, I feel like an adopted child and their sincere motives and care are done great injustice. My biological parents would also have given me up if my adoptive parents had not adopted me. My Urk parents told me after my probing questions that shortly after my birth I was abandoned on the sidewalk of an orphanage in Isfahan (then Persia). You miss the bottom of your existence, but my Dutch parents are not to blame for that. By throwing everything into one negative heap, I feel put away as an adopted child and their sincere motives and care are done great injustice. My biological parents would also have given me up if my adoptive parents had not adopted me. My Urk parents told me after my probing questions that shortly after my birth I was abandoned on the sidewalk of an orphanage in Isfahan (then Persia). You miss the bottom of your existence, but my Dutch parents are not to blame for that. By throwing everything into one negative heap, I feel put away as an adopted child and their sincere motives and care are done great injustice. My biological parents would also have given me up if my adoptive parents had not adopted me.

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A group of adoptive parents and adopted children want to stop adopting children from abroad. She has started a petition to reverse the cabinet decision to a full adoption ban. It has been signed more than 6,300 times within a week.

The initiators themselves have positive experiences with adoption from abroad. They therefore believe that “demonstrably careful international adoptions” should be allowed to continue. According to them, the recommendations of the Joustra Committee "came about in a limited, poorly substantiated and non-transparent manner".

One of the initiators is Karen Gregory, herself the adoptive mother of two children from the United States. "You can't put all countries together, many adoptions are going well and according to the rules," she says in Trouw. "A small group of adoptees has suffered tremendous trauma - I don't dispute that - but they don't have to project that on all adoptions," Gregory told the newspaper.

Full adoption stop

Minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) announced the full adoption stop last Monday. About 450 adoption files of Dutch people who wanted to adopt a child from abroad are no longer completed. Parents who have already received permission in principle to bring a child to the Netherlands, may complete the procedure “after an extra test” has been carried out.

“In Mauritius, we practice adoption with the heart, in defiance of a more professional method. This observation made by the president of the National Adoption Council (NAC), Anita Bacha, depicts the current situation. Appointed president of this organization in 1988, Anita Bacha was recalled to this post shortly after the victory of the Social Alliance. “The government wanted, as soon as it took office, to put order in the adoption procedures in Mauritius. It is in this logic that the NAC has been appointed as the Central Authority in this area, ”explains Anita Bacha. A law, currently in preparation, aims to entrust the NAC with both adoption at the international level and at the local level. Working meetings, underlines Anita Bacha, bringing together the main partners, take place regularly. The objective: set up the organizational chart of the future structure and the staff training schedule. This entity, affirms the president of the NAC, will have the task of carrying out social inquiries on adoptive parents, a mission previously entrusted to the Probation Officers. “They complete their investigation in less than a week. This is due to the fact that they are not trained for this kind of work ”, deplores Anita Bacha. To avoid this, the staff of the new structure will benefit from appropriate training. He will also have to ensure the assessment and psychological follow-up of the children. Anita Bacha adds that priority will be given to local adoptive families. “There is a law in Mauritius which indeed stipulates that solutions must be sought locally for these children. But there is a vagueness because this law does not say who is supposed to seek these solutions ", highlights Anita Bacha, who intends to defuse this" confused "situation. For the month of April, the NAC received only two adoption requests from abroad. Since then, nothing.

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The report of the Joustra Committee on abuses in intercountry adoption in the past is a valuable document and does justice to victims of the abuses. I would like to add nuance to the report from my scientific expertise.

First of all, I would like to say that I am very happy with the work of the Joustra Committee on abuses in adoptions in the past. It is a good thing that our government is now taking responsibility by apologizing to victims and is committed to rectifying abuses as well as possible.

As a scientist specialized in adoption and foster care, including 10 years as coordinator of the Leiden University-based ADOC - Knowledge Center for Adoption and Foster Care, I also have critical comments.

Children's rights

First of all, the scientific literature on which the Committee relies appears to be very one-sided and important articles that provide a broader picture of the phenomenon of adoption have not been included. It almost seems that those who focus on abuses surrounding adoption at some point become trapped in one side of a reality and lose sight of other perspectives such as child protection.

A couple have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a one-year-old boy they were set to adopt.

Police said a 37-year-old woman and 34-year-old man, from Barrow-in-Furness, had been arrested on suspicion of murder, causing or allowing the death of a child and two counts of assault.

They have been released on bail, Cumbria Police said.

Cumbria County Council said the child was under its care but was living with the couple before the adoption.

The council said it had recommended an independent safeguarding review was carried out.

Ibu Ellya is 78 years old and lives in Desa Susukan in central Java. She was 25 years old when she became pregnant with a son and married to Iwansa. She was a Javanese herself and her husband was from Sumatra. At the time, not everyone was happy that she chose someone from another island. They found a Javanese with a Javanese a better match. But she was happy with Iwansa, a dentist.

She had completed junior high school and after that she was able to find work in Jakarta and later Surabaya. She was a sporty woman, loved volleyball and swimming. Singing was also a hobby of hers. When the time came for her to give birth, her eldest son was ill and to make matters worse she was told the very sad news that her husband had died ...

Adoption

Photo credits: Bud Wichers

Giving birth without a child

The Swedish Agency for Family Law and Parental Support (MFoF) and the Adoption Center - mediators of international adoptions - request an independent investigation into how foreign adoptions to Sweden took place during the 20th century. Stock Photography. Photo: Jessica Gow / TT

The Netherlands froze adoptions from abroad this week after a government commission discovered that children had been stolen from their biological parents.

A similar inquiry should also be appointed in Sweden, according to both the Swedish Agency for Family Law and Parental Support (MFoF) and the Adoption Center.

The Netherlands will temporarily stop adopting from abroad. The government has decided this after a spicy report from the Joustra Commission. This shows that the Dutch government has known since the 1960s about abuses in the world of adoption, such as child trafficking and child theft. San-Ho Correweyn was also adopted himself and also proposes such an adoption break in Belgium. To get rid of the long waiting lists and to reflect on how things can and should be improved.

"Not five to twelve, but three in the afternoon"

San-Ho Correwyn was adopted himself and co-wrote the book "#HetGevoelGeadopteerd". “I knew that the adoption studies were underway in the Netherlands and that the reports would be critical,” he says in “Sofie's World.” “But what I didn't know was that the government would respond so quickly with that pause. I am pleasantly surprised. ”

Also in Flanders, an expert panel is working on a report on adoption. And Correwyn is really looking forward to that. “It's not five to twelve, but three in the afternoon, for that matter. I hope that those responsible will admit that everything went wrong. A recognition is already the first step. "

"We are also happy to have adoptees involved," said Correwyn. "We had to sound the alarm to make that happen."

NEW DELHI: About 80 per cent of children adopted within the country since 2015 were aged 0-2 years, while just two per cent were in the age group of 10-18, the Women and Child Development Ministry said on Thursday.

In a written response to a question in Rajya Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani presented data of in-country adoptions from 2015-16 to 2020-2021 (as on February 3, 2021).

According to the data, of the 16,856 children adopted within the country in the last five years, 13,495 were in the age group of 0-2 years, 1,340 were in the age group of 2-4 years, 889 were aged 4-6 years, 401 were aged 6-8 years, 350 were aged 8-10 years, 192 were in age group of 10-12 years, 100 in the age group of 12-14 and 59 were in age group of 14-18 years.

Irani said the number of infants below the age of three months adopted during 2016-2017 to 2020-2021 (as on February 3, 2021) is 725.

Responding to a question on the time taken to declare a child legally free for adoption, Irani said as per section 38 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, orphaned and abandoned children are required to be declared legally free for adoption within two months in case of a child up to the age of two years and within four months in case of a child above the age of two years, after following the due procedure.

The government immediately suspends international adoptions. There is structural child theft, child trafficking and unethical behavior in adoptions, concluded the Joustra Committee.

Our director-manager Ina HR Hut calls on the government to compensate adoptees and biological parents if possible.

With the temporary suspension, the cabinet is following the advice of the Joustra committee, which has come up with hard-hitting conclusions. On behalf of Minister Sander Dekker, the committee investigated the role of the government in adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka between 1967 and 1998. However, the committee notes that before 1967 and after 1998 and also in other countries was and is from adoption abuses. The committee concludes that the system of intercountry adoption is still susceptible to fraud and that abuses continue to this day. The committee has serious doubts whether it is possible to design a public law system in which the identified abuses no longer occur. See here the report.

Outgoing Minister of Legal Protection Sander Dekker admits that the government has looked away for too long: 'The Dutch government has failed by looking away from abuses in intercountry adoption for years and not intervening in this.'

Our managing director Ina Hut is pleased with the conclusions. she too was heard by the committee. In 2003 she made the switch from board member of Nyenrode University to Wereldkinderen, an adoption and project aid organization. At the time, she still thought adoption was a noble thing, but soon discovered that the demand side stimulated the supply. This was also a reason for her to stop her own adoption procedure after she was director of Wereldkinderen for a year. She thought she could improve the system from within, but that was fighting a losing battle. For example, she wanted to do further research into adoptions from China, because she was getting more and more suspicions and evidence of child trafficking. But in this she was opposed by the Ministry of Security and Justice (Central Authority Office). If she were to conduct research in China, The permit of Wereldkinderen would be revoked, it was threatened. She could no longer support intercountry adoption and publicly resigned as a whistleblower in 2009. See here thedocumentary by EO Network. Parliamentary questions and a General Consultation about her departure followed. See here the report that Ina Hut wrote for the Lower House for the General Consultation dated 6 October 2009. However, this did not lead to a stop. However, the number of applications for adoption decreased considerably, because the image changed.