MANILA, Philippines — An investigation on schemes shrouding the illegal adoption of children that often surface on social media platforms such as Facebook is being pushed in the House of Representatives.

In filing House Resolution No. 1555, Quezon City Rep. Alfred Vargas said the Department of Social Welfare and Development earlier disclosed in a virtual forum last February 6 the existence of more than 40 social media accounts on Facebook facilitating the illegal adoption.

Vargas is the chairperson of the House committee on social services.

“The propagation and facilitation of illegal adoption schemes in social media jeopardizes the safety and welfare of children in need of loving and caring families and is in violation of Republic Act No. 8552,” Vargas said in the resolution.

Republic Act No. 8552 or the Domestic Adoption Act of 1998 provides for the legal framework of adoption in the country.

On Monday, February 8, 2021 it is report 'Committee on the investigation of intercountry adoption'published and handed over to Minister of Legal Protection, Sander Dekker. This report is the result of an independent investigation by the 'Committee on the Investigation of Intercountry Adoption in the Past' into the actual course of events surrounding old international adoptions and the role of the Dutch government in this.

What is now known?

Minister Dekker indicates that the Dutch government has failed to act for years by looking away from abuses in international adoptions and not intervening in this. This applies at least for the period 1967-1998.

In the past, the Dutch government has acted too passively in intercountry adoptions, had insufficient supervision of adoption procedures and did not intervene in cases of abuses that came to light. Mediating bodies operating in the Netherlands were also aware of abuses, but did not intervene.

All international adoption procedures will be suspended immediately. This has been decided because the current adoption system still contains vulnerabilities and cannot be controlled sufficiently.

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Adoption numbers have fallen over the past year, mainly because of new challenges created by

the pandemic.

“It is not a drastic drop, but it is signicant enough,” says a member of the Integrated Child Protection

Scheme (ICPS), set up by the central government to provide protection for children in difcult

circumstances.

Terre des Hommes Nederland supports the conclusions of the Joustra Commission report on intercountry adoption and argues that the temporary stop should lead to abolition of the practice. Terre des Hommes spoke with the Commission about adoptions from Bangladesh in the 1970s and also shared its views on intercountry adoptions.

In the 1970s, Terre des Hommes Netherlands provided emergency medical assistance, schooling and assistance with the construction of emergency shelters in Bangladesh, ravaged by civil war and natural disasters. Our then local director in Bangladesh, in addition to his employment at Terre des Hommes, was also paid by the Dutch adoption organization BIA (Bureau Interlandelijke Adoptie). In that role he coordinated adoptions. Terre des Hommes NL was aware of this but had no role in the adoption procedures. In 1977 he was accused of convincing parents to give up their child for adoption under false pretenses. The allegations implied that he had abused the confidence that these parents had in the BIA and in Terre des Hommes.

In response to renewed questions about this issue by the adoptees of this period and the investigation of the Joustra Commission, Terre des Hommes has researched and made available as much historical information as possible about our work in Bangladesh in the 1970s. We shared the report on this in September 2020 with the interest groups of the adoptees and the Joustra Commission.

Forty years later, it is difficult to determine exactly how each adoption came about. We have however found no evidence that our country director at the time misused his position as representative of Terre des Hommes. The various investigations at the time also did not confirm this. However, what we have seen is that due to the interdependence of all aid organizations and the chaotic humanitarian emergency in Bangladesh, the various international and local aid organizations worked together to assist each other at times. In a sense, Terre des Hommes was intertwined with these adoptions. For example, employees of Terre des Hommes would on occasion escort children to the Netherlands.

As a children's rights organization, we feel very involved with the adoptees who are now, more than 40 years later, struggling with uncertainty about their origin and the circumstances of their adoption. We are also aware of the families in Bangladesh who have similar questions about the fate of their adopted child, brother or sister. That is why we offered support to the interest groups of the adoptees last year. Over the next two years, we will provide financial and - if desired - practical support to their initiatives to restore contact between adoptees and their relatives with a targeted search program. We hope to be able to report more about this together with these organizations in the short term.

To the President of the House of Representatives

of the States General

Box 20018

2500 EA THE HAGUE

Date

On December 15 last, your House asked me to respond to the newspaper article "Baby factories big business" from the Telegraaf of December 12 last. You ask me to answer the question of whether it can be ruled out that children from the baby factories, as mentioned in the newspaper article, ended up in the Netherlands. Because the investigation report of the Joustra Committee will not specifically address the situation in Nigeria, I am informing you about this separately in this letter.

International adoption procedures between the Netherlands and Nigeria have always taken place between the Dutch permit holder Stichting Kind en Toekomst and a mediation agency accredited by the Nigerian government. The children who have been adopted come exclusively from a home registered by the Nigerian government. In addition, in the context of an intercountry adoption procedure, the parents or, if the parents are deceased, a family member, must renounce the child. When it comes to foundlings, the Nigerian police investigate the background of the child and look for possible relatives. In those cases, advertisements are also placed in newspapers asking whether family members of the child concerned can register. Only after this examination can the child be declared adoptable through the Nigerian authorities. The ratification of the adoption procedure on the Nigerian side always takes place in court where the adoptive parents must be present. The children admitted for adoption in the Netherlands are almost all children older than 12 months. In most cases there is a socially burdened background and / or medical problems.

Moreover, from 2013 on the Dutch side, all adoption proposals from Nigeria (and other countries that are not party to the Hague Adoption Convention) have been submitted by the Central Authority.

International Children's Affairs reviewed. The principles of the Hague Adoption Convention and Dutch legislation and regulations were taken as the starting point in the assessment of these adoption proposals.

Within the available options, every effort has been made to ensure that procedures proceed in a careful manner. As the Joustra Committee indicates in its report, it cannot be completely ruled out that abuses have occurred during intercountry adoption. As I have previously informed the House (Parliamentary Papers II 31 265, no. 62), the current working method, in which the principle of legitimate expectations applies and stricter supervision of the procedures, cannot exclude the occurrence of irregularities.

Muniz Dekker was adopted from the city 26 years ago. From Brazil he came to live in Eenrum when he was two. Now Dekker is looking for his biological parents. He takes us on his quest through vlogs.

Dekker accurately keeps track of all his steps in the search for his biological parents. He makes extensive vlogs about this . Despite being adopted 26 years ago, he started his search and his vlogs last December. And that is not without reason.

'I thought it was too confrontational'

'Eleven months ago I became a father to a daughter and since then my interest has been rekindled. I have worked on it a few times in the past, but that came to nothing and then I stopped looking. I also found it too confronting, not knowing what I would encounter. '

Quest for little daughter

The adoption of children from abroad has been temporarily suspended, following harsh criticism from the Joustra Commission. Marijke Bleijenberg worked in a children's home in China and is not surprised, as is Antony Vinke, who discovered errors in his own adoption file.

'Even before this research report brought it to light, I was already aware that adopted adoption procedures are not always correct. My own adoption papers also contain errors and forgeries, 'says Antony Vinke (34). His parents adopted him as a baby from Sri Lanka. He doesn't blame them, he emphasizes. 'They have acted in good conscience and conscience. I am now happy with my family in the Netherlands. But if no mistakes had been made in Sri Lanka, I probably wouldn't have ended up here. '

'A mess', is how Vinke summarizes the papers that his parents received upon his transfer. "For example, the medical document said I was a girl." In 2016, when he was 29 years old, he decided to look for his biological parents in his native country.

He received the assistance of a Sri Lankan who is an expert in such quests. 'I ended up on an emotional rollercoaster. You start with the basic information you have, but in the hospital where I was born I saw my name, but the name of my biological mother was missing. ' Then they tracked down a couple whose husband had the same surname as stated on Vinke's papers. 'It turned out that he had a son from 1986, but he lived in Sri Lanka. So that trail also ended. '

Vinke had a photo of the woman who gave it up. Its publication in the national newspaper in Sri Lanka resulted in a reaction from a woman, but her story did not match what Vinke knew about the transfer at the court at the time.

The Netherlands decided yesterday, after a damning report, to suspend intercountry adoptions. Flanders does not want to do the same helplessly.

The Dutch government has immediately decided to suspend adoptions of children from abroad. Candidate families that are well advanced in the procedure can still continue with it. The decision follows a damning report by the Joustra Commission, which concludes that abuses from the past have still not been completely resolved and that the Dutch government has looked away for years.

The report had already been leaked on Friday, but was officially presented on Monday. Adoptees here also eagerly looked forward to this and the response from the Dutch government.

Happy surprise

"I didn't expect this decision so soon, but it's a happy surprise," says San-Ho Correwyn, 51, co-author of the recently released book Feeling Adopted . 'I have also cherished the hope for a long time that Belgium and my country of origin Korea will do the same, and hit mea culpa. Intercountry adoption doesn't exactly have a clean history. '