Adoption is a wonderful way to grow a family and give a child in need a home. But the process can be prohibitively expensive. In fact, the average cost of a private agency adoption in the U.S. is $43,000, according to a report from Adoptive Families Magazine. That's because there are numerous expenses that go into the process:

Attorney fees

Court fees

Home studies

Travel expenses

By Johannes Lindgren

When I first got the message from the adoption agency that my birth father did not want to meet me, I thought that I must have scared him.

He probably thought I was coming back to ask him for money, or perhaps blame him for leaving me. Therefore, I made sure to communicate that I did not want anything from him, I did well on my own, and I was not planning to confront him in any way. I simply wanted to meet a person that I was biologically related to; see what he looked like, if there were any similarities between the two of us, and also ask him if he knew anything about my birth mother. Perhaps he had a photo of her.

The answer came back quickly from the agency; he was not scared of me ? he was scared that his family would find out about me. The fact that he once had a son had been kept a secret from his wife ? and from his daughters.

The sudden disappointment from my birth father's rejection was in an instant swept away by this new revelation. I had two (half) sisters! This new piece of information gave me a lot of joy, but it also put me in a moral dilemma. Should I contact my sisters? Would they be pleased to, at an adult age, gain a brother!? I would not know unless I contacted them. But if my birth father wanted to keep me as his secret, was it wrong to reveal myself against his will? Who has the moral right in this case? A man who wishes his son to remain a secret or the son who wishes to know his origins?

Official Joint Announcement: Expanded Hague Adoption Convention Processing with the United States following the Conclusion of the Special Adoption Program (SAP) in Vietnam

The Department of State is pleased to announce that effective December 31, 2020, Vietnam will expand the categories of children that are eligible for intercountry adoption with the United States under the Hague Adoption Convention. This follows Vietnam lifting the limitations of the Special Adoption Program, which previously allowed processing only for children with special needs, over five years old, and/or in biological sibling groups.

The United States and Vietnam held discussions from June to September 2020 on intercountry adoptions with an emphasis on our mutual commitment to cooperate on child protection issues. We acknowledge Vietnam’s legal improvements, particularly under Decree 24/2019/ND-CP, to better align with the Hague Adoption Convention. Vietnam’s commitment to ongoing adoption reform is demonstrated by the progress made to build necessary safeguards and infrastructure, and meet its obligations under the Convention. Such significant improvements have contributed to a determination to process intercountry adoption cases for all eligible children under the Convention and follow the respective laws of the two countries.

Vietnam has not expressed plans to change the current limitation on the number of U.S. adoption service providers (ASPs) authorized to operate in Vietnam. These decisions are entirely within the jurisdiction of the Vietnamese government and these limitations exist for all partner countries participating in intercountry adoptions.

Vietnam and the United States will continue to process cases previously started under the Special Adoption Program to completion for children already determined eligible for intercountry adoption with interested U.S. prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) and/or for which U.S. PAPs have already completed dossiers. For cases other than those mentioned above, processing shall be in accordance with current Vietnamese law and in conformity with the Convention. There will not be changes to how cases are processed by the United States; U.S. PAPs will continue to use the Form I-800 for the Hague Adoption Convention process.

APPEAL: DID YOU KNOW MY BIOLOGICAL FATHER?

After 17 years, donor child Steph Raeymaekers finally finds her - unfortunately - deceased biological father. She launches a call: have you ever known him?

Antwerp, January 2, 2021 - After a search of 17 years, Steph Raeymaekers (41), chairman of Donorkinderen vzw and board member of the Donor Detectives, has finally managed to find out her real origins. She did this by working out the family trees of her closest DNA Matches that she had on the MyHeritage database . An additional DNA test with close relatives confirmed what she had suspected for a year.

“My biological father is called Marc Folens. His name and identity belong to me. Everyone has only 1 biological father: he is mine. It gives relief to finally be able to name and name him. ” said an emotional Steph.

“I searched and fought for so long, struggling through the maze that I didn't build myself. Today I can say with a certainty of 99.98% I am his biological daughter. My origin is no longer a question, it has become an answer. ”

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/committees/video?event=20181120-1430-COMMITTEE-CONT

Sara Denbok is a happy wife and mother living in Collingwood, and every year she celebrates her birthday given to her by Mother Teresa.

Sara didn't come with a birthday, or anything, when she arrived at Nirmala Shishu Bhavan (Mother Teresa's orphanage in Calcutta). She knew only that her name was Bindu (water drop).

Sara was rescued by a police officer from the gutter, filthy and wounded, perhaps by wild dogs, in Calcutta, India in 1972. She was about three years old, but there was no way to know.

Sara doesn't remember anything from her life before the age of seven. Though the orphanage put up posters to find her birth parents, nobody came forward to claim the toddler.

"Though Mother Teresa was, to many people, simply a woman to be admired, to me she is much more," said Denbok. "For if it was not for her, I would probably not be alive today."

Two revelations of child trafficking in recent weeks remind us of the need for extreme vigilance everywhere in the world.

Child trafficking in Kenya

One of these child trafficking is in Kenya: an investigation broadcast by the BBC, " These babies for sale on the black market in Nairobi ", with the first episode released in November 2020 revealed the existence of a immense child trafficking.

Director Peter Murimi, co-author of the investigation with Joel Gunter and Tom Watson, was caught up in 2019 ads in local newspapers about missing children. They reveal that women in financial difficulty are led to sell their babies or have them stolen. The infants are then sold by intermediaries to couples in expectation of children; or even, which is cold in the back, to people who organize rituals of child sacrifices.

This market works well because the pressure exerted on women to be mothers is very important in this country. This is what explains Maryana Munyendo , director of the Missing Child association: “ We are Africans, our culture wants you to have a child for a marriage to work, preferably a boy. Otherwise, you go back to the village and you are called a dry wood plank, so what do you do to save your marriage? You are stealing a child. “Sometimes even equally vulnerable people steal infants and then resell them.

“I hate myself.” The words slipped out of my youngest child’s mouth with a casual levity. Only 5 years old, her voice still carries that bright, fluted tonality unique to young children. The first time she said it, she was sitting in a little pink play-chair set against the wall in her grandmother’s living room, where she’d been living with her sister.

“I’m ugly,” she added. “I’m dumb.”

These aren’t things that she or her 6-year-old sister have been told at home—at least not that I’ve heard. Since the moment she was born and placed on my breast, where she immediately latched on and nursed contentedly for almost an hour, she’s been showered with love and affection. Neither child has ever experienced anything resembling abuse or neglect.

But in early 2018, a little over a month after I hauled my family from our home in Seattle to my in-laws’ home in Broward County, Florida so their father could recuperate from mental illness, he and I were removed from the home—and our daughters from our custody—by child services.

This followed an argument I had with my in-laws, after which they made allegations of abandonment and drug use against me. The abandonment charges would eventually be dismissed, and the claims of drug use negated by slews of tests. But by that point, my daughters were already living with them, I was already homeless in a strange state without resources, and we were ordered to complete numerous requirements within 15 months. When their father and I did not complete those mandates in time and to the court’s satisfaction, our parental rights were permanently severed. Our daughters were adopted out to their paternal grandparents.

A French woman was sentenced to 10 months suspended prison sentence for neglect of a minor by the Draguignan prosecutor's office. According to Var Matin , this forty-something native of Fréjus (Var) had abandoned a child she had just adopted in Congo.

After launching procedures in 2015, Ingrid L. obtained in 2017 the full adoption of Michel, taken in only 8 months by an orphanage. He obtained French nationality in 2017. However, after meeting him in 2018, the Frenchwoman abandoned him in Brazzaville (Republic of Congo). The child, now 8 years old, was then found on the steps of a church.

"During the week I spent with him, he was unmanageable. You had to constantly watch him. All the time, every minute. I felt he would ultimately be better off at the orphanage than with me." , tried to justify Ingrid L. Arguments which did not convince the criminal court of Draguignan which also pronounced with regard to this social worker in a service of educational action in open environment, a prohibition to exercise a professional activity in contact with minors, thus depriving her of her job. La Fréjusienne also said that she did not realize that the adoption procedure she had launched was final.

"He went through a trauma"

Ingrid L's lawyer, Me Juliette Bouzereau, pleaded that "the prevention of neglect" did not hold up to the extent that "the health and safety of the child" were "assured", this one having been left in the orphanage where he was already welcomed. Me Muriel Gestas, who defends the interests of the child, asks for personalized treatment for this orphan who is now a French stranded in Brazzaville. "It would be better, rather than placement in a foster home, to seize a family court judge so that he can pronounce the deprivation of parental authority and that he is then placed in a foster family", estimated the lawyer.

Manisha (name changed) is 15 and brighteyed . She might be the regular teenager . The adults in contact with her say she is

polite and disciplined and is always ready to help anyone in trouble. But Manisha is not a regular teenager and hers is no

ordinary story. She lives in a home run by an NGO in Gurgaon for abandoned or abused children or those with special needs.

She is the helpless victim of inter-country adoption gone terribly wrong.

Six years ago, Manisha was adopted by an American family from a centre in Mumbai. But soon enough, they were unwilling to