This year, Defence for Children Nederland is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Defence for Children is the only legal children's rights organisation in the Netherlands, located in Leiden on the Hooglandse Kerkgracht in the old children's orphanage. The lawyers who work there assist children, families, lawyers and care providers with their legal assistance needs on a daily basis. The Children's Rights Helpdesk handles around 1,000 cases each year in which children's rights are at stake and the organisation can make a difference free of charge.

Defence for Children investigates abuses and provides information to professionals, parents and children about children's rights. They also stand up for children so that their rights are respected and unjust systems and situations are addressed. We are committed to changing legislation and regulations to ensure that children's rights are always respected.

Director Mirjam Blaak

Mirjam Blaak has been the director of Defence for Children Netherlands for 5 years, she has worked there for 21 years. 'When I got to know the work of Defence for Children, I knew I wanted to be involved. After my studies in cultural anthropology, I did all kinds of work and I became acquainted with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and wanted to contribute to it. Because it concerns all aspects of children's lives and it concerns seeing children.'

'I called Stan Meuwese, the director at the time, every month to ask if I could come and work at Defence for Children. After three months he couldn't let me wait any longer. " The funding isn't in place yet, but come on, he said. "That was 21 years ago this year.'

July 26 – District Child Protection Unit South Goa has issued a public notice stating that two children under their care will be declared legally free for adoption no persons comes forward to claim that they are their family members within 60 days.  Both are girls aged 7 and 9. The children’s parent/relatives whereabouts are not available, informed DCPU, South.  

A South Korean woman adopted by an American couple is searching for answers after finding her biological brother — and shocked to learn she was part of a devastating government-backed adoption and kidnapping scheme.

Mary Bowers (Korean name: Jung Nayoung), a competitive eater, told the Korea Times that she was raised in Colorado after being adopted in 1982. She spent most of her life believing she was an orphan. “During the Covid-19 pandemic, I had extra time on my hands due to social distancing regulations, so I started looking into some old records and started finding some interesting conflicts,” she said. Her adoption had been arranged by the Seoul-based Eastern Welfare Society, and in her adoption papers, she was listed under three different Korean surnames: Jung, Chung, and Baik.

Bowers then discovered the shady story of Brothers Home, a state-run welfare facility in Busan that had been accused of kidnapping and mistreating hundreds of children and disabled individuals from the 1960s to the 1980s before ultimately closing. Brothers Home was said to have acted as a “supply chain” for private adoption agencies outside of South Korea.

“It just happened to be towards the end of the article [that] I recognised familiar names who signed off my adoption documents. Initially, I thought I was imagining things, so I had to go back and check my documents,” Bowers said. “But unfortunately, I was not.”

Bowers is not the first adoptee to speak out about realizing she had likely been torn from her family. South Korean adoptee Tara Graves said she had been selected from a catalog by American parents following the Korean War. Graves’ adoptive mother helped her track down her biological family, and she had an emotional reunion with some of her siblings. She had been placed for adoption for several reasons — including poverty, and a cultural preference for a son, not a daughter.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/volkskrant-magazine/habtamu-de-hoop-ik-denk-dat-veel-vrienden-geholpen-zouden-zijn-met-onze-politiek-maar-zij-zullen-nooit-links-stemmen~b85d381f/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&referrer=https://t.co/#Echobox=1721917980

The youngest member of parliament Habtamu de Hoop (GroenLinks-PvdA) is Frisian, whatever Johan Derksen may claim. His adoption is 'a beautiful story' and also entails a responsibility, he thinks. 'I felt that I had to do something with this happiness.'

Habtamu de Hoop was just able to grab one beer in the party tent on the Terp last night. A debate in the House of Representatives had overrun, he arrived later than he wanted in his familiar Frisian Wommels. The village festival lasts three days, green-yellow-red flags flutter on the facades, streamers are strung in almost all gardens – the uniformity betrays a lively, close-knit village culture.

Tomorrow, at the matinee, everyone will be dressed in a farm theme. The group of friends from De Hoop will be playing farmer golf. The men will be dressing up as farmers, with a red farmer's handkerchief and a flat cap. The women will be playing holes , a tuft of grass with a ring around it. 'Uh yeah', says the 26-year-old, laughing. 'That doesn't make any sense of course.'

Over the past ten years, ten foreign adopted children have been refused just before or after arrival in their adoptive family. Three children from Portugal were sent back, one stayed with another, Dutch family.

More than ten children have had their adoption refused just before or after their arrival in the adoptive family in the past ten years. Of the eight children adopted from Portugal in 2019, one was rehomed in a Dutch family, after which it returned to Portugal. Two Portuguese children who were adopted together in the same year were also removed from their home and then, in consultation with the Portuguese central adoption service, returned to their country of birth. Two years later, another adoption of two children from Portugal was stopped, before the children came to our country, at the request of the adoptive family.

Four children from Ethiopia and three children from India, who had already been assigned to their adoptive families, were also refused. In 2018, one child from Bulgaria came to Flanders via intercountry adoption – that child was placed outside the home. This also happened in 2021 with a child from Thailand, who was rehomed with other candidates from the same adoption service.

It is not about large numbers, but in the past ten years fewer and fewer children were adopted from abroad. In 2008 there were 210, last year 21, or ten times less. And yet just as many children were refused or rehomed as in the first decade of the century.

“Tip of the iceberg”

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/abuse-in-care-inquiry-report-reveals-forced-adoptions-starvation-and-beatings-in-unmarried-mothers-home/HRQUDOQNNBC7RJL34C6DGENFLE/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3Y2EoI2hvUWzbEcNMP0fDkYftctY1Xo4SkGHIqHrCzgt3Aqcg_yF0D774_aem_KrN-JpNDtG6UVWEn4VaI-g

The horrors endured by women and girls in New Zealand’s unmarried mothers’ homes have been laid bare - including a resident beaten in labour and forced to give birth on her side so as to not glimpse the baby that was taken and adopted out.

A landmark report into abuse in state care has detailed the experiences of women and girls who had their newborns taken from them and adopted out to married couples from the late 1950s to 1980s, the so-called “baby scoop” era. Those include:

• Being starved in an effort to keep unborn babies small so deliveries were more straightforward.
• One woman told the inquiry she was left alone to labour for three days, and then forced to give birth lying on her side, so as to not catch a glimpse of her baby.
• A 14-year-old was transferred to give birth at Auckland Hospital, was slapped by a staff member during labour, and then stitched up without pain relief. Her baby was removed straight away.
• The state played an active part in facilitating closed adoptions that haunted women for the rest of their lives, with a new birth certificate often created that claimed the child had been born to its adoptive parents.

The long-awaited report of the Abuse in Care Royal Commission, six years in the making, was released yesterday. That included women and girls sent to unmarried mothers’ homes, after the campaigning and efforts of a group who had earlier petitioned Parliament for a Government inquiry into forced adoption.

The CBI filed a chargesheet against nine people for alleged child trafficking, and the sale and purchase of newborns. The agency had rescued five babies during searches across the National Capital Region, Haryana and Rajasthan following which a case was registered on April 5.

This is the first chargesheet in the case and further investigation is underway. In the first raids at seven locations in April, the CBI rescued two male newborns – 1.5 days old and 15 days old – along with a one-month-old female. The agency also seized several documents along with Rs 5.5 lakh in cash.

According to the CBI, the accused through advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp would be connected with childless couples looking to adopt. ⁠They purchased the infants from parents, who were economically downtrodden, the agency said.

⁠Investigators said the accused would sell the newborns to hopeful parents across India for Rs 4 lakh to Rs 6 lakh per infant, giving them fake documentation related to birth and adoption. They also went to the extent of posing as the babies’ biological parents, they said.

Of the nine chargesheeted, eight accused were earlier arrested and sent to judicial custody. Police identified them as Neeraj from Sonipat; Indu Pawar, Aslam, Pooja Kashyap, Ritu, Anjali and Kavita from Delhi; and Hari Singh from Rajasthan. Another accused was subsequently traced and identified as Arti Naik from Rajasthan.

CHENNAI: As a ray of hope to prospective adoptive parents with disabilities, S Velmayil (34) and P Baby (36), a couple with disabilities from Srivaikuntam in Thoothukudi district, adopted a four-month-old baby on Tuesday. The child was assigned to couple after a wait of four years but the adoption committee had recently rejected them, citing disabilities as a reason. TNIE had reported this. The baby was finally brought home after the couple underwent a physical examination and were declared fit.

P Baby, the mother, was at a loss for words to express her happiness. She said the adoption committee has asked them to take care of the baby with the help of Velmayil’s parents and handed over the child by 5 pm.

Both Velmayil and Baby have locomotor disability of 90% and 80% respectively; while it has affected the lower limbs of the former, the latter can’t move her right hand and right leg.

The couple, who got married in 2016, live with Velmayil’s parents. Baby is a noon meal organiser and Velmayil works at a fuel station. They registered to adopt a child in 2020, following which social workers inspected their house twice and cleared all formalities. In June, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) informed the couple that a specialised adoption agency in Dindigul has assigned them a baby born in March.

However, a five-member adoption committee said the couple would not be able to care for the child, particularly in the first two years of age, due to their physical disabilities. Taking a decades-old disability certificate as basis and without examining them further, an ortho surgeon from Government Thoothukudi Medical College Hospital said the couple was unfit to adopt the child. But the final recommendation from the medical board chairman stated that they could handle the baby.

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Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence

The Romanian authorities express their understanding of the pain of the Romanian family from Leeds whose children were taken into foster care by the British state, but consider that the reasons behind this decision are "legal and justified", reports RareșPetru Achiriloaie, the president of the National Authority for the Protection of Child Rights and Adoption (ANPDCA), through a post made on the institution's page.

Yhe President of the Child Protection in Romania says that what happened in Leeds represents a "sad event with a big impact both in the Romanian community in the territory and in British society". "Emotions took the place of reason and, carried by good intentions, people let things degenerate into a situation that turned into a riot We understand the family's pain and desire to keep their children close. Many things could have gone better, on both sides, but the important thing is to find solutions to resolve the conflict peacefully, with understanding and calmness. We understand the parents' point of view, we understood that they felt powerless, wronged and that they reacted out of fear", says Rareș-Petru Achiriloaie, president of ANPDCA.

Child Protection in Romania considers the reasons of the British colleagues legal and justified 

On the other hand, the ANPDCA president says that the Romanian authorities understand the reasons why the British authorities took the decision to act in the Leeds case.