KOCHI: In addition to the challenges posed by the pandemic, the state is struggling to alleviate the concerns of the prospective parents in the backdrop of rigid rules set by the Centre. Biju Prabhakar, chairman of the State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA), told TNIE that the pan-India platform for adoption — CARINGS (Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System), introduced by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) — doesn’t give much choice to parents to adopt kids from the same state.

“We wrote to the ministry multiple times about this. A Keralite cannot adopt a child belonging to Manipur because of the physical difference. Likewise, a North Indian may not prefer to adopt a child from South India. Hence, they should give the applicants first preference to adopt a child belonging to their respective states,” said Biju.

He added that rigid rules would make people want to bypass the procedure, increasing malpractices. “For a child, every day is valuable. There are several cases when the parents are no more and the surviving parent is not interested in keeping the child. Such children are not treated legally free for adoption. The result being that the child is denied care and shelter,” said Biju.He added that the stigma surrounding adoption is yet another issue. “In other countries, people feel proud about adopting children and the society appreciates them. But here, prospective parents are usually not very comfortable.”

The Centre had also made a move to enable district collectors, instead of family courts, to take the call on children. “Institutional care is the last resort. In Kerala, some institutions do it for commercial gain. We had shut down multiple institutions because of such malpractices. They are raising funds from other countries, which is unethical. This is why deinstitutionalisation is being pushed. We are exploring foster care and adoption and trying to keep the children at their own homes by giving necessary funding to custodians,” he added.

in a nutshell

In the last few years many countries have voiced their concerns over inter-country adoption prevalent in most South Asian countries including India. Many countries including China, Russia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Korea etc., have banned adoption after instances of abuse of the adopted children were reported. In recent years many adoptee adults have started talking openly about the emotional trauma they undergo due to the sudden change of physical, linguistic and social environment at a young age due to adoption. There is a surge in the number of adoptees who go the birth of their countries in search of their biological parents. A few have succeeded in reuniting with their original parents whereas for a majority the search has proved to be a futile exercise.

One such adoptee who has been frantically trying to find her roots in India is Carol Peters ‘Carol D'Souza’ (Original name Carol Fonseca), a citizen of Belgium. Carol, who is now 53, has made four trips to India in her quest to locate her biological parents and to connect with the country of her birth. Her first trip was in 1998 and the fourth one was in 2018 and it has been like ‘so near yet too far’ in her pursuit of finding her biological parents. In 2009, she had visited India with her husband and two daughters to locate her biological parents and also to acquaint her family with the country of birth.

Despite her success in getting some vital clues in the last 20 years Carol is still far away from her mission. However, she isn’t giving up yet, this is my strength. Carol who is polio affected and suffers from many other ailments wants to come to India again despite her failing health to with the fond hope that she will succeed in her mission. “It was a painful experience for me in my new home in a new environment where I felt totally alienated. I wanted to know who my biological mother is and wanted to connect to connect with my roots and my culture. I wanted to find out why I was given away to the orphanage,” says Carol during the long telephonic conversation I had with her. After listening to her tale, I could realise that she went through a harrowing experience as an adoptee.

Uprooted and Alienated

Carol’s adoption story and her subsequent efforts to find her parents and get back to her roots make an interesting reading. She was born in Mumbai on December 2, 1967. Within four days of her birth she was admitted into St Joseph’s Home & Nursery, an orphanage located in Byculla (Agripada), Mumbai. She had poliomyelitis when she was 2.5-years-old. On October 7, 1974 when she was 7 years, she was adopted by Marcel Peters of Belgium. However, it wasn’t a happy ending to her story. She was unable to cope with the sudden change of the physical, linguistic and social milieu at such a young age. She says she felt out of place in her foster family. This traumatic experience was the trigger that resolved her to know more about her past and the circumstances that orphaned her.

“Do I belong here in the Netherlands? And what would it have been like if I had stayed in South Korea? ” Soorien Zeldenrust from Zwolle has these questions in her stomach. When she was three months old, she was adopted from the Asian country. “A lot of people around me said, 'You should be grateful, you are kind of saved.' Many people see adoption as a kind of fairytale, but I just didn't have that. ” Now, as an adoption coach, Soorien helps people with the same experience as her.

She has no memories of South Korea when she came to the Netherlands. Logical, because Soorien was only three months old when she arrived at Schiphol. Her adoptive parents picked her up. “The only thing that knows is that my body does have memories. I don't have an image, but I do have a feeling ”, she says.

Love sickness

Soorien, now 34 years old, does not feel completely understood. Despite having a good time with her adoptive parents, she feels pain and sadness. “I sometimes compare it to a serious heartbreak or when you lose someone. The advantage of that is that you know the one, but I don't know the one I lost. It hurts me a lot. You experience that pain in your body. I cannot trace who I miss or where exactly the feeling comes from. ”

Soorien thinks the feeling is mainly caused by her adoption at a young age. “It has also been proven that children have a great need for safety from their parents, especially during the first few months and years. I never had that safety at a young age. I was taken away from my mother after about ten days. As a result, my body went into a certain survival mode, ”she says. When she was three months old, she arrived in the Netherlands.

Christine Ockrent marâtre, Bernard Kouchner distant : Camille Kouchner acide

ILS N'ONT PAS ÉTÉ PRÉSENTS

Solène Gressier | mardi 5 janvier 2021 à 22h58 - Mis à jour le mardi 5 janvier 2021 à 23h43

Christine Ockrent marâtre, Bernard Kouchner distant : Camille Kouchner acide

Camille Kouchner a accusé le politologue Olivier Duhamel, son beau-père, d’inceste sur son frère jumeau dans son ouvrage La Familia Grande, qui paraîtra ce jeudi 7 janvier. La juriste aurait également brossé le portrait peu flatteur de son père et de sa belle-mère, Bernard Kouchner et Christine Ockrent.

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. ”

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.