JAKARTA - Until a few months ago, Ms Widya Astuti Boerma knew her biological mother only from glimpses of memory.

Some were pleasant: a moment of them both at the sultan's palace in Yogyakarta for example. But others were jarring, including one indelibly etched of the family's house ablaze. And then the final one: her mother's instructions at a Jakarta train station to "be a good girl" and go with a woman she barely knew.

Pandemic had impacted vulnerable sections of society, says Commission.

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday said it had issued an advisory to the government on measures to be taken to prevent human trafficking in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown has disproportionately impacted the vulnerable sections of the society,” the NHRC said in the advisory addressed to Union ministries concerned and State governments on Tuesday.

The NHRC said the vulnerable were falling prey to traffickers due to the “limited access to shelters and support structures for life and livelihood”. The Commission added that the Women and Child Development Ministry had reportedly received 27 lakh distress calls from March till August and had intervened in 1.92 lakh cases, of which at least 32,700 were related to trafficking, child marriage, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, forced begging and cyber crimes.

The NHRC recommended setting up of a 24/7 toll-free helpline for real-time reporting, tracking and monitoring of trafficking cases. The advisory also said special surveillance should be started at railway stations, bus depots and airports to trace children without adults. The NHRC recommended quick and up-to-date data sharing between States and districts about rescued and missing persons as well as those arrested in trafficking cases.

This article by Josephine Aburime discusses local and cross-border adoptions; that the fact that Nigeria is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (the Hague Convention) which inter alia, prescribes guidelines for international adoptions, is an impediment that must be addressed, since in its absence, we have had to resort to local legislation which are somewhat deficient, and seem to prohibit international adoptions

The Child Rights Act 2003 (“the Act”) is a Federal legislation, providing for the basic rights of a Nigerian child. It also provides for custodial matters such as adoption, foster parenting and guardianship. The Act has been domesticated in some States of the Federation including Lagos State which enacted the Child Rights Law of 2007 (“the Law”). This in itself, has brought some inconsistencies on matters relating to children, and with particular reference, adoption.

Private adoption has been long practiced in Nigeria, whereby a private arrangement between the adopter, usually a relative or kinsman and the parents of the child, a child is adopted.

However, contemporary developments including the menace of child trafficking has impelled the need for proper documentation reflecting adoptions, resulting in adoptions being formalised by the courts upon application of the parties. Embassies and border agencies now insist on the presentation of legal adoption documentation, in order to secure visas for adopted children or accord the adoptive parents, parental recognition over the child. This is particularly pertinent when the adoption is international in nature, referring to adoptions across borders where a national or resident of another country adopts a child from a different country, other than where he/she is resident. That is to say in Nigeria, a foreigner coming to Nigeria to adopt and take the child back with them abroad, or Nigerians resident abroad adopting a child in Nigeria with the intent of taking the child to live with them abroad. The term could also include a foreigner temporarily resident in Nigeria, adopting a Nigerian child.

International Adoption

When we travelled to Romania to build an orphanage 30 years ago, none of us could have been

prepared for what we witnessed, writes Anneka Rice

Anneka and Monica McDaid in a therapy room at the orphanage

uring lockdown we’ve been turning in on ourselves. It’s been

quite the thing in TV-land to take a nostalgic look at past shows

Filmmaker Huibert van Wijk has won the Karen de Bok Talent Prize 2020 with his film plan Kind van de Tijd. He will receive 25,000 euros for the development of the film, in which he, together with his father Lex and his brother Tim, who was adopted from Indonesia, look back on how that adoption went in the 1970s.

“Through the personal story, the documentary maker addresses social issues, such as the makeability of the composite family, illegal adoption and the tension between good intentions and white saviorism,” said the jury. Van Wijk managed to hit all jury members with his plan. “The plan is convincing because form and style as well as expressiveness are well thought out.”

The Karen de Bok Talent Prize was awarded on Thursday for the fourth year in a row to the winning documentary plan of the IDFAcademy & NPO fund workshop. The winner can continue to develop the plan together with a broadcaster, after which an application for a production contribution can be submitted to the NPO fund.

Former winner Marina Meijer won the Golden Calf for Best Short Documentary this year at the Netherlands Film Festival. She won the prize with the film Carrousel, for which she received the Karen de Bok Talent Prize in 2017.

Karen de Bok was a program maker and editor-in-chief of Television at VPRO for many years. She passed away in January 2017.

Six children had been staying at an adoption centre in Mumbai for over a year after they were rescued by the police last July. The rescued children were all boys and aged between 18 months and seven years.

Two months after a city civil court allowed five couples to adopt children allegedly purchased by them as part of an interstate child trafficking racket, the custody of the children was handed over to them late Monday.

Six children had been staying at an adoption centre in Mumbai for over a year after they were rescued by the police last July. The rescued children were all boys and aged between 18 months and seven years.

A Delhi-based couple, who took custody of the now four-year-old boy – separated from them last year – said they are delighted. “We are on our way to Delhi. He is too young to understand what has happened since last year. It may take some time for him to adapt but we are glad that his ordeal has finally ended,” the father said.

Since the past year, while the couples were allowed to meet the children for a limited period at the adoption centre, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, they were only allowed to speak with them through video calls.

The phone call was unexpected. Navya took it at her home in northern Italy, 11 years ago. The caller said that her birth mother, whom Navya believed dead, might still be alive somewhere in Kerala. She decided to find her mother, and began a search with the handful of details her adoptive Italian parents passed on. But over a decade and a visit to Kerala later, she hasn’t had much luck.

“All I know is that her name is Sophia and she was 19 years old when she gave birth to me. She came to stay at an orphanage in Kozhikode two to three months before the delivery. There was a woman with her, by the name of Thankamma. I don’t know how they are related to each other. On March 31, 1984, she gave birth to me and then she was gone. I was raised in the orphanage for two years before being adopted and taken to Trento in Italy,” Navya says.

As a little girl of three or four, Navya noticed how she looked different from her Italian parents. Why was she dark and they white, why was she not similar to them, she asked them. When she was old enough, they told her what they knew. She has since been curious about her birth mother, the person she hopes to be more ‘similar to’.

“I am not at all mad at her. I am thankful to her for giving birth to me. We don’t know what her situation might have been back then. And I have had a good life. I am very thankful to the people at the orphanage for giving me so much love and care. One of the nuns kept in touch with me all through my life through letters we wrote to each other. I am also thankful to my parents who adopted me and gave me a good life in Italy. But my mother doesn’t like it when I thank them. She says she needed a daughter and I needed a mother and we were there for each other,” Navya says, laughing.

Soon after learning that her birth mother was alive, Navya visited Kerala, but only for a few days. “I wanted to spend time with the nun at the orphanage who was quite aged by then. She passed away last year; today is her first death anniversary,” she says on Wednesday, showing a picture of the late nun.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V-NdDXSix7ZrS-u6Rd6OB8Euynr7wViD/view?usp=sharing

A woman who was adopted at birth into years of abuse has shared her story in the hope that no children will ever have the childhood she did.

During the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care hearing, Dallas Pickering told of the physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect she experienced, and how nobody had ever been held to account.

Pickering was put into a "white, middle-class P?keh?" family after her 16-year-old P?keh? mother gave birth, in a closed stranger adoption.

Her father, recorded as having "brown eyes" and a "light olive complexion", never knew of her existence.

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INTRODUCTION III

Membership of the Committee iii

Terms of reference iii

Consultation with stakeholders iii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY V