Hi everyone my name is Lynelle Long and I’m a Vietnamese adoptee raised in Australia. I’m also the founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) and I’m presenting to you from Sydney. Firstly, I wish to thank the UN Committees and Special Rapporteurs for inviting ICAV here today and for their hard work and commitment to supporting us. Special thanks to the Committee on Enforced Disappearances for making this possible and coordinating us all! I am honoured to be here with my fellow colleagues! Having published the UN Joint Statement a year ago, it was and remains a beacon of light after so many years of our voices crying out in what often felt like the darkness. Perhaps because of our great resilience and courage from being sent abroad completely alone as adoptees into a foreign country as infants and young children, we have developed the tenacity and will power to be able to stand here today to fight for our rights and call out the wrongs done to so many of us. Our global community is large and ICAV is here to represent a portion of that. I would love for all of them to present to you themselves, but for the purposes of today’s meeting and due to the time constraints, ICAV has compiled a collaborative paper that gives you their input and perspectives, other than from only the speakers today. I know from providing peer support to this community for 25 years, that our experiences vary and it’s important to understand the nuances when trying to achieve real and impactful change. We come to you presenting our ICAV paper, representing 9 adoptive countries and 19 birth countries. Our paper has been provided as a link to the CED Secretariat but is also hosted at ICAVs website https://intercountryadopteevoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Victims-of-IllegalIntercountry-Adoption-Speak-Out-to-the-UN.pdf I’m going to speak about what we see as the top 4 priorities as shown in our global collaborative, and I provide my suggestion as to WHO should be involved and responsible to address each priority: Priority 1 We need legislative frameworks to define illegal intercountry adoptions and allow the prosecution of those who do wrong. We need to criminalise the behaviours and we need to remove barriers such as the statutes of limitations and ensure compensation to victims aligned to the lifelong impacts. Who responsible: Legislative frameworks need to be tackled by politicians and lawyers around the world and ultimately it is the public - the people - who push legislators and governments to do the will of the people. The UN could also further assist by developing an in-depth legal definition for what an illegal and illicit intercountry adoption is, providing examples. The UN is already addressing the huge need to educate people by holding this forum today. Papers like ICAVs and the many other adoptee led papers and resources that contribute significantly to this topic are important. We all do what we can to educate the world. Priority 2 Truth investigations that lead to public acknowledgement, an accounting for what has gone wrong, and having full, un-redacted access to our history and origins artefacts. Who responsible: States / governments around the world need to fund an independent body to conduct Truth Investigations so that the evidence is brought to light and then the States need to www.intercountryadopteevoices.com Page 1 of 2 give public acknowledgements and funding to remedy the wrongs of the past. Priority 3 The need for legislated and free post adoption supports that include illegal and illicit intercountry adoption specialist supports, esp DNA testing, genealogy, and search/reunification services. Not all countries currently offer post adoption supports. This needs to change. Who responsible: legislators to bring about the legislation part, but then States need to fund and ensure provision of trauma informed and professional services. Priority 4 Stop and end all intercountry adoptions as they are conducted today (Hague and non Hague) and until priority 1, 2 and 3 are addressed. We should not be continuing what has become the commodification and trade of children. Who responsible: States / governments, The Hague, need to step up and end this ongoing trade of children, take responsibility for their own and turn to local solutions in-country. Intercountry adoption in this manner and via the current processes since the past 70 years are not in the best interests of the child. To end, I want to bring attention to the voices of biological families who you have started to hear from today. I am thankful and honoured to have worked with the CED to enable this as our first event where adoptees and biological families can present our experiences and views, side by side. Illegal and illicit intercountry adoptions have lifelong and multi generational impacts and as adoptees being raised in mostly white western countries we have so much privilege, so much access to basic resources like internet and DNA technology. I am strongly of the view, and I lead from example, that we must do more to help bring our biological families with us so their voices can also be heard. Thank you and I look forward to listening to the rest of our presenters and working with the UN Committees into the future.

Almost 50 children from Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia were removed by Belarusian charity, according to Belta

Ukrainian children who had been illegally deported to Russia have arrived in Belarus, where state media published photographs showing them waving Belarusian flags and flanked by riot police.

The 48 children come from the occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, which Moscow claims it has annexed.

The Bombay High Court refused to grant interim relief to two “abandoned” young girls seeking directive to the state government to consider granting them reservation in the 1 per cent parallel reservation quota for “orphans” for admissions to undergraduate medical courses.

The two girls had sought reservation pending issuance of “orphan” certificates to them.

The court said if the said relief was granted and if at the final hearing of the plea the court had decided against the petitioners pending their pleas, same would amount to deprive some other orphans of the seats in medical courses in which petitioners were seeking admission.

A division bench of Justices Sunil B Shukre and Firdosh P Pooniwalla was on September 14 hearing a plea by The Nest India Foundation, argued by advocate Abhinav Chandrachud.

Imagine your child being stolen from you. Kidnapped. You do not know where your child is or how he is doing. The pain you live with as a result is inhumane. What you don't know is that the kidnapping is the reason why your child has been adopted to the other side of the world. Decades after the criminal acts took place, you are reunited. Maybe the kidnapping of the child was worth it, as long as the child was okay.

Distasteful wording

What a strange thing to say, you might think. Kidnapping and "worth it". Two things that don't belong together. When I read the NRK article To persons i ein this summer , my stomach twisted. 

The article deals with the case of John Erik Aasheim, who was kidnapped as a child in Colombia and adopted to Norway. Journalist Oddgeir Øystese writes the following towards the end of the article: " John Erik, Jhonatan, has managed to bring together two different lives, two different lives. Was it then for the best that once upon a time he was the chair of his family?" The wording of the question is unmusical, distasteful and objectionable.

 

In a larger context

An inquiry into historical adoption practices has been warned the government will be holding a similar inquiry into donor-conceived children in years to come, and likely issuing them an apology. 

It comes as Jigsaw WA, which is a key agency connecting people with their biological parents, revealed it will close its doors at the end of the year. 

A West Australian government committee is investigating the impact of past adoptive policies and practices between1939 and 1980, during which time unmarried mothers were forced to give up their babies for adoption.

Well over 150,000 babies were removed from their unwed mothers across Australia during a peak period from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Giving evidence to the committee, Jigsaw WA manager Isabel Andrews said she and others at a medical conference 30 years ago had warned the issues that had arisen in adoption in Australia were going to occur in donor conception.

[Finding the truth about 372 international adoptees] I am looking for my biological mother with my daughter.

Before heading to a small alley on a mountain hill in Seongbuk-dong, Seoul in the hot summer of July, we were enjoying the cool subway ride. My 10 year old daughter was strangely quiet. I thought her daughter was getting tired of the heat, but then she turned to me and she said, She said, "She's looking for ladies who look like her mom." After a brief pause, she continues. “And someone who looks like me. I hope I can meet my (maternal) grandmother someday.”

According to my adoption file, I was found wrapped in a blanket on the street in front of an institution called ‘Hwirakwon’ in Seongbuk-dong. I don't know what kind of organization Hwirakwon is, and it seems like it doesn't exist anymore. Someone found me and handed me over to the Seongbukam Police Station on May 6, 1976. I was about three weeks old. Now I'm back with my family and my daughter who wants to know more about adoption in South Korea and her potential grandmother. There was so little information in the adoption file that we could only find the name of the police station. So we did our best to wander around the old neighborhood of Seongbuk-dong.

When I saw my daughter's face as soon as she was born, it was like meeting my first family. Before that, I barely thought about Korea. Growing up in a white community, I experienced everyday racism, but I rarely thought about my background. Why should you think? My life began in January 1977 with a one-way ticket to Denmark. The fact that I never met my biological family after giving birth to my daughter shocked me. At 35 years old, I knew nothing about Korea or my background. Now that I have become a mother myself, I realize that I have less and less time to find my mother.

I quickly realized that Holt, the adoption agency, would not be able to help, so I found an online forum for international adoptees. In this forum I slowly started to realize that something was strange. Until then, I had said that overseas adoption in Korea was an inevitable humanitarian effort born of misfortune and poverty after the Korean War. But I had a question. Why didn't other countries send 200,000 babies overseas during the crisis, and why were I and the majority of adopted children sent overseas even during a period of significant economic development in South Korea after the end of the Korean War?

At these forums for international adoptees, I learned about the dark side of Korean overseas adoption. I learned that our records had been manipulated to simplify the adoption process, and that the adoption agency and the Korean government had greatly benefited economically from international adoption. I was very shocked when I learned that the history of adoption in Korea also includes instances of children being taken away or otherwise separated without parental consent. But what continues to haunt me is learning how our Korean mothers were humiliated, abused, and forced into adoption by a society that despises single mothers. When she discreetly told her daughter this, she cried out in pain: "It's so unfair and unnecessary! Why should I lose my child just because I'm not married? Why doesn't Korea help mothers keep their children?"

As my family and I walk through the old slums of Seongbuk-dong, I imagine my mother. I've done it many times, but now we can point to a specific house and imagine that I was born in that house with the blue roof on the hill. I imagine my mother was one of those young women who broke her daughter's heart. She became estranged from her family when she gave birth to me out of wedlock, and after struggling to care for her baby alone, she decided that neither she nor Korean society could protect me. I know from my medical records that I had thrush (oral candidiasis) when I was found as a baby. This disease usually occurs during breastfeeding through a mother who has inflammation of the breasts. This is very painful for the mother. As I imagine my own mother in excruciating pain every time she breastfeeds, alone with her crying baby, I can feel the despair that she had to give up in the end, despite her best efforts. Today I cling to the knowledge that I had thrush. To me, that information is the only proof that her mother actually existed.

Danish Korea Rights Group ( DKRG) asked the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (Truth and Reconciliation Committee) last year to investigate allegations of human rights violations in international adoption, I told my daughter that many adoptees around the world were telling the Korean government the truth about overseas adoption. He said he asked them to shed light and free our mothers' lives from the shadows of dishonor, misunderstanding and oppression. I also told her daughter that I wasn't sure if she would ever be able to meet her grandmother. Our search continues, but time is running out. I'm sure if she meets her mother. My daughter will let me know that it wasn't her fault that she lost her baby.

In September 2022, 283 overseas adoptees submitted an investigation request to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to determine whether human rights were violated at the time of adoption. The number increased to 372 as additional applications were submitted twice on November 15th and December 9th. They requested an investigation into whether human rights were violated in the adoption process of overseas adoptees adopted from Korea to Denmark and around the world during the authoritarian period from the 1970s to the early 1990s and whether there was any intervention by the government in that process. Fortunately, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced on December 8 that it had decided to open an investigation into 'human rights violations during the overseas adoption process', and on June 8, it announced the opening of an investigation into an additional 237 people. This is the first government-level investigation decision in 68 years since Korea began overseas adoption. <Pressian> plans to continue publishing articles written by overseas adoptees who have requested an investigation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Editor's note

• More than 170,000 South Korean children were adopted by Western families in the turbulent post-war period – nearly 9,000 a year at times in the 1980s
• Many were labelled orphans, despite their birth parents still being alive, and say their documents were falsified, making them question their identity

It was late spring and Uma Feed had just dropped her son off at a kindergarten in Oslo when her phone rang unexpectedly, bringing news she’d been searching for her whole life: the true identities of her birth parents.

Adopted as a baby from South Korea in 1983, Feed grew up in Norway being told she’d been abandoned – a story she refused to believe but could only disprove in May this year, when at age 40 she was finally reconnected with her biological mother thanks to DNA testing.

A long letter and video message followed, revealing that Um Sul-yung – the name given on Feed’s adoption documents – was actually given up for adoption by her grandparents without the consent of her mother, who was hospitalised with tuberculosis at the time.

“Every evening, my mum and my older brother had gone out to look for me. They were just wandering the streets,” she said.

France has issued a decree suspending all international adoption procedures concerning children habitually resident in Burkina Faso by any person habitually residing in France.

The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs issued an order on September 13, 2023 relating to the suspension of international adoption procedures concerning children residing in Burkina Faso.

“ All international adoption procedures concerning children habitually resident in Burkina Faso by any person habitually residing in France are suspended ,” it is written in a decree dated September 13, 2023. This measure does not apply " to the procedures which gave rise, on the date of publication of this decree, to an agreement by the Burkinabe Central Authority for the implementation of the Hague Convention of May 29, 1993", it is specified .

Degraded relations between France and Burkina Faso

In the matter pertaining to the issue of whether children born out of a void or voidable marriage had a right in parents' ancestral property as per the Hindu law, the Supreme Court discussed whether in case of a notional partition before the death of a father, a child born to the said father from a void or voidable marriage would be entitled to the property inherited by the father in the...

Stories of Sri Lankan adoptees in far-flung lands searching for their biological families always tug at our heartstrings. Their quest to find out their biological parents and possible siblings is an innate desire some of these adoptees have as they long to know more details about their origins. Perhaps they want to feel their mother’s hug or just ask them why they were given up for adoption. Whilst many have experienced love and stability thanks to their adopted families, there are a fair few who have ended up facing a lifetime of “what ifs” because they have had negative adoption experiences.

Recently Sebastian Jensen an adoptee of Sri Lankan origin who lives in Denmark struck up a conversation on Social Media. He longs to find his birth parents and to be reunited with them.  Adopted at the age of 2 years and 9 months by a Danish family, and named Claus Frank Anderson, he changed his name to Sebastian Jensen in 2007. 

According to the frayed Sri Lankan birth certificate that he has in his possession, Sebastian believes that he is possibly 47 or 48 years old. His name on his Sri Lankan birth certificate is simply listed as Thirukumar and his place of birth is Telpallai. His adoption was processed at the Juvenile Court in Bambalapitiya in 1977 and it states that at the time of his adoption, Sebastian was a resident at the Prajapathi Children’s Home in Panadura. 

Sebastian says his initial adoption went wrong. The first family that adopted him in Sri Lanka, who are named on his adoption papers separated 12 days after returning to Denmark with Sebastian. However, he alleges that this separation was hushed up because one of the people who was instrumental in his adoption did not want any negative stories to affect the adoptions that were taking place between the two countries. 

His adoptive parents were Danish. His adopted father was a dentist (who did some social service with the Lions club in Sri Lanka) and his adopted mother was a homemaker who between the years of 1977 and 1998 was helping children at a place called Evelyn Nursery in Kandy, a nutrition centre in Trincomalee and another centre in Hikkaduwa.