Duty of investigation

Soul traffickers (Investigation of suspicions of fraudulent adoptions between Guatemala and Belgium)

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Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark

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Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.

The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu.

Now experts say that despite the children having been adopted into loving, nurturing families in the early 1990s, the early neglect appears to have left its mark on their brain structures.

Shareable Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZHNqEuVoe5DJ-VZ4Xyyk58UPXRCGKD5v

Private actors make child trafficking adoptions

Debate As more irregularities come to the surface, more adoptees begin to demand that both the past and the present adoptions be examined. The requirements are paradoxically supported by the same treaty that the adoption agencies are leaning towards - the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since the turn of the year, it is the law in Sweden and now we must start working to prevent trafficking in children in real terms, writes Maria Fredriksson, adoption debater.

From 1 January this year, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is law in Sweden. The Children's Convention was adopted in 1989 and came into force the following year. Sweden was one of the first countries to ratify it and for several years various forces have worked to raise it to Swedish law. Now this is reality.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes the right of children to be registered at birth. Furthermore, children have the right, as far as possible, to know their origins and to be cared for by their parents. The State party to the Convention undertakes to respect the child's right to identity and, upon deprivation, shall provide appropriate support to quickly restore the child's identity. In addition, the State Party shall take all measures to prevent trafficking in children, regardless of purpose and form.

The Swedish adoption organization Adoptionscentrum, which is the world's second largest and one of the world's oldest, is one of the actors that has long been pushing the issue of the Children's Convention as a law under the slogan "Children's right to family" and international adoption has since been formalized with similar altruistic slogans.

Illegal adoption, a real problem in Paraguay

Asunción: To close your eyes to it, as the authorities so often do, does not help. Doctors are helping to get a birth certificate in the name of the adopting mother for money. A case could now be prevented.

As part of an investigation into an illegal adoption, the prosecutor was able to rescue a small baby in a house in Fernando de la Mora, which came through a real mother's agent.

A 17-year-old gave birth to a child in a private hospital. The obstetrician and her boss were present. The doctor signed a certificate confirming the child's lively birth, but in the name of the adopting mother, who in turn is said to be her friend.

The 17-year-old, who already has a 1-year-old child, worked as an employee in her boss's house in exchange for food and accommodation, without wages. The newborn was examined by doctors and handed over to the Ministry of Children and Adolescents.

Some 40,000 unidentified bodies are disposed of by the police every year across the country. While most are natural deaths, accidents, suicides and homicides are also the other causes, especially among youth.

While these bodies have no claimants, what if someone turns up later searching for a lost/missing kin among the unidentified dead?

To answer just such queries, the Department of Forensic Medicine at All India Medical Institute of Medicine (AIIMS) here is now keeping a DNA record of unclaimed bodies.

Doctors from AIIMS said that within two months they will host the database on a website that people can access.

The pilot project to start retrieving DNA samples from unidentified bodies started in South and South-East Delhi in June. “The police declare a body ‘of unknown origin’ if nobody turns up to claim it in 72 hours. Depending on how mutilated the body, samples of organs, bones, hair or muscle tissue are retrieved for profiling the DNA,” said Chittaranjan Behara, Associate Professor, Forensic Medicine, AIIMS.

This financial support will cover reimbursement of adoption expenses such as CARA registration, child placement, foster care and establishment of legal guardianship.

PayPal India has announced a new Adoption Assistance Program where it will be offering financial support of up to Rs 1 lakh per adoption for adoptive parents. This financial support will cover reimbursement of adoption expenses such as CARA registration, child placement, foster care and establishment of legal guardianship.

Paypal said in a statement that the announcement is a part of the company’s continual effort to enhance the parental support benefits for employees.

PayPal offers paid adoption leave of 16 weeks for female employees and paternity leave of 2 weeks. “This leave must be used in one block and cannot be carried forward or accumulated. Any unused adoption leave will lapse,” it said.

'' At PayPal, fostering an open, diverse and innovation-driven culture is essential for our employees to be at their creative best. As part of this effort, we have enhanced our parental support benefits for adoptive parents so they have constant support throughout the process and can truly embrace their journey of parenthood,” said Jayanthi Vaidyanathan, ?Senior Director, Human Resources, PayPal.”

‘The online form for adoption has only two options, male and female’

Though Kerala came up with a transgender policy in 2015, many socio-legal problems of sexual minorities are yet to be addressed, according to LGBTQ activists.

“Marriage and adoption of children are still a huge issue for sexual minorities,” says Vijayaraja Mallika, transwoman poet and winner of the Vayalar Ramavarma Poetry Award 2019, who got married recently. To get married, transgenders have to cross many hurdles. Even if they are transman or transwoman, they have to procure the identity cards of ‘cismale’ and ‘cisfemale’ to get married. Otherwise they can live together, but the relationship will not be legal, she noted.

“The online form for adoption does not even have a third option, other than male and female. Leave alone the huge financial burden for such legal adoptions, the rules do not allow sexual minorities to legally adopt children,” Ms. Shyam noted.

Illegal adoptions

SLOVAKIA PRESS RELEASE

On 12 and 13 November 2019, an international conference was held in Bratislava on the issues of international child abduction and the search for the origins of the adopted. The conference was organized by the Center for the International Legal Protection of Minors and Young People(CIPC), Central Authority of the Slovak Republic on international adoptions. For the CAI, Vice-President Dr. Laura Laera participated as a speaker, together with the representatives of Central Authorities of other European States, including Austria, Malta and the Czech Republic, experts from the Hague Conference and the European Commission , university teachers and magistrates. The meeting was attended by representatives from other Central Authorities, including Belgium, the Principality of Andorra and the United States of America, representatives from authorized Italian entities, SRAI who presented an interesting series of video testimonials and ASAs, as well as from other States. Europeans, service operators and university students.

During the conference, the meeting took place between the Vice-President of the CAI and the Director of the CIPC, Dr. Andrea Cisarova, in an atmosphere of lively cordiality. The meeting revealed that the CIPC, which signed a new bilateral agreement with the CAI in May 2019 as it did with 9 other European countries (See CICP web page: https://www.cipc.gov.sk/ osvojenia / # medzistatne-osvojenie), is ready to start again with the adoption procedures with the Italian adoptive couples. However, taking into account the drastic drop in Slovak minors adopted in other countries in 2018 compared to previous years, it should be noted that the numbers will still be very limited. Compared to the data, in 2018 in Slovakia there were 1,492 adoptive couples included in the national adoption circuit and 322 minors, while 7 adoption procedures were concluded in the international adoption circuit for a total of 10 minors, with three states (Malta, The Netherlands and the Republic of San Marino).

11/14/2019

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By Dimithri Wijesinghe

Adoption is the process of permanently transferring all the legal rights and responsibilities of being a parent to a particular child from that child’s birth parents (biological parents) to the adoptive parents.

According to Attorney-at-law Harshana Nanayakkara, who works closely with the Department of Probation and Child Care Services (DPCCS), most people do not realise that adoption is about the child and not the parents. In that “it is about finding a suitable home for a child and not about providing a child to a childless family”.

Many would still say: “Oh, that’s the same thing, just worded differently,” but the fact of the matter is it is not. The biggest concern with such a misconception, regardless of however small it may seem, is that it gives way to all of the illegality and corruption that surround the adoption process.

Olivia