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It has been two years since actress Mandira Bedi is waiting to officially adopt a daughter. She already has an eight-year-old son and wishes to have a sister for him. She and her husband applied at the CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority), the central adoption agency under which any adoption across the country takes place – without any success so far.

Mandira Bedi is only one among many across the country who wish to adopt a child, and who face major obstacles.

Prospective adoptive parents in India have two legal possibilities to adopt a child: either under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, or irrespective of their religion, via the CARA, the primary facilitator of adoption. After registering online and uploading the relevant documents to an adoption agency, a social worker will draw up a home study report. The home study report is supposed to be completed within thirty days from the completed registration and remains valid for three years. Mandira can only hope that her application gets processed before she has to undergo another report.

A Child Cannot Be Given To An “Inferior” Family

Mandira and her husband could at least apply for adoption, in contrast to homosexual or unmarried couples. Same-sex marriages are not legal in India, therefore homosexual couples are not allowed to adopt a child together. The law debars the LGBTQIA+ community from adopting children together – demonstrating that homosexual couples still aren’t equal before the law. Reinstating Article 377 may have decriminalized homosexuality in India, but Indian mindset is still stigmatising LGBTQIA+ couples, as the statements of an officer of one of the five oldest adoption communities of Karnataka prove.

New Criminal Allegations Puts Spotlight on Orphanages

Allegations of illegal adoption of Armenian children are putting Armenia’s institutions for children in the global spotlight. In recent weeks, Armenian authorities said they opened several criminal investigations into the illegal adoption of over 30 children by foreign families. Several Armenian orphanage directors and other officials have been implicated in the alleged crimes, supposedly for financial gain.

It’s not the first time Armenia’s children’s institutions have drawn international attention. Here’s why. Many studies show that children, when separated from families and placed in institutions, have stunted physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development. In 2017, Human Rights Watch documented how, due to the lack of services to help families raise children at home, impoverished Armenian families find it difficult to care for children, especially those with disabilities, and may place them in institutions. Donors and the government have contributed to the problem by pouring money into institutions rather than community-based services.

Around 90 percent of children in residential care in Armenia have at least one living parent.

At the end of the day, Armenia should be investing less in institutions and investing more in community-based services for families. This would both curtail corruption and abuse at institutions, and help families care for their children at home.

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YEREVAN—The Armenian National Police Department has unveiled several more cases of potential illegal international adoptions following the launch of a National Security Service (NSS) investigation into the matter last week. In a video posted to the Police Department’s official YouTube channel on November 19, Lieutenant Colonel Vache Hovsepyan, who heads the police-dedicated organized crime unit, revealed that his team had uncovered cases dating as far back as 2009.

Elaborating on some of the investigation’s preliminary findings, Hovsepyan said orphanage staff members allegedly “provided signed and notarized documents releasing the infants from their biological parents’ custody and consenting to international adoption.” He continued, “However, when we contacted the parents in question, they revealed that they had never signed any such documents, nor had they consented to adoption.”

Hovsepyan also discussed the widespread use of intimidation tactics to receive written consent from parents. He recounted a particular case in which the director of an orphanage allegedly threatened the parents with cutting off access to their child and forging their signature if they refused to consent to international adoption.

The Armenian Weekly spoke with several adoptive families in the United States, under the condition of anonymity, who have largely corroborated these developments. Some of their adoption stories date all the way back to 2005. “My daughter’s birth parents were absolutely shocked when [we] reached out to them,” said one of the parents. “They had been told years ago by the hospital that their daughter had died,” she continued. According to her, the birth parents denied ever signing any adoption papers, despite signatures appearing on the notarized adoption documents which she shared with The Armenian Weekly.

International adoptions without the consent of the biological parents constitute a breach of the Criminal Code. The current law on adoptions prioritizes requests by adoptive parents who hold Armenian citizenship. Orphaned children are only eligible for international adoption if they are not claimed locally within a three-month period.

Six affluent couples, who each allegedly bought a child, have approached the city civil court for permission to adopt them. The Bombay High Court on Wednesday set deadlines for the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and the lower court to ensure expeditious hearing of their pleas.

A division bench of Justices BP Dharmadhikari and Sadhana Jadhav ordered that the criminal case registered against the couples in July this year for allegedly purchasing children should not be taken into account while

considering their adoption pleas.

“We are satisfied there is no harm to the safety or welfare of the child… the parents have no criminal antecedents,” the bench observed after perusing documents submitted by the couples on their social standing and

criminal record. “Pendency [of the criminal case] should not be used to deny adoption,” the bench added.

Lifted

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A Love Beyond Borders Temporary Suspension Lifted

Last Updated: October 22, 2019

This Notice Supersedes the October 4, 2019 Notice.

Kazakhstan: Suspension of Intercountry Adoptions Reconfirmed

This notice updates previously-issued notices dated July 12, 2019 and June 16, 2017.

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (MOES), as intercountry adoption central authority, reconfirmed with the Department of State on October 22 that the existing suspension on intercountry adoptions between Kazakhstan and the United States remains in place, pending the submission of all outstanding post-adoption reports (PARs). MOES continues to issue certificates of authorization to Adoption Service Providers (ASPs), although the suspension applies to all U.S. ASPs.

Please submit outstanding PARs, which should be both apostilled and notarized, at your earliest convenience. The required content for PARs is discussed in the Department’s June 16, 2017 notice.

Originals can be sent to the address below:

When children are unable to live safely at home with their parents, they may enter out-of-home care. Most of these children are in foster or kinship care and many are able safely to go home after a period of time.

But for more than 23,000 children in out-of-home care in Australia, the courts have determined they cannot ever safely return home.

Adoption is one way these children can be given permanency and avoid moving from placement to placement in foster care.

Read more: Explainer: how hard is it to adopt in Australia?

But the adoption of children from out-of-home care is extremely contentious. This is partly because adoption laws in all Australian states and territories require children to be legally severed from their birth family when they’re adopted. This is called “plenary adoption”.

A warm family helps orphanage children cope with stress

Psychology With orphanage children growing up in a warm family, the disturbed stress reaction normalizes during puberty.

An unsettled stress response due to intense experiences in early life can recover during puberty. This is what American psychobiologists write this week in the scientific journal PNAS. The research suggests that in addition to early childhood there is also a sensitive period during puberty, during which the biological stress system can still normalize by growing up in a warm nest.

In people who grew up in an orphanage as a small child, the body reacts differently to exciting events at a later age than in people who spent their early years in a normal family. They produce less of the stress hormone cortisol at that time than usual, because their biological stress system, the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis), functions less well. This is evident from, among other things, previous studies into seriously neglected children who grew up in orphanages in Bucharest. Research on rats and macaques that were neglected by their mother also shows that there is a sensitive period in early childhood, when the stress system is formed.

Both too much and too little of the stress hormone cortisol has a bad effect on the immune system, the stress response and mental development.