The set of recommendations, reviewed by HT, moot changes in the 1956 Hindu and Guardianship Act and asks that mothers be considered the default legal guardian in cases where the woman has been deserted by the husband or divorced.

The National Commission for Women has recommended to the Union ministry of women and child development a review of the Indian child guardianship laws in order to ensure that women, especially rape survivors and single mothers, are not discriminated against, HT has learnt.

The set of recommendations, reviewed by HT, moot changes in the 1956 Hindu and Guardianship Act and asks that mothers be considered the default legal guardian in cases where the woman has been deserted by the husband or divorced.

The quasi-judicial body also recommended that while rape survivors are automatically considered the legal guardian of any children born after the crime, the father should share parenting responsibilities.

Currently, if a child is born of wedded parents, the father is considered the natural guardian and if the child is born out of wedlock, the mother is seen to the natural guardian. But the NCW has recommended the mother should be declared natural guardian in conventional cases. In the case of children born out of wedlock, the body recommended that the law make the father equally responsible for the child’s upbringing.

CARRIZO SPRINGS, Tex. — As he stood before reporters in a newly opened emergency shelter for unaccompanied migrant children, the chief executive of the contracting firm that could be paid up to $300 million to run the facility was far from thrilled about the task before him.

“I hate this mission,” Kevin Dinnin, head of the San Antonio-based nonprofit BCFS Health and Human Services, said on Wednesday in this remote Texas town. “The only reason we do it is to keep the kids out of the Border Patrol jail cells.”

The Carrizo Springs shelter opened on June 30 to help alleviate cramped conditions in Border Patrol processing facilities, where people were recently seen sleeping head to toe on concrete floors, often lacking access to hot meals, showers and proper medical care. The shelter will be able to hold up to 1,300 teenage children, though it currently has just over 200.

Although reporters who visited the shelter Wednesday saw the children only briefly during a tightly controlled tour, conditions in Carrizo Springs appear far better than those in the Border Patrol stations. Children could be seen playing soccer outside, attending classes in groups of around 30 to 40 and making phone calls to their families.

The facility is a scattering of dormitory buildings, trailers and tents that were once housing for oil field workers. Children’s artwork — drawings of cartoon characters, flags and paper flowers — decorated the walls of their sleeping quarters. Lighted soccer fields allow children to play at night and avoid the harsh summer heat.

A Swiss couple living in Nicaragua have been told to give back the baby daughter they adopted nine months ago.

Daniel and Esther Schär, who work for an NGO in the Central American country, adopted a two-month old girl through the adoption service of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Families (Mifamilia) last year, reported the Nicaraguan press.

Nine months later, the child’s biological mother – a minor – demanded her daughter be returned to her, claiming she was put up for adoption without her consent.

Last week a court ruled in her favour, to the heartbreak of the Swiss couple.

“We don’t understand how they can do such a nasty thing as take away the baby... if the biological mother abandoned her why does she now want her back when she didn’t seek her out for nine months?” adoptive mother Esther Schär told El Nuevo Diario.

The number of children with special needs, available for adoption, on the other hand, has been growing steadily.

NEW DELHI: There are just 75 children under two years who are healthy—the most sought after category — available for adoption in India legally.

This effectively means just one “wanted” child per 346 parents in waiting, as there are nearly 26,000 registered prospective adoptive parents in India.

The data maintained by the Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System, under the Union Women and Child Development Ministry, shows that out of 2,290 children, available for adoption in India in September, just 3 per cent are healthy.

In comparison, the number of such children was 11 per cent in June 2018.

The TV2 documentary "The Danish children from India" can give rise to a number of questions about adoption from the orphanage Shejar Chhaya and a study launched by the National Board of Appeal in 2014. Here you can see our answers.

03/07/2019

Short about the process

2005 AC Children's Aid interrupts collaboration with Shejar Chhaya due to lack of development in the quality of work.

2014 Media Review of Shejar Chhaya Adoption Issues from 2004 to 2008.

The women from Tamil Nadu were abandoned by their parents, and are lashing out at efforts to evict them from missionary shelter that raised them.

New Delhi: Come November, the judiciary will once again weigh in on an adult’s right to choose their way of life, months after the Hadiya ‘love jihad’ saga saw the Supreme Court uphold the sanctity of individual freedom with respect to marriage and religion.

Eighty-six women abandoned as children during a spate of female infanticide cases in a Tamil Nadu town have approached the Supreme Court against efforts to get them out of a Christian missionary shelter that raised them.

The shelter allegedly kept them ignorant of the most basic human activities, like handling money and buying goods, to brainwash and subsequently indoctrinate them.

The state is arguing for the women to be taken out of the Trichy-based Mose Ministries, but the women want to stay on. The Supreme Court will take a call on the issue on 14 November.

By Vanne Elaine Terrazola

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has signed the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the law which institutionalizes the national feeding program for schoolchildren and another which simplifies the process of child adoption.

fficials signed on Monday the IRR of RA No. 11037, the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act, and Republic Act No. 11222, the Simulated Birth Rectification Act, during a ceremony held in the DSWD central office in Quezon City.

Senator Grace Poe, author of both laws, was also invited to witness the IRR signing. She lauded the development as this would green light the rollout of the two laws.

“I’m extremely glad the IRRs are done. Without them, the laws remain as dreams unfulfilled,” she said in her speech.

MANILA - Sen. Grace Poe on Monday appealed to Cabinet officials to urge President Rodrigo Duterte to certify as urgent a bill which would hasten the process of adoption in the Philippines.

Poe, who was adopted by movie stars Susan Roces and the late Fernando Poe Jr., recently filed Senate Bill 1070 or the Domestic Administrative Adoption Act which seeks to establish an administrative adoption system and eliminate the judicial phase of adoption.

“This bill mirrors our belief that an administrative proceeding will hasten the process, minimize the cost, declog our courts, and prod more people to embark on the legal fasttrack to adopting a child,” Poe said in a speech during the ceremonial signing of the implementing rules of Republic Act 11222 or the Simulated Birth Rectification Act at the central office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

“So I would like to appeal to the Cabinet officials here today, to convince the President to certify this measure as urgent so it could fasttrack its way through Congress.”

Poe said that as of 2018, some 6,500 Filipino children were in need of a permanent home. Of this number, 3,973 have already been made legally available for adoption since 2009.

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Children have given damning testimony in a new report into secure residential care.

Fifty-two children were interviewed for the report, released on Monday by the Office of the Children's Commissioner.

The study concluded that facilities for vulnerable youth are unhappy places which are not fit for purpose.

"I found this report extremely difficult to read, and I think most New Zealanders would too," said Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft.

"Children and young people have the right to have their views heard, considered and taken seriously. The voices of the children and young people contained in this report are insistent. They are distressing. We must take them seriously."