IT doesn’t matter what your church allegiance is, or even if you have none; most people think that the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa, is a good thing.

The order, with 4,500 nuns, is dedicated to ‘wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor’. The nuns care for refugees, former prostitutes, the mentally ill, sick and abandoned children, lepers, those with Aids, the aged, the convalescent. They run schools staffed by volunteers to educate street children. They run soup kitchens to feed the destitute. All this is provided free of charge and open to anyone regardless of religion, race or caste.

The Missionaries of Charity have a pretty impressive résumé, one probably unmatched anywhere in the world. But then there is poverty in India probably unmatched in any other country with its own space programme.

India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and a growing middle class, but poverty, although dropping, is widespread. In 2014, the Rangarajan Committee, heading by a former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, said the population below the poverty line in 2009-2010 numbered 454million (38.2 per cent of the population) and in 2011-2012 had dropped to 363million (29.5 per cent of the population). In India poverty means poverty. According to the government’s own figures, rural poverty in 2011 meant having less than 816 rupees, or £9.33 a month, or 31p a day.

There is still ample need for the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity.

Police officers in Mumbai have exposed a baby-selling racket. The operation was led by women who would convince parents to sell the children.

he Mumbai Crime Branch busted a baby-selling racket on June 30, 2019. Four women were also arrested for running the operation.

They would monitor babies being born in the slums of Mumbai to parents facing financial problems.

The suspects would convince them to sell their child to childless couples for a few lakhs.

Police also arrested two buyers and rescued two babies who were sold to couples seeking this “shortcut” adoption route.

A 47 year old woman from the Philippines was jailed for six years on Thursday for her role in an illegal adoption case for a same sex couple — a Greek Cypriot and a Turk.

The couple have left Cyprus taking the baby. European and international warrants have been issued for their arrest but their whereabouts are unknown.

Cyprus’ adoption law specifies that a couple must be married in order to adopt, effectively barring same sex couples who can enter into civil partnerships here but cannot marry.

The defendant had brought the baby to Cyprus from the Philippines, appearing on a forged birth certificate as its birth mother. The Greek Cypriot man, who was the woman’s employer and is married to the Turkish man, appeared as the father on the same birth certificate.

The case dates back to 2018 when the Greek Cypriot man asked the Family Court for sole parental custody.

There are many instances of prospective parents traveling from far corners of the country to Delhi to adopt a child. Such cases could also include physically disabled children or a single mother.

Taking a humane view of such instances, a Delhi court on Thursday

asked the ministry of women and child development and Central Adoption Resource Authority

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Central-Adoption-Resource-Authority) (CARA) if adoption matters could be filed in

courts within whose jurisdiction the proposed adoptive parents lived.

In June 2019, the ‘Angels and Demons’ investigation was made public. The case concerns the unlawful placing of children into foster care by the municipality of Bibbiano, province of Reggio Emilia.

The social services network of Val D’Enza, in the province of Reggio Emilia, is accused of having drawn up, for years, fake reports in order to remove children from their families and place them in paid foster care. The extremely grave abuse and violence allegations include the administration of electrical impulses to children to alter the state of their memory prior to court interviews, in order to induce fake memories of sexual abuse.

Those under investigation include the mayor of the Municipality of Bibbiano, politicians, doctors, social workers, self-employed professionals, psychologists and psychotherapists from a non-profit organisation in Turin.

Foster care is not a system for permanently separating family units, but is a temporary aid measure for children in difficult situations and is supposed to ensure that relations are maintained with their real families. The Italian Government has taken prompt action to shed light on the events which have taken place in Bibbiano.

Can the Commission therefore say:

Pessers screams himself over

Gay couples do everything they can to fulfill their children's desire, Dorien Pessers suggests. In her crusade against contemporary narcissism she does not shy away from demagogy, concludes José Smits ....

IT is not difficult to go along with the indignation about contemporary narcissism as Dorien Pessers regularly describes in her column. Her last demagogic example was the gay professor who orders a child from the wife of a colleague, and entrusts his mother with daily care because he is busy with his work (Forum, September 23).

Earlier, she criticized the two gay men who bought a black child from the mother in the United States, concealed that they lived together as gays, and pretended to the American authorities that one of them is the father.

And then there was the sperm donor who approached dozens of Opzij readers for sex, the hospital that inseminated more than a hundred women with the (contaminated) seed of one donor. Pessers regularly gives us a tour of the modern horror house of 'self-decision makers'.

With adoption, the truth is ultimately the best

Council investigator Ans Bosman tells about searching for your origin and the importance of clear legislation.

Ans Bosman has been working as a council investigator for more than forty years at the RvdK in Rotterdam, where she mainly did adoption cases. "If adoptive children are told that they have been ceded, they may be sad about that," says Ans. "Processing their unknown past is comparable to a mourning period. People struggle with questions about their origins and origins and ask themselves: who am I really? ”The RvdK has been approaching a large group of people for years looking for information about their descent, for example because they have been abandoned or have been abandoned. foundling. Ans has supported many of these people in their search and therefore knows from experience how important that knowledge is. "That's how I know a middle-aged woman who has persisted in her search for years. At regular intervals she comes by to dig through her entire file for the umpteenth time. She does that, as she says herself, hoping to find a clue to her past. "

The passage of time does not ease the sorrow of an unknown past. "We recently helped a 70-year-old woman with information about her pedigree," says Ans. "Now that she had grandchildren, she went looking for her origins. We have found an old file about her adoption. Then you see that, even in old age, all kinds of things suddenly fall into place. People can, for example, place traits of themselves that caused them to fall out of tune in their adoptive family. "

Honesty is the best policy

Consultation of Dutch distance files with retroactive effect free of charge for adopted persons

On September 30, 2019, Minister Dekker (Legal Protection) announced that access to Dutch distance files should be free of charge for adopted persons. Adopted persons who have incurred costs in the past to view the waiver file or to obtain pedigree data from the file, can reclaim the amount paid by them.

In his speech, held during the Start Conference on 'In-depth research into distance parents and distance children', Minister Dekker said that the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport is contributing to the financing of both access to distance files and financing for search actions by Fiom. This contribution from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport means that inspection of Dutch distance files can take place free of charge. For searches, the minister refers to the institutional subsidy that Fiom already receives. The personal contribution for national searches (€ 85) remains.

Right to pedigree information

Adopted persons do not automatically have the right to inspect the distance file. The waiver file is the property of the waiver mother (the woman who has renounced her child). He must therefore give permission for inspection. The distance file not only contains information about the child's descent, but also displays the feelings and considerations of the distance mother. This information is often very personal.

As Macedonia probes allegations about a sinister adoption "racket", an NGO is compiling testimonies of people who suspect that their children were stolen from them, pronounced dead, and then sold.

Testimonies by some 30 families who believe their babies were falsely pronounced dead in order for them to be sold will be handed to the Ministry of Social Affairs this week, a local NGO said.

The NGO, “Building the Future”, lobbies for orphans’ rights.

“The testimonies of the families that gave us their consent will be handed over to the ministry. But we have no means to further pursue and investigate [the claims],” Ilija Jovanovic, the head of the NGO, warned.

Earlier this month, Social Affairs Minister Spiro Ristovski sacked the entire national commission in charge of adoption and ordered an investigation into the procedures.

Six children were rescued by police in July from six couples, who had allegedly bought the children from the accused.

A sessions court in Mumbai has granted bail to the key accused in an interstate child trafficking racket. Pawan Kumar Sharma (42) was arrested from Delhi on August 22 by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch, which claims him to be at the centre of the racket, connecting other accused, including surrogate mothers, nurses, biological parents who allegedly sold their children and couples who allegedly purchased them.

Claiming innocence, Sharma, in his bail plea, said he was never involved in the alleged trafficking. He also claimed that the children were given in adoption as per the rules. It was also argued that the children rescued by the police were being ‘properly maintained’ and the persons who ‘adopted’ them were also granted bail by the court. “After adoption, the adoptive parents were taking proper care of the children. The children have been admitted in the school. As the children are rescued and now they are in proper custody…the further detention of the applicant in the case is not required,” the sessions court said earlier this month. The court added that the apprehension raised by the police regarding tampering of evidence by Sharma can be dealt with by imposing stringent conditions.

Opposing Sharma’s bail, police had claimed that Sharma, who ran two fertility clinics, had sold newborn babies with the help of colleagues, who are still absconding. The police also claimed that biological parents of some of the children were yet to be traced. Other co-accused, including the adoptive parents, were granted bail earlier by the sessions court.

Six children were rescued by police in July from six couples, who had allegedly bought the children from the accused. The children, aged between 18 months and seven years, are in the custody of an adoption centre in Mankhurd. The Child Welfare Committee had refused to grant custody to the adoptive parents, stating such instances of trafficking are ‘rampantly increasing’. A writ petition filed by adoptive parents seeking custody of the children is currently pending before the Bombay High Court.