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.

There’s a child, born to parents who have been poor for generations, not allowed to educate themselves or their children, ostracised from main society for centuries. There’s another child, born to some parents, but left with none, thrown in a dumpster, or left in a park, to die or to survive on its own, no idea where to get food from, or even how to get food, nowhere to go, and no one to love him/her.

It would be natural to think that both these children deserve sympathy and affirmative action in some form, if only from the voice of conscience that resides deep within us. That conscience speaks to the Government to take care of the destinies of these siblings in distress.

However, throughout its long existence, the Planning Commission did not think so.

As a result, in the above example, the first child gets benefitted under government schemes to go to school and college, coaching, hostels, reservation, loans and even sponsorship for studies abroad.

The second child? Well, if he/she is lucky enough to be in the 0.5% of all orphans that get to, through a rare concatenation of events, reach an orphanage, then the child has access to some food, limited education (only till age 14) and then at age 18, is shunted out to brave the streets again!

Editor's note: This story was posted Wednesday on the Atlas Obscura website.

Last week, Atlas Obscura announced the five finalists for First Journey, the competition we launched this year to send one of our readers on their first real journey. The idea was inspired by our co-founders, Dylan Thuras and Josh Foer, who both went on transformative journeys of their own when they were younger.

This year being Atlas Obscura's 10th anniversary, we decided to celebrate by giving someone out there — a person with an amazing idea who just needed the means to pull it off — $15,000 to take a meaningful, life-changing trip.

Thousands applied, and our panel of judges spent weeks narrowing down an incredibly impressive field of applicants to just a handful of finalists. Each of the four runners-up is being awarded $500, which, we hope, will serve as seed money toward making their journeys a reality.

And now, at last, we couldn't be more thrilled to announce that the winner of First Journey — who receives $15,000, logistical support and will be featured on Atlas Obscura — is Jenn Smith of North Adams, Mass.!

Alex Gilbert was two years old when he was adopted from a Russian orphanage by his New Zealand parents.

Now, 25 years later he's helping Kiwis reunite with their birth parents, like he did.

Mr Gilbert is filming every step of the journey for a new TVNZ reality series called Reunited.

He spoke to Seven Sharp about the details of the show.

"We are starting a show called Reunited which helps other adopted people from all over the world and in New Zealand reach out to their birth families.

In the final days of the Vietnam war, Operation Babylift evacuated 3,000 children and took them to the West to be adopted.

Not all were orphans; many of them, now middle-aged adults, are still searching for their roots.

When David Matthew Redmon met his birth mother at Saigon airport, it was as if his own ghost were being laid to rest.

“For more than 40 years, my mother lived with the thought that she had killed her son,” says David, 47, as he recalls finally meeting the woman from his faded childhood dreams.

On that day in August 2015, David had flown to Ho Chi Minh City from Boston, where he was brought up by adoptive parents. He spent most of the 20 or so hours in the air rehearsing every possible scenario, yet still it was not enough to prepare him. As he passed immigration at Tan Son Nhat International he saw an elderly lady dressed in a purple ao ba ba , a traditional South Vietnamese garment, and suddenly it was as if those childhood dreams had come to life. “When that moment came, my emotions simply took over and I cried like a child.”

By Ellalyn de Vera Ruiz

Legal adoption experts, foreign diplomats, and representatives of local and international child-caring and child placement institutions have gathered together in Manila to further boost public awareness on the process of inter-country adoption.

Led by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), through the Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB), the 15th Philippine Global Consultation on Child Welfare Services anchored on the theme, “Identifying the Needs of Children in Inter-country Adoption.”

The global consultation, which takes place every other year, serves as a platform to discuss and review policies and procedures to ensure that the best interest of Filipino children who are up for inter-country adoption will be prioritized and upheld.

DSWD Secretary and ICAB chair Rolando Joselito Bautista led the event and served as the keynote speaker.

New Delhi, India, Sep 30, 2019 / 02:05 pm (CNA).- A religious sister with the Missionaries of Charity has been released on bail 15 months after her arrest. She is accused of cooperating with the sale of a child from a home for unwed mothers, although her supporter argue that she was coerced into confessing.

Sister Concelia Baxla, 62, was arrested in July 2018, along with Anima Indwar, an employee at the Nirmal Hriday home in Ranchi.

Sr. Concelia was released Sept. 27 on a 10,000 rupee bail, the equivalent of $150, and two sureties of the same amount, ucanews reports. The sister was also instructed to leave her passport at the court.

The religious sister, who suffers from diabetes, had been denied bail twice previously – once last October on the grounds that her release could interfere with the investigation into her congregation, and again in January because charges had not yet been pressed, according to ucanews.

Her lawyer argued that Sr. Concelia should be granted bail because she is not facing direct charges, and noted that Indwar was granted bail shortly after her initial arrest.

My diary about our adoption, being a family and being a mother

Archive for the month of July 2015

At home, a day later on July 29th

JULY 29, 2015

Today was over twenty-four hours. It feels like ages ago that we left Russia behind. But only a few hours have passed since our arrival in Germany. We are at home! Richard and I still can not believe that our life as a family started. Our children will stay with us and no one can ever take them back from us. It seems like a dream from which we have to wake up someday.

Analysis of adoptions from the Russian Federation to Germany

based on the mediation practice of the Foreign Adoption Agency "Zukunft für Kinder e. V. "

Author / Editor: Julia Richter

Edition: 2016

product form