Aboriginal children will be excluded from a plan to boost adoptions of children in state care in South Australia because of cultural sensitivities around the Stolen Generation, the State Government says.

Key points:

The South Australian Government has begun consulting on a plan to increase open adoptions of children in state care

The open adoptions will exclude Aboriginal children

No children have been adopted out of state care in the past five years

Aboriginal children will be excluded from a plan to boost adoptions of children in state care in South Australia because of cultural sensitivities around the Stolen Generation, the State Government says.

Key points:

The South Australian Government has begun consulting on a plan to increase open adoptions of children in state care

The open adoptions will exclude Aboriginal children

No children have been adopted out of state care in the past five years

An American woman is facing life in prison for brokering an illegal adoption online with a teenage girl from the Philippines and trying to smuggle the 6-day-old boy out of the country, officials said.

Jennifer Erin Talbot, 43, was busted on Wednesday as she allegedly tried to board a Detroit-bound flight at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila with the Filipino infant hidden in a sling bag.

Talbot, who says she has five children and owns a home in Sandy, Utah, was paraded before the media in handcuffs on Thursday as she was charged with human trafficking and kidnapping.

“The child’s situation must have been very difficult during the time that he was put inside that bag,” said Auralyn Pascual, a spokeswoman for the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation.

Security-camera images released by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration show the carry-on bag in which the boy was allegedly being held slung behind Talbot’s body as she sneaked past Filipino immigration officials.

There are nearly 3.8 lakh children living in over 9,500 childcare institutions-run by state governments and NGOs in the country.

NEW DELHI: India’s apex child rights body has flagged the issue of a large number of children in various states being made to live in shelter homes “unnecessarily” by district child welfare committees.

The Commission has now decided to audit the decisions by the CWCs to declare the kids as “children in need of care and protection”, which paves the way for them being put in shelter homes where they often face neglect, sub-standard care and even abuse.

There are nearly 3.8 lakh children living in over 9,500 childcare institutions-run by state governments and NGOs in the country.

Officials in the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights said in its statutory meeting recently, it was highlighted that many CWCs are defaulting in declaring children as CNCP before sending them to shelter homes. The Commission has therefore decided that a fact-finding exercise will be carried to examine the decisions taken by the CWCs.

New Delhi, Sep 4 (PTI) The Supreme Court Wednesday said it would hear on September 17 a matter related to alleged child trafficking from an orphanage in West Bengal so that "tussle" between the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and the WB SCPCR is resolved.

The NCPCR and West Bengal State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WB SCPCR) are at loggerheads over the issue related to powers of NCPCR in initiating inquiry in a matter which is pending before a state commission.

A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose said the apex court would hear and decide the issue so that such tussle does not arise again between the NCPCR and any other state commission.

"We must decide this matter otherwise this tussle will go on. Two years ago, stay was given by this court but no orders have been passed by the NCPCR," the bench said.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for NCPCR, said inquiry by the national commission is going on in the matter.

Out of the way - and delivered to the state

For four years researchers have worked up the administrative supplies. Now the final report is available. The content is disturbing.

There were tens of thousands. Tens of thousands who were locked up in Switzerland without being guilty. In educational homes, in prisons, in psychiatric hospitals. "Administrative Supplies": What sounds like an official act is a disturbing aspect of the Swiss rule of law in the 20th century. It is the story of arbitrariness, compulsion and injustice.

Gabriela Merlini was first treated at the age of 18 months. This because she was illegitimate. A child of a couple who was not married in the mid-1960s. "We were not only torn from our social environment, but have experienced torture-like abuses," Merlini told the media yesterday.

At least 60 000 people affected

For many mothers, their adoption decision was a deal made with a guarantee of secrecy.

The discussion in the Senate on the Adoption and Tracing Bill brings to mind interviews I did in 1998 with women who were planning to give up their babies for adoption as part of the Women and Crisis Pregnancy study.

Adoption was one of three ways of responding to a “crisis” pregnancy for these women, the other two being single motherhood or abortion. For many women interviewed, the possible revelation of the sexual behaviour that led to their pregnancies, augmented by stress and fear, was what led to defining their pregnancy as a “crisis”.

The pregnant women we interviewed who were planning adoption were not in traditional mother and baby homes. They had been offered private accommodation by a voluntary organisation with links to adoption agencies.

They found it very difficult to continue a pregnancy with the knowledge that they would later part with their babies. In many cases their families were either not aware of their position or, if they were, offered them no support as future lone mothers. Abortion and secret adoption had two things in common: if a woman took either option, no one would know that she had had sex and got pregnant. Both protected family respectability and kept premarital sex hidden.

AHMEDABAD: When Vinayak, 6 (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/6), started speaking in broken French at Shishu Gruh

on Wednesday, Jeremy and Madeline Platin, residents of Pont De L’Arche in northern France, had tears in their eyes. Their fouryear wait to adopt children from India ended with the formalities of adoption getting completed. The couple will fly to France

from Delhi on Wednesday night with Vinayak, 6, and Vignesh (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/and-Vignesh), 5

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/5).

The brothers, mention Shishu Gruh officials, were found from near Kubernagar railway crossing exactly a year ago in April 2018.

After waiting for 12 years (2004 to 2016), the children of Uganda finally made a big win on the floor of the 9th Parliament. On March 2nd 2016, the Parliament of Uganda, presided over by the Speaker, Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, passed the long awaited Children Act Amendment Bill 2015. This is a key milestone and demonstrates that despite the shrinking of the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) space in Uganda, CSOs can still advocate and put pressure on the Government, achieving results at scale for children.

For the last 12 years, the children of Uganda have had no clear law protecting them. Children's rights which were being violated, as such, included being trafficked out of the country under the guise of legal guardianship and subsequently ending up in unprecedented adoption. Children were also ‘institutionalised’ in child care institutions (Baby and Children Homes) under the guise of care and protection, and issues regarding them were not effectively coordinated or monitored by the Government.

Key amended clauses that were fronted by child rights CSOs:

The law strengthens the institutional mechanism for the promotion of the rights of children through the establishment of the Uganda National Children’s Authority (UNCA). The Authority will be mandated to manage, monitor and coordinate the implementation of all child-related policies and laws, creating inter-sectoral coordination and management of matters related to inter-country and domestic adoption of children.

The law streamlines the provisions of Guardianship, Adoption and Inter-country adoption. The law provides legal guardianship to be granted strictly to Ugandan nationals and repeals legal guardianship for foreigners. Legal guardianship has been used as a conduit for trafficking of children outside the country, leading to an unprecedented increase in inter-country adoption.

Dr Jane Aronson

Founder and CEO of Worldwide Orphans Foundation

Dr. Jane Aronson was born in Brooklyn in 1951 and grew up on Long Island. She attended Hunter College in New York City and taught school for ten years.

At thirty-one, she fulfilled her life’s dream to become a physician and entered medical school. She graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1986 and did a pediatric residency and chief residency in New Jersey, followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Columbia Presbyterian /Babies Hospital in New York City. Between 1992 and 2000, she was the Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Director of the International Adoption Medical Consultation Services at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, New York.

Since July 2000, Dr. Aronson has been in private practice as Director of International Pediatric Health Services, in New York City. She is Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and has evaluated well over 4,000 children adopted from abroad as an adoption medicine specialist; she has traveled to orphanages in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, China, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Latin America.