Caroline Swartz

The aftermath of the 1989 Romanian Revolution has been compared to the "Wild West" period of United States frontier expansion between 1850 and 1890. Immediately following the Revolution the influx of foreigners and foreign aid proved impossible to coordinate or control. As the London Sunday Times put it, "New charities sprung up like dandelions in wet grass" (Carol Sarler, "Shame About The Babies," 20 January 1991, 18-30). Well-meaning people with little or no experience in Central and Eastern Europe came to Romania prepared to do anything they could to help. The free-for-all in aid distribution caused confusion and an overlap of efforts. Consequently, orphanages in the northern and western parts of Romania received more aid than they could handle, while many orphanages in other parts of the country received very little.

The popular view that "some help is better than no help at all," spurred an inestimable number of Westerners to travel to Romania with loaded cars and trucks. Material goods flooded through the doors of orphanages with the natural assumption that the children would be relieved of some of their suffering. As more and more foreigners were exposed to the orphanages, stories spread of the vast numbers of institutions and widespread abuse of children. The conditions were appalling, and the response was to provide better equipment, more supplies, and volunteers to lighten the workload of the small number of staff in each facility. Some groups addressing these needs believed that the best solution was for the children to be adopted by foreign families. They assumed that Romanians could not manage adoptions because of their poverty and political instability.

The "AIDS epidemic" further raised the plight of Romania's orphans to the world. Doctors fanned across the country, bringing with them disposable syringes and other AIDS-prevention techniques. People sought to bring any comfort possible to these suffering children as they attempted to understand how such an atrocity could have been overlooked or ignored under Ceausescu's regime.

Now, more than three years later, many still assume that this type of crisis relief and care is what is needed. Yet experience has shown that the roots of the problems lie much deeper than emergency relief can penetrate. Immediate needs are, in most cases, being met with medical supplies, building equipment, and personnel. However, the increasing concern now is that emergency aid progress to a strategy of development.

NEW YORK –Indian-American couple Purvi Padia, an interior designer, and Harsh Padia, a hedge-fund manager, in conjunction with UNICEF USA, hosted the launch of Project Lion at The High Line Hotel May 30, kicking off a new project to support children in residential institutions across India. The event raised more than $850,000 for UNICEF’s work to put children first, according to a press release from UNICEF USA.

Emceed by Museum of Ice Cream Co-Founder Manish Vora, the program included remarks from UNICEF Next Generation founding member Jenna Bush Hager, the daughter of former U.S. President George W. Bush; actress Sienna Miller; CEO and President of UNICEF USA Caryl Stern, as well as performances by Arya Dance Academy. The host committee included Miller along with Sonia Kapadia, Samir Patel and Emily Stackman.

Inspired by the true story of Saroo Brierley captured in the film Lion, Project Lion started with a generous seed grant from Purvi and Harsh Padia to UNICEF. The amount given by the Padias was not disclosed in the press release.

“Project Lion is created to serve the orphaned or displaced children of India. Right now, there is 1.5 million displaced children in India and the first phase of Project Lion which will be three years long will serve the first 200 thousand of them,” Purvi Padia is quoted saying in the press release. “But in addition to that it will really put programs in place so going forward children who find themselves in situations without families have proper rules, proper procedures so they can really thrive,” Purvi Padia added.

Project Lion is a UNICEF child protection program that aims to support more than 200,000 children without family care living in residential institutions across eight states of India.

Jalandhar, August 17

Amid the much-hyped rumours about child-abduction incidents surfacing on social media, especially WhatsApp, the Police Division 1 today arrested two persons involved in the kidnapping of a newborn boy, identified as Shiva.

The suspects reportedly abducted the infant from the pavements near Fair Farm on GT Road. On the complaints of Chanda Rani and her husband, the police acted swiftly and arrested the suspects from Bathinda and recovered the boy, who was born only 15 days ago. SHO, Police division-1, Sukhbir Singh, said the incident was reported on Thursday evening.

“The victims, who are migrant labourers and resides here near the pavements, said two-motorcycle borne assailants took away their child from the lap of their 10-year old daughter Rashmi, who was playing with the child.

Rashmi said the suspects, a man and a woman, were wearing masks while committing the crime,” the SHO added.

Of the six arrested, two including Desai, were booked for purchasing children, while four women were arrested for scouting for children and selling them.

AMAR DESAI (32), one of the six accused arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch earlier this week for his alleged involvement in a child trafficking racket, has claimed that he committed the crime as he was under pressure from his family to have a male child after two daughters.

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The police said that Desai, who hails from Kolhapur, told his relatives that his wife had delivered twins, a boy and a girl. In reality, his wife delivered only a girl. Following this, Desai, a driver with a cab aggregator, allegedly agreed to pay Rs 3.84 lakh for a seven-day boy, he told the police.

Of the six arrested, two including Desai, were booked for purchasing children, while four women were arrested for scouting for children and selling them.

In Summary

The multi-million-shilling child trade industry has been thriving for years and poor households, especially in the slums and villages, have been the target of its scheming directors.

Babies are not only being snatched off the streets by strangers in passing cars, but also being stolen right after birth by nurses and midwives and passed on to social workers.

The distraught mother was kept waiting in a room for seven hours last Saturday, her stomach in knots as she waited to be reunited with her son.

But those seven hours were nothing to her, because the last time she had seen her son was almost five years ago.

When she fell pregnant, her parents kicked her out of their home. The Ethiopian teenager then sought refuge across the border in Moyale.

But after giving birth at Sololo Mission Hospital on July 18, 2012, she abandoned the baby. Not even community service penalty by a Moyale court could tighten the bond between the young mother and her baby. She fled. The infant was placed under foster care at the Nairobi Children’s Home.

But on July 11, 2019 the baby found new parents. The court allowed a couple, who had adopted a son in July 2015, to assume parental rights of the baby’s biological parents.

“The child shall have the right to inherit their property. The applicants shall not be able to give up the child owing to any subsequent unforeseen behaviour or other changes in the child. This court dispenses with the consent of the child’s biological mother who abandoned it and disappeared into Ethiopia,” said Justice Aggrey Muchelule.

Hers is just one of several cases of parents running away from their children. While some give up their children due to economic hardships, others do so due to traditions and the stigma of giving birth at a young age. It is a situation that has seen the children acquire new parents, identities and homes as they continue with their lives without knowing their biological parents.

Children are the pleasure and pride for parents and future of our society and country

By Alok Gupta, Honorary Secretary, Bapuji Children’s Home

Sometimes children lose the protection of their parents because of their demise or other unavoidable circumstances. Such children become homeless and then the State becomes their guardian.

To look after such children, Government runs Homes for them under their direct control and also through recognised NGOs under their supervision. Government appoints prominent social workers to form Child Welfare Committees (CWC) in each district to take urgent decisions in cases of such children, who are in need of protection and care. CWC, a quasi-judicial body, carries out this job with the assistance of District Child Protection Officers (DCPO) and Special Juvenile Police Unit (SJPU).

Homes for the children provide food, clothing, medical care, shelter, education, vocational training, counselling and other inputs for overall development of the children till they attain age of 18 years. Examples of such Government-run Homes in Mysuru are Government Girls Home on Lalitha Mahal Road and Government Boys Home in Vijayanagar 4th Stage. Both these Homes take care of children between the ages of 6 and 18 years.

Among the submissions made before the court were photographs of their children. The sessions court, while granting bail, stated that the photographs show that they had “no malafide intention of trafficking the children”, and that their intention was to adopt them.

WEEKS AFTER they were rescued by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch in an alleged interstate child-selling racket, six children between the ages of 18 months to seven years face an uncertain future, with officers saying they can neither be allowed to go back to the care of their biological parents who allegedly sold them nor returned to those who allegedly purchased them.

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Since July, the six children have been put up at Bal Anand, a specialised adoption agency at Chembur as per the orders of the Mumbai Children Welfare Committee (CWC). The authorities have not ruled out giving them for adoption. But what is complicating the decision is that those who allegedly bought the children were treating them well and bringing them up like their own.

In some cases, the children had spent years with their new “parents”. The oldest child, a seven-year-old boy, had been living with the family from whom he was rescued for more than three years. While the police are yet to decide whether to name the biological parents as accused, some “adoptive” parents, who were arrested and released on bail, have approached the CWC for custody of their children, even temporarily, till a decision is taken on their fate.

Call for review of processes around cross-border adoption

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In a globalising world where new family structures are emerging and evolving, a University of Sydney scholar is calling for a reassessment of the regulations around intercountry adoption.

Associate Professor Sonja Van Wichelen, sociologist and leader of the Biohumanity FutureFix research project in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences made the call in a paper published in the latest issue of Law and Society Review.

In the paper, Associate Professor Van Wichelen argues that the world of international adoption today is undergoing profound changes and that legal systems and processes have been unable to catch up.

Adoption from Nepal is beginning to look like trafficking

A NEPALI TIMES INVESTIGATION

In the cramped Anamnagar office of an adoption broker and his dusty orphanage in Ratopul, Nepali Times this week made arrangements to buy a child for adoption.

We posed as a British couple wishing to adopt a Nepali child and were told that the process was complicated and involved eight government offices and agencies. The broker said he could take care of the entire process for a $1,500 fee. If we decided to adopt from his orphanage, a further donation of $5,000 was strongly suggested.

Although he initially insisted on up-front cash of a third of his fee, he agreed to take a cheque for just over half the total amount. Immediately after we agreed to pay, he said he had just met a family from his village who wanted to put up for adoption a child the age we wanted. Earlier, he had said it could take months to find a child as young as we were looking to adopt.