Adoption & Samfund has sent the following to the Folketing Social Committee.The future remains uncertain and unhappy for international adoption in Denmark

Adoption & Society can state that, despite promises of a quick clarification, nothing has been done to correct the inadequate handling of international adoption in Denmark!

On 16 January this year, all international adoptions were urgently suspended by the direct intervention of the then Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil. The promises to the many waiting applicants for adoption were not fulfilled from this date. This also applies to the promises to secure a solution for the many adoptees in Denmark who would like to apply back and have information about their own case. Promises that were made over half a year ago!

In other words, nothing has happened since Danish International Adoption (DIA) announced in mid-January that it would carry out a controlled closure of the organisation.

Adoption & Samfund bears a great responsibility as an interest organization, as we have taken on the important task of fully supporting and helping both individuals and families who want to adopt or have adopted. It necessarily also reaches back in time, because as an organization we look both forward and backward in time.

Seoul, South KoreaCNN — 

South Korea has for decades been known as the world’s largest “baby exporter” – sending hundreds of thousands of children overseas after the country was ravaged by war and many mothers left destitute.

Many of those adopted children, now adults scattered across the globe and trying to trace their origins, have accused agencies of corruption and malpractice, including in some cases forcibly removing them from their mothers.

A report released earlier this week by a Korean government commission supports those claims and uncovers new evidence on the coercive methods used to force mothers to give up their children.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean commission found evidence that women were pressured into giving away their infants for foreign adoptions after giving birth at government-funded facilities where thousands of people were confined and enslaved from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Monday came years after The Associated Press revealed adoptions from the biggest facility for so-called vagrants, Brothers Home, which shipped children abroad as part of a huge, profit-seeking enterprise that exploited thousands of people trapped within the compound in the port city of Busan. Thousands of children and adults — many of them grabbed off the streets — were enslaved in such facilities and often raped, beaten or killed in the 1970s and 1980s.

The commission was launched in December 2020 to review human rights violations linked to the country’s past military governments. It had previously found the country’s past military governments responsible for atrocities committed at Brothers. Its latest report is focused on four similar facilities in the cities of Seoul and Daegu and the provinces of South Chungcheong and Gyeonggi. Like Brothers, these facilities were operated to accommodate government roundups aimed at beautifying the streets.

Ha Kum Chul, one of the commission’s investigators, said inmate records show at least 20 adoptions occurred from Daegu’s Huimangwon and South Chungcheong province’s Cheonseongwon in 1985 and 1986. South Korea sent more than 17,500 children abroad in those two years as its foreign adoption program peaked.

Ha said children taken from inmates at Huimangwon and Cheonseongwon were mostly newborns, who were transferred to two adoption agencies, Holt Children’s Services and Eastern Social Welfare Society, which placed them with families in the United States, Denmark, Norway and Australia. Most of the infants were transferred to the agencies on the day of their birth or the day after, Ha said, indicating that their adoptions were determined pre-birth.

KUSHINAGAR: A man in Uttar Pradesh was reportedly forced to "sell" his three-year-old son to cover hospital fees and secure the release of his wife and newborn child, according to officials. The incident, which caused widespread outrage, led to the arrest of five individuals, including a couple who took the child.

Harish Patel, a daily wage worker from Barwa Patti, sought medical care at a private hospital for his wife's delivery. When he was unable to pay the hospital bill, the hospital staff refused to allow his wife and newborn to leave.

Desperate for funds, Patel agreed to a fraudulent adoption arrangement for his three-year-old son in exchange for a few thousand rupees on Friday. Once the police were informed, they promptly launched an investigation and arrested five people: middleman Amresh Yadav, adoptive parents Bhola Yadav and his wife Kalawati, a fake doctor named Tara Kushwaha, and a hospital helper, Suganti.

Additionally, a police constable who allegedly neglected to act on the case has been removed from active duty and reassigned to police lines. Fortunately, the child was safely rescued and has been reunited with his parents, according to Superintendent of Police Santosh Kumar Mishra.

Three years ago, Laurie Carey from Birmingham, Ala., would admire videos of the little boy she was set to adopt from China, as he said "mama" and "baba" while looking at photos of Carey's family.

But this week, she faced the painful reality that she may never hear those words from him in person. The hardest part has been not knowing how her adoptive son is doing.

"We want answers," Carey said. "We wonder what the kids who had pictures of us and videos of us, do they think that, 'Oh I've been abandoned again?' "

Carey is one of the hundreds of families whose hopes to adopt a child from China have been dashed this week with the ending of China's international adoptions program. The Chinese government said the only exception will be for families who are adopting the children or stepchildren of blood relatives in China.

The government adjusted its policy to be "in line" with international trends, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday, according to Reuters. "We express our appreciation to those foreign governments and families, who wish to adopt Chinese children, for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown," Ning said.

New Life in the bookstore!

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When did Kathalijn's life really begin? In 1988, when she appeared as Kalawati in

India was born? In 1990, when she came to the Netherlands as an adoptee

Indonesian syndicate allegedly bought and sold babies on Facebook

Police in Indonesia busted a baby-trafficking ring that bought newborns on Facebook and sold them to foreigners in Bali.

Police said the “well-organised” syndicate operated in Depok city of West Java, about 27km from capital Jakarta.

The infants were bought from parents for less than £800 on Facebook and sold to foreigners in Bali at four times the price, police said, adding the traffickers also worked on “pre-orders”.

Colorado mother objects to court-ordered reunification therapy, claims it is harmful and abusive

A retired Aurora police sergeant faces criminal charges for raping his daughter and continually sexually assaulting her and his two adopted daughters, but he remains free from custody while his ex-wife is in jail for objecting to court-ordered reunification therapy meant to repair his relationship with two of his sons.

The mother, Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, said the reunification therapy by Christine Bassett, a licensed marriage and family therapist, has been harmful, abusive and counterproductive. For now, the mother has custody of the couple’s minor children, and they are living in a domestic violence shelter. She said that she has arranged for family members to care for her children when she goes to jail.

The mother said Bassett has supported the efforts by her ex-husband, Michael Hawkins, to gain sole custody of their two youngest sons, now 10 and 13, and has psychologically tortured the children along the way.

“The very last visit with her, I told her, ‘This man now has formal criminal charges for sex assault on children and child abuse, and you need to know this,’” Pickrel-Hawkins said of one encounter with Bassett before a reunification session with the children that the father attended. “She went into the room, and the very first thing that my boy said that she told them was, ‘We need to make progress, and today you need to tell your father that you forgive him.’”

A-Buddy is a subsidiary of Adoption Support Center, supported by volunteers and managed by thecoordinator. Adult adoptees are trained to provide a listening ear to othersadoptees. This volunteer organization also organizes activities and shares storiesadoptees via the website and social media.a-Buddy wants to be a place where adult adoptees (both the buddies themselves and the callers) feel at homewhere they find the recognition and understanding they lack elsewhere.a-Buddy is currently looking for a coordinator to temporarily replace the current coordinator.

Most international adoptions to Finland are from Thailand and South Africa.

Adoptions in Finland decreased by six percent in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to Statistics Finland on Friday.

In total, 252 adoptions occurred in Finland last year.

Adoptions in Finland have been dropping for years. Since 2010, the number of adoptions has decreased by 48 percent.