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.

In the last nine years, 20 Nepali children have been taken to six countries for adop­tion, according to government records. However, statistics from those six nations show that 157 Nepali children have been adopted by their citi­zens. Where have the other 137 gone? This means that Nepali kids are being smug­gled out of the country.

The government has been sending children to 18 nations for adoption. Six among them—Denmark, France, Norway, Canada, Switzerland and the US—submit the list of Nepali kids adopted by their citizens to the Hague Confer­ence on Private International Law (HCCH). The data they have submitted reveal that 157 Nepali children have entered those nations as foster kids since 2010.

According to the Nepal gov­ernment data, 82 children have been sent to the other 12 countries for adoption since 2010. But since this number cannot be independently ver­ified, it is unclear how many Nepali children have actually been taken out of the country.

How did they go abroad?

Before 2010, adoption rules and procedures were not as stringent as they are now. But now that the government has tightened the rules, an increasing number of Nepali children are being smuggled out of the country. The then Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare formed a separate committee to man­age and implement the proce­dures for sending Nepali kids for adoption abroad. In 2009, Nepal also signed the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.

Move will benefit those living in Child Care Institutions

In good news for couples looking to adopt children, the Women Development and Child Welfare (WD&CW) Department has set itself a target of ensuring 1,000 adoptions this year.

Nearly 1,350 applications for adoption are pending in Andhra Pradesh, it is learnt. The move will benefit hundreds of orphans and half-orphans living in Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in the State.

About 32,000 children are living at more than 900 registered CCIs (shelter homes) in Andhra Pradesh.

A few months ago, officials of the WD&CW and the Juvenile Welfare Department conducted special drives on CCIs and identified about 2,700 children, who were fit for adoption, but were staying at shelter homes for the last few years. Unconfirmed reports state that many unregistered homes were illegally operating as children’s homes, without furnishing any information to the government.

Fifteen years ago, Bernie and Debbie Penkin adopted two older children from Liberia. Their story bears similarities to many other adoption narratives, but with a few significant differences.

The Penkins, who live in Washington state, began to think about adopting from Liberia after talking with some Liberian friends.

They were interested in adopting older children because, as Bernie Penkin explains, “Once the cute washes off a baby, they are very hard to adopt. And these kids need love just as much as a baby does, if not more.”

After about a year of communicating back and forth with the Penkins, a girl named Rita, age 13, and a boy named Misha, 9, boarded an airplane bound for America to begin a new life with people they barely knew.

“I was really excited to know that I was coming to the states, but I was also nervous because I was leaving behind everything I had ever known,” Rita Penkin Palmquist, now 28, says during a phone interview.

The director of the organisation has been accused of abetting a British national in unlawfully procuring a Nepali child and assisting in obtaining fraudulent documents to claim the baby.

Dangol was detained by police on Wednesday morning from outside his office for his alleged role in abetting a British national in unlawfully procuring a Nepali child and assisting her in obtaining fraudulent documents to claim the baby as her own.

The British national, Dina Smith, was detained by immigration officials at Tribhuvan International Airport last week when she tried to leave the country with the infant.

Smith had arrived in the country on July 26 and claimed she had given birth to a baby, who was born on July 28. She attempted to fly out on August 7, a little over a week after the baby was born.

Initially, she told officials she had given birth to the baby herself in Kathmandu. But after tests at the Maternity Hospital proved otherwise, she confessed that she had received help from Dangol in obtaining the infant. Smith told officials that Dangol had found the baby at an abortion clinic and helped her obtain fraudulent documents, which included a birth registration certificate naming her as the mother.

CEO of Adopt Change Renee Carter joins Jon Faine and co-host Sally Warhaft for Known Unknowns, to talk about adoption.

Last year there were 22 adoptions in Victoria and 330 adoptions in Australia.

"There has been a massive decline," Ms Carter said.

"Some of it is good reason, but a lot of it is to do with our heritage of adoption in Australia. We used to do adoption very badly."

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The family, which also includes the girl’s two elder brothers, has been living for years at Manakad at a shed-like house on a Puramboke land.

KOZHIKODE: Emotions flow unabatedly at the time of a crisis like landslides and flood being witnessed by the state for the second consecutive year, but the persons demonstrating such feelings don’t necessarily follow guidelines and they ignore the problem their offers would create.

A 12-year-old girl, who lost her father recently, is the centre of discussion now going viral on social media. A number of Keralites across the globe wanted to adopt her.

The discussion is taking place with all details of the girl, including her picture, following which the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) has raised the alarm over the auction-like offers for the minor. Originally from Karnataka, the girl’s father Raju, a street performer, collapsed and died at the flood relief camp at Manakad UP School, Mavoor here, on August 11.

The family, which also includes the girl’s two elder brothers, has been living for years at Manakad at a shed-like house on a Puramboke land. Their house was washed away in flood. The girl’s mother had deserted them years back.

Raksha Bandhan 2019: "When you adopt older kids, you need to keep in mind that they remember their past. My daughter was three years old when she came to us. Every time we went back for court hearings and she saw her previous caretaker, she would get frightened."

Raksha Bandhan 2019: Sheik Jenia, a mother from Delhi, adopted a girl child last year after having two biological sons. The mother told Express Parenting about how she adopted her daughter, who now listens to her elder brother more than her mother. Here’s her story, in her words:

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‘I wanted a girl. That’s when adoption came to my mind’

I have two boys and one girl. My boys, eight and six, are my biological kids. My husband and I wanted a girl. When I had my first child, I had no expectations with regard to gender and just wished for a healthy baby. When we planned our second baby, we hoped for a girl. And I gave birth to a boy. I remember telling my doctor in the operation theatre, ‘I will come back again.’

Adopted child raped younger adoptive kids, lawsuit claims

An Indiana couple has sued a Centennial adoption agency claiming the teen boy they brought home from China had an undisclosed history of sexual trauma and raped their two younger children.

The couple brought the civil lawsuit against Chinese Children Adoption International of Centennial on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Denver for themselves and on behalf of two Chinese boys, the lawsuit said. The Denver Post is withholding the couple’s name to protect the identity of juvenile sexual assault victims.

The couple are asking for an unspecified amount of money and a judge’s order ensuring the adoption agency follow court-ordered protocols that keep families and children safe, according to the lawsuit filed by Indianapolis attorneys Jonathan Little, Derrick Morgan and Annemarie Alonso.

“We have great empathy for the family that brought this suit, but we strongly and categorically deny the allegations,” said the Rev. Joshua Zhong, the Chinese Children Adoption International co-founder and president. “We expect a full vindication through the courts. We stand behind our decades-strong reputation as a professional and ethical non-profit having served thousands of families and children here and in China.”