Liberian actor sues UNICEF for child abuse

A Liberian actor has filed a $25 million lawsuit against UNICEF for alleged child abuse over his starring role aged 13 in a fundraising film as a murderous child soldier who tortures his victims.

Mike James, now 28, says he and other cast members have been "stigmatised as rebels, killers, cannibals and drug addicts" after being recruited for the 1997 film "Soldier Boy" and made to act out eating human body parts.

In a writ filed in a west African human rights court earlier this month, James says he was paid $300 by a Danish production team hired by UNICEF for the docu-drama and duped into believing it would get limited distribution when in fact it went worldwide.

The UN child protection agency's Liberian office provided "active support and collaboration" to the Danish crew which recruited children from schools and orphanages to act in the short film, the writ says.

Erin Siegal, Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, recently donated one bankers-size box of documents about US citizens’ adoptions of Guatemalan children and adoption fraud to the National Security Archive.

These documents are the result of over thirty FOIA requests Ms. Siegal filed with the Department of State, Customs and Border Patrol, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the CIA. The requests asked for information as far back as 1980 and cover a variety of topics, ranging from information on the Casa Quivira issue (in which 46 babies were seized from a Guatemalan adoption agency due to accusations of adoption fraud), to US embassy communications regarding Celebrate Children International (a US organization imputed to have acted in violation of conditions the Hague Convention set regarding the adoptability of children).

Of particular interest in the declassified documents is information on the extent of adoption fraud in Guatemala, what the United States knew about it, and the US’s attempts to combat the problem. According to Department of State cables dating back as far as 1987, adoption fraud in Guatemala had been a lucrative business for some time. Lawyers in the country turned huge profits arranging the international adoptions of kidnapped children, women were paid to masquerade as mothers abandoning their “children” so that the children could be put up for adoption, and by March 2010, 29,400 Guatemalan children had found their way into American homes. That meant that one in every one hundred babies born in Guatemala was growing up in the US, and the adoption industry in Guatemala had become a $100 million industry.

The documents also contain information on the involvement of US-based organizations in the problem. Certain US adoption agencies with operations or relationships in Guatemala became involved in the scandal, including International Adoption Resources, which was implicated in smuggling Guatemalan children out of the country, after three mothers came forward and attested to selling their children for 750 dollars apiece.

Some documents of note in the files include:

Russian teen 'flees US adopters'

From: AAP March 27, 2013 1:03AM

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Hoe adoptie haar onschuld verloor

AMSTERDAM - Adoptie van buitenlandse kinderen is uit. Het idealisme van de beginjaren is verdwenen door de dramatische verhalen over de mondiale adoptie-industrie.

De afgelopen zestig jaar zijn in Nederland ruim 37 duizend kinderen geadopteerd. En een veelvoud daarvan in veel andere westerse landen. Eerst kwamen ze uit eigen land, daarna uit Griekenland en Oostenrijk. Zodra het taboe op ongehuwd moederschap uit Europa verdween, kwamen de adoptiekinderen van heinde en verre: Zuid-Korea, Brazilië, Libanon, India, Sri Lanka en de laatste jaren vooral uit China.

In het naoorlogse Nederland tot diep in de eindjaren van de vorige eeuw domineert het enthousiasme over adoptie van een vondeling of weeskind uit een minder ontwikkeld land. Wat is er mooier dan een kind zonder ouders in een straatarm land een betere toekomst te geven in je eigen gezin in een welvarend land? In de loop der jaren gaat het idealisme er meer en meer van af en wordt adoptie een oplossing voor ongewenste kinderloosheid met een sympathiek randje.

hechting

Kids bought from smugglers: father

by: Ainsley Pavey

From: The Courier-Mail

March 26, 2013 1:00AM

TWO children embroiled in an international adoption scandal are being relocated to Australia amid allegations they are part of a child smuggling racket.

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Data: 02-04-13

Brasile: Patricia Lamego destituita dall’incarico di Coordinatrice dell’Autorità Centrale

Come pubblicato dalla Gazzetta Ufficiale del Brasile (Diário Oficial da União), è di martedì 26 marzo la destabilizzante notizia che Patricia Lamego, Coordinatrice per le adozioni internazionali presso l’ACAF (Autorità Centrale Amministrativa Federale), è stata esonerata dal suo incarico.

Alla base dell’esonero ci sarebbero state divergenze di opinioni tra Patrizia Lamego e la Ministra dei Diritti Umani Maria do Rosario, da cui dipende la stessa Autorità Centrale.

Tuesday 26 Mar 2013

Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock attacked on four fronts

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The Liberal Democrats have tonight announced that their chief whip, Alistair Carmichael, is urgently investigating allegations of sexual harrassment against the MP for Portsmouth South, Mike Hancock, made by one of his female constituents.

I am told that Mr Carmichael recently travelled to Portsmouth to interview Mr Hancock, and plans to hold further meetings to explore the allegations. He is expected to report to Nick Clegg within a “couple of weeks”.

Missing babies from hospitals: Serbia must give credible

answers about what has happened to each child and

compensate the parents

In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of Zorica Jovanovi? v. Serbia (application

no. 21794/08), which is not final1, the European Court of Human Rights held,

Adoptions to Italy halted

Missing Documentation Led To Suspension Of Adoptions

25 Mar 2013Roman Cuprik Politics & Society

ADOPTIONS of Slovak children to Italy were put on hold on February 19, due to what Slovakia identified as missing post-adoption reports on the fate of 72 Slovak children adopted by Italian families. The moratorium will remain in effect until all of Slovakia’s terms are met by the Italian side. Meanwhile, Italy, the country with the highest demand for international adoptions from Slovakia, has promised to supply by April 15 the missing reports on 72 of the 269 children adopted over the past 10 years, Labour Ministry spokesperson Michal Stuška told The Slovak Spectator.

Slovak Labour Minister Ján Richter halted the adoptions on the heels of a visit to Italy on February 13 by Andrea Císarová, the head of the Centre for International Legal Protection of Children and Youth (CIPC), a branch of the Labour Ministry, to discuss the missing adoption reports. Císarová met with representatives of the Italian Commission for International Adoptions (CAI) and inquired about 117 post-adoption reports. However, she was only able to access a few of them, according to the Sme daily.

Foreign-run orphanage closed after reports of abuse, human trafficking

Sapa-AP | 25 March, 2013 14:47

Cambodian authorities said Monday they had shut a foreign-run orphanage that is suspected of beating its children and carrying out human trafficking.

Officials and a rights group said police in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday raided the unlicensed orphanage, called Love in Action, and rescued 21 children.

Gratianne Quade, a spokeswoman for SISHA, an anti-trafficking organization in Cambodia, said an Australian woman who ran the orphanage was not arrested in the Friday raid and her current whereabouts were not known.