Patricia and Aaron Pearson were overjoyed when, after four years of trying, they finally conceived their daughter Emma.

But they always dreamed of giving her a sibling. Since pregnancy had been such a struggle, and they knew there were children out there that needed a home, they turned to Choices Adoption and Pregnancy Counselling Agency on Vancouver Island.

The couple spent $12,000, underwent numerous background checks, had a home study and took part in an education course. They were registered in the domestic adoption program and on the wait list for a South African adoption when they received an announcement from Choices last week.

The e-mail informed them Choices was closing as of May 31, staff were working to find another agency to take on the Pearsons’ file and they would be in touch, Patricia Pearson said.

“We were pretty shocked. It seemed to come out of the blue. We hadn’t had any indication that they were struggling financially or that this was a possibility,” she said.

Jiji Press

TOKYO (Jiji Press)— The Justice Ministry has presented the Diet with a set of bills to expand the special adoption system to cover children under 15 years old, up from the current basic age limit of under 6.

The first revision of the system since its introduction in 1988 is aimed at helping children lacking proper care due to reasons such as abuse and poverty, according to ministry officials.

The special adoption system terminates legal ties between adopted children and their biological parents. The consent of the children is not required, and the names of their birth parents are erased from their official family registries.

But there are many hurdles to adoption under the special system. For example, the consent of biological parents is required and at least one of the adopting parents must be 25 years or older.

Subsidiarity Made Simple: Understanding the Hague Convention’s Subsidiarity Principle

BY: CHAD TURNER

ADOPTION ADVOCATE NO. 127POSTED JAN 01, 2019

Subsidiarity Made Simple: Understanding the Hague Convention’s Subsidiarity Principle

BY: CHAD TURNER

EASTERLOG: A NEW BEGIN

I didn't have to think long about the date of my last weeklog: it had to be Easter Sunday. Not only because the SP has always allowed me to write a purely personal blog twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, where the inspiration that I get from faith was allowed to resound. But certainly also because Easter is the ultimate celebration, which is also a new beginning.

In this month's Tribune, Jobien van de Rijt-van Keulen is speaking in the Left Front section, SP member since 2013 and she said it very nicely: "I live from the basic principle: for each other, for each other, with each other. I recognize that social both in my faith and in the SP ". It is the same for me: through the progressive movements in Christianity I became a socialist, and as an SP man I want to focus not only on the vertical axis of the cross, the worship of God, but also on the horizontal , the conscious life for, by and with others. And struggle together to tackle the negative forces in society, the ikke-ikke-ikke and the holy belief in the "market".

An organization wherever this comes together is the Salvation Army. I am mainly involved as a donor, but in addition to the work for the SP that will continue to come my way in the future, I think it would be wonderful to have time to actively start volunteering, for example. for an organization like the Salvation Army. It is nice to build a different world from far Brussels, it is just as nice to help people in concrete terms through local SP campaigns, but also through other voluntary work.

Through the Salvation Army, I also received the announcement that you could go to the Passion in Concert with a discount (yes, I will remain economical). And so I was in Ahoy yesterday, together with partner Kees, for an overwhelming evening. How well everything came together was clear from the opening and closing number: The World is Van Everyone. We have often sung it at SP meetings, together with the late Thé Lau. Because that's how it is: the world belongs to everyone, everyone belongs to the world. And that is why I will soon have to leave part of that world in July, and in particular the indestructible and always inspiring and challenging SP-Brussels team, but the world is bigger than Brussels. And there will be many new, beautiful encounters in and around Rotterdam. Think of it as a small resurrection, thanks to all the SP people who have made so special in recent years and who I hope to continue to see in the future.

The last chapter of Saroo Brierley’s life is perhaps the only portion that the general public aren’t yet privy to. After all, the first 31 years went out for public consumption when he penned his tell-all memoir A Long Way Home in 2013, and when British actor Dev Patel took his story not only to the big screen, but to the Academy Awards, too.

But what of everything that came after the happy ending? Well, that thirst to know what has become of Brierley – the Indian child who got lost so far from home that he wound up rehoused in Tasmania, only to go in search of his real mother two decades later with only a faint memory and Google Earth as guidance – can now be satiated. “I’m writing another book,” he tells The National. “It will be the sequel, and Mum’s writing the prequel.”

The sentence is rattled off, just like that, as if each of its components aren’t huge, lifelong achievements for most people. Oh, and there’s one more thing: his story is also being developed into a stage show.

Brierley, now 37, is in the capital this week for the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, alongside other renowned authors flocking in from across the globe, such as Ben Okri and Ziauddin Yousafzai, the father of Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. The guest of honour this year is India, which is particularly poignant for Brierley. The impending additions to his oeuvre have not yet been officially announced, so he is understandably coy with the finer details.

What he is certain of, however, is how his story will end. “It will finish off with finding my father. I know where he is, but I just haven’t had the strength to finalise that point. It’s an individual thing that you do by yourself, there’s a lot of soul searching.”

Days after an American couple decried that a three-year-old Kenyan boy whom they have been taking care of was taken away from their custody; questions abound as to the state of adoption in Kenya.

The Kenyan-based US couple, Matt and Daisy Mazzoncini, noted that the child was taken away from their apartment in Westlands on April 5 by 11 DCI officers and they do not know of his whereabouts hitherto.

This, they add, is despite the fact that the Children's Court in 2017 granted them legal guardianship rights to the boy who is reportedly said to be sickly and in dire need of surgery in the US.

Daisy, a British who holds dual American citizenship and has been working in Kenya as a volunteer missionary since 2016 maintains that the boy suffers epileptic seizures which require him to be on "anti-seizure medicine three times a day."

The incident has since triggered a debate with sections of Kenyans wondering; what is the legal position of adoption in Kenya?

The Tsipras government on Thursday launched an online platform for child adoption and fostering.

The annoucement was made by Labour Minister Effie Achtsioglou and Alternate Social Solidarity Minister Theano Fotiou who said the new platform will handle applications for adoption and fostering, through which members of the public can apply to adopt or foster a child.

“Today we have put into action a law that was ‘born’ in order to serve children, which it will do since it is, in reality, the implementation of a law that was ground-breaking by the standards of social welfare in the country,” Achtsioglou said.

The ministers made the announcement while visiting the Attica Child Protection Services Section ‘The Mother’.

Achtsioglou said that citizens could also go in person to the social welfare centres in their area.

Ai.Bi. authorized to operate in Nigeria. Africa is the new frontier of international adoption

With the most populous country on the continent, the countries of equatorial Africa rise to six, with Ai.Bi.

Good news on the international adoption front. After seven years, new horizons are reopened, in particular towards Africa, the continent towards which, due to a series of factors, not least migration and demographic pressure, global attention is increasingly being concentrated .

In fact, in recent days the news that Ai.Bi. - Amici dei Bambini, has been authorized by CAI - International Adoptions Commission to operate in Nigeria. The African country, which does not participate in the 1993 Hague Convention on the protection of minors and cooperation in the field of international adoption, finds its reference legislation on the subject of extra-national adoptions in the Child's right act of 2003 and in the African charter on the rights and welfare of the child, entered into force November 29, 1990, in addition to a law of 1968 originally drafted for adoptions in the State of Lagos.

This is important news, because, to date, only an Italian association was operating at those latitudes. As a result, the number of adoptions was very low: eight Nigerian children adopted altogether between 2016 and 2017, with an incidence on total international adoptions of approximately 0.25%. For 2018, according to the data currently made available by the CAI, they were allowed to enter Italy from Nigeria for international adoption a minor in January, two in February and two in April.

"In India, Stefia doesn't stand a chance"

Paul Vandenhoven and Christel Van de Voorde, a married couple from Sint-Niklaas, tell their experiences as adoptive parents in the One Adoption program. She follows the program to India, where Christel is about Stefia, their fourth child.

With four adoptive children, two of whom are physically disabled, the couple is extremely suitable to participate in the TV program. ,, When the people from Adoptie asked us if we ...

Michaël Temmerman

With four adoptive children, two of whom are physically disabled, the couple is extremely suitable to participate in the TV program. ,, When the people from Adoptie asked us if we wanted to cooperate, we immediately agreed. We want to tell everyone how difficult it is sometimes to adopt and raise a child, "says Christel Van de Voorde. "It is not just rose scent and moonshine."

Today, Lumos and the British Embassy in Panama brought together global and regional child protection experts to discuss strategies to tackle the institutionalisation of children across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It comes as Lumos, the international children’s rights organisation founded by J.K. Rowling, expands its work within the LAC region, where an estimated 240,000 children continue to live in institutional care. [1].

Hosted in partnership with the British Ambassador to Panama, His Excellency Damion Potter, the event highlighted emerging good practice across the region, and outlined what steps must be taken to transform care for the most vulnerable children.Speakers and panellists in attendance included youth advocates, academics, civil society representatives and delegates from regional and global child rights agencies.

Georgette Mulheir, CEO of Lumos, said:

“Institutional care puts children at an increased risk of violence, abuse and neglect. However, examples from around world show that reform is possible, cost-effective and delivers better outcomes for children, even in the most challenging of circumstances.

We are delighted to welcome today’s esteemed group of experts and advocates to share progress, strengthen ties, and consider how we can collectively build upon recent successes in transforming care across the region.”