The Madras High Court has constituted a dedicated special bench comprising Justices N Anand Venkatesh and Sunder Mohan to monitor the implementation of provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection Act (JJ Act).

In an order passed on June 16, the division bench accordingly directed the High Court Registry to notify all lawyers' associations both at the Principal seat in Chennai, as well as the Madurai Bench to "enable the Court to take assistance of the Bar, considering the importance of the issue that is going to be dealt with by this Court."

The bench also directed the Director General of Police (DGP), Tamil Nadu, and the DGP of Pondicherry to submit all data on cases under the two Acts pending at the stage of investigation before the police and the cases which are pending before the Court or, the JJ Board, pertaining to thevictims as well as to juveniles in conflict with law.

The bench was constituted following an order to that effect in April this year by the then Acting Chief Justice T Raja.

In the life of adopted Anand Kaper (46), there have always been questions about India, the country where he was born. From the age of eighteen until now, he has visited the country eighteen times. He traveled across the country to meet people, get to know the culture and ultimately to find his family. During the first session of the “Getting to grips with the search landscape” process, Anand shares his knowledge and experience with adoptees who are at the beginning of their search: “I had to do everything surrounding my search alone and I would find it very annoying if others did the same. just have to do.”

Anand is a primary school teacher and co-manager of theinterest groupAn interest group or association is an organization that represents the interests of a specific group. Interest groups in the adoption field, for example, serve adoptees from a certain country. DNA India Adoptees. He lives with his family in Apeldoorn, where he has lived almost all his life. Anand was nine months old when he was adopted from India by his Dutch motheradoptive parentsIn Dutch we use many different words for parents after distance and adoption. Everyone uses their own words for these relationships and gives their own meaning and feelings to these words. This means that two people can use the same word in a different way. INEA used a questionnaire to investigate which words we can best use. As INEA, the expertise center for intercountry adoption, we take this into account. We are aware that every word we ultimately choose can have advantages and disadvantages for everyone personally.. “Together with my wife, who is also adopted from India, I have a twelve-year-old daughter and a ten-year-old son,” he says proudly. “For me, the Netherlands feels like home thanks to them, but India now also feels like home. I remember the first time I stepped off the plane in Mumbai, the place where I was born. I felt the warmth, I smelled the scent and thought: 'home'.”

Anand was eighteen when he returned to India for the first time with his adoptive parents: “At home we had a large folder with all the documents and papers related to my adoption. I was always curious about the country I came from. During our first visit to my native country, we mainly came to get to know the country. It was a three-week trip, during which we visited the orphanage in the last five days where I was taken as a six-day-old baby. I have now been to India seventeen times. My wife has been there twice now and I would like to show it to my daughter and son too, but it is a costly undertaking.”

Follow the paper trail

“I always had a great interest in the country of India and I saw a lot during my travels. During my first travels I was not looking for my family. I went from north to south, from east to west, but always ended up in Mumbai. In 2002 my journey was different than usual. Where I normally immersed myself completely in the culture, the people and the country, this time I decided to go to the hospital where I was born on spec. I had found the name of the hospital in my 'large adoption folder'. Without any expectations, I arrived at the hospital, where I told my story to a nurse and a counselor. I was helped kindly and to my surprise there was a birth register that I was allowed to look at. Taking photos was forbidden, so I copied everything by hand. It was a very special discovery, but I decided not to do anything with it.”

"I wanted to help people. You get that in your genes. We love children. My sister and I consciously chose a teaching job. So I just wanted to help, that should be possible, right?" Sister Gertrudis Kuijpers leaves no doubt about it. Motivated to do something for her fellow man, this Dutch nun ran a children's home in South America in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the less than rosy and poverty-stricken Chile of the 1970s – then under the rule of dictator Pinochet – adoption seems to be the method to offer many children a safe home. "Mother whore, father criminal," Gertrudis Kuijpers explains the often dreary situations. The sisters took care of the children and tried to place them at another address. And so Gertrudis gradually became a household name in Santiago and in the Netherlands.

Criticism

Intercountry adoption has been under discussion for years. Why does the Flemish government spend 1 million euros on 29 adopted children from abroad?

It is May 19, 2014. Chairman Luc Broes and treasurer Adelain Vandenbrouck of the adoption service FIAC are on their way to a conversation with Ariane Van den Berghe, head of the Flemish Center for Adoption (VCA). FIAC had been experiencing financial problems for several years at that time. The two directors turn to the Flemish adoption officer for additional resources, in the hope of saving their service.

The number of intercountry adoptions has been declining sharply for several years: from 244 in 2009 to 61 in 2014, a drop of 75 percent in five years. Not only FIAC, but also the two other intercountry adoption services - Ray of Hope and Het Kleine Mirakel - write in their annual reports that they feel the impact of the declining number of adoptions on their operations and income. Het Kleine Mirakel is experiencing difficulties due to the loss of adoptions from Kazakhstan, while at FIAC adoptions from Ethiopia are disappearing. The financial impact is greatest at Ray of Hope: at that moment it is heading for a deficit of 70,000 euros.

FIAC is being heard: adoption officer Van den Berghe promises to adjust the subsidy scheme in favor of the services. And while intercountry adoption is increasingly being discussed. What convinced the policy to still stand up for the three adoption services?

“For too long, intercountry adoption has been seen as a laudable way to save children in need.” That sentence appears almost at the end of the Joustra committee report (February 2021). There are children in need and there are no good solutions in their own country; they are better off in the rich West. Here are - childless - couples who want to receive them lovingly. Adoption is a form of doing good. 'In this way of thinking there was no room for contradictory or unwelcome judgments that could disrupt this picture.'

In fact, it still works that way, as can be seen from the reconstruction in this newspaper on Saturday of the decision-making in the cabinet in April last year. Perhaps there is room for 'unwelcome' judgments; the risk of abuse is discussed. But the consequence is not drawn. Minister Franc Weerwind wanted to stop adopting children from distant countries, with a phase-out period of five years. But when it turned out that his own party D66 wanted to go through with it, he made a U-turn within a day.

Many adopted children are doing well; they wouldn't want their lives to have turned out differently. And many adoptive parents are of good will and provide a loving home. There is no doubt about that. But is continuing with adoption 'in the interests of the child', as D66 claims?

This decade, 48 million children under the age of five will die from 'preventable causes'. 200 million children suffer from malnutrition, almost 160 million are threatened by drought, 160 million children have to work. More than three-quarters of all children under the age of fourteen grow up with abuse or psychological violence. And the UN children's fund Unicef ​​has even more figures. In the Netherlands, several dozen children are adopted from abroad every year. If that is a form of child protection, as advocates say, it bears no relation to what is needed. On the other hand, there is the risk of abuse - 'until now', said Joustra, and you cannot eliminate this, even if you set up one central mediation organization in the Netherlands.

The entire Joustra committee had not been necessary; Ultimately, D66 and in its wake the cabinet listened to interest groups again. The children currently concerned do not yet have a voice. And there is another group that is not heard: their biological parents - to whom the children are first and foremost entrusted, if necessary with help from people and institutions around them and support from the wealthy West.

NEWS

A plan to phase out intercountry adoption within five years was scrapped at the last minute, according to research by the Nederlands Dagblad. Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the committee that investigated abuses in adoption practice, is surprised about this.

A committee led by Tjibbe Joustra conducted more than a year and a half of research into the practice of intercountry adoption. The conclusions that the former top official presented in February 2021 were clear. Serious abuses occurred in all countries surveyed, such as forgery of documents, child trafficking and child theft. Then-Minister Sander Dekker of Legal Protection immediately pulled the emergency brakes and announced a temporary halt to adoption. A year later, his successor Franc Weerwind decided that adoptions could be resumed, but in a new system and from a limited number of countries.

Joustra and his committee were no longer asked for advice when drawing up this new policy. “No, there has been no contact with us,” he responds. 'I thought that was remarkable. If you have done long research into something, you can also ask such a committee for ideas when making decisions. That is of course not necessary, but from an efficiency point of view it is a good course of action.'

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Network meeting 17 June 2023

Meet & Greet for Haitian adoptees (17+)

Meeting, connecting and sharing Haitian roots

Date : June 17, 2023

Room open : 3:00 pm – 8:00 pm

While denying custody to Ariha’s parents or the Indian Welfare Services, the court relied on two injuries that she had suffered — a head and back injury in April 2021 and a genital injury in September 2021

A district court in Pankow, Germany, has in two judgments dated June 13  denied the custody of Ariha Shah — the 28-month-old — to her biological parents and handed her over to Jugendamt, the German youth services.

Rejecting the application of Dhara and Bhavesh Shah to return the child to them directly or at least hand her over to a third party, the Indian Welfare Services, the court awarded Ariha’s custody to Jugendamt and ruled that “the parents are no longer authorised to decide on the whereabouts of their child”.

On June 3, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi urged the German authorities “to do all that is necessary to send Ariha to India at the earliest, which is also her inalienable right as an Indian national”. Earlier in June, 59 MPs from 19 political parties, including the BJP, Congress, the Left and the Trinamool Congress, had written a joint letter to German Ambassador to India Philipp Ackermann and asked him to do everything possible to ensure that Ariha was repatriated to India at the earliest.

With the Central Youth Welfare Office of Berlin being appointed Ariha’s provisional guardian by the court, it said the authority shall decide on her whereabouts. The parents had initially sought Ariha’s custody but had withdrawn the request. They had then requested that the child be given to the Indian Welfare Services and to restore parental custody in full, with the understanding that she would be moved to the foster home run by Ashok Jain in Ahmedabad. The parents also planned to move back to India with her.

BACKGROUND

Adoption was really no longer possible and would be phased out within five years. There was discussion about it within the Ministry of Justice and Security for months and the lobby was at high speed. The decision to stop was made, but was canceled at the last minute. A reconstruction.

It is March 7, 2022. Minister Franc Weerwind has prepared a draft letter to Parliament about intercountry adoption and is sharing it with other ministries. It states that every intercountry adoption system is more or less susceptible to abuses. Adoption is not a sustainable instrument to protect the interests of children, Weerwind believes. It is a firm decision and will mean that the practice of intercountry adoption will end within five years.

Weerwind (D66) will then be Minister for Legal Protection in the Rutte IV cabinet for just two months. During those months, officials, who have been on this file for much longer, are heading for a definitive freeze on adoption. Although these officials certainly do not all agree on this among themselves and they email back and forth furiously, according to documents that the Nederlands Dagblad has requested.

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Minister Franc Weerwind was determined to stop adoption, but changed course at the last minute after consultation with his own party D66. This is evident from research by the Nederlands Dagblad.

The devastating final report of the committee that investigated intercountry adoption. It now appears that Minister Weerwind wanted to stop adoption, but ultimately did not. image Robin Utrecht

More than a year ago it was a great relief for prospective parents: intercountry adoption became possible again. Minister Franc Weerwind wrote to the House of Representatives about his decision on April 11, 2022: 'For adopted children, growing up in a Dutch family offers an opportunity that they would not otherwise have had.' However, the number of countries from which adoption is allowed has been severely limited.

A month earlier, he had a completely different letter ready, according to documents that the Nederlands Dagblad requested through an appeal to the Open Government Act (WOO). The draft letter actually states that he wants to quit within five years, because the adoption system is prone to abuses. 'Adoption is no longer a sustainable instrument to protect the interests of children.' The risk of abuse simply cannot be removed, Weerwind thought.

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