Adopterad Fran Srilanka/ Indien Till Sverige

Eight adoptees sued the State for negligence in their adoption from Sri Lanka in the 1980s. They argue that the government did not intervene even though it should have known about the many abuses. The adoptees want the government to recognize this negligence and reimburse the costs they incurred to trace their origins.

"We want the judge to determine that the government is liable for the damage suffered by these eight people," says lawyer Mark de Hek, who started the legal proceedings on behalf of the victims. The hope is that there will also be justice for other adoptees in a similar situation.

Child theft and baby farming

It has been known for decades that many things went wrong with adoptions from Sri Lanka. The first signals date from 1979. Since then, stories have regularly emerged about incorrect files, baby theft, so-called baby farms and human trafficking. In 1987, a Sri Lankan study found that the vast majority of adoptions were illegal.

The fact that the Dutch state was repeatedly informed of abuses from Sri Lanka from the early 1980s was evident from the report of the Joustra committee in 2021. At the request of the government, that committee investigated the role of the Netherlands in international adoption. The abuses included baby farming and child theft. According to the committee, the Netherlands did not intervene and the government did not come up with solutions.

"Was my mother paid to give me up?" Looking for government recognition for mistakes in adoption


Eight adoptees from Sri Lanka are holding the Dutch state liable for abuses during their adoptions. Sam van den Haak, one of them, explains the extent of the damage and the questions she has struggled with all her life.

Anneke StoffelenJuly 25, 2023, 6:43 PM
In a personal interview in the newspaper, it is customary to mention the age of the interviewee. In the case of Sam van den Haak, who was adopted from Sri Lanka, this is not easy. If you base it on the date in her Dutch passport, she would have celebrated her 42nd birthday at the beginning of this month. Or do you, like Van den Haak herself, follow the version of her later found Sri Lankan grandmother? She said that her granddaughter was born on December 17, 1981. In that case, Sam van den Haak is now 41.

A date of birth is an obvious detail for others that you rarely think about. For Van den Haak it has become a crucial part of her story. 'Every time I request a repeat prescription from the pharmacy, I give an incorrect date of birth and am reminded that I am a victim of adoption fraud.'

Van den Haak published a book about that turbulent history last year with the telling title Not born on my birthday. Together with seven other adoptees, she is now starting a collective lawsuit against the Dutch state. The adoptees argue that the government, as supervisor, is liable for the abuses during their adoptions, which were arranged by the Flash foundation. Since the late 1970s, Flash has been publicly associated with baby trafficking and adoption fraud. But according to lawyer Mark de Hek, the government deliberately looked the other way.

About the author
Anneke Stoffelen is a reporter for de Volkskrant and writes, among other things, about the multicultural society. For the podcast series A Kind of God, she investigated how people end up in a cult.

As a result, some of the Sri Lankan adoptees will probably never manage to find their biological family again. The adoption files are missing all kinds of basic documents, such as waivers from the biological mothers. Personal data is also regularly falsified.

Little information in adoption file
When requesting her adoption file, Sam van den Haak discovered that 'there's actually not much in it'. It does not contain the details of her biological mother, let alone a document in which the woman declares that she is renouncing her daughter. Her birth certificate is also missing. Strangely enough, her Dutch surname is already mentioned in the Sri Lankan passport with which the adoption was arranged at the time. "So that must have been forged," Van den Haak concludes. On the handwritten document, the numbers have been scribbled with a pen, so it is not entirely clear which day of birth is meant - in her adoption file it was April 7, in her later Dutch passport it was July 4.

Also missing is a report from the Child Protection Council showing that her adoptive parents were screened before they were allowed to pick her up from Colombo as a toddler. That's strange, Van den Haak thinks, because the couple who adopted her already had three sons, two of whom have severe multiple disabilities. "In the 1980s, relatively little was known about the consequences of adoption, but was there no one who could have imagined that there was no room in this family for another child with special care needs?" she wonders.

As a lively little child, she ended up in a Hoorn household where, in her memory, it always had to be quiet. 'I used to, and still do, prefer to do things together with someone else. But in our family it was always every man for himself. One was doing a puzzle and the other was reading the newspaper. I didn't fit in there at all.'

Sexual abuse
Van den Haak saw little love in the marriage of her adoptive parents. In her opinion, this was the reason why her adoptive father sexually abused her from the age of 6 onwards. As a girl who craved attention and affirmation, she often crawled into her adoptive parents' bed in the morning, looking for cuddles. Once her adoptive mother left, those hugs turned into "things an adult should never do to a child."

For years, Van den Haak was under the impression that this was normal. 'I thought this was the way you, as a parent and child, show that you love each other. Until I was 14 and started having boyfriends, and discovered that you're not supposed to do these things with family.' Years later, when she wanted to file a report, she heard from the police that the case had already expired. Her adoptive father has always denied the abuse. Her adoptive mother kept a low profile and did not support her daughter. Van den Haak therefore no longer has contact with them.

Her unhappy childhood made the question that almost all adoptees ask themselves at some point even more pressing: how would my life have turned out if I had not ended up in a strange country, with strange parents?

Address on a note
Van den Haak traveled to Sri Lanka for the first time in his twenties. An intermediary there initially had bad news: based on the scant information in her adoption papers, it seemed impossible to find her biological family. But there was a blessing in disguise: when her biological mother gave her daughter to the Dutch in 1984, she had placed a note in the hands of Van den Haak's adoptive mother with her address scribbled on it. The note had been kept all these years. And although her biological mother died of cancer in the 1980s, Van den Haak was able to use that information to find her grandmother, plus a brother and a sister.

'At the first meeting I was sceptical. The intermediary who had helped me with the search told me that relatives of adoptees often ask for money very quickly. So I had planned to keep an appropriate distance. But when I arrived at that little old house without electricity, it turned out that my brother was even more skeptical. The first thing he did was take my hand and study my fingers. I thought: what is he doing? Until he discovered the scar he was looking for. “Nangi,” he said, which means little sister.”

The scar was proof to him that Sam was who she said he was, he said later. 'He could still remember me helping him cut bamboo as a small child. I then had to hold the stems. He once accidentally chopped my finger, that's what left the scar.'

In the passport photos he showed of their mother, she immediately recognized the woman from the photos from her own scrapbook, taken by her adoptive parents. Then all doubts were gone.

The meeting with her brother and grandmother was warm (with her sister, whom she only meets later, the contact is more complicated). This caused Van den Haak to wonder how necessary it actually was for her to be given up, if there were family members who would have wanted to care for her. Her grandmother, now deceased, said that her mother harbored a secret. She is said to have feared that she would be expelled from their village if the truth about her daughter's conception came out.

Compensation
But Van den Haak was never able to unravel the complete story surrounding her adoption. 'Was my mother paid to give me up, temporarily or otherwise? I do not know. My file does show that my adoption cost more than 10,000 guilders, a large part of which went to mediation organizations.'

In the upcoming lawsuit, adoptees will demand compensation for the costs they have had to incur in the search for their family - searches that in many cases have not led to anything. In addition, it will also involve compensation for the psychological suffering: growing up in an environment in which you find little recognition and the feelings of uprooting that follow some people for the rest of their lives.

Yet Van den Haak wants to emphasize that as far as she is concerned, it is not an exclusively gloomy story. 'I've been through a lot and there was a period when I didn't even want to live anymore. But my story shows that you can get out of it.' As a former Dutch teacher, she has written her book especially in understandable language for young people, so that they may find hope in it when they are going through a difficult time. 'I believe that you can always choose to make something of your life. I am now very happy with my son. I am also proud of the company I founded, with which I organize pub quizzes for companies.'

For her, the lawsuit is not about compensation. However, she does want the government to acknowledge the mistakes of the past, so that these problems are prevented in the future. And what would be the best and most important outcome for Van den Haak: that a passport would one day be arranged for her with her real date of birth in it.

Emma Harriet Nicholson, Baroness of Winterbourne, is a distinguished figure whose lifelong commitment to public service and advocacy has left an indelible mark on British politics and international affairs. With an illustrious career spanning several decades, Baroness Nicholson’s accomplishments have been characterized by her tireless dedication to human rights, social justice, and gender equality. Her unwavering commitment to these causes has earned her international recognition and respect. Born on October 16, 1941, in Oxford, England, Emma Harriet Nicholson was raised in a family that valued education, philanthropy, and public service. She attended St Mary’s Wantage School, continuing her education at Royal Academy of Music, where she studied piano, cello, and singing and gained LRAM and ARCM.. Her academic pursuits laid the foundation for her future endeavors in politics and diplomacy. Baroness Nicholson’s political career took off when she became a member of the Conservative Party. Her time in the House of Lords was marked by her dedicated work on a variety of issues, including education, social welfare, and healthcare. Her efforts to improve the lives of her constituents were widely recognized and appreciated. One of the defining moments of Baroness Nicholson’s career came when she turned her attention to international affairs and human rights. In 1997, she was appointed as a member of the UK Parliament. This appointment marked the beginning of her remarkable journey as a champion for human rights on the global stage. Baroness Nicholson’s passion for human rights and social justice led her to focus on the plight of vulnerable communities, especially women and children in conflict zones and regions affected by humanitarian crises. She became a leading voice in advocating for the rights of these marginalized populations and spearheaded numerous initiatives to provide them with support and assistance.

One of the most significant achievements of Baroness Nicholson’s career was her instrumental role in establishing the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, also she was  appointed as parliamentary undersecretary for foreign affairs. She chaired the Select Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict in 2015, and before that, in 2011, she was appointed to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. Baroness Nicholson has monitored over 34 elections in different countries, including Yemen and Iraq. She tirelessly campaigned against this heinous crime, raising awareness about its prevalence and advocating for stronger legislation to combat it. Her efforts were crucial in shaping the UK’s response to human trafficking and modern slavery, and her work continues to inspire others to take action. In addition to her parliamentary work, Baroness Nicholson has held several prominent positions in international organizations. She served as Vice-President of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009, where she worked on issues related to foreign affairs and human rights as President of the Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, and Common Defence and Security Policy; and Rapporteur for Romania, Iraq, and Kashmir. Her advocacy for gender equality and women’s empowerment was particularly noteworthy during her tenure. She also served as a Member of the European Parliament for the South East England constituency from 1999 to 2009.Baroness Nicholson’s commitment to human rights and social justice has taken her to some of the most challenging and dangerous regions in the world. She has been at the forefront of efforts to support communities affected by conflicts in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Her work in these areas has involved providing humanitarian aid, promoting peace and reconciliation, and advocating for the rights of those affected by war and violence. In recognition of her outstanding contributions to human rights and international diplomacy, Baroness Nicholson was appointed as a Life Peer in1997, granting her a seat in the House of Lords. As Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, she continued to champion causes close to her heart and to leverage her position to effect meaningful change. Her relentless pursuit of justice and equality has earned her widespread admiration and respect from colleagues, constituents, and human rights activists across the globe. Baroness Nicholson’s dedication to women’s rights has been a cornerstone of her advocacy. She firmly believes that empowering women and promoting equal opportunity are not only moral imperatives but also key drivers of social and economic progress. Throughout her career, she has worked tirelessly to ensure that women’s voices are heard and their rights protected. She has been a leading advocate for initiatives that address gender-based violence, promote women’s education, and increase women’s political participation. Furthermore, Baroness Nicholson’s efforts to combat poverty and improve healthcare have been instrumental in bringing about positive change in many communities. She has been actively involved in initiatives aimed at eradicating poverty, providing access to clean water and sanitation, and improving healthcare services in underprivileged areas. Her work in this regard has been recognized by numerous organizations, including honorary fellowships and awards for her outstanding humanitarian efforts. Baroness Nicholson’s passion for human rights and her unwavering commitment to making a difference extend beyond her political and diplomatic roles. She has been actively involved in numerous charitable organizations and foundations that focus on issues such as child protection, disability rights, and refugee support. Her philanthropic endeavors have touched the lives of countless individuals and have helped make the world a better place for those in need. As a testament to her exceptional contributions, Baroness Nicholson has received numerous accolades throughout her career. In 2000, she was appointed as a Dame Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II for her humanitarian work. She has also been awarded the Freedom of the City of London and holds honorary doctorates from several universities. Baroness Nicholson’s impact and influence continue to resonate in the political, diplomatic, and humanitarian spheres. Her dedication, resilience, and unwavering commitment to human rights serve as an inspiration to current and future generations of activists and change-makers. Her legacy is one of compassion, integrity, and a relentless pursuit of justice. As we reflect on the remarkable achievements and professional career of Emma Harriet Nicholson, Baroness of Winterbourne, we are reminded of the power of one individual to make a significant difference in the lives of others. Her tireless efforts to promote human rights, social justice, and gender equality have left an indelible mark on the global stage. The world is undoubtedly a better place because of her unwavering commitment and selfless dedication to creating a more just and equitable society for all.

By Ovidiu Stanica

Dutch woman Truus Kuijpers linked at least three people adopted from Chile as young children to the wrong biological family. She wrongly told a fourth that his biological mother could not be found, Trouw reports based on its own research.

Mirjam Hunze told Trouw how Kuijpers introduced her to a Chilean family and how she found out 20 years later that it wasn’t her actual biological family. The newspaper found two other women with the same experience. A fourth adoptee, Miguel Pacheco, paid Kuijpers 1,000 euros to find his birth mother and never heard from her again. According to Trouw, Kuijpers was already in contact with Pacheco’s birth mother when he contacted her - the woman asked Kuijpers to help track down her adopted son.

Kuijpers ran the children’s home Las Palmas in the Chilean capital of Santiago from 1976 to 2000. She also helped adult adoptees search for their biological family, sometimes even calling adoptees or their adoptive parents to offer her services. She charged varying amounts for these services, even though, in some cases, she had to do no more than check her own records, according to Trouw.

Nearly 850 children lived in Las Palmas until Kuijpers transferred the home to a Chilean foundation in 2000. According to Kuijpers, over 120 of these children were adopted to the Netherlands and she helped around 50 of them look for their biological families.

According to Trouw, several Chilean mothers also accuse Kuijpers of illegal or vague adoption. The newspaper spoke to several mothers who said Kuijpers put their children up for adoption in the Netherlands without their knowledge. Some also accused her of involvement in networks that told mothers in the hospital that their children had died.

The children welcomed by “Village of Peace and Love” were transferred to other centers, a senior judicial source told L’Orient-Le Jour .

Human trafficking, sexual assault, initiation into drugs and alcohol: an association responsible for caring for children exposed to danger or abandoned by their parents, "Village of Peace and Love", located in Mansouriyé in the Metn, was closed and sealed by Joëlle Abou Haïdar, single criminal judge ruling on minors' cases in Mount Lebanon. 

The magistrate's decision, published Friday and consulted by L'Orient-Le Jour , was taken after observing several "flagrant violations" allegedly committed by the NGO against the children it welcomes. According to the judge's decision, the director of the association is accused of "complicity and participation in a criminal act" for not having informed the court that a man, a member of the association, "sexually harassed two minors, forced them to have sex with him, take drugs and masturbate.” One of the girls even admitted in court that she wanted to die because she could not be in a relationship with the man since he is married.

Justice also accuses the director of the NGO of having taken minors to nightclubs and allowing them to consume alcohol. One of the teenagers, drunk, then attempted suicide. The director also allegedly threatened the children with prison if they informed the court of the practices carried out within the association, and would have verbally attacked them. Minors were also allegedly brought by the person in charge to her home and forced to do the cleaning. The text finally denounces the fact that the NGO does not take “physical, psychological and health security” measures.

Personal profits
In addition to these accusations, the association is also singled out for human trafficking, after having children adopted for financial remuneration. “We open this type of association under the guise of charity but in reality it is mainly to make personal profits,” criticizes a senior judicial source at L’Orient-Le Jour. "The leaders of these associations collect funds from NGOs, they barely spend for the good of the children and pocket the rest of the money", regrets this source, who accuses the association of having "monetized an adoption for several thousand dollars" and falsified papers (including a birth certificate) to make it appear that the child was the family's biological son, in order to facilitate the procedure. A second similar case was going to occur but was finally discovered in time, she continues.

SCPCR members, in a surprise visit to the Bala Sadan, found that the children, the majority belonging to the Yanadi tribe, were anaemic and suffered from skin diseases due to unhygienic conditions in the home

Anguished over the tonsuring of children in Government Bala Sadan (Home for girls), run by the Women Development and Child Welfare (WD&CW) Department, the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) has directed the officials concerned to submit a report on the incident and to conduct a detailed inquiry into the inhuman act, said Commission Chairman Kesali Appa Rao on Saturday.

SCPCR Chairman, along with members T. Adi Lakshmi, B. Padmavathi and G. Seetaram and Child Welfare Committee (CWC) members Raj Kumar and Ravi Bhargav, made a surprise visit to Bala Sadan on Saturday.

WD&CW Regional Joint Director (RJD), K. Uma Rani and NTR District Project Director, G. Uma Devi, said that nine children were tonsured by an assistant (helper), arranged by a visually impaired employee, in the home without informing the higher officials.

The Bala Sadan staff explained that the students were tonsured as they suffered from an infestation of lice and allergies.

Adoptees and other victims of false birth and adoption papers demand truth at National Assembly Library

By Jia H. Jung

Tensions between international adoptees and Korean officials erupted last Monday during a forum held at the National Assembly Library addressing the management of national adoption records.

After experts gave their recommendations on the country's handling of over seven decades of birth and adoption documents, 15 minutes remained for members of the audience to voice concerns and ask questions. The short session ended with a shouting match among attendees and a walkout by a group of 16 international adoptees and a man raised within Korea's orphanage system.

International Korean adoptees comprised at least half the audience of approximately 60 people. Some were residents or reinstated citizens of Korea, while others were in Seoul at the tail end of the 2023 International Korean Adoptee Associations (IKAA) Gathering that had concluded the night before, which had over 450 adoptees in attendance from around the world.

The tensions underscored human rights concerns about pending legislation to allow anonymous births and relinquishment of babies. If passed, the law could perpetuate the systemic lack of identity information already impacting over 200,000 ethnic Koreans sent overseas for adoption at a young age and more than 1 million domestic adoptees and children raised within facilities and the foster system of Korea.

Many arrived ready to express concerns about a bill put forward to allow women to give birth anonymously, but the topic did not arise during the presentations.
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Peter Moller, a Danish Korean adoptee and co-head of the Danish Korean Rights Group, asked how the panelists would parse out true and accurate information from records falsified by private adoption agencies. Moller has been calling for an investigation by Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission into crimes and abuses of the adoption system.

Goh Geum-ran, vice president of Korea's National Center for Rights of the Child (NCRC), said that she acknowledged that there was a limit to what her center could do and that the focus was to try harder and do better at least from this point on.

Women's and children's rights attorney Jeon Min-kyeong, a former NCRC Adoption Policy Team employee, later stood and said that Moller's question had been lost in translation. She asked what would be done about the double archives created by private adoption agencies fabricating "goa hojeok."

"Goa hojeok" are family registrations that adoption agencies and intermediaries began making after the 1950-53 Korean War so children would be more readily adoptable. The practice erased the original identities of children and created paper orphans out of kids who had living biological families.

Danish Korean adoptee Han Boon-young, co-founder of the Korean Adoptee Adoption Research Network, stood at the forum to once again ask how to reconcile double archives, and whether private agencies have been cooperating. "If the original documents aren't transferred, it's not really of help to adoptees," she concluded, to hearty applause.

 

A survivor of the domestic adoption system who spoke up was Cho Min-ho, who was raised entirely in the country's orphanage facilities. At age 4, he lost hold of his mother's hand in a busy marketplace in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. Rather than reuniting him with his family, an adoption company gave him a new name and wrote him onto a false hojeok in 1977, rendering him an orphan viable for the international adoption market.

According to national documents, overseas adoptions in 1978 brought in 3.8 million won ($3,000) each, while placement of a child in facilities housing real and paper orphans generated donations and subsidies of approximately 1.5 million won ($1,185).

Cho was admitted to Chuncheon Pentecostal orphanage, a facility housing approximately 60 children used as a source for Holt International Children's Services, an international adoption agency. When he resisted attempts to send him to the U.K. and the U.S., the agency sent others instead. From 1977 through 1979, Cho saw at least 50 peers shipped overseas with constructed identities, while he stayed back with the hope of reuniting with his family.

"Back then it was so hard," he recalled of the living conditions in an orphanage camp in Wonju. "It was really like a prison. They made us do hard labor, didn't feed us sufficiently. So I just got out of there as soon as I turned 17."

It was 1990 when Cho left the system and got a job at a toothbrush factory. He thinks that there are 1.5 million others in the country like him without real records. He hardly knows a single one of them ― people rarely disclose a lack of original family background out of fear of discrimination in every aspect of society, from education to career to marriage prospects. He believes that an unknown number of this population take their own lives or scrape by on the streets.

Cho implored the panel: "What will you do about this? You need to disclose falsified, inaccurate records and upright them. This isn't just about listing the right names ― it's about a person's fate." He urged the NCRC to hurry up. As those sharing Cho's predicament age, the realistic chances of a reunion with original families grow slim. The gathered adoptees applauded.

 

As the dissatisfaction in the room became audible, panel mediator Kim Hyang-eun of Kosin University said, "We came here to do just what you all are asking. Though our efforts are insufficient, we ask that you understand us, trust us and work with us."

Goh said that the NCRC is trying "even to capture detailed information to the extent that people would find it granular." She said, "All I can say is that we are trying. I understand all of you. Please understand and root for us."

As the meeting was winding down, a woman in the audience stood up and said that adoptees had to understand the reality of historical circumstances ― the falsified records had been created to give children a better chance.

The room filled with shouts in Korean, English and other languages telling her to stop perpetuating lies and criminality. One of the voices was that of Jeon Hyun-suk, who runs theRUTHtable self-help group for "first mothers" who have lost their birth children to adoption.

Jeon was a 21-year-old unwed mother in 1990 when she gave birth to a son and sent him for international adoption. She didn't give up searching for him, and with the help of diverse international adoptee groups, she found her son and reunited with him in Minnesota in 2021.

As a group of 16 international adoptees plus Cho walked out of the auditorium in solidarity and event organizers with uneasy smiles tried to hush the room, Jeon stood again. "After I gave my son away, nobody here cared," she said with tears in her eyes. "It's the adoptees who helped me to find him."

Jeon later told The Korea Times in a phone interview "No matter what the circumstances were at the time, apologies must be made for what happened to the children and there needs to be cooperation to atone for the losses."

An added layer to the forum was that it was hosted by Rep. Kim Mi-ae of the People Power Party (PPP), who is openly pro-adoption. She is a single mother of three adopted children and advises a national adoption family solidarity group. Supporting her at the forum were chairs and associates of the largest facilitators of adoption in modern Korean history, such as Holt, Eastern Social Welfare Society and the Holy Family Adoption Center. None of them spoke.

Rep. Kim was also the assembly member who submitted the "protective birth bill" in 2020 to allow women in difficult circumstances to give birth and relinquish their babies to local governments for registration without disclosing their personal information.

A law was passed on June 30 requiring medical institutions ― not just parents, as had been the case previously ― to register the births of all newborns. The legislation's purpose of assuring the documentation of every Korean-born person's identity is challenged by the prospect of an anonymous birth law.

Adoptees and other victims of falsified records worry that an anonymous birth system will reintroduce a de facto goa hojeok system ― anonymously abandoned children will receive identities assigned by governments, severed from all possibility of ever knowing their background or finding their birth families again. And controversial "baby boxes'' for newborn drop-offs could become more, not less, acceptable.

The anonymous birth bill has regained momentum amid a spate of infanticides across Korea and the discovery of over 2,000 unregistered babies born since 2015, at least 249 of which have been confirmed to have died.

Many Korean conservatives posit no-strings-attached adoption as a measure of reproductive justice for women and the protection of children. Others tout anonymous birth as a solution to Korea's dire population crisis.

However, the goal of increasing the Korean population by any means does not address the needs of individuals separated from their birth parents and lacking access to personal history and family information.

International standards for the protection of children set by the 1995 Hague Adoption Convention deem intercountry adoption to be a last resort. Korea signed the convention 10 years ago but has yet to ratify it, and approximately one child a day continues being sent abroad from Korea. Meanwhile, according to the most recent count posted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 3,437 unadopted children were on record in the Korean orphanage system in 2021.

Attorney Jeon told The Korea Times in a phone interview that another weakness of the anonymous birth bill is that it requires women to decide during their pregnancy that they want to carry out an anonymous birth. "But crises in raising a child can happen at any time after birth," she pointed out.

She said the government needs to offer a full range of reproductive rights and supports for vulnerable women and mothers instead of making a law that further facilitates the abandonment and disposal of children.

As for Cho, who is now creating a children's rights solidarity NGO, he hopes that history will not repeat itself. "I was a kid with a perfectly fine family but by somebody's arbitration, I was written onto a goa hojeok," he told The Korea Times. "I'm past my 40th year searching for my family and no one will help me. I don't even have a name. And they're trying to do it again."

Jia H. Jung is a multimedia journalist. She is an alumna of Columbia Journalism School in New York City and was a 2022-2023 postgraduate fellow of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She is writing a book about her late father, a street child of the Korean War era.

The Center for Children, Law and Ethics combines the interest and involvement of law students, local, national and international advisers, and the well-known scholarship of Director David Smolin. The center facilitates the production of meaningful, influential scholarship, projects and advice in the field of children’s issues.

The mission of the center is to further the welfare and best interests of children locally, nationally and internationally, through working collaboratively with organizations and persons engaged in furthering those ends, and by training students to contribute substantively to the field of children’s issues.

Overview

Foci

• Adoption
• Family Law
• Child Abuse and Neglect
• Juvenile Justice
• Child Labor
• Orphans and Vulnerable Children
• Child Trafficking
• Pediatric Bioethics
• Children’s Rights
• Reproductive Bioethics
• Education

PROJECT AIMS

The rapidly growing refugee crisis sparked by the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 saw Lumos, along with many other child rights protection organisations, shift towards the provision of humanitarian aid. Thanks to the support of both international and local partners and donors, we’ve been able to provide urgent life-changing support to internally displaced families in Ukraine as well as to refugees settling in Moldova.

One such partnership has been the implementation of the “Ukrainian Refugee Crisis Response in Moldova” project, financed by Terre des Hommes Netherlands and started in December 2022. The six-month project had a total budget of just under 200,000 Euros and was designed to support local authorities from four districts – Floreşti, Ialoveni, Glodeni and Teleneşti – in their efforts to provide help and support for refugee children and families hosted by local families. The project’s main objectives were:

• To help refugee children and their families meet their basic and essential needs
• To facilitate appropriate access to educational and healthcare services for refugee children
• To engage these children in community child and youth participation activities
• To strengthen capacities of the national and local public authorities, service providers, frontline specialists and other professionals as well as local NGOs to provide an effective emergency response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.