COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — 

A Danish report on Thursday said adoptions of children from South Korea to Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s was "characterized by systematic illegal behavior" in the Asian country.

These violations, the report said, made it "possible to change information about a child's background and adopt a child without the knowledge of the biological parents."

The report was the latest in a dark chapter of international adoptions. In 2013, the government in Seoul started requiring foreign adoptions to go through family courts. The move ended the decadeslong policy of allowing private agencies to dictate child relinquishments, transfer of custodies and emigration.

The Danish Appeals Board, which supervises international adoptions, said there was "an unfortunate incentive structure where large sums of money were transferred between the Danish and South Korean organizations" over the adoptions.

Norway has already stopped adoption from the Philippines. Now the Swedish authorities are considering doing the same.

Last week it became known that Bufdir recommends a complete halt to all foreign adoptions to Norway.

It also became known that all adoptions from Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines have been stopped.

This happens after a year in which VG has made a number of revelations about illegal adoptions to Norway.

Among other things, VG has told about how babies are sold in the Philippines - and that fake birth certificates are a big problem.

Musician Samuel Vekeman was adopted from Congo as a toddler with a hereditary disease. He made a play about it with Dimitri Leue. “Ban international adoption? No, it saved my life.”

Sam Renascent is the stage name of musician and producer Samuel Vekeman (30), aka “the Antwerp reincarnation of Kanye West and Stromae”. There is a special meaning behind it. “Renascent comes from the Latin verb renascere which means 'to be reborn',” Vekeman explains. “I see my adoption as a rebirth. In Congo I might never have been able to turn my passion into a profession. Here I was given the opportunity to build a new life and I am very grateful for that.”

As a drummer and actor, Vekeman has often appeared on stage with his mentor Dimitri Leue (49). Now the duo is making a theater performance together for the first time. One of the first about adoption in Flanders, they claim. In Loos , in which actresses Clara Cleymans and Inge Paulussen also play, the life of a couple with a fervent desire to have children intertwines with that of a sister and her adopted brother, who take stock after the death of their father. Copywriter Leue talked to numerous adoptive parents and children. At what price can you tear a child away from his homeland? And can the love between parent and child ever truly transcend the blood bond?

It has become a piece that Vekeman would have liked to have seen when he was 16, to better understand why he always felt “between two worlds”. Not from here, but not from there either. When he was 2, he was given up by his parents in Kinshasa. He ended up with a warm family in the Catholic community of Sant'Egidio in Antwerp. The man who took him to Belgium by plane disappeared at the airport with the northern sun ("I was his one-way ticket to Europe"). But otherwise, Vekeman's story bears little resemblance to the abuses that made the news in the autumn, when it emerged that several Ethiopian children had not been voluntarily given up and that there were errors in their files. In anticipation of the new adoption decree, Minister of Welfare Hilde Crevits (CD&V) imposed an intercountry adoption stop .

Dimitri Leue and Samuel Vekeman have worked together before. — © Ksenia Kuleshova

Pune, 27th January 2024: The sun was setting as young Kumari (name changed) settled down on her mat among other children to sleep at the Child Care Institution (aka child shelter) she had come to know as home over the years. Her story, though unique in its details, echoes the haunting refrain of many children within India’s shelters (https://www.punekarnews.in/indias-adoption-paradox-why-thousands-of-eager-familiescant-find-waiting-children/).

Orphaned early on, losing both of her parents to sickness, Kumari biological relatives were unable to look after her so her aunt Nalini (name changed) placed her in a child shelter. Kumar was shuffled from one shelter to another as she grew older. Emotionally, she became detached as she watched other children at the shelter come and go, some of them reunited with biological families and others celebrating their adoption by adoptive families. Eight years went by and nobody ever visited nor came for Kumari, leaving her to wonder if she was truly forgotten by everyone.

 “Almost every day, she’d ask if anyone was going to come for her. Her hopeful eyes searching for a family, a connection,” recalls a caretaker from the institution. Kumari was not placed in the legal adoption pool because she had relatives on paper, even if they never cared for her in real life.

 All over India, stories like Kumari’s reveal a silent, overlooked crisis. In a small village on the outskirts of Maharashtra, two sisters, aged 9 and 11 respectively, found themselves grappling with a heart-wrenching reality. Their laughter, once echoing through their family home, now resonates within the walls of a children’s shelter. Their mother, after the tragic demise of their father, found solace in another relationship and remarried. Hopes of a blended family were quickly shattered when their new stepfather showed no interest in integrating the girls into their new family. While their mother’s visits became sporadic at first, they soon ceased entirely. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and the shelter to a loving home, lack of clear laws around their gradual abandonment has kept them trapped in a system, unable to join the legal adoption pool, and thereby, kept away from the embrace of a family that might cherish and love them 

“People think shelters house only orphans, but the reality is many kids have families, who, though not strictly orphaned, are effectively abandoned. We see cases where families have left the children for care, and do not visit them but either do not want to surrender the child for adoption or are not aware of the fact that there is an option for these children to be adopted by waiting families. It leaves them in a heart-wrenching limbo,” says Protima Sharma, Co-founder and Director of Where Are India’s Children. 

Stopping foreign adoptions deprives children of their right to a family.

A childhood in an institution. Without parents. Without family. Without the unconditional love and the close, secure care that only parents can provide. This will be the reality for many children if Norway stops adoption abroad.

That could also have been the situation for my two boys. They are both adopted from South Africa.

Adoption regulations in South Africa require social workers to first provide advice and guidance with the hope that biological parents or someone else in the family can care for the children.

If this does not lead to success, they try to find adoptive parents in their home country. But in South Africa it is difficult to find parents for children over one year old, children born prematurely and children who have been exposed to drugs during pregnancy.

A Dutch group that reunites children with their birth parents in Bangladesh is fighting to change the international adoption system

It was not long into a research trip to Bangladesh, on behalf of an organisation seeking to reunite children adopted abroad with their birth relatives, when Kana Verheul found herself huddled in a cafe toilet, comparing birthmarks with a stranger.

That trip seven years ago was one of many that Verheul, 47, had taken to the country of her birth since she was 16 years old, travelling back to Bangladesh for the first time as part of a “roots trip” organised by the Dutch government for children such as her, an orphan adopted to the Netherlands as a baby.

But this trip was different. After decades of trying in vain to find her siblings, Verheul joined forces with other people in her situation to set up an organisation called the Shapla Community, creating a network of hundreds of Bangladeshi adoptees raised in the Netherlands. If she could not find her own family, she could at least help others find theirs.

They were adopted as biological sisters but discovered that they share 0.0 per cent of their DNA. The discovery of the sisters Doriet and Mirjam Begemann was the start of their search for the truth. Shocking is that they are not alone. Some countries stop with intercountry adoption altogether. Read here why.

Their adoptive parents had no idea that they were being tricked into the adoption, the sisters tell the Dutch daily Reformatorisch Dagblad. In 1979, there had been an official adoption procedure in court and by the notary.

In addition, a Dutch lawyer looked at the case as well. "Who would have thought that something was wrong?" the sisters point out. "The Indonesians were so sneaky: our parents did not get the translation of our papers until the day they went back to the Netherlands. Just imagine you're in a hot country with two little children; then you want to go home as soon as possible. And how could they have compared the translation with the original documents?"

Later, they discover irregularities in their official documents. Signatures do not match, and birth dates seem to be falsified. Then, a DNA test confirms their fears: the alleged sisters are not biologically related at all.

Abuses

A WOMAN has shared how she discovered she was separated from her twin sister at birth and sold through an illegal adoption ring.

Ano Sartania, 21, was left stunned when she was reunited with her sister Amy thanks to a TikTok video but the real shock came when the pair found out they shared three more siblings.

Ano was reunited with Amy after 19 years after they were separated at birth

The twins born in June 2002, had been sold to an illegal adoption ring in Georgia

They reconnected thanks to a TikTok video after a friend noticed the resemblance

The Council of Europe called on Friday for the establishment of official reparation measures for the millions of children in care who are victims of violence in Europe

“I survived but many children died”: whether they attended Romanian orphanages or Portuguese Catholic schools, mistreated children in Europe must benefit from official reparation measures, the Council of Europe argued on Friday.

In a resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) considers that the 46 member states of the institution - whose main mission is the defense of human rights - must shed light on the acts of child abuse, whether physical, psychological or sexual violence.

It recommends that each country take stock of this violence, recognize the suffering suffered, present an official apology and compensate the victims.

Press release of January 26, 2024

A first in the world of international adoption in France: a judicial investigation opens for adults born in Romania.

Subject : Opening of a preliminary judicial investigation for the following offenses:

• Arrests,
• Kidnappings,
• Sequestration or arbitrary detention of minors under 15 years of age,
• Assistance with the entry, movement or illegal stay of a foreign minor in the territory of a state other than that of origin
• Distance from the family environment

The Racine&dignité group officially announces the opening of a preliminary judicial investigation decided by the Paris Prosecutor concerning illicit trafficking in the context of international adoptions and the arrival on French territory of Romanian children with short-term visas for medical care.