Heum finally formally accused of child pornography

NDTV Correspondent | Updated: February 24, 2010 13:23 IST

Chennai: The Chennai police have finally filed a chargesheet against William Heum for digital child pornography. Heum was arrested in November last year under India's new IT Act.

Because the police did not file a chargesheet against him within 90 days of arresting him, Heum was granted bail. The only reason Heum is still in jail is because he did not provide the money required for his bail.

The Chennai police are expected to now challenge the bail granted already to him.

Vietnam's hill tribe children "stolen" for adoption (Feature)

By Simon Parry Feb 23, 2010, 3:08 GMT

Hanoi - High among the jagged limestone peaks that mark Vietnam's border with Laos, Cao Thi Thu squats on the stone floor of her family's hut and pleads, 'Please help bring my daughters home.'

It is more than three years since officials came to Thu's village and offered her the chance to send her daughters - Cao Thi Lan, 3, and Cao Thi Luong, 8 - to be educated in the provincial capital. Instead, they were sold for adoption overseas.

Clutching the only photographs she has of the girls - shots ironically taken at the children's home to send out to prospective adoptive parents abroad - the pain of separation from her daughters is as sharp today as it was on the day she last saw them.

Updated : 7:47 PM, 02/23/2010

Vietnam pledges to ensure children’s rights

Investing in children to exercise their right to live, to be protected, and to grow is investing in the future, said Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung at a ceremony in Hanoi on February 23 to mark the 20th anniversary of Vietnam’s adoption of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Twenty years after approving the Convention, Vietnam is making great effort to implement its socio-economic development plans which will help ensure children’s rights in education and healthcare.

So far, 20 percent of communes and wards around country have achieved their targets in making homes, schools and communities “children-friendly”.

Questions Surface After Haitian Airlift

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Don't suspend inter-country adoption

PHILIP HOLMES

Inter-country adoption is once again receiving a bad press. First we had the arrest of a group of Americans in Haiti who were allegedly trying to remove children from the country without the permission of the authorities. Then in this past week UNICEF in Nepal has endorsed the findings of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference that inter-country adoptions from Nepal should once again be suspended. This they state is in response to the Government of Nepal’s failure to fulfill commitments that it gave to reform adoption practice and improve child protection after it signed the Hague Convention in April 2009.

Of course, aspects of the inter-country adoption process as it stands at the moment are totally unacceptable and if the interests of the child are not central and being ignored then UNICEF and others are duty bound to adopt a robust stance. My concern is that a blanket suspension is an overreaction that will be to the detriment of very many children who will be denied a future and loving homes abroad. Instead they will be condemned to remain in grim “orphanages” or they could face an even worse fate. I also believe, after 10 years of working in grass roots childcare in Nepal, that it is overly simplistic to champion the use of family-based care alternatives in Nepal.

In the joint UNICEF/Terre des Hommes report of August 2008 “Adopting the Rights of the Child” it was stated that over 60 percent of children in orphanages were not true orphans. The contention restated in a BBC interview this week by Joseph Aguettant, Country Representative of Terre des Hommes, is that these children could be better supported within their natural families. The status of “orphan” or otherwise is not the key issue; children do not need to be presented as orphans for inter-country adoption. Being a step child is enough. In this regard, I offer an alternative statistic that is much more relevant than the 60 percent figure.

"Activities of Child Homes Suspicious"

Gorkapatra, 23Feb10

Kathmandu - The Ministry of Women, Child and Social welfare has taken action against one orphan home for presenting fake documents. Only last week the Hague Convention submitted a report saying that the Nepalese orphan homes are not transparent. As a punishment, the said orphan home cannot send any child on international adoption for 2 years.

According to the ministry the Ranibari based orphan home presented fake documents to send a child to USA. The parents of the child who are working as labour in Kathmandu were not aware of this conspiracy. The case was revealed when the parents of the child came looking for their child in the ministry after she went missing from the orphan home.

Minister of MOWCSW Mr. Sarbadev Ojha said, the orphan home was trying to send the child on adoption using fake documents. This action is very positive for the adoption. As there are many irregularities, we are soon coming up with minimum criteria for the orphan homes.

Govt to set up body to check illegal adoption

TNN, Feb 23, 2010, 09.19pm IST

RANCHI: The government has decided to set up a State Adoption Resource Authority to put check on cases of illegal adoption that has plagued Jharkhand for the last 10 years.

The decision was taken at end of a two-day workshop on "Adoption" organized jointly by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), state social welfare department and Action against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) on Tuesday.

State ATSEC convener Sanjay Mishra said since the formation of Jharkhand they had been trying to streamline the process of adoption.

Domestic adoption of children promoted in SKorea

By Channel NewsAsia's Korea Bureau Chief Lim Yun Suk | Posted: 23 February 2010 1159 hrs

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SEOUL: For several years now, the South Korean government has been trying to reduce the number of Korean children sent overseas for adoption. It prefers the children to be adopted in Korea, as a way to stem the country's falling birth rate.

Die verlorene Tochter - Die Geschichte einer Auslandsadoption

Eine WELTWEIT-Reportage von Golineh Atai

Dienstag, 23. Februar 2010, 22.00 - 22.30 Uhr

Montag, 01. März 2010, 14.30 - 15.00 Uhr (Wdh.)

Anisha (l) mit ihrer leiblichen Mutter Fatima.

Nepal's Adoption System Unreliable: US

KIRAN CHAPAGAIN

KATHMANDU, Feb 23: The United States has accused Nepal´s inter-country adoption of being unreliable and cautioned prospective adoptive US parents to find out orphan status of the minors before taking any decision on adoption from Nepal.

"We caution prospective adoptive parents who have yet to choose a country that the inter-country adoption system in Nepal is not yet reliable," said the US State Department in a notice last week.

The US allegation comes after the finding of US Embassy in Kathmandu which found that a child set for adoption was not a true orphan and its biological parents were actively searching for it.