In the raw and unflinching drama Earth Mama, Olympian-turned-director Savanah Leaf centres a woman fighting to get her kids out of an oppressive system

Eleven years ago Savanah Leaf competed at the London games as a member of Team GB’s first ever Olympic volleyball team. But to hear the London-born, Oakland-raised film-maker tell it now, that was nothing compared to the pressure of making her first feature film. “It was really tough,” she says to the Guardian. “At times I was looking around like, damn, how are we going to finish today?”

That A24-stamped indie – Earth Mama – hits US theaters this weekend after a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival. And, well, “tough” is definitely one way to sum up this 100-minute heart render. Another: Gia, a pregnant single mother, is straining to recover from past drug use and the two small children put in foster care as a result, and barely has strength remaining to keep pushing.

Gia is bogged down inside a crappy apartment with her call-girl sister, stuck working a soul-crushing job at a mall portrait studio staging portraits with newborns and young moms. She has to endure case workers giving her a hard time about being late to supervised visitations, and for not sacrificing enough time to participate in reunification programs. She seems fated to end up like too many Black woman left to fend for themselves in Oakland’s concrete jungle. And yet she keeps going. “She’s definitely an Olympian, too” says Tia Nomore, who plays Gia. “A street Olympian. Shorty is jumpin’ through hoops, OK? She’s absolutely persevering.”

The Dutch child protection system uses the term 'acceptable period'. This concerns the supervision order (Article 1:255 paragraph sub b BW: period in which work can be done on home placement after a supervision order) and the termination of parental authority (Article 1:266 BW: period before the authority of a parent can possibly be terminated). The 'acceptable period' is associated by some with intercountry adoption. It is claimed that this period has its origins in the UN Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children from 2009. These guidelines, which are not legally binding, are said to have been influenced by the international pro-adoption lobby, in order to stimulate the intercountry adoption of children.

The Guidelines for Alternative Care elaborate in particular, but not exclusively, the right to special protection and assistance for children in alternative forms of care as included in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 20). The starting point is that every effort should be made to have children grow up with their biological parents or caregivers, in their own environment and culture (see also Article 30). If this is not possible or not in the best interests of the child, stable and permanent solutions must be sought within an appropriate period (elsewhere in the guidelines referred to as a 'reasonable period'). The guidelines mention adoption and kafalah under Islamic law. If this is not possible, other long-term options, such as foster care, appropriate residential care or informal care ( extended family ), must be considered.

Those who link the 'acceptable period' to intercountry adoption believe that the emphasis in the guidelines on an 'appropriate period' and 'stable and definitive solutions' is the result of the international pro-adoption lobby. Whether and, if so, to what extent this lobby has influenced the text of the guidelines is unknown to us at Defence for Children Netherlands. It is important that the guidelines state that if (domestic or intercountry) adoption is not possible, other appropriate solutions must be considered. In doing so, Article 21 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child must be observed. According to this article, there are various reasons why adoption is not possible. For example, countries may not recognise and/or allow domestic and/or intercountry adoption. It is also possible that the subsidiarity principle included in Article 21(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is not being met (for more information about this concept, see the answer to the question 'What is the subsidiarity principle').

The guidelines do not state anything about the duration of the 'appropriate period'. However, the implementation guide 'Moving Forward' published in 2012 does state that sufficient time must be spent and every effort must be made to return the child and reunite him or her with his or her family. According to the guide, this process could take up to two years. The Dutch articles of law on supervision and termination of parental authority deliberately do not provide precise terms. This is stated in the explanatory memorandum to those articles dating from 2009. Since the introduction of the articles in 2015, guidelines from the Netherlands Youth Institute (NJi) and three professional associations have advised using terms of six months to one year. There is currently a lot of commotion about this. That is why these guidelines are now being examined.

The Guidelines for Alternative Care for Children do not interfere with the provisions of Article 21 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. They also do not elaborate on the concept of 'appropriate period'. As such, they do not form the basis for the interpretation of the Dutch legal term 'acceptable period'.

The Search Squad uses old-fashioned snooping skills to bring families together.

By Danielle Campoamor

One Facebook group is showing the true power of social media by helping people find the missing pieces of their lives.

A group named Search Squad uses old-fashioned snooping skills and connections on the social media app Facebook to help reunite family members around the world who have been separated by either adoption or other factors.

The group, which is volunteer-based and who call themselves 'Search Angels', say that everything they do is free of charge. To date, the group has helped thousands of people learn more about who they are, where they came from and — perhaps most importantly — complete their forever families.

A change in the law has contributed to more Danish children being forcibly adopted, writes Kristeligt Dagblad.

In 2022, the Danish Appeals Board released eight more children for forced adoption nationwide than the year before.
 

This is shown in an extract from the Danish Appeals Authority's case processing system according to Kristeligt Dagblad.

We see that there are recommendations for forced adoption, even if the parents of placed children comply with all agreements on contact and have good contact

BITTEN KJÆRSGAARD, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY

A total of 37 children were forcibly adopted in 2022 compared to 29 in 2021.

Clifford Chance Badea and STOICA & Associații law firms were issued a final ruling to cancel one of the largest fines imposed in recent years by the Competition Council, amounting to EUR 13.5 million, in an investigation into an alleged abuse of a dominant position.

The case brought together the legal team of Orange Romania including Milena Horvat, Legal Affairs and Corporate Director și Andrei Brujan, Corporate and Technology Legal Division Manager, and one of the best lawyers in Romania.

On behalf of the STOICA & Associates law firm, the team was coordinated by Emeritus Professor, PhD, Valeriu Stoica and included Senior Partner Dan-Rareș Răducanu and Senior Associate Constantin – Cosmin Pintilie.

On behalf of the Clifford Chance Badea law firm, the team was coordinated by Counsel Simona Neagu, Head of the Bucharest Litigation practice and included Of Counsel Eleonora Udroiu, coordinator of the Competition practice, and Senior Associate Vicu Buzac. 

Hapless parents and relatives are compelled to wait on the road in front of an NGO working for protection of children and their rights. Most of the families are from North India who migrated to Bengaluru for livelihood. They expressed concern over the delay in getting their children released from the NGO after completing the due process as per the law.

They complain that there is no proper designated space to wait. They have to rush to a nearby public toilet to attend nature’s call. The parents, most of them are daily wagers, have to abstain from work as they wait, thus losing the wages.
 

“I have been visiting this NGO for the last three days. They told me that they could not release my nephew who was brought by the police while he was at a playground. His mother works as a Group D employee at a private hospital. She has to work without fail to make ends meet. So, I have come here to get my nephew released,’’ said Radha (name changed), a resident of Kamakshipalya.
 

Rohan Singh Rajput, a relative of four children from Uttar Pradesh, was seen waiting near the NGO. He alleged that a volunteer at Majestic railway station caught the children when he had gone to buy the train ticket. “The volunteer assured me the enquiry would be over in 10 minutes. It all happened on Thursday morning. Today is Monday. All these days, the people at the NGO neither expedited the release of my relatives nor gave proper guidance,’’ he said. He blamed the volunteers of the NGO for not letting him take his relatives after producing all the documents. “I do not know why they kept us waiting for more than five days. I did not go to work all these days. How to make ends meet?’’ he asks.

Surrogacy is more popular than adoption in Sweden. The government coalition is divided on how to deal with this new challenge.

Childless Swedes chose surrogacy over adoption to get a child, says Annika Strandhäll. She is an MP for Sweden’s largest party, the Social Democrats, and chairman of Sweden’s Social Democratic Women’s Federation. Strandhäll opposes the practice, likening it to prostitution, trafficking, and organ trade. She, therefore, wants to forbid women to carry a baby for someone else.

Surrogacy became a fierce debate in Swedish society after a celebrity spoke in the media about how he and his husband got a child through surrogacy in the United States.

Currently, Sweden does not know legislation regarding surrogacy. In theory, it is thus possible to ask women around you to carry a child for you altruistically. However, in practice, many Swedes travel abroad to get their child in the commercial sector. Various agencies in Sweden can connect intended parents with clinics abroad. Although there are no official statistics about surrogacy in Sweden, the Swedish Authority for Family Law and Parental Support acknowledges that the number is growing.

And that has to stop, says Strandhäll, whose party ended up in opposition last year after ruling for eight years. She compares commercial surrogacy to prostitution, and does not believe in altruistic surrogacy either. “There aren’t any middle-class mothers who come forward as surrogate mothers”, she says to the Swedish daily Aftonbladet. “It is poor women who are often already exploited and who do this for financial reasons.”

After retiring from swimming, the Paralympian began researching her origins. This led her to her birth family – and to uncover the shocking difficulties facing other disabled children

As a child, Ellie Simmonds would fantasise about what her birth mother might be like. In her wildest visions, maybe her birth mother was a rock star, or famous, or extraordinary in some other way. “You never think as a seven-, eight-year-old, that you’re actually going to meet your birth mum,” she says. It turns out that the woman knew exactly who the baby she had given up was – and that the child was the famous and extraordinary one. When Simmonds, then just 13, competed at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, and won two gold medals for swimming, her birth mother put the pieces together: her name, her age, the details of her life that were becoming public. In February this year, they met for the first time.

Simmonds has made a powerful and very moving documentary – I sobbed throughout – about tracing her birth family, which also highlights the shocking difficulties faced by disabled children waiting to be adopted. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case for Simmonds, who has achondroplasia, or dwarfism – she was adopted within months of being born – but it remains the reality for many other children.

She began the process just over a year ago; the time felt right. Her retirement in 2021 after the Tokyo Paralympics – a career that saw her win five Paralympic gold medals and countless world titles, and break several records – had given her the time and space to think about life beyond swimming. But the end of her career as an athlete when she was still in her 20s (she is now 28) had also shaken her identity. If she wasn’t a swimmer and champion Paralympian, she thought, then who was she? It was a question that became even harder to answer when so much of her own life was a mystery to her.

Where did her warmth and chattiness, or her beautiful blue eyes – all strikingly radiant characteristics when we meet in a rather dull office – come from? Her love of animals, especially horses? Her competitiveness and determination? Mostly: what was going on for her birth mother that meant she decided, when her daughter was just two days old, to place her for adoption?

Transnational adoptions are again up for debate. But the sensitive subject contains a number of diverse destinies. Some are adopted from Germany, others from Sri Lanka, China or Iran. Some were adopted illegally, others in accordance with the rules. And some are angry, while others are grateful. Here, five adoptees are allowed to tell their story as they have experienced it - for better and for worse

I am insanely grateful

Ida Rekha, 33 years old, adopted from Sri Lanka

I was born in 1989. I was 17 days old when I came from Colombo in Sri Lanka to Anholt in Denmark. My biological father ran away when my mother became pregnant, and since she could not provide for me herself, she did what she could to give me a better life.
Many people ask me when it dawned on me that I was adopted. After all, I have always been able to see that my skin color was different from that of my parents. That I looked different. But when I went around with my friends at school, I never thought that I stood out. And unlike many others, I did not have to be told that I was different.

My parents have always talked a lot about the sensitive subjects - probably especially because my father himself is adopted, just in Denmark. His mother was inappropriately young when she gave birth to him, but my father actually, when he became an adult himself, found his own biological mother. This is probably a significant part of the explanation for the fact that I have always felt that there was room for that curiosity about what one comes from, without it being taken as an expression that I wanted a different or a better family .

On May 11th Korea marked the 18th anniversary of Adoption Day, intended to raise public awareness about adoption, promote a positive adoption culture, and encourage domestic adoption of children in need while safeguarding their rights and interests. For nearly two decades, the government has attempted to achieve these important goals through the enactment of new policies, but unanticipated barriers have limited their success.

With the longest-running adoption program in the world, Korea sent out more than 200,000 children between 1953 and 2022. Inter-country adoption was devised after the Korean War as a method of rescuing war orphans, but the demand for Korean children increased exponentially in the 1970s, reaching its highest point in the 1980s. In 1985 alone, 8,837 Korean children left for inter-country adoption, amounting to 1.35 percent of live births or more than one in 75 children, the highest rate anywhere in the world.

Inter-country adoptions declined in 2013 by two-thirds from their peak in 2004, due to a shortage of available children. This phenomenon became more salient during the COVID-19 pandemic because nations closed their borders for international travel. In this context, the pandemic functioned as a de facto moratorium on inter-country adoption. Nevertheless, inter-country adoption from Korea increased by nearly five percent from 2019 to 2020, becoming the third-largest source that year.

Inter-country adoption of Korean children has continued alongside alarmingly low fertility rates. According to Statistics Korea, the country's fertility rate fell to 0.78 in 2022 and is expected to keep dropping. A group of children's rights activists and the overseas Korean adoptee community ascribe the perpetuation of inter-country adoption to limited and often absent government interference, profit-driven practices, and powerful agencies influencing policies. However, some scholars (including this author) suggest that it may also stem from the country's collective wariness of differences. Those perceived as a threat to this moral order are thought as being unworthy of public assistance.

Historically, the Korean government seems to have used inter-country adoption programs as a mechanism for social exclusion. First, biracial children― those conceived of temporary relationships between Korean women and American servicemen or U.N. soldiers ― were sent abroad, because they were considered to be "racially contaminated" and thus considered unfit for Korean society. Between the late 1950s and the mid-1970s, close to 4,500 biracial children were sent abroad for adoption.

Gradually, Korean children, mostly born out of wedlock, have been offered for inter-country adoption. Korea underwent rapid industrialization in the 1960s, utilizing a labor force of young single women between the ages of 15 and 25. These women moved to large cities to financially support their families back home while working for exploitative wages. However, a lack of social support, inadequate sex education that emphasized women's chastity, and the financial burden of abortion led them to become unwed mothers, many of whom gave up their babies for adoption.

Lastly, children with disabilities or health challenges are more likely to be offered for inter-country adoption than domestic adoption. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, from 2018-2020, 1,025 infants were adopted domestically, with only 103 of them having a reported health condition. In contrast, during the same period, 852 children were placed for inter-country adoption with 341 of them having health issues. Historically, disability has been viewed as a moral problem, bringing disgrace to the family. Furthermore, these differences often instigate societal fear and discomfort. Therefore, it is considered the best for them to be removed from Korean society through adoption abroad.

Inter-country adoption has persisted in Korea for 70 years. If the government truly wants to terminate inter-country adoption, it needs to identify cultural and social barriers and develop a child welfare system indigenous to and appropriate for Korean culture. The system must recognize children of all backgrounds as relevant to the country and worthy of public assistance. Without this system in place, whenever "unfit" children are born, the Korean government will continue to look for quick solutions outside the country without making substantial efforts to solve them domestically. The result will be a continued legacy of perpetual dependency on inter-country adoption.


Ma Kyung-hee (kyungheem@daum.net) is a researcher and editor specializing in mental health.