In Vietnam, a remarkable woman has adopted 346 children after overcoming a life of incredible hardship which started when her parents left her on a doorstep as a foundling.

Huynh Tieu Huong, whom national media has dubbed “Mother Theresa of Vietnam” runs a non-profit organization dedicated to the adoption, support, and free offering of loving kindness to foundlings, orphans, and homeless children. Thanks to support given by donors and volunteers, these 346 children are all able to receive education, safe places to sleep and play, and the proper medical care to ensure they reach adulthood healthy.

Huong herself doesn’t really know when she was born. An ID found on her didn’t include a surname, but did say 1968. In the years following the war, An old homeless woman dedicated what was left of her life’s energies toward trying to help Huong find a home—which she did in the hands of a young couple from the city of Vinh Phu.

These turned out to be sexual predators, and it took the neighbors to help her escape a permanent fate of sexual exploitation. Her life then became year after year of vagabondry, until she found a baby girl left on her doorstep when she was about 19 years old.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development has said that after the amendment to Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2015, as many as 2,250 Child adoption orders have been issued by the District Magistrates across the country.
 
The official in the Ministry said when the amendment was introduced in Parliament, there were 997 adoption orders pending with the courts all over the country. He added that after the amendment a total of 858 orders of adoptions were given immediately and as of the 16th of June 2023 the figure stands at 2250.
 
The Amended Juvenile Justice Act came into force in September last year. 
 
Under the amended Act, the District Magistrates, instead of courts have the power to issue adoption orders under Section 61 of the JJ Act. With the Act, the district magistrates have also been empowered to ensure the completion of the adoption process and support children in distress. As per the amended provisions of the Act, any childcare institution will be registered only after considering the recommendations of the District Magistrate.
 
The official said that constant efforts are being made by the Ministry to reduce the pendency of adoption orders, keeping in mind the welfare of the children.

Lesbian mothers raising families in Italy risk being erased from official records and ordered to change the surnames of their children as Giorgia Meloni’s government continues its crackdown on same-sex families.

A magistrate in the northern city of Padua has sent a court a list of 33 lesbian couples registered as parents at the town hall since 2017 and asked judges to strike from birth records the name of the partner who did not give birth. If that partner’s surname has been taken by her child or children, it must be dropped, Valeria Sanzari, the magistrate, said.

The request, which will be ruled on by a court in November, is Sanzari’s response to an Italian government circular in March that ordered town halls to stop

This Select Committee was established on 21 June 2023 to inquire into and report on birth trauma.

Submissions

The committee has received over 4000 submissions.

Out of the 997 adoption cases that had been pending before courts as on September 12, 2022, a total of 858 adoption orders have now been issued by DMs.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development on Tuesday revealed that the highest pendency in adoption cases in the country is in Maharashtra with as many as 329 cases pending till date. There are 174 cases awaiting adoption orders as of September 2022, and another 35 fresh cases which are pending with District Magistrates in the state.

However 329 cases are pending at either Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA) or District Child Protection Unit (DCPU) level, ministry sources have said.

Ministry sources have indicated that the pendency is due to the uncertainty created by the Bombay High Court’s January order, granting an interim stay on the transfer of pending adoption cases from courts to DMs.

On January 11, the Bombay HC directed the state governments not to transfer pending adoption proceedings to DMs, as mandated under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2021. The directive came during the hearing of a writ petition filed by advocates and Kandivli residents Nisha Pandya and Pradeep Pandya that challenged the constitutional validity of the 2021 amendment.

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.