"Adoption is the best thing that happened to me in my life"

Joure (6 Feb) - “My adoption is the best thing that happened to me in my life”, says Jaap Jonkers, candidate member of parliament for the CDA from Joure. On Monday (February 8), the Joustra Committee recommended that the adoption of children from abroad be prohibited for the time being because of 'serious abuses' from the past.

Jaap Jonkers (36) explains why he has difficulty with the committee's conclusion: “In 1985 I was abandoned at a children's home in Bolivia. Without my adoption to the Netherlands I would undoubtedly have grown up under the name Pablo in poverty and without parents. By a lot of luck I ended up with loving parents in Hardenberg and I was baptized as Jaap. Without adoption I might not have lived now. "

He realizes that there have been wrongdoing: “I will be the last to deny that. The injustice done to children through illegal practices such as child trafficking is a violation of human rights. That has to stop. The Joustra Committee's investigation will be thorough. I don't want to question that. But I think the proposed measure is very drastic. You say to children like me: You are no longer welcome in our prosperous society. I have great difficulty with that. In addition, you deprive people who have bad luck and who cannot get pregnant biologically in order to become parents. ”

The number 27 of the CDA looks like any Bolivian: “I have always felt welcome and have never felt less fully Dutch because I was born in South America and clearly look like Pablo instead of Jaap. This has never been an issue. In fact, what happened to me in my early childhood is my main motivation to dedicate myself to society and especially to those who did not get those opportunities or for whom fate was less favorable. ”

Jaap Jonkers wants to emphasize with his story that there are also many positive stories. They are now in danger of being underexposed. “My adoption has changed my life so positively that I think this story should also be heard. The reality is that children like Pablo are still being born whom I wish to grow up as Jaap. I represent that voice, since their voice can only be heard once they have become a Jaap. ”

“I have also seen and experienced closely that a relatively large number of adopted children have to deal with ancestry issues and attachment problems. Much more often than non-adopted Dutch children. Logically, we were certainly 3-0 behind due to the circumstances in which we were born. Our mothers often had an unplanned pregnancy in a country with an insufficiently functioning social safety net, destined for a life in poverty. ”

Nevertheless, Jonkers does not want adoption to be blamed for this: “In my view, this is too blunt. This attachment problem is not a result of adoption but of being abandoned. Adoption determines where you end up, but it does not make it undone. They are two different things. It's very ambivalent. You can be extremely sad and angry about the fact that you have been given up and at the same time happy and grateful for your adoption. ”

Jaap Jonkers thinks that the measures proposed by the Joustra Commission should only apply to those countries where things have gone wrong structurally. Where that is not the case, supervision as it is now must be sufficient to guarantee safety. He hopes that the government can quickly set up watertight supervision for the other countries that will then be temporarily stopped, so that safe adoption from those countries can be possible again.

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