Coimbatore: The Karumathampatti all-woman police on Wednesday evening arrested a 54-year-old man in Andhra Pradesh for ‘buying’ a seven-day-old baby boy from a child trafficking racket operating out of Bihar. With this, the number of arrested people in connection with the case has gone up to six.

An investigation officer identified the arrested person as S Srirama Chandra Murthy Devarasetti, a truck driver from Indiramma Colony at Devarapalli in Godavari in Andhra Pradesh.

On Thursday, he was produced before a judicial magistrate, who remanded him in judicial custody. He was later lodged in the Coimbatore Central Prison.

The officer said the truck driver had bought the baby boy from a Bihar-based couple, who were running a hotel in Coimbatore, for 2.5 lakh.

According to the officer, H Neha Kumari and her mother H Poonam Devi, of Darbhanga district in Bihar, had kidnapped a baby girl and a baby boy from their state and handed them over to M Maheshkumar, 34, and his wife Anjalikumari, 24, a couple from Bihar who were running a hotel at Appanaickenpatti near Sulur.

Not knowing where your child is. For Yoo-hee (69), this has been the nightmare she has been living in for almost forty years. In 1987, she gave birth to a cloud of a baby in South Korea, but before she could hold it once, her son was taken away. “Against my will,” the mother testifies. An adoption service brought him to Belgium and since then there has been no trace. The Korean woman tells her story for the first time. Desperate, she begs: “I want to be able to hug my son just once before I die.”

Jeroen Bossaert 27-06-24, 06:00

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The Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022, which establishes a regulatory framework for the establishment of a regulatory agency to oversee AHR in the state was passed without a vote in the Dáil yesterday. 

It includes measures which limits surrogacy within the state to couples in which the child will have a “genetic link to at least one intending parent,” and that there is no commercial transaction involved.  

However, the Bill also gives legal recognition to children who were born to surrogate mothers outside of the state and provides a framework for the licensing of commercial agencies engaged in international surrogacy. That recognition and the facilitating of such arrangements, all of which are commercial, in the future is in fact the main burden of the legislation.  The proportion of non-commercial arrangements within Ireland is likely to be a much smaller proportion.

It is notable that very few of the media reports on the passing of the legislation referred to the commercial aspects of international surrogacy, nor to any of the considerable criticisms of the practise. 

That avoidance of the monetary aspects is made easier by the fact that the only reference to the commercial nexus is covered by “reasonable expenses.”

A group of Greenland-born people have sought compensation from Denmark over allegations the state facilitated their illegal adoption by Danish families starting in the 1950s, their lawyer said on Friday.

Greenland was a colony of Denmark but has been autonomous since 1979, and relations between them are shadowed by their past.

Lawyer Mads Pramming told radio P1 that four of his Greenland-born clients have sought compensation of 250,000 kroner ($35,800) each on accusations the Danish authorities knowingly facilitated their adoptions.

"These Greenlanders thought they had placed their children in foster care, but they had not realised that was for life and they would not see their children again," Pramming said in the P1 interview.

In a 2020 interview, former head of Greenland's social services Alfred Dam compared the situation on the island in the 1960s to "self-service."

The case about the closure of international adoption to Denmark is characterized by deeply serious irregularities from both the Danish Appeals Board and the Ministry of Social Affairs. It is unacceptable.

In her response to our chronicle , written by a group of adopters from Danish International Adoption's waiting list on 15 June, Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil expresses sympathy for our situation , which we are happy about.

However, the minister refers to the Danish Appeals Board's criticism of Danish International Adoption from January this year, as well as the Norwegian authorities' recent recommendation to withdraw the permits to mediate adoptions from South Africa.

At the same time that Rosenkrantz-Theil refers to Norway's recommendation, the Norwegian authorities in their  report from June point  to the Danish minister's suspension from January as a contributing factor to their decision. Common to both the Danish and Norwegian authorities is that no one seems to have provided documentation that demonstrates serious errors or challenges in adoptions from South Africa.

Over 60 million children have lost one or both parents throughout the world due to different causes.  The HIV/AIDS pandemic is adding significantly to this number.

We know that children need and have a right to be cared for by their parents and to grow up in a family environment as much as possible.  This has been recognized through years of experience and research as well as formally recognized under national and international laws.  In many countries, however, few or no mechanisms exist to ensure the most appropriate placements, encourage and support guardianship and adoption arrangements, and provide support and monitoring for foster families.  Much needs to be done to prevent separation by supporting families and to develop better care alternatives when separation is inevitable.  National and international actors need to establish and enforce appropriate legal standards to ensure the safety, well-being, and healthy development of children placed in care, including continued efforts towards reunification and permanency.

Establishment and Expansion of the Better Care Network

Recognizing the urgent need for concerted action, UNICEF, the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF) and the Africa Bureau for Sustainable Development of USAID, and Save the Children UK, came together to form the Better Care Network (BCN) in 2003.  This decision was influenced by the Stockholm Conference on Residential Care in May 2003 and the position paper presented there by the Save the Children Alliance, "A Last Resort: The Growing Concern About Children in Residential Care," and by workshops on better care issues in Africa and the United States.  During its first two years, BCN existed as a loose affiliation of organizations exchanging information through a growing listserve.  As the listserve grew, and more information was shared via the network, the organizations mentioned above, together with CARE and the Hope for African Children Initiative (HACI), agreed that BCN served a vital role, and should expand its scope through the creation of a formal secretariat to support its work.  Each organization agreed to contribute resources to strengthen BCN and to serve on its steering committee.  In August 2005, BCN's secretariat was established.  The secretariat is based at UNICEF headquarters and operates with the guidance and direction of the steering committee, which meets once a year.

Wob request on artificial insemination with donor sperm (KID)

BZ Wob decision requesting implementation of sanctions against Russia

Woo request regarding reactions after publication of the Joustra Committee report on intercountry adoption

Wob/Woo request about specific dog seller