The Delhi Police arrested 10 people, including a doctor, last month.

It was nearly midnight on August 22 when Suresh, a brickmaker travelling to Behror in Rajasthan, woke up at the Sarai Kale Khan ISBT and got the scare of his life. While his wife and three other children were asleep beside him on Platform 2, his six-month-old son was nowhere to be found.

After frantically looking for his child, Suresh approached the nearby Sunlight Colony police station and a case of kidnapping was registered.

What Suresh could not have known that night was that his baby’s disappearance would crack open a larger child trafficking network operating across the country with 10 people, including a doctor, being arrested last month.

During its probe, the police noticed two middle-aged men approaching the sleeping family and leaving the bus terminal with the infant in CCTV camera footage. However, the police could not trace their movements once they stepped outside the ISBT.

No ban on international adoptions

Submitted by:

Committee for Legal Affairs National Council

Reporting:

Gianini Simone

True to its principles, the Red Cross does not represent any political, religious, or ideological beliefs. Nor does it make recommendations on issues subject to referendums. It primarily shares its expertise with the Red Cross Parliamentary Group through the "Standpunkte" information bulletin.

Fall session 2025

Editorial

The overriding principle of the Swiss Red Cross (SRC) is humanity. Wherever the interests of particularly vulnerable people are at stake, the SRC advocates for their concerns. Against this backdrop, the SRC comments on the following topics and on matters up for discussion during the fall session.

Strengthening Switzerland’s global role as a “humanitarian hub”

BRUSSELS — Plans to overhaul the EU’s executive arm will be brought forward by the start of next year at the latest, leaked documents reveal, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pushing for a restructure to make its labyrinthine civil service more efficient and cost-effective.

According to a document seen by POLITICO, the bloc’s budget and public administration chief Piotr Serafin has been tasked with “a large-scale review of the Commission’s organisation and operations, together with an external benchmarking exercise.”

The intention is to deliver a “modern, efficient public administration to deliver on our political priorities,” while also being able to handle “volatility as the new normal” and reduce both complexity “and, where possible, costs.”

Two Commission officials, granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive process, said that alternative models were being considered whereby departments could be merged.

Tobias Hubinette’s findings on illegal international adoptions confirmed by investigations in Seoul and Stockholm

Two decades ago, when Tobias Hubinette began publishing research papers on the dark history of Korea’s overseas adoption program, his work was dismissed as radical, even extremist.

Now, the Swedish adoptee — born in Korea as Lee Sam-dol — is seeing both Seoul and Stockholm acknowledge what he has long maintained.

Earlier this year, state-run commissions in both countries found widespread human rights violations in intercountry adoptions from the 1960s to 1990s, when the adoption of Korean babies to the West was at its peak.

Mirjam Hunze, 53, from Willemsoord, and her Chilean Adoptees Foundation have managed to find a biological mother for the first time. It's a breakthrough in a bizarre story of child theft and kidnapping that began in the 1970s. "I'm deeply moved."

It concerns Anna Nilson from Sweden, who had been searching for her biological mother in Chile for years. A successful DNA test provided the final answer: her mother was found.

This was achieved thanks to the efforts of Mirjam Hunze's foundation. "As a foundation, we are incredibly proud that we managed to travel to Chile ourselves and successfully administer a DNA test," she says.

“From December 20, 2022, to September 1, 2025, a total of 21 children of the state have been adopted by prospective parents," Shimla Deputy Commissioner Anupam Kashyap said.

Two orphaned children, being taken care of under the “Children of the State” programme, were adopted by two couples from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh at Shishu Grah (Infant Home) at Tutikandi in Shimla.

Shimla Deputy Commissioner Anupam Kashyap said, “From December 20, 2022, to September 1, 2025, a total of 21 children of the state have been adopted by prospective parents. The state government’s meaningful efforts are helping give a new life to these children.”

The DC appealed to prosperous members of society to come forward and adopt children growing up in infant homes and child welfare institutions to provide a happy and bright future to these children.

Shimla District Programme Officer Mamta Paul said, “Prospective adoptive parents, who apply, are selected for adoption based on merit. Only those who fulfil the rules and conditions as per the relevant act are eligible for adoption.”

We have been horrified to learn about the scale of the allegations against SOS Children’s Villages in Syria, following reports in the media. Children are at the heart of everything we do, and learning about what these families have been through is truly heartbreaking. They deserve our full support and outrage.

We have been horrified to learn about the scale of the allegations against SOS Children’s Villages in Syria, following reports in the media. Children are at the heart of everything we do, and learning about what these families have been through is truly heartbreaking. They deserve our full support and outrage.  

In the UK, we pride ourselves on having extremely high standards when it comes to supporting the work of our international programme partners.  

During the civil war in Syria, it now appears that those high standards were not being met by the team at SOS Children’s Villages Syria, a national member of the SOS Children’s Villages Federation.  

SOS Children’s Villages is actively supporting family tracing and reunification in Syria, while continuing to support children and young people without parental care. We stand with families searching for their children, and we are committed to uncovering the truth about children who were forcibly separated from their families and placed in care by the former regime. 

During the Syrian war, many children were forcibly and unnecessarily separated from their families by authorities and placed into care, often without proper documentation. In this time of extraordinary instability, these placements reflected the absence of a child protection system grounded in international standards – in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.  

SOS Children’s Villages condemns the former regime’s practices of forcibly separating children from their families and assigning falsified or incorrect names to children. We acknowledge that, under that regime, some children who had been forcibly separated from their families were referred to our care without the necessary documentation. 

We took decisive action in 2018 to halt the placements of children into our care without proper documentation. It is our firm belief that children should never be separated from their families unless it is in their best interest – and only through a documented, child-centered process. 

We recognize that, despite our best intentions, not all decisions made during this time met the high standards to which we hold ourselves. Learning from these shortcomings, we have taken active steps to ensure this does not happen again.

As she does every year, Princess Esméralda of Belgium attended the CARE Belgium gala. This charity gala was held on June 12th in the majestic setting of the Egmont Palace in Brussels to mark the 10th anniversary of this charity event. Prince Laurent joined his aunt to show his support for this worthy cause.

Princess Esmeralda with CARE Belgium patrons at Egmont Palace

Over the years, the CARE Gala has become a must-attend charity event, bringing together patrons and supporters who support the fight against extreme poverty around the world. Princess Esmeralda has supported CARE Belgium since its inception and attends the fundraising gala every year. For this 10th edition of the gala, the organization invited its patrons to the Egmont Palace in Brussels on June 12.

Princess Esméralda of Belgium surrounded by the CARE Belgium team: Daniel Thierry, Baroness Odile de Saint-Marcq and Grégoire Tolstoï (Photo: CARE Belgium)CARE supporters and patrons arrive at Egmont Palace to support the charity's fundraising efforts (Photo: Royal Stories)

Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, the CARE International network's objective at the time was to provide support to a war-torn Europe by sending humanitarian aid packages. The Belgian branch was created in 2014 by a group of people active within the network internationally. CARE Belgium is represented by its president, Daniel Thierry, and its secretary general, Odile de Saint-Marcq.