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.

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

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.

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 search for the origins of adoptees now gives rise to a real business. Intermediaries offer their services for remuneration, even if it means inventing false parents.

Jessica was born in Sri Lanka in 1982. At the age of two, she was adopted in France by a loving family. She led a happy life until Christmas Eve in 2017. “I learned that adoption trafficking took place in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, right at the time of my adoption,” she explains. . " I also learned that the person who served as an intermediary for my adoption is involved in this traffic. It's a big shock. I feel the need to find my biological family.” People contacted via adoptee groups on Facebook give him the contact details of an intermediary who lives there. She contacts him to ask him to look for his biological mother.

A fake mother

The man demands 350 euros from him for food, accommodation and travel costs. “He says the search will not last more than four days. The time, he says, it took him to find other relatives.” Confident and full of hope, Jessica makes a transfer to him and sends him the information she has on his adoption. The result lived up to his expectations: “After three days, he told me that he found a woman who had information that matched my file.” According to him, it was his aunt.

Upset, Jessica decides to go meet her in Sri Lanka. “It’s a magical moment. We hug each other. We cry. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so many years!” , she remembers. Back in France, Jessica continues to talk with her aunt. But a few weeks later, her husband at the time, overcome with doubt, advised her to request a DNA test. It’s a blow: “The test is negative. She's not my aunt. I’m completely falling apart.”

The search of Chilean adoptees for their biological family threatens to become an impossible mission. Almost all files are missing or possibly destroyed. The woman who arranged many adoptions refused to provide information until her death in January.

More than two hundred Chilean children have been (illegally) adopted in the Netherlands since the early 1970s. The Dutch Truus Kuijpers, who ran the Las Palmas children's home in Santiago for more than 25 years, was involved in about a hundred adoptions.

Adoptees accuse her of child theft . Among other things, she is said to have taken babies from hospitals to Las Palmas for adoption without the knowledge and consent of the mothers. She was interrogated in 2019 by justice in Chile, who are investigating the illegal adoptions of 20,000 children in the 1970s and 1980s.

Many late adopters struggle with serious problems and abuse after their traumatic start in life.

Society does not have a box for Alex Balógh. She is diagnosed with ADHD, emotionally unstable personality disorder and has self-harming behaviour. 

She is homeless, addicted to benzodiazepines, opioids and other prescription drugs. 

But she fits well into one box. A box that can explain why Alex has been fighting with herself for 26 years.

BRUSSELS — A coalition of six child rights NGOs met the European Union’s new leadership this week, aiming to cement child protection and participation as priorities for the bloc in the next five years and beyond.

“Egos and logos stay outside the room. When we are going here to the commissioners … there is no competition”

— Richard Pichler, special representative for external affairs and resources, SOS Children’s Villages International

The NGO leaders from Joining Forces — uniting ChildFund Alliance, Plan International, Save the Children International, SOS Children’s Villages International, Terre des Hommes International Federation, and World Vision International — were in Brussels to meet with the European Commission, European Parliament, and European External Action Service.

Richard Pichler, special representative for external affairs and resources at SOS Children’s Villages International, told Devex that International Partnerships Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen is seeking the group’s input on a number of issues.

An Irish law that gave adopted people the right to access their birth records has led to more than 10,000 applications during its first year of operation.

The Birth Information and Tracing Act, external was designed to end much of the secrecy embedded in Ireland's 70-year-old adoption system.

But for many adoptees waiting decades for answers about their early lives, the new procedures meant delays and frustration.

The legislation created a new family tracing service and throughout the year 5,500 requests to find relatives were submitted.

However, due to the complexity of some searches, 53% of tracing requests are yet to be allocated to staff.

Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and the Family Hilde Crevits is having the adoption landscape and the legal framework surrounding it reformed. This is done after previous recommendations from an expert panel and extensive consultation with all those involved. In the future, stricter supervision will be exercised to ensure that adoptions take place in the interests of the child. For example, there will be a systematic screening of countries of origin and independent experts will also assess adoption processes. It will also no longer be possible to adopt a child without guidance from the adoption service. And prospective parents for adoption and foster care will be better informed about the two options in the future.

“I absolutely believe in a future for intercountry adoption in Flanders, but only with a philosophy in which the interests of the child are absolutely central.  We have worked very hard in recent years with all partners on the necessary changes . Adoption should primarily be a search for a suitable family for a child and not the other way around. We therefore build in extra guarantees that adoptions are carried out correctly and morally. Good guidance is essential. It should not be about more-more-more adoption, but about better-better-better. We also connect adoption and foster care more strongly. In foster care we see many children waiting for foster parents, while in adoption we see just as manyseeing parents waiting for a child. That is why we would like to introduce all people who would like to care for a child to the two options. Ultimately, they can then make their own well-informed choice. In this way we hope to give more children a warm home.” – Flemish Minister of Welfare and Health Hilde Crevits  

To ensure that the interests of the child are absolutely paramount in intercountry adoption and to further eliminate the risk of malpractice, Flemish Minister of Health and Family Hilde Crevits has the Flemish regulations on adoption amended. The reform is based on the recommendations of an expert panel who provided several recommendations on intercountry adoption in mid-2021 and which various working groups started working on in concrete terms. A new screening instrument is already being implemented. The working groups included experienced experts and partners from the adoption sector, as well as adopted people and adoptive parents themselves.

Closer supervision of cooperation with countries of origin

In order to more effectively exclude the risk of malpractice and to carry out intercountry adoption in Flanders in a high-quality manner, the systematic screening of countries of origin will be enshrined in law as a principle and some assignments of the authorities involved will be changed.