To increase search options in countries of origin, pilot projects will be supported by INEA from 2023. This support comes specifically from the services that INEA offers regarding Searches & Country Approach. On Wednesday, September 20, 2023, the first design session of the country-specific pilot project Indonesia took place at INEA.

The pilot process starts with country-specific design sessions. This first Indonesia design session was held to map the current search infrastructure with the aim of improving it. During this session the following eight pillars were discussed:  

1. Legislation and Regulations                                                
2. Technological Tools                                                   
3. Culture                                                                                                                                          
4. Best Practices                                                                                                                       
5. Stakeholders         
6. Group Knowledge                                                    
7. Database/Register                      
8. Remaining Aspects 

The design session

For each pillar, general knowledge, risks and opportunities were brainstormed. The results have been inventoried and processed in a report, which will be shared with the participants of the relevant session. Following this successful meeting, follow-up sessions will be scheduled at a time yet to be determined in order to arrive at a concrete pilot project.   

The letter was written when the woman was approaching her 19th birthday.

A woman shared a heartening letter her adopted mother wrote to her biological mother when she was a teen and it made netizens emotional. The woman named Amy took to microblogging website X, previously Twitter, to share a photo of the letter.

The letter stated, “Amy approaches her 19th birthday. She has matriculated, has her driving license and has grown into a beautiful, colourful and talented young woman. She is becoming increasingly independent. Should she ever make the decision to seek you, I want you to know that I have thought of you often over these 19 years and offered many prayers for you, wishing I could communicate the joy she has been to us…her beauty and her wellbeing.”

Amy’s parents had adopted a boy first who they named Tim. When Tim was three years old, they adopted Amy. “I will always be aware of the pain you will have experienced at the separation from your baby and the enormously unselfish decision you made to have her adopted. There will always be deep gratitude to you for she has given both Derek and I unbelievable pride and joy,” she further wrote in the letter.

“Just found an envelope of my adoption documents, much of which I’d never seen before. This letter from my mom to my birth mother… I am a MESS,” Amy wrote as caption.

Thousands of children born to victims of rape during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971 were adopted by foreign families. Now, many want to discover their roots

Jane Radika was searching for answers. Approaching 50, she had become reflective about life and yearned to know more about the circumstances of her adoption, from an orphanage in Bangladesh to a small Cornish town in England.

“I was only five weeks old when I came to the UK, so I have no recollection of it. From what I have learned, my mum gave birth to me in the Mother Teresa orphanage in Dhaka. Unfortunately, I have conflicting information – her name may be on my Bangladeshi birth certificate or it may not. It has been lost, which is heartbreaking, but apparently the orphanage has a copy.”

Jane knew almost nothing of Bangladesh growing up and online searches got her only so far. She felt drawn to visit, but the pandemic and personal circumstance had made the prospect seem distant. One morning, she decided to write a letter to the Guardian:

“Dear Thaslima, I came across some of your articles and wondered if you could help. I was adopted into the UK from Bangladesh in 1972 by a British family. I grew up not knowing anything about my past, except that I was a ‘war baby’ and that my birth mother was a Birangona. I want to know if there are others out there like me. Who are they? Where did they go? Can you help?”

For years, Bibi Hasenaar felt rejected because she was adopted aged four. Then she saw a photo that described her as missing – and began to uncover an astonishing dark history

Bibi Hasenaar has had two lives. One began in November 1976, when she was about four, arriving in the Netherlands to meet her adoptive parents. “I remember it vividly. There’s a photo of us at the airport with other children arriving from Bangladesh – it was published in a Dutch paper.” Her older brother Babu was there, too.

Her other life appears only in fragments. She remembers being in a children’s home with another older brother and having her food stolen by older children. “It was not a nice place to be,” Hasenaar says. Her only memory of their mother is her long black hair. But of the flight out of Bangladesh, she remembers every detail. At her kitchen table in the village of Muiderberg, 30 minutes’ drive east of Amsterdam, sipping hot water and fresh ginger, the 51-year-old slowly recounts the long journey that changed her life.

The police said they have registered a case of conspiracy and illegal trafficking of a human being but have not arrested anyone in the case so far.

The Bhoiwada police on Wednesday registered a case against a Bhiwandi-based couple for illegally adopting a seven-day-old child from an Uttar Pradesh-based woman. The police said the child was born to a woman through an illicit relationship and as she did not want to keep the child, the infant was handed over to the childless couple.

According to the police officials, the three persons who have been booked have been identified as Irshad Rangrez, his wife Tahira and a woman named Rubina Bano.

The police said that Irshad, who is a vegetable vendor, stays with his wife in Bhiwandi while Bano was their neighbour there till four years ago. In 2019, Bano left her Bhiwandi residence and shifted to Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh with her family and she was aware that the couple were not able to conceive a child and were undergoing treatment.

“So on July 18, she allegedly called the couple and informed them that one of her relatives had delivered a child and they wanted to give him away. Bano further asked them to come to UP and take custody of the child immediately,” said an officer.

Natalie Montaño was recently reunited with her biological mother from Colombia. And believes this is yet another illegal adoption case. Now she and other adoption activists are demanding a halt to adoptions while the investigation is ongoing.

- I have been an activist for a while, and was not surprised, because my case is not unique. What has happened in Colombia and other countries is just heartbreaking, says adoption activist and former vice-chairman of Utenlandsadopterte (UTAD), Natalie Montaño to Utrop.

Natalie was born in a clinic in Bogotá, and was then at the Lot Pisingos orphanage for nine months before she was adopted to Norway.

She says that she had no burning desire growing up to find her biological origin. But that she still made an attempt after she turned 18.

- This did not lead to anything. But four years ago I happened to come across a page for adopted Colombians worldwide, and posted without thinking too much about it, she says.

BENGALURU: An adopted son cannot continue to exercise rights as a coparcener in his genitive family, the Kalaburagi bench of the Karnataka high court has observed in a recent judgment.
Dismissing the regular second appeal filed by Bheesmaraja, a resident of Secunderabad, Justice CM Joshi has pointed out that in M Krishna vs M Ramachandra and in another case, the HC had already held that on adoption, the adoptee gets transplanted into the family that adopts him with the same rights as that of a natural-born son, and such transfer of the adopted child severs all his rights with the family from which he was taken in adoption.
 

“It was categorically heldthat he loses the right of succession in genitive family properties,” the judge added.
Son of Pandurangappa Ellur and Radhabai, Bheesmaraja was given in adoption to Hyderabad-based couple P Vishnu and P Shantabai. The adoption deed was executed on December 22, 1974; at that time, Bheesmaraja was 24 years old. His biological father died in 2004.
Thereafter, in the very same year, he moved the Raichur court for partition. He argued that the adoption was without his consent and was prohibited under the provisions of Section 10 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956. His mother, sister and brother resisted his claim, saying he was a consenting party to the adoption, and the suit was dismissed on December 10, 2007. OnJanuary 22, 2010, Bheesmaraja’s appeal, too, was dismissed.
Challenging both orders, he moved the HC, reiterating he is a coparcener in his genitive family and, therefore, had an existing right in family properties.

On the other hand, his mother, brother and sisters, and the children of his deceased brother, Ashokraj, argued that in the Arya Vysya community, to which they belong, adoption of a person aged more than 15 is allowed.

“If we accept the contention of the counsel for the appellant herein, it would lead to a situation whereby an adopted son would continue to be exercising rights as a coparcener in the genitive family as well as the adoptive family. Therefore, this contention at any rate cannot hold good,” the judge noted.

An organisation involved in reconnecting families devastated by the forced adoption era has called for compensation for mothers, fathers and children who were adopted out as babies in a strongly-worded submission to Western Australia's inquiry into the practice.

So far, Victoria has been the only state in the country to promise redress to thousands of mainly unwed mothers who were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption from the 1930s to the 1980s.

But now the head of the organisation Jigsaw WA, which has been supporting people traumatised by forced adoption since 1978, has called for all parties – mothers, fathers and adoptees — to receive redress which would be a national first.

In her submission to the ongoing WA inquiry, Jigsaw manager Isabel Andrews called for a base rate of redress for anyone involved in forced adoption, many of whom have had to deal with life-long consequences including PTSD, depression, grief and identity issues.

"It's important to acknowledge that some individuals experienced additional layers of trauma, such as adoptees who were abused by their adoptive parents," Ms Andrews said in the submission.

Andrea Johanna Bratt Mæhlum is born in Latin America in the 80s. Before she is five, she has already been moved between two orphanages. At the age of six, she is flown to Fornebu in Oslo, where she and her siblings start a new life.

One January day in 1989, a plane from Costa Rica lands at Fornebu airport.

Six-year-old Andrea Johanna sits on board with her two siblings. This is the first time they will set foot on Norwegian soil.

It is the mildest winter in years, with an average temperature of 2.4 degrees in Oslo. Nevertheless, it is as if a wall of ice hits Andrea in the face as she steps out of the plane.

A new family of five goes out excited and expectant. No one knows what their new everyday life will be like.

Jayme Hansen, who has a tremendous range of professional international work experience as well as the lived experience of being a Korean adoptee to the United States, was recently named to the Board of the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity. (IAAME).

According to Inter Country Adoption News:

“Congratulations to Jayme Hansen!! Jayme is our ICAV USA Director and has just been voted in as a Board member of the USA Accrediting Entity, IAAME for a 2 year term. This is the org in the USA who accredits all adoption agencies on behalf of the Dept of State who hold overall responsibility for intercountry adoption. We have been saying to the Dept of State for years now that Lived Experience needs to inform all policy, practice and legislation – so it’s awesome to see they have actively sought lived experience at this level in their key organisation!

Jayme comes in with a wealth of NGO experience and has sat on numerous NGO boards and has done volunteer work for 28 years. IAAME is designated as an Accrediting Entity (AE), under the authority of the Secretary, and as allowed by 22 CFR 96.7(a) to Accredit agencies and Approve persons to provide intercountry adoption services in the United States.

IAAME is a 501(c)(3) organization operated by staff with extensive experience in providing child welfare services, administering child welfare standards, contracting, licensing, monitoring, and both domestic and intercountry adoption services. More information can be found at: https://www.iaame.net/“