Closing a children's home is a big step, but it will ultimately benefit more families and children, says Bep van Sloten. 'Children lose contact with their community precisely because of a recording.'

Bep van Sloten was involved in closing an orphanage in Namibia and placing the orphans in foster families. The painting and the cushions on the sofa come from Namibia, the books are about Africa. (image Dirk Hol)

Amersfoort

In her work, Bep van Sloten (68) told governments and NGOs on a daily basis that children's homes are not a good place to grow up. As an international consultant in the field of alternative youth care, she advised them on the transition to other ways of caring for children. 'Saying that it has to be done is one thing, but actually doing it is another story', says Van Sloten. 'In Namibia I had to do it myself.'

Article continues below the ad

Abstract

South Korea experienced international scrutiny over its irregular intercountry adoption practices in the 1980s. However, it eventually came to be viewed as a model of transparent and efficient adoptions. This façade disguises an orphan adoption system that has become entrenched over the decades. Today, adoptees continue to lobby for their right to origins. This paper explores South Korea’s laws and policies, which nullified the rights of adoptees, and it calls for receiving countries to assume co-responsibility to restore these rights.

.

The Karnataka High Court has said that in the absence of a declaration that a child is

deserted by his biological or adoptive parents or guardians, filing of chargesheet under

section 80 of the Juvenile Justice (Care And Protection Of Children) Act 2015, is without

any substance.

Section 80 provides punishment for adopting any orphan, abandoned or surrendered

The Archdiocese of Vancouver has released an apology on Mother’s Day weekend for its role in what has been called Canada’s “post-war adoption mandate” that led to the coerced separation of unmarried mothers from their children.

The apology, released Friday, said in 1933 the Archdiocese of Vancouver founded a home for unmarried mothers where many women were pressured to give up their babies.

The Our Lady of Mercy Home for unmarried mothers, under the direction of the Superintendent of Child Welfare of the Province of British Columbia, was located at 54th Avenue and Oak Street in Vancouver and offered unwed pregnant mothers “a place to stay, arrangements for medical care, counselling, financial planning, and temporary foster care for those who needed time to plan their future and make decisions about the care of their child, including adoption.”

The archdiocese’s apology said, “We now know that many of these mothers faced pressures that adoption was the only choice.”

The archdiocese’s role “in any pressured and coerced adoptions created a legacy of pain and suffering,” said the statement. “We contributed to a culture of shame, guilt and secrecy, which often led to pain and isolation.”

Highlights

Holistic Review of Alternative Care Provision in an area of Thailand with a high number of migrant children: The border District of Sangklaburi, Kanchanaburi province by Mahidol University Professors and One Sky Foundation. The review was conducted in different form of Institution cares: Private Residential Care, (Charity) Boarding Schools, and temple as well as (informal) Kinship Care. Finding and recommendations were presented to the Provincial Social Development and Human Security Office and Department of Children and Youth to further develop an Alternative Care road map and plan of action.

Author(s)

Department of Children and Youth, One Sky Foundation, UNICEF Thailand, Kanchanaburi Office of Social Development and Human Security

y

In a shocking incident, a newborn baby was found left inside a dustbin at NS Road, Marine Drive on Saturday morning.

As per reports from Mid-Day, the infant was discovered by a BMC cleaner, who with the help of locals recovered the baby from the dustbin and provided him first-aid treatment and milk.

A case was registered against the unknown parents of the baby after the BMC cleaner informed the Marine Drive police station about the occurrence.

Earlier on Friday, a child was kidnapped from Boisar railway station. However, the case of the kidnapping was solved and the accused was nabbed within eight hours of the incident.

.

TENNESSEE, USA — If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and gives the states the power to ban abortion, adoption systems are expected to take on more cases in Tennessee. However, some parents are concerned the system is already full of hurdles.

A new organization is working to ease the process and make it easier to foster or adopt in Tennessee. The Adoption Project was launched in March by two adoptive parents frustrated by the complex process.

Jeremy Harrell teamed up with a former coworker, Jennifer Donnals. They are both former public service workers in the office of former governor Bill Haslam. They said their first-hand experience in government helped them re-focus on a new challenge — adoption.

"In that conversation, I very clearly got the response, 'Well, Jeremy, if you think it is so messed up then why don't you do something about it?'" Harrell said.

"If we can make it easier for other families to adopt, that's our goal and that's what's driving this work," Donnals said.

From disseminating Edward Snowden’s damning NSA leaks to becoming a leading critic of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, American journalist Glenn Greenwald and his husband, Brazilian Congressman David Miranda, are no strangers to controversy. Nor are they rattled by its attendant fiery chain reactions: It was, after all, a spilled drink in the sands of Ipanema that sparked a rapid relationship and, eventually, a long, arduous battle for the future of Brazil.

Here, the couple reflect on parenting, politics, and personal measures they’ve had to take at the precipice of the country’s bitter political divide.

ON THEIR FIRST MEETING AND FAMILY

David Miranda: We met on Ipanema beach, in front of Farme de Amoedo street, where I was playing footvolley. I kicked a ball straight into Glenn’s drink and spilled it, so I went up to him and apologized. We both took a good look at each other. It was love at first sight. And here we are together, stronger than ever, after 17 years.

Glenn Greenwald: I was going through a midlife crisis and I wanted to figure out my life. So, I rented an apartment for seven weeks in Rio, and I met David on the first day. When you go to Rio, you’re not looking for marriage — you’re not really looking for anything other than some fun. But love often happens when you are not looking for it, and right from the beginning I felt he was the one for me. That feeling has grown every day, right up to this day.

Ukraine is one of the few countries that tolerate surrogacy on its soil. In recent years, many foreigners, often through agencies, have resorted to it, even when this practice is tolerated in their own country, because the prices there are attractive. The number of GPAs is estimated to be between 2000 and 2500 per year. Precariousness and economic difficulties have led many Ukrainian women to submit to this form of reproductive exploitation. The health crisis, then the war, have brought to light the inextricable injustices and difficulties that this practice induces. The contract signed by the surrogate, in effect, gives the Agency and sponsors complete control over her life and body. The surrogate mother no longer belongs to herself. In addition, the tragic population displacements and the interruption of the administrative services of the Birth Registration Office have shattered the framework in which these GPAs operated on Ukrainian soil. The legal resources used by the sponsors to bring their surrogacy project to fruition are thus undermined and force them to find other ways to obtain the baby that was the subject of the contract.

In France, it is estimated that two babies are born each week in Ukraine for French customers. Investigations, including that carried out by Le Figaro , revealed that Ukrainian surrogate mothers had been repatriated to France. Like Katarina, for example, who arrived in March, came without her children, two girls aged ten and three, who had to stay with their grandmother. Two “GPA babies” have already been born, one in the Lyon region and the other in Vendée.

But this practice is prohibited on our soil. To circumvent this, French clients who bring their surrogate mother to France then have her “give birth under X”, the man who provided his gametes for conception proceeds to recognize the child, then his or her spouse subsequently initiates an application for adoption.

The Juristes pour l'Enfance association has just filed a complaint against X for incitement to child abandonment. Indeed, “the sponsors of surrogacy are guilty of the offense of incitement to child abandonment, punishable by law [i] . The offense being committed in France, it is subject to French law and the French judge has jurisdiction. These people must therefore be prosecuted”.

Furthermore, Juristes pour l'Enfance stresses that childbirth under X is thus diverted from its purpose and used to allow the sponsors of surrogacy to achieve their ends: namely to obtain a child "without mother", a child whose maternal line is deliberately left blank. There is therefore a clear fraud against the law.

I will first comment on where we are today in terms of inter-country adoption (ICA) practice at the global level, then consider our experience of the outcomes of a suspension of ICAs, and finally ? in all modesty as an outsider ? offer some thoughts on what the path forward for Korea might be.

On the global level, where are we today?

The 1993 Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption (HC 93) has been useful in confronting certain problems associated with ICA ? and indeed in reducing unwarranted recourse to ICA ? but it has by no means eliminated all those problems. This is demonstrated by the fact, for example, that expert groups at The Hague are still working on ways to prevent and address illegal adoptions and to tighten financial standards.

HC 93 certainly constitutes a landmark in ongoing efforts to formalize, harmonize and regulate more strictly the processes in ICA, including financial aspects, but it fails to tackle certain essential issues.

This is because HC93 is grounded in a system whose key features are the same as when the first adoptions took place from Korea in the 1950s, initially instigated by what were known as "humanitarian" concerns. ICA is still carried out through mediation by non-state actors ? private entities or agencies ? where prospective adopters pay for the "privilege" of caring for a child. That system is fundamentally flawed but has not been seriously questioned until very recently.