In her new book, “American Baby: A Mother, a Child, an the Shadow History of Adoption”, journalist Gabrielle Glaser exposes the secret adoption system in postwar America that exploited generations of women and children and the ongoing efforts to get answers for victims.

MIDDELBURG - Aggression in a thrift store in Zeeland. Terre des Hommes has decided to close its doors. Several customers at the door had not made an appointment but wanted to go inside. They started throwing things at employees.

One of the volunteers has already received a shopping basket. Another angry customer deliberately broke crockery, says Omroep Zeeland. A declaration may still be made. “We are still looking at that, but the question is whether it makes sense. Who do you report against? We are a thrift store and so far had no reason to buy a security camera, ”says a spokesperson for the store.

The dissatisfaction with the corona rules, imposed from The Hague, is great, according to the spokesman. “We too are forced to keep shopping by appointment. This means that you book at least four hours in advance. Volunteers not only have to deal with misunderstanding but also with angry reactions. That cannot be the intention! ”

'Unheard of'

The incident with broken crockery turns out to be the last straw for the thrift store. “Unfortunately, that is the consequence of the behavior of some customers. Our volunteers are there day in and day out for a good cause. To deal with their safety in this way is unheard of. ”

Atide of emotion swept over Claire Martin as she stood alone in the concrete stairwell of a bland residential block off a busy Kowloon intersection. Then, just as she did almost 60 years earlier, when she had been left there by her mother as a newborn, she burst into tears.

“Being on that staircase was an extraordinary moment,” she says. “I thought of my adoptive father. He always wanted to help me find my birth family but he couldn’t, and it would have been wonderful if he had been there with me.”

After a lifetime of wondering, Martin had finally found the place where she’d last felt her mother’s touch. The discovery that she had been left on the first-floor landing of a block of flats gave her a measure of comfort.

“Some babies were found in graveyards,” she says, “but my mother was expecting me to be found quickly.”

Martin considers herself one of the lucky ones, and with good reason. Hundreds of babies, most of them girls, were abandoned in Hong Kong as mothers, desperate and starving, fled across the border from China to escape the Great Famine that killed tens of millions of people between 1959 and 1961.

SOME SURVIVORS OF mother and baby homes and county homes want financial compensation, access to medical care, counselling and housing supports as part of a redress scheme that will be drawn up by the government.

Others want a national day of remembrance to be established, as well as memorials at the sites of former institutions and a national archive where their personal stories can be accessed for educational and research purposes (once consent is given by individuals).

Some survivors have also called on the government to take legal action against the religious orders who ran the institutions if they refuse to pay financial compensation.

A number of religious orders have apologised for their role in running the institutions in question. The government has asked them to contribute to the redress fund.

“Engagement with religious orders is ongoing in relation to how they can contribute,” a spokesperson for the Department of Children told The Journal.

Hindu couple seek no-objection certificate to adopt child born to Christian parents

The Delhi High Court has issued notice to the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) on a plea by a Hindu couple, living in the U.S., seeking a no-objection certificate (NOC) to adopt a child born to Christian parents.

“The present petition raises an issue of enormous importance as it relates to a legal vacuum in respect of adoptions carried out prior to the coming into force of the Juvenile Justice [Care and Protection of children] Model Rules, 2016... in respect of a child born to Christian parents, as in the present case,” Justice Prathiba M. Singh remarked in a March 15 order.

As per the couple, they adopted a minor child, who was born on December 11, 2014, from Ferozepur, Punjab. The biological parents of the child got the legal formalities done for completion of adoption of the child with them by preparing an adoption deed which was signed and executed between the biological and the adoptive parents of the child.

The adoption deed was duly witnessed by the village sarpanch as well as the relative – social worker and was also registered on December 18, 2014 under the provisions of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (HAMA), 1956, the couple said.

At the beginning of August, a Palestinian man opened fire on IDF soldiers at the Gaza boundary, threw an incendiary device, and attempted to breach the fence. He was killed by return fire. What made his act stand out was that the man, Hani al-Majdalawi, was employed as a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), one of the world’s best-known international aid organizations. Al-Majdalawi had previously been employed by both Oxfam Great Britain and the American Friends Service Committee, two of the West’s oldest NGOs. Although he was not dressed as a medical provider at the time of his attack, his act added to mounting concern that NGOs operating in the Middle East are increasingly vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists, and susceptible to being co-opted by extremist ideologies. Doctors Without Borders is currently conducting an inquiry.

In August, another alarm was sounded about the possible spread of terrorist ideology to supposedly neutral aid groups when a respected EU police mission called EUPOL COPPS, the EU Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support, announced it was partnering with a children’s charity, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P). EUPOL COPPS, which was founded under the auspices of the EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process in 2005 and has a current budget of 12 million euros, provides assistance and training to the Palestinian Authority to improve its civil police and law enforcement capacity as part of the EU’s wider effort to work toward “a comprehensive peace, based on a two-state solution.” Though it enjoys the reputation of being a serious and professional group, on Aug. 8, EUPOL COPPS posted a notice on its Facebook page that it was hosting a workshop with DCI-P, an organization, it announced, with which it has enjoyed “a longstanding collaboration,” despite the fact that its founding members enjoy strong ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is considered to be a terrorist group by Israel, the European Union, the United States, and Canada.

There is nothing particularly subtle about the reasons why the EU itself labels the PFLP as a terrorist group. The organization was responsible for more than a dozen high-profile airline hijackings, bombings, and shootings starting in the 1960s and ’70s, including the Lod Airport massacre, in conjunction with the Japanese Red Army, which led to the deaths of 28 people. The PFLP-General Command was responsible for the hijacking of an Air France plane to Uganda in June 1976, which was ended with the successful Israeli rescue operation, Operation Thunderbolt, at Entebbe Airport. Since 2000, PFLP has carried out at least 13 suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings and ax attacks, including the murder of Israeli Minister for Tourism Rehavam Ze’evi.

Defense for Children International-Palestine’s links to the PFLP have been fulsomely documented. According to NGO Monitor, Mahmoud Jiddah, who was elected to the DCI-P board in May 2012, was imprisoned by Israel for 17 years for carrying out grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968, and is reported to be a member of PFLP. Hassan Abed Aljawad, another DCI-P board member up to 2018, represents the PFLP at public events. Fatima Daana, an attorney and board secretary, is said by Israeli intelligence to be the widow of Raed Nazzal, the former commander of the PFLP’s armed wing (the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades) in Qalqilya. Nazzal led several terrorist attacks and was killed in 2002 in a shootout with IDF forces. Shawan Jabarin, a PFLP activist, was a member of DCI-P’s board of directors from 2007 to 2014, and was convicted in 1985 for recruiting members for the PFLP and arranging PFLP training outside Israel. In 1994 Jabarin was again arrested for PFLP links and placed in administrative detention for six months. Israeli authorities claim he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.” Nassar Ibrahim and Dr. Majed Nassar, also on DCI-P’s board, are also both alleged to be members of PFLP. DCI-P’s latest published annual report for 2014 is dedicated to Hashem Abu Maria, one of its employees killed during a riot in July 2014. Abu Maria’s obituary was also featured on the PFLP website and in its Facebook postings, where he was described as a PFLP military commander. After the revelation of DCI-P’s terror ties by U.K. Lawyers for Israel, both Citibank and Arab Bank deactivated their online links for monetary donations to DCI-P.

So how did such a bizarre mix come about? Defense for Children International, DCI-P’s parent organization, was founded in 1979, the “Year of the Child,” for the purpose of advancing the rights of children, particularly in cases of intercountry adoptions and human trafficking. With 45 sections around the world, and an international secretariat in Geneva, DCI has an international reputation, and holds “consultative status” on the United Nations Economic and Social Council, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe.

. 

Kidnapped from his village in India and sold to a Christian orphanage. Adopted and raised in Utah by a loving LDS couple who was told his parents were dead. Taj Rowland’s incredible journey is filled with twists and turns that would rival a blockbuster movie. And just when he had given up hope of ever seeing his birth family again, the Lord led him down a path that would defy all odds and guide him back home.

On a snowy night in December 1979, a young boy from India shivered from the cold and trembled with fear as he exited an airplane in Salt Lake City, Utah. Surrounded by white people speaking a language he didn’t understand, he clung in terror to the legs of the orphanage owner who was delivering him to his new adoptive parents. The boy kicked and screamed as he was wrapped in a warm blanket and put in the back of a car, sobbing himself to sleep on the way to his new home.

“The most frightening part was being taken away from everything that was familiar and being thrown into something that was completely different. I didn’t know exactly what was happening to me,” Taj Rowland recalls.

New Family, New Life

Fred and Linda Rowland had been searching for another child to adopt, but almost everything about their new son would come as a surprise.

The future of identity systems is being shaped by the UN's Legal Identity Task Force, which has opportunities for a positive influence, yet severe risks remain.

KEY POINTS

The UN Statistics Division has endorsed the Legal Identity Agenda and the Legal Identity Task Force, which shape the understanding of the key Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 on legal identity for all.

Dangers remain in the potentially severe human rights implications of their approach towards civil registration and identity systems.

However, they are aware of many of the dangers surrounding issues like unique identifiers, function creep, and the role of the private sector.

The appointment by President Obama of human rights adviser Samantha Power to the post of US ambassador at the United Nations was greeted with particular interest at Mount Anville girls’ school in Goatstown in South Dublin. It means that three past pupils educated there by the Sacred Heart nuns now hold some of the most important positions in the world. It is also the Alma Mater of the former Irish President Mary Robinson, now UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes in central Africa, and of the Secretary General of the European Commission, Catherine Day, who was a near neighbour of ours in Mount Merrion when I moved back to Dublin in 1967.

I was already familiar with Mount Anville from the 1960s as my aunt is a member of the Sacred Heart congregation (RSCJ) and entered the religious life there. She taught for a while in the Montessori school, where she ran soccer games for the children, as my former secondary school class colleague Peter Mathews TD once recalled! Over the years we have been privileged to celebrate a number of important family occasions with the community there. Now as in many towns and cities in Ireland, the nuns no longer occupy the convent, but tomorrow (June 7th) on the feast of the Sacred Heart, they will be gathering for Mass at the original convent building, once the home of engineer William Dargan. The school has a classical-style chapel, designed by EW Pugin and GC Ashlin in 1866. I understand they are hoping to open a heritage centre later this year, in which the history of the convent and the associated schools will be displayed.

One of the highlights of the calendar last year was the visit by President Robinson to deliver the Barat lecture, named after the founder (1826) of the Society of the Sacred Heart, St Madeleine Sophie. In her speech Mary Robinson spoke warmly and movingly about the main points of her career as a lawyer, Senator, President of Ireland (her greatest honour she said), UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and lately, her work for climate justice. She also participated in a questions and answers session with the secondary school students. She spoke about her time spent as a boarder in Mount Anville in the late 1950s (Mary Bourke from Ballina in County Mayo). She recalled reading in the school library about Eleanor Roosevelt, someone she said who had inspired her in her formative years. In March, she was in Belfast for a memorial service to celebrate the life of the former trade unionist and human rights activist, the late Inez McCormack.

Catherine Day

Catherine Day