NBC News reported at the age of 28-years-old, Culberson began her search when she learned her biological mother died when she was only 11. After a phone call from an uncle, she learned she was related to African royalty. According to the news outlet, she is from the Mende tribe in Bumpe, Sierra Leone, and is considered a mahaloi, the child of a paramount chief. This makes Culberson the princess of the Bumpe village.

Sarah Culberson Sierra Leone www.theGrio.com

(Image via sarahculberson.com / Brandon Flint Photography)

Hundreds of people came out to celebrate her return during a special ceremony in 2006 where her biological father gifted her a dress that matched his own suit. Culberson shared with the news outlet that although a royal title sounds glamorous, learning her identity came with responsibility.

“My only guidance of what a princess was was what I saw in movies,” Culberson said to NBC News. “[But] it’s really about responsibility. It’s about walking in my great-grandfather and grandfather’s footsteps and what they’ve done for the country. I realized that’s my role as a princess, to keep moving things forward in the country.”

FOR 40 YEARS, his name was Michael Libberton.

The Florida man defined himself by his Midwestern upbringing and the values instilled by his adoptive parents. Libberton, who was adopted shortly before his second birthday, said he thought little of the fact that he’d been born in Colombia.

Then, in 2016, Libberton applied to Lake Technical College to strengthen his welding skills. There was a problem with his paperwork. Over the next two years, Libberton followed a trail of records — from his adoptive family to the city in Illinois where he grew up to the immigration office — and learned that he was not, as he’d always believed, a U.S. citizen.

Libberton said he feels like he’s losing his country, his identity, even his name.

“You love this country, and it’s taken from you,” Libberton told USA TODAY. “Every right you thought you had, you don’t have.”

The Orban government is preparing to take a surprising decision during the government meeting on Monday. The draft Decision is already on the agenda of the Government meeting to be held on 31 August 2020.

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When the health emergency was declared, the Secretariat for International Adoption of Quebec (SAI) suspended all its activities, delaying to an indefinite date the meeting of the adoptive parents with their child. "There are those who thought they would leave in March to pick him up, and now it is December and they have no promise of being able to find this child," testifies Dr Jean-François Chicoine, pediatrician at CHU Sainte-Justine , specialist in international adoption.

“When we have already lost a little time with a child who is proposed to us for adoption, with whom we have not been able to share the first months, even the first years of his life, when a year is added to that, it is extremely trying for the parents ”, shares Dr. Chicoine, who was able to speak with these parents within the framework of virtual meetings organized with the collaboration of the personnel of the clinic of adoption and international health of the CHU Sainte -Justine and the SAI.

Gathered in groups of around twenty people, the parents were able to share their concerns and experiences during virtual sessions lasting 2h30 supervised by Doctor Chicoine and his team.

“When we have already lost a little time with a child who is proposed to us for adoption, with whom we have not been able to share the first months, even the first years of his life, when a year is added to that, it is extremely trying for the parents ”, shares Dr. Chicoine.

“When we have already lost a little time with a child who is proposed to us for adoption, with whom we have not been able to share the first months, even the first years of his life, when a year is added to that, it is extremely trying for the parents ”, shares Dr. Chicoine.

Prayagraj: In an important judgment, the Allahabad high court has held that even if a married Hindu man has estranged wife, i.e., living apart but not divorced, even then he needs prior consent of his alienated wife for adoption of a child under Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act.

Dismissing a writ petition filed by one Bhanu Pratap Singh of Mau district, Justice JJ Munir observed, “The proviso makes it imperative for a Hindu male to secure his wife’s consent to an adoption that he makes, unless she has completely and finally renounced the world, or has ceased to be a Hindu, or has been declared by a court of competent jurisdiction to be of unsound mind.”

The petitioner, Bhanu Pratap Singh, had requested for appointment on compassionate grounds in the forest department of the state after the death of his uncle Rajendra Singh.

According to the petitioner, in the year 2001 he was adopted by his uncle, Rajendra Singh, who had alienated his wife Phulmati and had no child from the marriage. Therefore, he was entitled for job as per the provisions of ‘The Uttar Pradesh Recruitment of Dependants of Government Servants Dying-in-Harness Rules, 1974’ because he was sole heir and dependant of his adopter, who was an employee of the forest department at the time of his death.

Subsequently, on December 17, 2016, the forest department rejected the plea of the petitioner for appointment on compassionate grounds. Hence, this rejection was challenged in the present petition before the high court.

Last month, BBC Africa Eye exposed a thriving black-market trade in babies in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Police arrested seven people on trafficking charges in response to the story, but what about the women on the other side of these illegal deals? What drives a mother to sell her child?

BBC

Adama's life was easy when she had her parents, she said. Money was tight, and her options were already narrow, but there was an order to things that made sense. She attended school and cherished it. She had few worries. Then her father died when she was 12, and her mother died a few years later.

"Life became so hard then," she said, in a conversation from her village in rural western Kenya. "I had to drop out of school and fend for myself."

At 22, Adama met a man and got pregnant, but he died three days after their baby daughter was born. Her loneliness deepened. She nursed her baby through an infant sickness until the girl improved, at about 18 months, then a steady income was needed to keep them both alive. So Adama left the baby with her elderly grandmother and headed to Nairobi to find work.

The stolen climate crisis babies: US politician jailed for selling children of mothers desperate to escape environmental catastrophe

A former politician has been sentenced to six years for running an illegal adoption racket which took advantage of impoverished women from the Marshall Islands, a low-lying nation in the Pacific Ocean, where more and more citizens are being forced to flee because of the climate crisis.

Paul Petersen, a onetime Republican county assessor who was also an adoption attorney, illegally paid women to come to the US to give up their babies to Americans. Petersen had at least 70 adoptions cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas over three years.

Petersen “manipulated birth mothers into consenting to adoptions they did not fully understand,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Fowlkes of the Western District of Arkansas.

Judge Timothy Brooks, who imposed the sentence from Fayetteville, Arkansas on Tuesday, said that Petersen abused his position as an attorney by misleading or instructing others to lie to courts in adoptions that wouldn’t have been approved had the truth been told to them.

JAKARTA - Until a few months ago, Ms Widya Astuti Boerma knew her biological mother only from glimpses of memory.

Some were pleasant: a moment of them both at the sultan's palace in Yogyakarta for example. But others were jarring, including one indelibly etched of the family's house ablaze. And then the final one: her mother's instructions at a Jakarta train station to "be a good girl" and go with a woman she barely knew.

Pandemic had impacted vulnerable sections of society, says Commission.

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday said it had issued an advisory to the government on measures to be taken to prevent human trafficking in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown has disproportionately impacted the vulnerable sections of the society,” the NHRC said in the advisory addressed to Union ministries concerned and State governments on Tuesday.

The NHRC said the vulnerable were falling prey to traffickers due to the “limited access to shelters and support structures for life and livelihood”. The Commission added that the Women and Child Development Ministry had reportedly received 27 lakh distress calls from March till August and had intervened in 1.92 lakh cases, of which at least 32,700 were related to trafficking, child marriage, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, forced begging and cyber crimes.

The NHRC recommended setting up of a 24/7 toll-free helpline for real-time reporting, tracking and monitoring of trafficking cases. The advisory also said special surveillance should be started at railway stations, bus depots and airports to trace children without adults. The NHRC recommended quick and up-to-date data sharing between States and districts about rescued and missing persons as well as those arrested in trafficking cases.

This article by Josephine Aburime discusses local and cross-border adoptions; that the fact that Nigeria is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (the Hague Convention) which inter alia, prescribes guidelines for international adoptions, is an impediment that must be addressed, since in its absence, we have had to resort to local legislation which are somewhat deficient, and seem to prohibit international adoptions

The Child Rights Act 2003 (“the Act”) is a Federal legislation, providing for the basic rights of a Nigerian child. It also provides for custodial matters such as adoption, foster parenting and guardianship. The Act has been domesticated in some States of the Federation including Lagos State which enacted the Child Rights Law of 2007 (“the Law”). This in itself, has brought some inconsistencies on matters relating to children, and with particular reference, adoption.

Private adoption has been long practiced in Nigeria, whereby a private arrangement between the adopter, usually a relative or kinsman and the parents of the child, a child is adopted.

However, contemporary developments including the menace of child trafficking has impelled the need for proper documentation reflecting adoptions, resulting in adoptions being formalised by the courts upon application of the parties. Embassies and border agencies now insist on the presentation of legal adoption documentation, in order to secure visas for adopted children or accord the adoptive parents, parental recognition over the child. This is particularly pertinent when the adoption is international in nature, referring to adoptions across borders where a national or resident of another country adopts a child from a different country, other than where he/she is resident. That is to say in Nigeria, a foreigner coming to Nigeria to adopt and take the child back with them abroad, or Nigerians resident abroad adopting a child in Nigeria with the intent of taking the child to live with them abroad. The term could also include a foreigner temporarily resident in Nigeria, adopting a Nigerian child.

International Adoption