Soul traffickers (Investigation of suspicions of fraudulent adoptions between Guatemala and Belgium)

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"Improve intercountry adoption system, don't stop it"

31 Jan 2017

File: Adoption

Today, Secretary of State for Security and Justice Dijkhoff presented his policy response to the report 'The future of the chain for intercountry adoption' by consultancy firm Andersson Elffers Felix (AEF), and the advice 'Reflection on Intercountry Adoption' of the Council for Criminal Justice and Youth Protection (RSJ). The RSJ advised in November last year to stop intercountry adoption. Defense for Children - ECPAT believes that the State Secretary should implement a number of strong changes in the adoption chain, but sees no improvement in the proposed adjustments on a number of fundamental points.

Defense for Children - ECPAT welcomed the RSJ report and recognizes the identified bottlenecks in adoption. In particular the influence of financial incentives on adoption and the problems with applying the subsidiarity principle. Strengthening child protection systems in the countries of origin of adopted children is most consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

On November 8, 2018, the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers enacted new adoption regulations that restrict which children may be eligible for intercountry adoption. The new regulations restrict which children may be eligible for intercountry adoption and limit intercountry adoption to children in three groups: 1) children living in institutions, for whom an adoptive family in Latvia has not been found; 2) stepchildren of prospective adoptive parents; and 3) children living with a foster care family in Latvia, if the adoptive child is related to the prospective adoptive parents. The new regulations will also impose additional requirements on accredited adoption service providers (ASPs) and require more pre-adoption training programs, including classroom and practical training hours. ASPs have six months from the effective date of the new regulations to create new training programs and apply for an extension of their authorization to operate in Latvia. Latvia’s Ministry of Welfare (Central Adoption Authority) will post an official English translation of the new regulations on their website in January 2019. Once the regulations are posted, the Office of Children’s Issues will post an updated notice on adoption.state.gov with a link to their site, and will update the country information page for Latvia.

The U.S. Embassy in Latvia has met with the Ministry of Welfare to discuss adoption cases that were in process prior to the November 8, 2018 implementation of the new regulations (pending cases). The Minister confirmed that cases will not be subject to the new requirements if the prospective adoptive parents received an official referral prior to November 8, 2018. On a case-by-case basis, the Ministry will consider whether the new requirement will apply to situations in which the ASP submitted completed adoption applications OR letters of intent prior to November 8, 2018 but for which the prospective adoptive parents have not yet received a referral.

In an effort to ensure the Ministry is aware of all pending cases, ASPs should provide the following information to Jana Sipola, Senior Desk Officer at the Children and Family Policy Department of the Latvian Ministry of Welfare, by e-mail at Jana.Sipola@lm.gov.lv.

Names of the prospective adoptive parents;

Names of the children;

How can I participate in the study of distance and adoption between 1956 and 1984?

You can participate in the distance and adoption investigation between 1956 and 1984 by contacting the distance and adoption hotline. This can be done by telephone, e-mail and mail. You can register up to and including June 2020.

Distance and adoption by pressure

According to research, many women renounced their child for adoption between 1956 and 1984 under pressure. The government wants even more clarity about the situations of the distance parents, distance children and adoptive parents. And about the role of the government. The government wants to learn from this and if necessary adjust rules and agreements on, for example, adoption. That is why a more extensive investigation is ongoing until the end of 2020.

The researchers include personal experiences of, for example, distance parents or adopted children in the study. And also material such as photos and letters.

Human rights body appeals to Govt

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is appealing to the Government to protect the interests of a 15-month-old boy – the son of a Venezuelan woman.

The baby is in TT custody. He has been in a safe house for more than a year under the care of the Children's Authority, while two court cases related to custody continue between the mother and the alleged adoptive parents.

For more than a year, the mother has not had any contact with her child.

The Children's Court is due to rule on custody in January 2020, after the case has been postponed repeatedly.

With the infertility rate crossing 15 percent, Kashmir is joining the societies where childless couples are always seeking kids to adopt. Saima Bhat investigates the least known aspect of the Kashmir society in which abandoned babies are filling part of the surging demand gap amid new rules and processes that make offering a child for adoption easy

On a rainy afternoon in 2012 summer, Farooq Ahmad, an auto-rickshaw driver was driving alongside Srinagar’s Flood Spill Channel near Aalochi Bagh, when, all of a sudden, his mother’s pleas flashed back to his mind. His mother wanted him to leave his wife as she could not bear him a child in 15 years of their marriage. Farooq loved his wife and his mother too. So leaving either of the two was not an option. He burst into tears and decided to stop for a while.

Farooq parked his vehicle on the bund and came out to take rest under a mulberry tree. “I was weeping like anything while resting my head with a tree and suddenly my eyes saw a miracle,” Farooq said. “In utter disbelief I saw an infant moving an arm from a bag. I thought God has answered my silent prayers and tears. It was a miracle that changed my destiny.”

His happiness, however, was short lived. He was hugging the infant, a baby girl, when the local police arrived on the spot. “He had kept the abandoned girl close to his heart and was crying that the kid has been sent by God for him only,” says Shahid, an eyewitness. “He gave a tough time to cops by not leaving the abandoned child. Ultimately the police motivated him to come along to the police station so that they can at least register the FIR.”

There is a set procedure if an abandoned child is found anywhere in the state. If found in Srinagar, they mostly land up in GB Pant Hospital for the treatment and then these children’s custody is given to the childless couples who remain waiting in the queue with their applications.

Number smaller in comparison to other states. The Women and Child Welfare department yet to get updates on kids who have been returned by their adoptive parents

HYDERABAD: In a disconcerting trend, the state of Telangana has seen nearly 16 adopted children being returned to the State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA) in the last five years. The data was accessed by TNIE after National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) raised an alarm in September over the nationwide trend of adopted children being returned by their adoptive parents. The NCPCR asked the states to furnish details about the children sent back by their adoptive parents.

The information has become vital, as on Dec 5, a 14-year-old girl from Karimnagar who had been officially adopted from SARA in 2014 committed suicide amidst allegations of negligence by the adoptive parents.Telangana from its end has found that nearly 16 children were returned.

The children have been sent back to government homes or the NGOs from where they are adopted under the supervision of SARA. Interestingly, the women and child welfare department is yet to get reports on the status of the children who had been returned by their adoptive parents.

Officials are trying to find out the age of kids sent back to homes. Most of them were in their adolescent age groups. Their gender and district they belonged to. They also have to check whereabouts of other adopted children as adjustment issues can spring up for any child. The number, however, is smaller compared to other states in the country. Previous reports suggest that nearly 260-odd children were returned across the country between 2017-19, with Maharashtra and Karnataka topping the charts where 56 and 25 children respectively.

His accomplices illegally took away newborns from mothers – some claimed that the babies had allegedly died at birth

Armenia’s chief obstetrician and director of the Republican Maternity Hospital Razmik Abrahamyan and several other individuals have been detained in the case of a recently exposed scandal involving the illegal adoption of children by foreigners in Armenia.

The investigation claims that mothers were told that their children were either sick and that they should give them up for adoption, or that their newborns had died shortly after birth.

Most of the children taken from their mothers in this way were then adopted by foreigners – more than 30 such cases have been recorded involving Italian foster parents, in which the process took place involving flagrant violations of the law.

There is concern that the children were adopted for the purposes of harvesting their organs, however so far this has not been confirmed.

Three decades after the collapse of communism in Romania, Visinel Balan still has fresh memories of one of its most infamous legacies -- the orphanage system in which he grew up.

"They used to beat us until we couldn't move," he says of the orphanage he entered in 1987, aged just two months.

The scars of those institutions, exposed to the world in the 1990s through horrifying news images of emaciated children in caged beds, have still not fully healed for Balan.

They were places where children were caned on the soles of their feet for bedwetting and fed in an assembly line while sitting on potties.

Balan was one of the "Decretei" or "children of the decree": children abandoned by poorer families as a result of the natalist policies of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, among them a 1966 decree banning abortion.

On Tuesday, 17 December, Saeima’s Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee’s majority voiced support towards limiting adoption of Latvian children to foreign countries.

It is planned to return to this topic in January to decide if the Cabinet of Ministers should add changes to rules or laws.

During the meeting of the committee the head of the Ombudsman’s Office for Child Rights Laila Gr?vere said that in practice it is possible to circumvent certain limitations for foreign child adoption. It is possible to circumvent rules by putting a child from a foster family to an orphanage for a couple days to later adopt them to a foreign country. The ombudsman invites the Saeima to decide if it supports or does not support adoption of children to foreign countries and set a clear regulation in which cases it is permissible, says Gr?vere.

Welfare Ministry’s parliamentary secretary Krišs Lipš?ns said Latvia cannot put obstacles for child adoption to foreign countries. At the same time, it is not the primary goal – rather the last option available to provide children the right to a family.

Lipš?ns stresses that it is necessary to exercise children’s rights to live and grow up in a family environment, which is clearly outlined in the Constitution and international law binding to Latvia.