My Mother Disappeared, and My Father had Died.

None of it is true.

FOR THE FIRST TIME A FLEMISH TEENAGER TESTIFIES ABOUT FRAUD REGARDING HER ADOPTION FROM ETHIOPIA.

HLN, 27 April 2019 (Google translation)

In 2009, Thereza (17) came from Ethiopia and ended up in Flanders. Her adoptive parents were told that the biological mother had disappeared and that the father had died. A lie, as it turns out. ‘’ My file is full of errors.’’ Thereza is outraged and tells her story because she wants to make sure that adoptive children are taken seriously. ‘’ We are not products with which you can do whatever you want. ‘’ JEROEN BOSSAERT & LIEVE VAN BASTELAERE.

One complaint after another about tampering with adoptions

There are more and more testimonies about fraud in adoptions from Ethiopia between 1997 and 2017. In 48 hours our editorial staff already received 15 testimonials from adoptive parents who claimed that serious mistakes had been made. They demand an investigation. Minister of Welfare Jo Vandeurzen is examining whether that is a possibility.

It started last weekend with a testimony from 17-year-old Thereza De Wannemaeker from Denderleeuw, but in the meantime more and more Flemish people are coming out with their story about fraud in an adoption file from Ethiopia. The past 48 hours have already received 15 testimonials from our editors. There are serious errors in this. Parents who were wrongly declared dead, children who were pressured to lie about their age and children who were wrongly presented as siblings. Almost all the files were handled through the adoption agency Ray of Hope and went through the same contact person in Ethiopia. "We remain convinced that the man did everything according to the procedures," says Ray of Hope.

Our witnesses dispute that and state that they informed the adoption agency years ago. They are now addressing the Flemish government. "This needs to be investigated." Minister of Welfare Jo Vandeurzen (CD&V) is looking at what is possible. “We cannot just request all files, that would be a violation of privacy. But we are looking at how we can bring more clarity. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden have already decided to investigate past adoption practices. That is the only way to get an idea of ??what went wrong. ”Between 1997 and 2017, 936 children from Ethiopia came to Flanders.

Dutch:

Barrister Sabrina Zarin, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and partner at the FM Associates/

Daily Observer

Having dual citizenship has become a matter of concern for many citizens of Bangladesh due to the high interest in migrating to different countries of the world from Bangladesh. People from Bangladesh are moving towards the western countries to avail a higher standard of living and better opportunities for earning their livelihood. Therefore, they must have the scope for getting dual citizenship when they migrate to different countries because being a citizen of Bangladesh is a right they acquire at birth, which should not be given up lightly.

The Citizenship Act 1951 generally does not allow ‘dual citizenship’. If a person is a citizen of Bangladesh and is at the same time, a citizen of another country, he shall, unless he makes a declaration in that other country renouncing his status as a citizen or national, shall cease to be a citizen of Bangladesh.

However, the Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provision) Order 1972, (as amended in 1978) 1978, Bangladesh now permits dual citizenship under certain limited circumstances. Therefore, Bangladeshi-origin nationals of certain countries as specified by the government may apply to the government of Bangladesh for the reacquisition of Bangladeshi citizenship without having to renounce their existing citizenship of other countries.

Once you have been granted Dutch nationality you will not automatically lose your Bengali nationality. It is not possible for you to renounce your original nationality.

Dutch:

Bij verkrijging van de Nederlandse nationaliteit verliest u de Bengalese nationaliteit niet automatisch. Het is voor u niet mogelijk afstand te doen van uw oorspronkelijke nationaliteit.

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A soldier with the U.S. Army adopted six children in 2000 and sexually abused them for years until one daughter reported the abuse in 2017, according to an indictment filed recently in a federal court in North Carolina.

Daniel Kemp and his wife Shanynn Kemp were arrested last year by New York State Police, each charged with several counts of sodomy related to the abuse in Jefferson County, New York, according to police. Daniel Kemp was based at Fort Drum in Jefferson County when he adopted the children, the FBI said in the indictment.

One of the victims told investigators “it happened so many times she was unable to quantify how many times she was abused,” according to the federal indictment filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

That victim told investigators the abuse began when she was 12 or 13 and the family was living in Clarksville, Tennessee, near Fort Campbell, according to the indictment. When the abuse stopped with her, Kemp began abusing another girl the FBI described as “mentally disabled,” the FBI said in the court filing.

The abuse came out in April 2017 when one of the victims, a senior at a high school near Fort Bragg in North Carolina, told school officials and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Command that her adopted father had been abusing her for years, according to the indictment.

Ireland has an extensive history of systemic human rights abuses of women and children, encompassing multiple institutional settings and spanning most of the 20th century: Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools and the non-consensual practice of symphysiotomy in hospitals.

The legal responses of the state have been fragmented, generally narrow in approach, and often the subject of censure from various UN Treaty Bodies (see Concluding Observations on Ireland by CAT 2011, 2017, HRC 2014, CESCR 2015, CEDAW 2017), with consistent recommendations to the effect that there must be independent and thorough investigations, prosecution of perpetrators, and adequate redress – i.e. access to justice. However, while Ireland has been increasingly criticised regarding historical abuses of women, the specific issue of historical practices of illegal adoption has not been scrutinised to the same extent.

Therefore, the recent Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children regarding her visit to Ireland is noteworthy due to the detailed concerns expressed by the Special Rapporteur regarding historical practices of illegal adoption (in Mother and Baby Homes and related institutional settings).

The Special Rapporteur stated that not enough has been done “to provide information, accountability and redress” to those who suffered abuse in such institutions (Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene Laundries) and “to those who were adopted in a manner that would amount to sale of children under international law”.

In this manner, the Report draws much needed attention to the issue of historical practices of illegal adoption, while also offering a further indictment of Ireland’s poor legal responses to its history of systemic abuses of women and girls, building on the repeated recommendations of UN Treaty Bodies.

Ireland has an extensive history of systemic human rights abuses of women and children, encompassing multiple institutional settings and spanning most of the 20th century: Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools and the non-consensual practice of symphysiotomy in hospitals.

The legal responses of the state have been fragmented, generally narrow in approach, and often the subject of censure from various UN Treaty Bodies (see Concluding Observations on Ireland by CAT 2011, 2017, HRC 2014, CESCR 2015, CEDAW 2017), with consistent recommendations to the effect that there must be independent and thorough investigations, prosecution of perpetrators, and adequate redress – i.e. access to justice. However, while Ireland has been increasingly criticised regarding historical abuses of women, the specific issue of historical practices of illegal adoption has not been scrutinised to the same extent.

Therefore, the recent Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children regarding her visit to Ireland is noteworthy due to the detailed concerns expressed by the Special Rapporteur regarding historical practices of illegal adoption (in Mother and Baby Homes and related institutional settings).

The Special Rapporteur stated that not enough has been done “to provide information, accountability and redress” to those who suffered abuse in such institutions (Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene Laundries) and “to those who were adopted in a manner that would amount to sale of children under international law”.

In this manner, the Report draws much needed attention to the issue of historical practices of illegal adoption, while also offering a further indictment of Ireland’s poor legal responses to its history of systemic abuses of women and girls, building on the repeated recommendations of UN Treaty Bodies.

Een Congolees kind.

Foto: Flick.com, Mulungwishi mission station, D.R. Congo

Congolese adoptiekinderen eindelijk hier

12 APR 2016

DEN HAAG - De Nederlandse adoptieouders van bijna dertig Congolese kinderen hebben deze eindelijk in de armen kunnen sluiten. Ze hebben lang moeten wachten. De Democratische Republiek Congo wilde sinds 2013 geen kinderen meer naar verschillende westerse landen laten afreizen, ook al waren ze wettig met instemming van een Congolese rechter geadopteerd. Congo zag gevaren op het gebied van mensenhandel.

In recognition of Adoption Month, we interviewed two scholars, Peter Hayes and Ingi Iusmen, about intercountry adoption (ICA) to raise awareness of some of the complexities presented by intercountry adoption. Today, we present a brief Q&A with Peter Hayes, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sunderland and author of “The legality and ethics of independent intercountry adoption under the Hague Convention” in International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family.

Where is independent, intercountry adoption (ICA) legal?

An independent ICA can be interpreted to mean a private adoption that has not been scrutinised and endorsed by either the sending or receiving state. This will almost certainly be illegal. However, more usually an independent ICA means one where an initial match is made without the involvement of official state agencies, although the state authorities in either the sending or receiving state do decide whether or not to authorise the match. This form of independent ICA is much more likely to be legal.

When state adoption authorities were asked about the legality of independent ICA in 2010, their responses were more or less equally divided between states that said that it was not permitted (e.g. China) and states which said that it was (e.g. France). It was not always clear, however, which definition of independent ICA was being used. The United Kingdom ducked the question by replying ‘not applicable’. In fact, ICAs in which the initial match was made by non-state actors have been authorised by the British courts so independent ICA is legal in the United Kingdom.

The 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption provides a framework for arranging ICA, and independent ICA, in the sense of independent preliminary matching, is permitted under the Convention at the discretion of each state. When the Convention was drawn up there were mixed views on whether to sanction independent ICA. However, a majority of state representatives were in favour of allowing for it; the United States in particular made it clear that it would only sign up to a treaty that permitted independent ICAs. After the United States implemented the Convention in 2008 the arguments against independent ICA were reinvigorated by the Permanent Bureau’s Guide to Good Practice, which claimed incorrectly that independent ICA was inconsistent with the 1993 Convention. This misleading guidance has become the source of continuing confusion over the legality of independent ICA.

In a recent flurry of articles, the National Council for Adoption asserts that the State Department is responsible for the plummeting number of intercountry adoptions. They are wrong. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

There are a multitude of reasons international adoptions to the United States and all other receiving countries have declined. Foreign governments have moved, in many cases, to bolster their own child welfare programs. But as they make progress they have also become concerned about what they increasingly view as lax practices by U.S. adoption service providers (ASPs) and inadequate regulation by federal and state child welfare agencies.

The unfortunate practice of unregulated custody transfer, more commonly referred to as “rehoming,” has become the focus of major concern for sending countries, as well as the State Department. Guatemala, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Nepal have all closed their intercountry adoption programs due to concerns about child trafficking as well as rehoming and other questionable practices by ASPs. The U.S. Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted more than one ASP for criminal activity, but concerns remain.

Russian adoption is a particularly troublesome issue. Russian children have been overrepresented in child fatality and abuse statistics. In one notorious rehoming case, an American adoptive mother put her Russian adopted son on a flight back to Moscow with a one-way ticket.

Ultimately, Russia’s closure was out of the State Department’s hands when Russia chose to close intercountry adoptions in retaliation to U.S. Congress’ passage of the Magnitsky Act.