North Korean authorities in Hamhung, South Hamgyong province, pressured local police officers late last month to adopt orphans under a pro-natalist law that grants benefits to families with three or more children, drawing sharp resistance from officers who say they cannot afford to take in additional children on their meager wages.

Although the Law on Preferential Treatment for Multi-Child Families, adopted in August of last year, aims to promote childbirth by legally enshrining benefits for multi-child households, people quietly complain that the state really intends to dump responsibility for orphans onto private individuals.

The police department of one district of Hamhung gathered its officers late last month and openly discussed orphaned children, according to a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province who requested anonymity for security reasons. The head of the department’s political department said at the meeting that police “should take the lead in resolving the orphan issue, a matter of concern for the party,” and that “people who take in orphans also receive benefits under the Law on Preferential Treatment for Multi-Child Families.”

The law designates families with three or more children, whether biological or adopted, as multi-child families and provides them with preferential benefits.

자세히 알아보기

At 7 a.m., the first rays of sunlight barely illuminate the large courtyard of the La Cayenne Hotel in Les Cayes, when dozens of parents are already crossing the threshold. The event is scheduled for 9 a.m. Yet, as early as 7 a.m., some are there, sitting silently, files under their arms, photos clutched to their chests.

On faces etched by the years, hope is palpable. Eyes scan the entrance, conversations are whispered, hands sometimes tremble. They all await the same thing: a chance to reconnect.

“I couldn’t wait for this day because it’s been too long since I lost contact with my two children,” says Pheliciane Jeanty, 63, originally from Faucault, a town near Les Cayes. Her two children were adopted by French and Canadian families respectively in 1998. Since then, silence.

In the large hall set up for the RAPWOCHE / KONEKTE project ceremony, families place on the tables photographs yellowed with age, crumpled birth certificates, and rare correspondence preserved like relics. Each document is a testament to love, each memory an attempt to resist oblivion.

Leaning on his eldest son's arm, 67-year-old Gilbert Antoine, who came from Port-Salut, walks slowly. He was registered at the Voie d'Espoir office in 2025. His daughter was adopted in Belgium. For him, taking a DNA test today represents a tangible glimmer of hope.

Police in Ukraine have uncovered an illegal surrogacy scheme, in which newborns are being trafficked over the border.

Key Takeaways:

Ukraine has been a thriving destination for surrogacy, though the war with Russia has had a negative effect on business.

Police have uncovered a trafficking scheme in which newborns are smuggled across the border, claiming to be born to surrogate mothers.

Other countries have warned citizens against Ukraine's surrogacy industry.

An adoptive mother says she is reaching "breaking point" caring for her daughter who has "significant trauma", and has called for more support for adoptive families.

The woman, who we are calling Anna to protect the identity of her child, said she had been physically attacked by her daughter and spent much of the last 15 years "living in crisis".

Anna, from north Wales, has spoken out after a BBC report found adoptive parents struggling with children who had often suffered abuse and neglect before being removed from their birth families.

The Welsh government said it valued the commitment of adoptive families and took seriously "any concerns raised about access to support".

What do the figures show?

The Belgian-Congolese lawyer Julienne Mpemba has been sentenced on appeal to fourteen years in prison for trafficking abducted Congolese children for adoption. She must also pay substantial compensation to the biological parents, adoptive parents, and the children involved. It began to dawn on people that something was going wrong with adoptions from Congo in the autumn of 2015, when Belgian adoption candidates reported that their adopted children were stuck in Kinshasa. The Congolese authorities had caught wind of the goings-on at the Tumaini orphanage and blocked the adoptions. The orphanage turned out to be the cash cow of the Belgian-Congolese Julienne Mpemba (48). She worked as a lawyer for the French-speaking community and ran for the PS in the 2014 European elections.
From Namur, Mpemba had set up a trade in children, whom she offered for adoption in Belgium and the United States. Her accomplice “Rambo” abducted the children from the streets of Kinshasa, or they were recruited in remote regions under the guise of a holiday camp in Kinshasa. Still others were assigned to the orphanage by local authorities with the instruction to reunite them with their biological families within a certain period. In November 2015, the Congolese authorities decided to release eleven children from Tumaini for departure to Belgium after all. However, rumors of identity forgery, fraud, and kidnappings had been circulating since 2013. When Belgian embassy staff came to collect the children from the orphanage, they turned out to be missing. Mpemba refused to disclose their whereabouts and demanded at least 20,000 euros to release the children. Belgium filed a complaint against her for hostage-taking.

DNA testing
On November 7, Mpemba finally relented, and on November 10, eleven Congolese children arrived in French-speaking Belgium. The adoptive parents were unaware that their papers had been forged and that they had different names. Meanwhile, the biological parents in Congo were searching for them in vain. Mpemba's lawyer reported in the spring of 2016 that at least three children had been taken away from their biological parents and were not available for adoption. This was also confirmed by DNA testing. Complaints were subsequently filed with the Belgian judiciary by Congo. The judicial investigation revealed that Julienne Mpemba was the central figure in a child trafficking network aimed at financial gain. She had American adoptive parents pay thousands of dollars for children who were already in the Belgian adoption process. She also bribed a Congolese magistrate in the hope of covering up the case. The money paid by Belgian adoptive parents ended up primarily in her own pockets. The children stayed in the orphanage in deplorable conditions.

**Moral damages**
Now, the Court of Appeal in Liège has sentenced Mpemba to fourteen years in prison, with immediate arrest. This ruling is harsher than the verdict at first instance, in which Mpemba received a ten-year prison sentence. Mpemba was found guilty of the most serious offenses: she led a structured system of fraudulent adoptions from Congo. The children were abducted and held hostage, documents were systematically forged, the biological parents were deliberately misled, and the adoptive parents were financially and emotionally exploited. The court also determined that Mbempa clearly had a financial motive, and that the children and families were subordinate to this. Mpemba managed the orphanage from Belgium via money transfers, emails, and WhatsApp. In addition to the prison sentence, she is also stripped of her political and civil rights for ten years. She receives a fine of 8,000 euros and must pay damages of up to 100,000 euros to the biological parents and the adoptive parents. She must transfer money for the children to a blocked savings account. Mpemba often failed to appear in court and hid behind sick notes. Several government agencies that had joined the proceedings as civil parties are also receiving compensation. These include the Federal Migration Centre Myria, the French-speaking Community in Belgium, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Flemish agency Opgroeien is receiving moral damages of 1 euro because the reputation of international adoptions has suffered a severe blow due to Mpemba's actions.

GENEVA – Allegations that at least 80 Indigenous children were subjected to illegal intercountry adoptions after being institutionalised at the “Hogar Temporal Elisa Martínez” following their capture and enforced disappearance between 1968 and 1996 in Guatemala are gravely concerning, UN experts* said today.

“We are particularly troubled that no prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation has been conducted into the alleged involvement of some State authorities in these processes and that mothers affected by these illegal adoptions have reportedly not received adequate recognition or reparations,” the experts said.

Illegal adoptions may occur through a range of illicit acts or unlawful practices, including fraud in the declaration of adoptability, falsification of official documents, coercion or lack of free and informed consent of biological parents and improper financial gain for intermediaries.

The experts called for independent investigations into the allegations that in this process of illegal inter-country adoptions, public officials were allegedly involved , including former Director/Administrator María Consuelo Porras Argueta, current Attorney General and Head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala, who reportedly served as the children’s “legal guardian” from 21 January to 30 August 1982.

The experts recalled that there is an ongoing judicial appointment process and urged all actors to exercise caution in view of these very serious allegations that are yet to be investigated. They noted that Porras Argueta is currently running for election to the Constitutional Court and may run for re-election as Attorney General this week.

A government report from the European country acknowledges that the processes were plagued with irregularities, from the theft of babies to documents with false information.When he was eight years old, Markus Lidman realized he was different from the other children in Pitea, a town in northern Sweden. They had all inherited the same pale skin tone as their parents. He, on the other hand, was dark-skinned. “I decided to ask them if they were really my parents, and they told me they had adopted me in Colombia in 1982. They sat with me and showed me a video of the orphanage,” he recalls. He had been born Luis Alberto Sánchez in Cali, a hot city 7,000 mile away. Like 4,500 other Swedes born between 1970 and 2000, his Colombian parents had abandoned him. Or at least that’s what the adoption papers said, without providing any details.

From that moment on, Markus began to feel a void that he still feels at age 43. “Questions started popping up for my biological mother: ‘Why did you abandon me? Wasn’t I lovable enough? Did you have a drug addiction and couldn’t take care of me?’” he says via video call after finishing his shift as a waiter at a pub. He believes the lack of answers has affected him at different times. “I panicked about women leaving me. I did everything to avoid it. And when my girlfriends dumped me, I attempted suicide,” he says before saying that he now is married and has a daughter. “Years later, I did drugs and stupid things. When you have a hole, you fill it with shit.”

Markus Lidman.CORTESÍA

Markus decided to look for his mother. The problem was that he only had the scant information from his documents. “All they say is her name, and I think it’s made up. When I Google it, all that comes up is an inventor from the 1900s with a mustache,” he explains. He asked for help in Facebook groups and that’s where, a year and a half ago, he met Mikael Kjelleros. He’s something of a celebrity among Swedish adoptees: he found his Colombian mother in 2024 and now helps others. He recommended that Markus take a DNA test on MyHeritage, a platform that has genetic data on some 10 million people worldwide. That didn’t work either.

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has directed the state government to submit a report on the welfare of a minor child who was taken into custody after allegedly being adopted through a child trafficking network. he child, adopted in 2023, was later seized by the police and handed over to the Women and Child Welfare Department. Challenging this action, a couple from Suraram mandal in Nalgonda district, M Venkanna and his wife, approached the High Court. They contested the decision to remove the child from their custody.

Single judge dismisses petition

A single judge had earlier dismissed their petition, observing that an adoption carried out in violation of legal procedures could not be permitted. The couple subsequently filed an appeal. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice GM Mohiuddin heard the matter on Friday. Counsel for the appellants argued that although statutory procedures may not have been strictly followed, the child had been raised with care and affection, and sought directions to restore custody.

Govt counsel opposes plea

Opposing the plea, government counsel Kommineni Mani Deepika submitted that the child had been adopted from Nakka Yadagiri, who is allegedly part of a child trafficking racket, and urged the court to dismiss the appeal.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate.

In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives.

Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued.

The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.Three justices issued a scathing dissent, calling what happened in this court “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation.”

An attorney for the Masts declined to comment, citing an order from the circuit court not to discuss the details of the case publicly. Lawyers representing the Afghan family said they were not yet prepared to comment.The child was injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in September 2019 when U.S. soldiers raided a rural compound. The child’s parents and siblings were killed. Soldiers brought her to a hospital at an American military base.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate.

In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives.

Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued.

The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud. Three justices issued a scathing dissent, calling what happened in this court “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation.”

An attorney for the Masts declined to comment, citing an order from the circuit court not to discuss the details of the case publicly. Lawyers representing the Afghan family said they were not yet prepared to comment.