The government must make free DNA kits available to adoptees.

The government must make free DNA kits available to adoptees.

Children have the right to know their biological parents, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Therefore, the Dutch State must help adoptees, says Wen Xin van der Linden.

Source Colourbox

This article was written byWen Xin van der LindenPublished on December 15, 2018, 14:19

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My name is Wen Xin van der Linden, I am 20 years old, and I was adopted from China when I was one and a half years old. I now live with a lovely family, but that does not change the fact that I would like to know where I come from. Who brought me into this world and with whom I can compare myself genetically.

I have many questions about my past, and I would like to have them answered. Although reality cannot be very rosy, when I think of the poverty and the one-child policy in China, but also the preference for a boy over a girl at the time I was born.

Quote from Wen Xin van der Linden (20) .

I would like to know who brought me into this world and with whom I can compare myself genetically.

Wen Xin van der Linden (20)

International adoptees will most likely have far fewer leads than donor-conceived children to search for biological family. Therefore, I would like to call upon the Dutch State, as the receiving country, for (financial) support for adoptees.

Many adoptees, myself included, want to be heard and receive the help they are entitled to, namely finding their identity. Article 7 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child states that a child has the right to know his or her biological parents.

Next, Article 8 states that a child has the right to retain his or her identity. For that, you would want to know your true identity.

Responsibility

Money should play as little as possible, or ideally no role at all, for adoptees and their biological parents to provide DNA in the hope of reunification. The Dutch State must therefore now take responsibility by helping adoptees search for and find their biological family abroad. This can be done by making free DNA kits available to adoptees and potential biological parents in the sending countries. This allows for a relatively simple search for matches.

In that way, it can become clear quite quickly whether they are indeed the biological parents and that it really is the biological child that the parents, for whatever reasons, had to give up. That is important, at least for me as an adopted person. I hope that this makes my life complete.