Americans banned from adopting children from Kazakhstan

Wednesday, 12.06.2013, 16:29

U.S. citizens will not be able to adopt Kazakhstan children until U.S. authorities explain how two orphans from Kazakhstan ended up at the American ranch, Tengrinews.kz reports citing chairwoman of the Commission for Children’s Rights Protection of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education and Science Raissa Sher.

“Last July it turned out that 2 of our kids were staying at the ranch. This ranch is similar to our schools for children with deviant behavior. Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry and the Children’s Rights Protection commission filed an request, asking for details and explanations, but received no answer. In this relation we are not going to resume adoption practices with the U.S. until we receive a reply from this country in line with the Hague Convention and the international obligations it undertook,” Sher said. (more…)

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AFRICA: Call to reverse soaring adoption rates

ADDIS ABABA, 6 June 2012 (IRIN) – As the number of African children adopted by people outside the continent reaches record levels, experts, activists, government officials and academics have called for the practice to be stemmed, warning that adoption was too often motivated by financial gain rather than the best interests of the children involved.

Between 2003 and 2011, for example, at least 41,000 African children were sent abroad for adoption from Africa, according to a study entitled Africa: The New Frontier for Inter-country Adoption by the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF).

“Commercial interests have superseded altruism, turning children into commodities in the graying and increasingly amoral world of inter-country adoption,” the ACPF study said.

In 2010 alone, it said, some 6,000 African children were involved in inter-country adoption, representing an almost threefold increase in just seven years. Global rates are at a 15-year low, the report said. (more…)

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Colombia closed the door for foreign adoption

Date: 2013-05-30

Google Translation from Spanish:

May 30, 2013

E n an unprecedented move, the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare has temporarily suspended acceptance of new applications for foreign families who want to adopt Colombian children between 0 and 6 years, with no special conditions.

The move, announced on Thursday at the First Meeting of Central Authorities in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, responds to the need to manage 377 Colombian applications and 3,506 foreign families who are registered on the waiting list who want to adopt healthy children, children seven years and no siblings, ie children who do not have characteristics of difficult adoption.

“This decision is part of the obligation to safeguard the interests of children,” said the Director General (in charge) of the ICBF, Adriana Gonzalez Maxcyclak. “We are guaranteeing and prioritizing adoptions by domestic households and in the context of subsidiarity, successfully carrying out the processes that are already ahead of foreign families who want to provide all the love and warmth of their homes to children in Colombia yearning to have him. ” (more…)

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adoptie is big business

Source: http://www.vpro.nl
Maartje Duin , 29 april 2013

Holland Doc: Mercy Mercy
Maandag, Nederland 2, 20.55-22.00 uur

Bezoekers die huilend naar buiten kwamen. Een woedende pedagoge die de filmmaakster wel iets wilde aandoen. Bij de IDFA-première afgelopen november bleek de documentaire Mercy Mercy de gemoederen flink te beroeren.
Niet verwonderlijk, want in de film voltrekt zich een hartverscheurend drama. Roba en Masho zijn een broertje en zusje uit Ethiopië. Hun ouders, beiden seropositief, is verteld dat ze niet lang meer te leven hebben. Ze krijgen bezoek van een man van een weeshuis en een lokale medewerkster van een Deens adoptiebureau. Waarom de kleine Roba en Masho niet naar Denemarken gestuurd? Van een goede opleiding, zegt de weeshuisdirecteur, zullen niet alleen zij als ouders, maar zal heel Ethiopië profiteren. Masho en Roba kunnen wetenschappers of dokters worden, misschien worden ze wel premier. De ouders gaan akkoord, maar niet van harte. Ze willen minstens eens per jaar bellen met hun kinderen. Natuurlijk, belooft de medewerkster van het adoptiebureau. ‘Ook wij bekommeren ons om hun welzijn.’
De Ethiopische ouders denken dat zij een financiële vergoeding van de Deense adoptieouders krijgen. Dat adoptie in Europa het voorgoed verbreken van familiebanden inhoudt, weten zij niet. Net zomin als het Deense stel – veertigplus, onvruchtbaar – voorziet wat er kan gebeuren als je een meisje van zes losrukt uit haar omgeving. Vier jaar lang registreerde de Deense Katrine Kjaer hoe de situatie steeds verder uit de hand loopt. (more…)

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Review: ‘Mercy Mercy’ is a sad portrait of international adoption SPECIAL

Sarah Gopaul
Apr 27, 2013

‘Mercy Mercy: A Portrait of True Adoption’ is a documentary about inter-country adoption that provides a raw look at all participants in the adoption process.
When the average person thinks about adoption, they think about all the orphans in the world. But a surprising number of adoptions involve living biological parents and international adoptive parents. In Mercy Mercy: A Portrait of True Adoption, filmmakers follow as loving Ethiopian parents give their children to a couple from Denmark.When Sinkenesh and Hussen were diagnosed with HIV and told they’d live for a maximum of five years, they made the difficult decision to give their two youngest children up for adoption. Excited couple Henriette and Gert travel from Denmark to Ethiopia to collect the children and bring them home. While the African couple wishes to secure a better life for their kids, they also hope for some financial compensation. Meanwhile, the Danish couple is realizing their dream of becoming parents, though it’s not everything they expected.This is a tragic story that is difficult to watch without becoming emotionally involved in the narrative. There are so many broken promises that combine to cause so much pain over the four years chronicled in the film. The Danish couple and adoption agency promise to stay connected and provide the birth parents updates, but they are forced to jump through ridiculous hoops to gain even the least amount of information. The pop-up adoption agency appears ready to say anything to convince Sinkenesh and Hussen to sign over their children.

FULL TEXT HERE

 

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Taken & never returned: When adoption profits the middleman

Source: https://www.youtube.com
19 April 2013


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Ethiopian orphanage used ‘child harvesters’ to find children

Source: http://cphpost.dk
Ray Weaver
April 8, 2013 – 15:05

DanAdopt’s closed orphanage used an intermediary to convince families to put their children up for adoption

This woman said she had no idea her children would never return when she allowed them to be adopted in Denmark (Screen Shot: DR/ 21 Søndag)
Adoptions from the the Enat Alem orphanage in Ethiopia were recently halted by the social and integration minister, Karen Hækkerup (Socialdemokraterne), based on reports of children being deprived of food, basic care and medical treatment at the facility. Now new reports have surfaced that the home used ‘child harvesters’ to lure local families into putting their children up for adoption at Enat Alem in violation of the Hague Conventions.

A local man, Gimma Kebele, told the DR News programme ’21 Søndag’ that he worked at Enat Alem and that, along with his duties as a night watchman, he went around local villages visiting families in an attempt to persuade them to put their children up for adoption. Kebele says that he has been involved in 145 adoptions at Enat Alem. (more…)

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Strasbourg Human Rights Court: Judgment against Serbia

26/03/2013

In the case of Zorica Jovanović v. Serbia, the Court found that the authorities had not given the applicant credible information about her new-born baby who, according to her, had not died in hospital but had been illegally adopted.

In view of the significant number of other potential applicants, the Court held that Serbia had to take measures to give credible answers explaining what happened to each of the children who disappeared and to provide the parents with appropriate

Press Release Judgment Zorica Jovanovic v. Serbia missing babies from hospitals

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Foreign-run orphanage closed after reports of abuse, human trafficking

Sapa-AP | 25 March, 2013 14:47

Cambodian authorities said Monday they had shut a foreign-run orphanage that is suspected of beating its children and carrying out human trafficking.

Officials and a rights group said police in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday raided the unlicensed orphanage, called Love in Action, and rescued 21 children.

Gratianne Quade, a spokeswoman for SISHA, an anti-trafficking organization in Cambodia, said an Australian woman who ran the orphanage was not arrested in the Friday raid and her current whereabouts were not known.

Poverty compels many parents in Cambodia to send their children to orphanages. SISHA estimates that 70% of Cambodia’s 100 000 orphans actually have at least one parent.

Um Sophanara, an official at the Social Affairs Ministry, which oversees orphanages, confirmed the closure but declined to give details. A SISHA statement said the raid came after several groups of children had fled the orphanage recently and reported a variety of neglect and abuse problems to authorities. (more…)

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Terre des hommes will no longer be organizing adoptions

Wed, 6 Mar 2013 14:16 GMT

Source: Member

International adoption has been a part of the activities of Terre des hommes since the early 1960s. But from Edmond Kaiser and the first children arriving by their dozens, for whom adoptive families were sought urgently, to the complexity of today’s procedures, international adoption has come a long way. Firstly, the criteria and the demands are now far stricter for the adopters, the number of applications has significantly decreased and the profile of the children put up for international adoption is currently very different from the expectations of the future parents. Secondly, structural changes in some of the countries of origin, notably in India, no longer enable us to assume our responsibilities towards the children and the adoptive parents. In such a background of evolution, Terre des hommes will no longer be serving as an intermediary for adoptions, but will continue to advocate for the children’s protection, encouraging keeping or returning the children to their own families, or having recourse to alternative care options such as host families in the child’s own country.

For some years we have been witnessing a gradual decrease in international adoptions. All host countries are concerned, in North America as well as in Europe. Keeping a child in his biological family, alternatives to the institutionalization of children, the increase of national adoptions, have all played their part in this decrease. In the United States, for example, in 2004, 24,000 children from other countries were adopted. In 2011, only 9,300 international adoptions were counted. (more…)

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