Foster care: It’s time to think out of the box

Date: 2012-10-29

Being blind followers of the West, even in matters of child care, may lead us down a dark alley, writes Suranya Aiyar

In sharp contrast to Western conventions for reportage of children, the pictures and names of Abhigyan and Aishwarya were freely used in our media in articles about their escapade with foster care in Norway. But that was not necessarily a bad thing for the ill-starred Bhattacharyas.

The images of little Aishwarya driving away from New Delhi airport showing her unmistakeable resemblance to her mother Sagarika, made an eloquent proclamation of where she came from and whom she ought to be with. The footage of the radiant smiles of the mother and grandmother, when they were finally able to meet the children in India were a testament, if any was needed, to their great joy at their return. Watching them, we smiled with them and felt their happiness. Admittedly, some of us did not smile, and rather felt our impatience at the media over-kill. Nevertheless, such public empathy for the family as was generated by the free media access to them was of no small value to the Bhattacharyas. In the situation in which the Bhattacharyas found themselves, cornered by a widely respected and powerful bureaucracy that was deeply invested in justifying its drastic action, the impersonality of faceless and nameless reporting was perhaps the opposite of what they needed. The mother certainly gained something in having out there the images of her holding Aishwarya in her lap and pushing Abhigyan’s hair off his forehead in an everyday mom-like gesture, belying the extreme allegations about her mental and parenting competence. (more…)

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Made in Colombia – The other face of adoption (Part 1)

8 April 2012


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Profit, not care: The ugly side of overseas adoptions

Date: 2011-06-05

Lax regulation and an endless demand by childless couples in the West has created an often exploitative market in babies born in the developing world

By Laurie Penny
Sunday, 5 June 2011

In rural Nepal, where the going rate for a healthy orphan is $5,000 (£3,000), some 600 children are missing. They were taken by agents who came to the villages promising that they would educate the children and give them a better life in the capital, sometimes for a steep fee. The children never returned. (more…)

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The scandal of orphanages in tourist resorts and disaster zones that rent children to fleece gullible Westerners

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk 
By IAN BIRRELL
10th April 2011

As a child welfare expert who has worked amid bullets and bombs in some of the world’s toughest war zones, Jennifer Morgan is not someone easily shaken. But even she admits she was shocked by some of the orphanages she visited recently in Haiti.
‘Outside it is a sunny day. Then you step inside the walls of an orphanage and realise that the children there have been exposed to rapes, severe beatings, emotional and mental trauma,’ she said. It was even more disturbing, she added, than the damaged children she came across amid the deadly mayhem of Darfur.
But perhaps the most troubling thing is that these tragic scenes in Haiti are not unusual. In dozens of places around the world, unregulated orphanages have become a boom business trading off Western guilt. Our desire to help is backfiring in the most dreadful fashion. (more…)

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Surrogate twins in no-mans land

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Sumitra Deb Roy, TNN, Jul 21, 2010, 03.43am IST
MUMBAI: Two representatives from the Norwegian embassy in Delhi are making enquiries about Andras Bells surrogacy procedure in a Mumbai clinic. 

We provided all the relevant documents and two to three informed consent papers that she had signed, said medical director of Bandras Rotunda Clinic Dr Gautam Allahabadia. He added that the clinic had done nothing illegal or unethical. (more…)

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Stolen by the Nazis

 The tragic tale of 12,000 blue-eyed blond children taken by the SS to create an Aryan super-race
By ANDREW MALONE
Last updated at 11:43 PM on 09th January 2009

With blond hair and striking blue eyes, the toddler attracted admiring glances from other mothers growing up in the Crimea.

But Folker Heinecke’s looks also proved a curse: they brought him to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, the psychopathic head of the German SS and architect of a plan to populate the world with the Aryan master race. (more…)

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Europeans Get Around Sperm And Egg Donor Regulations

December 03, 2006

The booming egg donor market in the United States is pulling in British donors who want to make extra money.

The sale of eggs is illegal in this country, but in America, the industry is worth an estimated $4.5bn (£2.4bn). Donors with the right physical, personal and intellectual attributes can attract fees of up to $35,000 for their eggs, with some in the industry claiming that as much as $50,000 has changed hands. Prices are rising, too: in New York, average eggs are fetching $8,000. About 15 years ago, the comparable figure was closer to $1,000. (more…)

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Små barn-stora pengar/Small Children-Big Money

Source: Gringo
Date:2008-06-06

- UNOFFICIAL TRANSLATION -

 One of Scandinavia’s largest adoption agencies has illegally adopted children.
In the early 1990s Norwegian Adopsjonsforum brought children from
Argentina, despite the fact that the South American country had banned
international adoptions. Several years later one of the children was
still reported as missing in his homecountry. (more…)

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Ethiopia’s adoption dilemma

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk
Date: 2005-10-06
 
Mohammed Adow
BBC, Addis Ababa

At the Kids Care Orphanage in Addis Ababa, hundreds of newborn babies – some of them only days old – are cared for until people are ready to adopt them.

 

Most of the parents are from abroad. The adoption of Ethiopian children by foreigners has increased sharply in the past few years, with thousands of parents from various parts of the Western world adopting children from this impoverished nation. (more…)

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