Dir: Margo Harkin. Ireland. 2023. 103 mins

The horrors of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes have been vividly conveyed in both drama (2013’s Philomena) and documentary (The Missing Children in 2021, and more). Familiarity does nothing to blunt the power and emotional charge of Stolen. Previously entitled Limbo, Margo Harkin’s heartbreaker of a documentary gives a voice to those silenced for far too long. An elegant layering of chapter and verse testimony underpins a wide-ranging portrait balancing individual suffering with an understanding of the bigger societal issues. Essential viewing in Ireland, Stolen should provoke outrage in audiences far and wide.

The homes and their horrors were the product of an Ireland determined to punish the transgressive

Harkin sets the scene by asserting her love for Ireland but also recognising it as a country with “dark secrets” buried beneath its “waterlogged surfaces”. Mournful shots of bleak rural settings punctuate the narrative, adding to the melancholy air. The first individual we encounter is Michael O’Donovan, a gardener at Sean Ross Abbey Mother and Baby Home in Tipperary from 1988 to 1991. He recalls the discovery of lots of small bones and a policy of planting trees that felt like a deliberate act of concealment. His many unanswered questions lay out the themes of a film which confronts shame, guilt , collusion and cover-up.

We move on to the site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home that operated at Tuam between 1925 and 1961. Subsidence exposed a children’s graveyard on a site that is now a playground, adding to the sense that the horrors of the past are seeping to the surface. Historian Catherine Corliss is interviewed about her tireless, ground-breaking research into Tuam and the 796 babies and children who died there.

Unforgettable moment for Maria Paola. For the very first time in 37 years, she met her biological mother. “I dropped all my bags to hug her.” Maria Paola was only a few days old when she flew from Guatemala to Belgium. She was received at Zaventem airport by her adoptive parents and her brother. She spent all her childhood in Belgium, but as a young woman she began to question her identity. That's why she went looking for who she was. She flew to Guatemala to consult the local database and came up with something surprising.

“According to the state, I never left Guatemala and I was not adopted at all,” says Maria Paola. "I have my doubts about how the adoption came about, but I have no idea about the extent of the smuggling and the falsification of documents."

She did not stop there and continued to look for her biological family. She found out with a DNA test that she has a half-sister with the same mother. This is how she first came into contact with her biological mother via FaceTime. "She saw me on the screen and she knew I was her daughter." When she meets her mother, Maria Paola has no more questions about who she is.

Parents want to start a mass claim against two ministries, the Safe Home reporting point, the Child Protection Board and youth care institutions. The policy by which many of their children were placed under supervision or removed from their homes was unlawful, says the foundation in which several parents have united.

Insufficient research has been carried out into custodial placements and supervision orders over the past thirty years, say the parents of the Stichting Collaboration of Parents with Youth Care. According to the foundation, policy in recent years has also been aimed at reducing parental control and legal protection “to virtually zero”.

The organizations and ministries thus went against Dutch law and international treaties, say the parents. Affected children and parents can register to participate in the mass claim. It is not clear how many parents will actually sign up. According to the foundation, "more than 100,000 children and their parents have probably suffered damage".

ANNEX “SEARCH FOR ORIGINS” CHINA Reviewed by local contacts

The profile of people registering to adopt a child in Malaga has changed greatly in the past decade. Ten years ago there were practically no same sex couples that started the procedures to adopt. Now, these account for 75 per cent of the requests that reach the child protection system.

«Right now it is couples made up of men who are mostly offering themselves as adoptive families,» explains the delegate of Social Inclusion, Youth, Families and Equality of the Junta de Andalucía, Ruth Sarabia.

This trend coincides with a decline in adoption applications nationally. From 193 requests in 2011 to a total of 70 in 2022. In little more than a decade, applications have dropped 63.7 per cent.

The decline is even higher in international adoption applications. From 2011 to 2022 these have plummeted by 89.3 per cent, going from 84 couples who offered themselves 12 years ago as adopters to nine last year, the lowest in history.

«The drop in international adoptions began to be noticed as a result of the 2008 crisis, adding to this that the prospects for national adoption are better, since they involve fewer procedures and a shorter waiting time, as well as being less expensive», stated Sarabia.

India does not have adequate safety mechanisms for children who face abuse at home. It’s time to build systems for their protection.

The film Mrs Chatterjee v/s Norway, set to be released on March 17, chronicles the traumatic story of Sagarika Bhattacharya and her ex-husband whose very young children were forcibly taken away by the Norwegian child welfare authorities, the Barnevernet, in 2011 because they believed that the children were being abused. It subsequently became a diplomatic row since the Chatterjees and their children were Indian citizens.

This was not the first — or the last — such intervention by the Norwegian state. Migrant families have especially been under scrutiny because their child-rearing practices (co-sleeping for example) are different from the cultural practices of the country. In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Norway had violated the right to respect for privacy and family life, home, and correspondence which is protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because of the forced child removal in multiple cases. The ECHR fined Norway because a child was removed from a Somali family, and put up for adoption.

Child protection rules, such as banning physical punishment for disciplinary infractions, are, in fact, beneficial for children, and in the case of the Bhattacharyas, this was one of the reasons (even if it happened just once) that made the family reunification process more arduous. The film has unsettled many Indian immigrant families in Europe. For example, a social media post in the largest international mother’s group in the Netherlands, Amsterdam Mamas, indicated the worries of several South Asians.

India is home to nearly 440 million children, one of the highest numbers in a single country. Yet, we do not have adequate mechanisms to ensure a safety net for children, should homes turn out to be unsafe. UNICEF argues that figures on violence against children, their exploitation, and abuse are likely to be underestimated because most of these cases are not reported.

A ZDF report on Ukrainian children deported to Russia brought it to light. President Putin's child protection officer used an SOS Children's Village facility for propaganda images. The child protection organization rejects the suspicion of involvement and relies on clarification. Finding the truth is not easy.

"It hit us like a bang," says Boris Breyer, spokesman for the international aid organization SOS Children's Villages worldwide. He refers to a ten-minute ZDF "Frontal" report from the previous week, which deals with Russian child deportations from Ukraine. You can see Ukrainian children being visited by a good-humoured blonde lady – Maria Lvova-Belova, a woman close to President Vladimir Putin. The scene of the incident is an SOS Children's Village in Tomilino, Russia, near Moscow.

Ukrainian children turned up in Russian SOS Children's Village facilities

The 38-year-old Lvova-Belova, a member of the presidential party United Russia and Putin's "ombudswoman for children's rights", is - according to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" in November of the previous year - the "architect of the repopulation" of Ukrainian boys and girls to Russia. According to the UN, at least 1,800 Ukrainian children have been taken to Russia since the start of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities speak of a multiple of that – 14,000 children.

In November 2022, the SOS umbrella organization learned that 13 Ukrainian children had been assigned to two SOS Children's Villages Russia facilities by the Russian authorities. "We immediately made that transparent on our website," says Breyer in an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND), "above all to ensure that the public knows about these cases and that these children cannot suddenly disappear somewhere". The 13 boys and girls are still housed there to this day, and there have not been any other Ukrainian additions to the Russian SOS Children's Village facilities. "As far as we know."

Marco Antonio Garavito on the trade in Guatemalan war offspring

The civil war in Guatemala ( 1960-1996 ) not only massacred the indigenous population, but also launched a human trafficking network in which small children were sold to wealthy Western European families. What psychological problems do those affected show who are supported by your organization Liga Guatemalteca de Higiene Mental?

ND ImClub_Stephan Hermlin. Along the poet

There are basically two syndromes: abandonment and guilt. Guilt prevails in biological families. In society, it is prescribed as a cultural concept that parents have to protect their children. In a rural area, we were able to document a case: in the midst of a military shootout in a village community, a family fled and left their child behind. Later they said to themselves: If only we had gone back, even if they had killed us. They assumed it was their fault - not the war, not the military, no, themselves. The adoptees suffer from a complicated abandonment syndrome. Ever since they were little, they have asked themselves: Why am I here in Europe? Didn't my parents want me? Why did they leave me? This feeling of being abandoned often manifests itself in anxiety, depression, social isolation, and the consumption of alcohol and other drugs.

INTERVIEW

Det er kritikkverdig at Bufdir har fått ansvaret for å hente inn denne informasjonen når det er bestemt at det skal nedsettes et eksternt utvalg. Det er likevel viktig at alle får en mulighet til å ytre seg i denne saken, og vi deler følgende: "Bufdir har forbindelse med at det skal nedsettes et ekstern utvalg for gransking av utenlandsadopsjoner fått i oppdrag fra Barne- og familiedepartementet (Norge) å innhente synspunkter fra de berørte om bl.a. hvilke opprinnelsesland som bør legges til grunn i granskningen. Bufdir har derfor invitert stiftelser, interesseforeninger og organisasjoner på adopsjonsfeltet til et innspillsmøte om dette, men vi er også interessert i å høre fra deg som er adoptert, men som ikke er tilknyttet noen interesseforening e.l. I vår anbefaling til Barne- og familiedepartementet vil Bufdir også gå gjennom henvendelsene vi allerede har mottatt fra adopterte som er bekymret for at noe galt kan ha skjedd i deres adopsjonssak. Om du ikke har kontaktet Bufdir med en bekymring, men har innspill til granskningen, er vi takknemlig om du vil dele ditt synspunkt om: -hvilke land av de Norge har adoptert fra, som bør inngå i utvalgets undersøkelser -hvilken tidsperiode som bør granskes -hvorfor nettopp adopsjoner fra dette opprinnelseslandet i nettopp dette tidsrommet, bør granskes -eventuelle andre innspill til granskningen Gi ditt innspill via sikker elektronisk melding innen 8. mars 2023 (skriv i emnefeltet «Innspill granskning saksnummer 2023/68429»)." Se i artikkelen for direkte lenke til sikker elektronisk melding.

It is objectionable that Bufdir has been given responsibility for collecting this information when it has been decided that an external committee will be set up.It is nevertheless important that everyone gets an opportunity to express themselves in this matter, and we share the following:"Bufdir is connected with the establishment of an external committee for the investigation of foreign adoptions commissioned by the Ministry of Children and Families (Norway) toobtain views from those concerned about e.g. which countries of origin should be used as a basis for the investigation.Bufdir has therefore invited foundations, interest associations and organizations in the adoption field to an input meeting about this, but we are also interested in hearing from youwho have been adopted, but who are not affiliated with any interest association etc.In our recommendation to the Ministry of Children and Families, Bufdir will also review the inquiries we have already received from adoptees who are concerned that something wrong mayhave happened in their adoption case. If you have not contacted Bufdir with a concern, but have input for the review, we would be grateful if you would share your point of viewabout:-which of the countries Norway has adopted from should be included in the committee's investigations-which time period should be examined- why exactly adoptions from this country of origin in this particular period of time should be scrutinized- any other input for the investigationGive your input via secure electronic message by 8 March 2023 (write in the subject field "Input investigation case number 2023/68429")."See the article for a direct link to a secure electronic message.

CAIRO – 27 February 2023: Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Social Solidarity Mohamed Omar al-Kamary stated Monday that Egypt used to have 526 orphanages, but now the figure dropped to 497 as 29 shut down due to the increase in alternative care.

To better ensure the safety of adopted children, the legal advisor revealed that the ministry plans to pay foster families to avoid any risks of human trafficking. Also, it works on introducing weekly/monthly visits to foster families by either the ministry itself or the facility where the children were adopted.

As for foster families living abroad, Kamary said that the ministry is trying to make agreements with other countries for their agencies to play the monitoring role on its behalf. He added that Egypt has that kind of deal only with Qatar until present, noting that regulations provide that at least one of the foster parents has to be an Egyptian citizen.

The statements were made at the Regional Conference on Social Care System Reform organized by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in collaboration with UNICEF and the Arab League.

National Coordinator at Rwanda National Child Development Agency (NCDA) Naphtal Rutayisire said that the establishment encouraged the residents of every village to elect a man and a woman to respond to the needs of children, help in abuse prevention, and assist with reporting sexual assault cases.