We have been horrified to learn about the scale of the allegations against SOS Children’s Villages in Syria, following reports in the media. Children are at the heart of everything we do, and learning about what these families have been through is truly heartbreaking. They deserve our full support and outrage.

We have been horrified to learn about the scale of the allegations against SOS Children’s Villages in Syria, following reports in the media. Children are at the heart of everything we do, and learning about what these families have been through is truly heartbreaking. They deserve our full support and outrage.  

In the UK, we pride ourselves on having extremely high standards when it comes to supporting the work of our international programme partners.  

During the civil war in Syria, it now appears that those high standards were not being met by the team at SOS Children’s Villages Syria, a national member of the SOS Children’s Villages Federation.  

“From December 20, 2022, to September 1, 2025, a total of 21 children of the state have been adopted by prospective parents," Shimla Deputy Commissioner Anupam Kashyap said.

Two orphaned children, being taken care of under the “Children of the State” programme, were adopted by two couples from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh at Shishu Grah (Infant Home) at Tutikandi in Shimla.

Shimla Deputy Commissioner Anupam Kashyap said, “From December 20, 2022, to September 1, 2025, a total of 21 children of the state have been adopted by prospective parents. The state government’s meaningful efforts are helping give a new life to these children.”

The DC appealed to prosperous members of society to come forward and adopt children growing up in infant homes and child welfare institutions to provide a happy and bright future to these children.

Shimla District Programme Officer Mamta Paul said, “Prospective adoptive parents, who apply, are selected for adoption based on merit. Only those who fulfil the rules and conditions as per the relevant act are eligible for adoption.”

Tobias Hubinette’s findings on illegal international adoptions confirmed by investigations in Seoul and Stockholm

Two decades ago, when Tobias Hubinette began publishing research papers on the dark history of Korea’s overseas adoption program, his work was dismissed as radical, even extremist.

Now, the Swedish adoptee — born in Korea as Lee Sam-dol — is seeing both Seoul and Stockholm acknowledge what he has long maintained.

Earlier this year, state-run commissions in both countries found widespread human rights violations in intercountry adoptions from the 1960s to 1990s, when the adoption of Korean babies to the West was at its peak.

It sounded like freedom, like a world of possibility beyond the orphanage walls.

Maria Pires was getting adopted. At 11 years old, she saw herself escaping the chaos and violence of the Sao Paulo orphanage, where she’d been sexually assaulted by a staff member. She saw herself leaving Brazil for America, trading abandonment for belonging.

A single man in his 40s, Floyd Sykes III, came to Sao Paulo to meet her. He signed some paperwork and brought Maria home.

She arrived in the suburbs of Baltimore in the summer of 1989, a little girl with a tousle of dark hair, a nervous smile and barely a dozen words of English. The sprawling subdivision looked idyllic, with rows of modest brick townhouses and a yard where she could play soccer.

She was, she believed, officially an American.

The Delhi Police arrested 10 people, including a doctor, last month.

It was nearly midnight on August 22 when Suresh, a brickmaker travelling to Behror in Rajasthan, woke up at the Sarai Kale Khan ISBT and got the scare of his life. While his wife and three other children were asleep beside him on Platform 2, his six-month-old son was nowhere to be found.

After frantically looking for his child, Suresh approached the nearby Sunlight Colony police station and a case of kidnapping was registered.

What Suresh could not have known that night was that his baby’s disappearance would crack open a larger child trafficking network operating across the country with 10 people, including a doctor, being arrested last month.

During its probe, the police noticed two middle-aged men approaching the sleeping family and leaving the bus terminal with the infant in CCTV camera footage. However, the police could not trace their movements once they stepped outside the ISBT.

Adoptee human rights advocate Simone Eun Mi stood before lawmakers on Sept. 2 with a question that has haunted thousands of Koreans sent abroad as children: “Where is my home? When will I have the right to be in Korea?”

It was the fifth time she had been invited to speak at the Assembly. Her remarks were part of the “Korean Diaspora: Memories Across the Sea, National Responsibility Beyond Borders” forum, which brought together policymakers, scholars and diaspora representatives.

More than 250,000 Korean children were adopted overseas in the decades following the 1950-53 Korean War, most of whom were not true orphans but children born to single mothers who lacked state support. For many, returning to Korea as adults has brought new difficulties: visa insecurity, lack of housing and no guaranteed access to adoption records.

“These are not isolated tragedies,” Simone told the audience. “They are the outcome of policies that treated children as numbers to be exported, not citizens to be protected.”

For the last two months, 20 people have died due to the Melioidosis virus in Turakapalem village

Melioidosis outbreak: Andhra wakes up after 20 deaths, declares health emergency in Turakapalem

Amaravati: Waking up to suspected Melioidosis deaths, Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu has declared a health emergency in Turakapalem village and rushed all infected people to hospitals.

The Bombay High Court ruled that emotional bonds do not grant custody rights over a child to anyone but the biological parents, directing the boy's return to them.

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Thursday held that sharing a strong emotional bond or attachment with a child did not confer a superior right on any person to claim custody of the child over that of its biological parent. A division bench of justices Ravindra V Ghuge and Gautam A Ankhad directed the police authorities to secure a young boy’s custody from his grandparents and hand him over to his parents within two weeks.

The child, one of two five-year-old twins, had been sent to live with his grandmother at birth since the twins suffered a serious ailment and their mother was unable to take care of both of them. The father of the boy had approached the high court for custody of the boy after the grandmother refused to send the boy back to his parents.

After the Covid-19 lockdown eased, several disputes arose between the father and his parents, and in February 2025, they exchanged legal notices over the boy’s custody. The father filed several police complaints in March, requesting the police to intervene in the custody dispute, but the boy’s grandmother refused to hand him over to his parents, prompting the father to approach the court.

Representatives of the father said that grandmother has no superior legal right to retain the child’s custody over its biological father. “The son ought to be reunited with his biological parents and twin brother,” said the father’s council.

Between 1970 and 1990, Geertruida Kuijpers not only arranged irregular adoptions of Chileans to the Netherlands, but also purchased a large number of properties to operate in La Cisterna and Buin. In the 2000s, she donated a large portion of the properties to the Integra Foundation, while selling others to Jehovah's Witnesses and her former right-hand man in Chile.

Despite the passing of years, the story of Geertruida Kuijpers, who arranged irregular and illegal adoptions from Chile to the Netherlands, continues to be written. A well-known fact, but one that has not been fully explored, is the donations of real estate that this fake Dutch nun made to the Integra Foundation in the early 2000s. 

Specifically, these were six properties that Kuijpers acquired in the 1970s and 1980s with cash payments and then, thirty years later, without his personal motivations being known, were transferred to the institution. 

In this context, four properties located in the El Bosque district of Santiago were donated: one on Caminos de Chile Street and three in Los Aviadores, donated in 2004. 

In addition, Kuijpers had his own foundation called Stichting Kindertehuis Las Palmas Foundation, which he also used to manage donations, but in Buin. One was located on Calle San Martín and the other in Balmaceda in 2005. 

The Telangana High Court has declined to interfere with the action of the Child Welfare Committee and District Child Protection Unit in taking away the custody of an adopted child residing with the petitioner, holding that the adoption process was illegal. The Division Bench of Justice Moushmi Bhattacharya and Justice Gadi Praveen Kumar has further held that a petition for habeas...