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Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence

The Romanian authorities express their understanding of the pain of the Romanian family from Leeds whose children were taken into foster care by the British state, but consider that the reasons behind this decision are "legal and justified", reports RareșPetru Achiriloaie, the president of the National Authority for the Protection of Child Rights and Adoption (ANPDCA), through a post made on the institution's page.

Yhe President of the Child Protection in Romania says that what happened in Leeds represents a "sad event with a big impact both in the Romanian community in the territory and in British society". "Emotions took the place of reason and, carried by good intentions, people let things degenerate into a situation that turned into a riot We understand the family's pain and desire to keep their children close. Many things could have gone better, on both sides, but the important thing is to find solutions to resolve the conflict peacefully, with understanding and calmness. We understand the parents' point of view, we understood that they felt powerless, wronged and that they reacted out of fear", says Rareș-Petru Achiriloaie, president of ANPDCA.

Child Protection in Romania considers the reasons of the British colleagues legal and justified 

On the other hand, the ANPDCA president says that the Romanian authorities understand the reasons why the British authorities took the decision to act in the Leeds case.

John Portmann (61) believes he is first to use modern technology to prove that he is entitled to an Irish passport

An academic in the United States who discovered his 100 per cent Irish ancestry following a DNA test has been awarded Irish citizenship.

John Portmann (61), who was adopted and unaware of his heritage, was granted an Irish passport after proving that his biological father Thomas Fitzgerald was from Dublin and his biological mother Térese Delahanty’s family was originally from Co Kilkenny.

Prof Portmann believes that he is the first person to gain Irish citizenship solely on the outcome of a DNA test.

Prof Portmann is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and the author of several books. He was born on June 6th, 1963 in Phoenix, Arizona into the care of the Sisters of Mercy nuns in the city.

Paula Beer was just 17 when she fell pregnant.

Afraid to tell her parents, she hid her pregnancy and travelled from her hometown of Bridgend to Essex to stay with her aunt.

At seven months pregnant, she decided to give her baby up for adoption.

After giving birth in February 1967, Paula spent just three days with her little boy before he was taken away.

Paula had been working in a grocery shop when she found out she was pregnant.

Panaji: A total of 330 parents in Goa are on the wait-list for adoption as on date, women and child development minister Vishwajit Rane told the assembly in reply to a question by Benaulim MLA Venzy Viegas.

Over the past five years, 77 children — from 2-month-olds to 15-year-olds — have been adopted from Goa by parents from Goa and other states.

Nineteen out of the 77 children were given in adoption to parents in Goa and the rest to parents in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Telangana, Rajasthan, New Delhi and even US through inter-country adoption.

During this same period, 55 older children, mostly teenagers, were taken under foster care by foster parents. Over the past five years, however, 12 older children given under foster care were returned and five children given for adoption were returned.

The reasons given for returning foster children ranged from the child and foster parents not being able to adjust with each other, the foster parent not willing to continue to take care of the child, the child not able to adjust and not ready to stay with foster parents, the child not being able to bond with the foster mother and behavioural and discipline issues of the child.

In the case of the five adopted children who were returned over the past five years, the reasons ranged from the adoptive parents not able to adjust, the parents backing out feeling incompetent, problematic child behaviour, child emotionally attached to old friends and no bonding between child and adoptive mother.

Older foster children are mostly those who have lived in child care institutions their whole life and often find it difficult to adjust to a family set up, a stakeholder said.

Adoption, donor conception, out-of-home care, an absent parent — these are all reasons why someone might not know their birth parent.

But beyond the reason, the decision to search for a missing birth parent or family member is often difficult.   

Ask forty-year-old counsellor from Sydney Kimberley Lee if she would like to find her birth mother and she will admit that until recently the answer was almost always 'no'.

"I used to be like, 'Everything is good. I don't know this person, why would I?'" she says.

Kimberley was born in Busan, Korea but was relinquished at birth and adopted at four months old by a Sydney couple.

The Pierhagen family has supported SOS Children's Villages since 1980. When their adopted son, Tico Pierhagen, first returned to his native Colombia in 2008, he had many questions. His family encouraged him to search for answers. In Colombia, Tico met his biological family and visited an SOS Children's Village. This made such an impression on him and his Dutch family that they set up a Named Fund : the Doris Tuapante Children's Fund.  

Tico Pierhagen visited Colombia in 2008 and met his biological family there. ''Before that time, I often felt empty and out of place. The visit to Colombia changed that. You are a more complete person when you know where you come from.'' His family understands this completely: "The principle of letting a child grow up in the country where he was born really appeals to us", says his Dutch mother Andel Pierhagen. That is also the reason why the Pierhagen family supports SOS Children's Villages. If the possibilities are there, the preference is always to let a child grow up in the country where he was born with his own family. That is what the family strengthening programs within SOS Children's Villages stand for. "With these programs you really get to the core. We feel at home with the formula of SOS Children's Villages: the family, the family, that is the basis", explains Mrs. Pierhagen.

'I am a more complete person now that I know where I come from'

Tico Pierhagen

Doris Tuapante Children's Fund

Andel and Wandert Pierhagen, Tico's parents, have been supporting SOS Children's Villages since 1980. After Tico met his Colombian family in 2008 and visited an SOS children's village, his Dutch parents and sister followed him to Colombia in 2009. The family wanted to become more involved with SOS Children's Villages because of this trip. It was clear to them: family is the basis, but this is not self-evident for every child. In order to make an extra contribution, they set up a Named Fund. "With a Named Fund, the involvement is very high. You support specific projects and remain connected for several years." 

Mary Cardaras, editor, Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption. London and New York: Anthem Press. 2023. Pp. xi + 192. 30 illustrations. Paper $35.00.

It is rarely acknowledged that the practice of transnational adoption of children started as a British practice of outplacement of UK-born children to British commonwealth nations (Selman, 16) beginning as early as 1618 (Hoksbergen, 87). Though adoption may have been socially configured very differently during that time, adopted individuals then and those adopted in the more widely recognized contemporary period of transnational adoption practice beginning at the end of World War II have the common experience of being administratively erased and forgotten in the national annals of history within both sending and receiving countries. Early postwar transnational adoption practice in the United States was marked by the involvement of faith and other charitable organizations attempting to expand their missions while taking advantage of lax or nonexistent international adoption policy (Herman, 217). This mission-led work under the banner of American benevolence began to build an American international adoption industry that focused more on supposed child saving than child welfare, creating systems which prioritized child removal and swift adoptive placement over retention of familial or cultural identity for adoptees. It is into this complicated historical, social and cultural landscape that Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption enters.

Author, book editor, journalist, Communications professor and Greek American transnational adoptee, Mary Cardaras, addresses the general lack of information about adoption within her adoptee community of over 4,000 Greek American transnational adoptees by turning to Greek adoptees themselves to record this important history. In addition to editing the volume, Cardaras contributes an introduction, a conclusion, and an autobiographical chapter of her own. She also includes an introductory chapter by a non-adoptee, Greek history and adoption scholar Gonda Van Steen.

The fifteen autobiographical accounts in Voices include adoptees born in Greece and adopted to the United States in the 1950s to the early 1960s. Cardaras has organized a group of authors that represent a diversity of Greek adoption experiences: men, women, gay, straight, adopted into ethnically Greek families or not, those with close and estranged relationships to adoptive parents, those who had searched for birth family and not, those who had found birth family and not. The fifteen adoptee authors write with clarity and honesty in telling sometimes very moving stories of their experiences and feelings about their lives as well as their memories of their American and Greek families. Many write about the profound but often unacknowledged loss they experienced, including family, language, culture, and their own identities and memories of pre-adoption. Some recount experiences of abuse within adoptive families, which are especially difficult for adoptees to square with the dominant narrative that adoptees should be grateful for their adoptions.

Most also write about their search and reunion with their Greek birth family. The majority of these adoptees were able to locate members of their biological families, though it is not clear to me if this is typical of the greater Greek American adoptee population, or if this might be one of the key factors that brings these adoptees into adoptee-centered communities, as is the case in the Korean American adoptee community. Though the life experiences in this volume are specific to these individual adoptee authors and to conditions of their adoptions from postwar Greece, thematic similarities between these authors and transnational adoptees adopted from other countries during later periods in history are striking. I immediately recognized these storytellers’ experiences of erasure, loss, invisibility, and secrecy as well as the tools they have used to recover their histories and connections to Greece, including community building with other adoptees, networking on and offline, DNA testing, and self-education, as universal to the transnational adoptee experience.

Human trafficking is a global problem, and children are uniquely vulnerable. Almost one third of all trafficking victims worldwide are children. “Orphanage trafficking,” is defined as the recruitment or transfer of children from their families into orphanages for a purpose of exploitation or profit. The trafficking of children into orphanages encompasses those who receive, transport and harbor these children. Traffickers may be orphanage directors or staff, recruiters who search for children (sometimes called “child finders”), community leaders or members, or civil servants seeking to personally profit from referring children into care.

It has strong links to foreign aid sourced largely from Western donor countries, illicit international adoption rings, and “voluntourism” schemes that cater to tourists seeking international volunteer opportunities. The cycle of trauma is perpetuated when voluntourists form connections with the children only to depart, reinforcing the belief that those who care will eventually leave. To meet revenue goals or to meet the demand generated by tourists seeking to volunteer with “orphans,” large numbers of children are recruited into orphanages where they are exploited. Of the estimated 8 million children living in orphanages around the world, it is unknown what proportion have been trafficked. However, concerns have been widely expressed about the prevalence of unregistered and unlawfully operating orphanages that continue to admit children.

Orphanage traffickers target children who are uniquely susceptible to trafficking due to poverty, lack of access to education or other services, or other family crises. False promises of support, good education and other opportunities are often made to families during recruitment to entice them to relinquish their children. Unbeknownst to most volunteers and donors, up to 80% of the children in these orphanages have at least one living parent and other living kin. They are often called “paper orphans” due to falsification of documents vouching for parental death or abandonment.  Once living in a residential care setting, traffickers continually employ false orphan narratives to elicit sympathy and international funding.

Additionally, orphanage trafficking has become a more prominent topic due to the trafficking of children from Ukraine to Russia. A February 2023 Conflict Observatory report found that approximately 6,000 Ukrainian children have been taken by the Russian Government for pro-Russia re-education and, in some cases, military training. Some children were recruited into a network of 43 recreational camps for “ostensible vacations”. Others were taken to orphanages or institutional facilities for children in Russian linked to the Russian foster and adoption systems. In both cases, parental consent for their children’s engagement was reportedly extracted under duress and routinely violated. This is why in March of 2023 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a war crimes arrest warrant for Putin for the deportation of Ukrainian children.

Orphanage trafficking is a particularly heinous crime that exploits the most vulnerable of our society. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 8.7 calls for “immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of of human trafficking.” To enhance efforts to meet this goal, we believe SDG 8.7 should be expanded to include explicit recognition of trafficking of children into orphanages and other residential care facilities, a hidden yet growing epidemic within our modern world. The stripping of basic human rights from these children is an injustice that can be combated in part by stopping the demand for international voluntourism and curtailing foreign funding of residential care facilities, particularly those operating in contravention of law and policy.

While children are affected by all the legislation and policy that we adopt at European level, in the European Parliament (EP) there is no Parliamentary committee that has specific responsibility for children. The Intergroup on Children’s Rights represents the first formal body in the EP that will mainstream children’s rights and assess the impact of legislative and non-legislative work on children.

It is a cross-party, a cross-national group of committed MEPs, who will work together with child-focused organisations to keep children’s rights on top of the EU agenda. The aim of the Intergroup is to promote children’s rights and ensure that the best interest of the child is taken into account in EU internal and external action.

To do so, the Intergroup has nominated child rights focal points in each parliamentary committee, who alert the Intergroup on the files that have an impact on children. The Intergroup’s work is based on the Child Rights Manifesto prepared by a coalition of child-focused organisations working towards the realisation of the EU’s legal and policy commitments to promote and protect children’s rights, and obligations set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Support the re-establishment of the Intergroup