Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: A couple from Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district has been arrested for allegedly killing their “adopted” 4-year-old daughter, an official said on Friday. 

Sillod residents and accused Fauzia Shaikh (27) and her husband Faheem Shaikh (35) also tried to hush up the alleged crime by attempting to carry out the child’s final rites hastily, he said. 

The couple has told the police that they had adopted the child, Aayat, six months ago. 

The kid was taken to the sub-district hospital around 3 am on Wednesday, but doctors declared her dead.
However, someone from their locality tipped the police that the child did not die of any natural causes, like an illness or some health condition, the ofcial said. 

Police moved swiftly and stopped Fauzia and Faheem from burying Aayat’s body, which was sent for post-mortem. 

Adoptees in Australia are calling for an inquiry and formal apology following allegations South Korea committed mass human rights abuses in its inter-country adoption program.

Pippa McPherson says when she gave birth to her son she started to search for answers about her birth family. Source: Supplied

Pippa McPherson came to Australia as a four-month-old in 1986, to live with her adopted family in Melbourne.

 

She's still never spoken to her birth family in South Korea and believes the adoption paperwork she has is false, so she's never been sure of where she really came from, or if she has siblings.

 

Korea and Norway agreed Thursday to cooperate on investigations into intercountry adoption irregularities and support the rights of affected adoptees, as both nations conduct separate probes into past adoption practices.

Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Chairperson Park Sun-young met with Camilla Bernt, head of the Norwegian Investigation Committee on Intercountry Adoption, in Seoul, where the two sides agreed to share their respective investigative findings.

Their meeting took place a day after the TRC announced the initial findings of its yearslong probe into adoption misconduct from the 1960s to 1990s, which unearthed the Korean government's mistakes and oversights in the process.

The investigation found that inadequate government supervision and administrative failures led to widespread misconduct, falsified documents and corrupt practices.

"Korea is the country from which there has been the highest number of adoptions to Norway, totaling more than 6,500 children. For the Norwegian committee, TRC’s investigation is therefore highly relevant. The report will be an important source for our investigation and evaluation," Bernt told The Korea Times in an email.

The Minister of Social Affairs will have detailed how an expanded investigation will be financed.

After previously refusing to expand an investigation into the area of ​​adoption, Minister of Social Affairs Sophie Hæstorp Andersen (S) will now enter into dialogue with the opposition.

She does this after the opposition gathered a domestic political majority on Thursday for an expanded investigation , which is not only a historical investigation, but also a legal assessment.

- Now I have heard the desire from the opposition parties to expand the investigation, and I look forward to getting more details on exactly what they agree on and how they envision it being financed, says Sophie Hæstorp Andersen.

Question: So you won't rule out expanding it?

ISS (International Social Service) is a worldwide organization that works for the protection and well-being of children. In the context of its work, the organization is well placed to give an impression of the positive and negative feelings, but also the challenges that adoptees can face when searching for their roots. They made a brochure about this in English, French, Spanish and Dutch .

A process that varies from person to person

The search for roots is a process that takes place at different times in life and for different reasons. What this process looks like varies from person to person. For one adoptee, questions about roots never arise, while for another, solving these questions is of vital importance. The answers can look very different: from gaining access to the file, to traveling to the country of origin, to meeting the birth family.

Challenges along the way

Searching for roots presents challenges such as gaining access to information and files. Language barriers, cultural and financial differences also play a role in an intercountry adoption. A search can have a very positive result. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and the search itself does not always go smoothly.

This fundraising challenge to individuals, governments, and philanthropies will provide essential nutrition programmes and urgently needed supplies for the most vulnerable children and women

PARIS/NEW YORK, 27 March 2025 – Today, global nutrition leaders met in Paris at the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit to discuss how to improve access to life-saving child and maternal nutrition.

To significantly address the urgent needs of the most at-risk women and children, UNICEF, in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), the UK government and other private and public partners, established the CNF in 2023 with a goal of raising US$2 billion by 2030.

Currently, the World Bank estimates that an additional US$13 billion per year over the next 10 years (2025-2034) is needed to scale up nutrition interventions to address undernutrition globally.

The CNF is an ambitious UNICEF-led financing mechanism designed to accelerate the scale-up of evidence-based, high-impact actions to tackle critical nutrition challenges, including wasting, stunting and anemia in children and women in high-need countries. By addressing both prevention and treatment, the CNF bridges critical gaps in nutrition services, ultimately saving lives and building resilience in vulnerable communities. The CNF aims to reach 320 million children and women annually with life-changing nutrition programmes.

South Korea's adoption practices over nearly 50 years are being butchered in a new report, with the government largely blamed.

The report, prepared by South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and presented at a press conference in Seoul on Wednesday, follows a three-year investigation and describes the entire adoption process as a mistake.

The commission also believes that the government must apologize to the victims and provide compensation to children whose identities were forged.

Many children were given orphan status even though their parents were alive, which has made it very difficult for adopted children to track down their biological relatives. Some of the children were outright abducted from their parents before they were adopted.

The commission states that for almost 50 years, South Korea handed over responsibility to adoption agencies without adequate oversight, and that the adoptions were characterized by fraud and mismanagement.

Entrepreneur and media personality Anitha Clemence has spent most of her adult life wondering about her adoption.
When she was 26, she went to India with her then-boyfriend.
There, she began to unravel her past, even though it was difficult.

Anitha Clemence was actually worried about what she would find out about her biological family.

– I was really scared. I had a boyfriend in high school who was adopted from Chile. When he went back, he found out that his mother had been a prostitute and drug addict, so I was scared of what I might encounter, says Anitha when we meet at the Soho House members' club in Stockholm.

Anitha knew that she had been found on the street outside a hospital in the city of Kottayam, just a few days old. It was the summer of 1978 and nuns had cared for her inside the hospital.

In this strictly Catholic region of India, it is very common for children born out of wedlock to be left outside the hospital, as the mother otherwise risks social death and exclusion.

Switzerland is considering banning international adoptions following the exposure of questionable past practices. Other countries have halted international adoptions in the name of child welfare.

No more foreign children should be adopted in Switzerland: this is the plan presented by the Federal Council last January. The Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) has been tasked with preparing a bill by the end of 2026. This radical decision was taken after the publication of a damning report in 2023. 

Berne then acknowledged significant irregularities in international adoptions that took place between 1970 and 1999. The findings of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences highlighted systemic failures and negligence on the part of federal and cantonal authorities. Also read:End of international adoptions in Switzerland

Several thousand children from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, India, Colombia, South Korea, Lebanon and Romania were brought to Switzerland through illegal practices, including child trafficking, falsified documents and the lack of information about their origins.

Written consent from biological parents was often lacking.  

Adoptees demand concrete support following first-ever government acknowledgment of adoption misconduct

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on Wednesday found that past Korean governments were responsible for human rights violations in overseas adoptions from the 1960s to the 1990s, pointing to falsified records and inadequate supervision.

This marks the first official acknowledgment by the Korean government of the irregularities in the nation’s previous overseas adoption system — issues that hundreds of adoptees have been raising in recent years.

Following a yearslong probe, the TRC concluded that legislative gaps, inadequate government oversight and administrative failures led to widespread misconduct.