Carlos Dunnink (21), adopted from Colombia, where he has already traveled three times.

I was adopted by my parents when I was eight weeks old. So my roots are far away, in Colombia. The only thing I have from there is a note that my mother gave me at the time, together with a photo of her. Those are precious possessions, but without memories. I know what my mother looked like 21 years ago and that poverty was the reason she gave me up for adoption. I don't know anything about my biological family.

That photo of my Colombian mother: I often looked at it. To keep remembering what she looks like. Sometimes I also try to see characteristics of myself in it. For example, people sometimes say to each other: “You look a lot like your father.” I never hear that.

Being adopted has never bothered me. My parents have always handled it very well. I've never had the idea that I'm different. The fact that my only brother has also been adopted, and is also from Colombia, may have contributed to this. And I also have cousins ??who are adopted. My eldest cousin is a month older than me and he is also from Colombia. So the rest of the nieces and nephews know no better than that their eldest cousins ??have colored skin, black hair and brown eyes. They never had to get used to us.

As a child you take it for granted that you have a different skin color than most others around you. You don't stop there. And in my case there was never a moment when I suddenly became aware of this. It was a gradual process. Gradually I discovered that my background is very different from that of my classmates.

A lawyer and an orphanage proprietress have been sentenced to three years each by the Accra Circuit Court, for deceiving a married couple, to release their one-year old child for adoption.

Additionally, the lawyer, David Opare Asiedu, and the proprietress, Elizabeth Arthur Adjei, alias Maa Lizy, were ordered by the court on Wednesday to pay GH¢12,000 and GH¢6,000 respectively as fines.

Elizabeth, was charged with defrauding by false pretence while Asiedu was charged with abetment.

This was after they had presented an electrician, Benjamin Kofi Okyere, with an opportunity to travel abroad, but ended up giving his one-year old son for adoption to a white man, at his blind side.

A driver, Prince Armah, also known as Paa Kwasi, son of Elizabeth, and an alleged accomplice is on the run.

Wob/Woo request about specific dog seller

Remote mothers, mothers in the Netherlands who have had to give up their child for adoption, will not receive compensation from the government, the court ruled earlier this year. The coercion to adopt did not come from Child Protection, but from their own environment. In the meantime, the Ministry of Justice and Security is conducting a second investigation into exactly that question: whether or not state coercion? An initial investigation was aborted following complaints of bias and privacy violations. If the state does indeed appear to have made a mistake, the cabinet wants to prevent proceedings by settling. Journalist Marco de Vries went to the setting of his own adoption together with his mother of waiver Mieke and wrote this personal story about it.

I have two mothers. Which one is the real one? One, Jantina, believes that everything is controlled from above. The other, Mieke, prefers to steer himself. She can't handle navigation systems, usually has a road map unfolded on the passenger seat where I am now. This trip was my idea, but she immediately said yes, does not get talked about it on the way and therefore misses the right exit.

Then we take the next one and drive around. Her van thunders over the back roads of the Veluwe. The meadows are yellow and swampy in the November sun, the woods bare and grim. I grew up here, she is strange. I'm still looking for the address on my phone. Turn left in six kilometers, Google says. Destination reached.

Henk and Ineke turn out to live right behind my old primary school. Would I have ever seen them at that time? I may have played soccer with one of their many children. They are slightly older than Mieke, but just as vital. Ineke wears her long, white hair in two pigtails. She leans back in her large chair and looks at me searchingly.

I tell about myself. How it went. Still got there reasonably well. That I would like to meet them. My voice sometimes gets hoarse when it comes to that. An egg filled with mucus and snot that belches when asked difficult questions. But those aren't your real parents, are they? But where do you really come from? Well, from here apparently. I hatched with these people. And now they expect a thank you? No, I don't get that impression.

Ministry of Justice and Security, Directorate-General for Punishments and Protection

Job description

The Advice, Management and Central Authority (ARC) directorate at the Directorate-General for Punishment and Protection (DGSenB) is looking for an enthusiastic and solid adviser who will carry out the activities within the Central Authority for International Children's Affairs (Ca IKA). area of ??the Hague Child Protection Convention and the Hague Child Abduction Convention. This concerns two temporary positions (one for 32 and one for 36 hours) for a period of one year.

Activities

In the role of advisor at the Ca IKA, the activities have a varied character.

KOLKATA: Prospective parents in West Bengal have preferred adopting a girl child in the past four years. According to records available with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), childless couples, unmarried men or women, widows, divorcees and widowers are more interested in adopting a girl than a boy child. Sociologists have found the trend a positive sign as it indicates a societal change in terms of awareness.

“For adopting a child, applicants have to apply online on CARA. Applicants have to mention in their application whether they want to adopt a girl child or a boy. According to the CARA report, more than half of the applicants showed their interest in adopting a girl child in the past four years,” said an official of the state government’s women, child development and social welfare department.

According to records available with the state government, a total of 855 children were adopted since 2018-19 and among them, 512 are girl children. According to the rule book, anyone can apply to adopt a child. The district magistrates give final approval after representatives of the government visit the houses of the applicants, conduct counselling sessions, and arrange meetings between the applicants and the child to be adopted.

According to the ministry, the ombudswoman also admitted to facilitating the illegal adoption in Russia of about 350 more children from the occupied regions of the Donbas.

“Transfer of Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia and their subsequent adoption by Russian citizens grossly violate the legislation of Ukraine, as well as the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949, which provides for the obligation of the occupying state not to change the civil status of children, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989,” the ministry said in a comment.

Ukrainian diplomats have called on the international community to “strongly condemn the ongoing crimes committed by Russia and its officials against children in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.”

“Ukraine will continue to make every effort to ensure that Ukrainian children who were illegally taken and adopted in Russia are returned to their parents or legal guardians,” reads the report.

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Children are continuing to be taken from battle zones in Ukraine for adoption in Russia - that's according to the US Institute of War, which cites confirmations from Russian media.

It says children have been transported from the devastated city of Mariupol to be processed by the office of the Commissioner for Children's Rights. The end goal is to be adopted into Russian families.

Its head, Maria Lvova-Belova, has herself taken in a teenager according to one of her posts on the Telegram messaging service. Meanwhile, in Kherson, people continue to be evacuated and moved into Russia proper, which Ukraine advised its citizens to resist.

According to an investigation by AP, Russia is conducting an open effort to adopt Ukrainian children and bring them up as Russian.

Moscow claims that these children don't have parents or guardians to look after them, or that they can't be reached. But AP alleges that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent and lied to them that they weren't wanted by their parents.

The Surrogacy Act and the Assisted Reproduction Technology Act miss out on addressing some crucial aspects. The SC and Delhi HC now have the opportunity to assess the Acts through the framework of reproductive rights and justice, and extend recent constitutional jurisprudence on the right to privacy, reproductive autonomy, and recognition of non-traditional families

The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2021 and the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act 2021 (ART Act) came into force early this year. The Acts aim to regulate the multimillion-dollar industry of reproductive medicine, stipulate who can access assisted reproductive technologies and procedures such as in vitro fertilisation and surrogacy, the conditions under which gamete donation and surrogacy can take place, and specify requirements for clinics to operate.

The Acts allow only married infertile couples and certain categories of women to avail of ARTs and surrogacy. Sale of gametes and any payment to the surrogate mother, other than insurance coverage and medical expenses, has been prohibited. Clinics and banks offering ART procedures have to be registered.

Reproductive technologies allow people who are unable to conceive or achieve pregnancy, for medical and non-medical reasons, to have biological children. Inequities in access to healthcare, including infertility care, are pervasive and disproportionately impact persons from marginalised contexts. Equitable access to infertility care, including reproductive technologies, is part of the full spectrum of reproductive rights, including the right to make decisions about one’s reproductive life, to health, and to equality and non-discrimination. In India, ARTs are offered by an expensive privatised medical industry that was unregulated for decades. The technologies can be used to transform traditional notions of family and strengthen the status of same-sex and other queer couples by expanding the ability to reproduce beyond heterosexual marital unions. Use of ARTs can also entrench notions of genetic parenthood as the “true” form of parenthood. ARTs provoke complex legal, ethical and social dilemmas, and their regulation requires consideration and balancing of conflicting interests and values.

Petitions against the Acts have now been filed before the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court by an IVF specialist and persons desiring to become parents, respectively. Both petitions challenge the Acts as being discriminatory and violative of reproductive autonomy and choice by denying access to ARTs to single persons and people in live-in and same-sex relationships. The petitions also oppose the ban on commercial surrogacy, arguing that it is unreasonable and deprives surrogate mothers of reproductive agency.

“I don’t know who I am…

if you’ve ever made a jigsaw and you’ve got one piece missing, that’s how I feel.”

John Tuthill never knew his biological parents and the circumstances of his birth in Dublin 44 years ago remain a mystery.

John

Adopted as a baby in 1979, he has little idea about his original identity, despite a frustrating 13-year search.