Changes in law has transferred power of authorising adoptions from judiciary to collectors

BHUBANESWAR: For the orphaned and abandoned children living in child care institutions in Odisha, the recent amendment of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act making adoption process simpler and faster has brought big hope of finding homes and parental love.

The changes in the law by the Centre has transferred the power of authorising adoptions from judiciary to district collectors, making the process less time consuming and hassle-free.Currently, 129 children (50 boys and 69 girls) in the State have been declared legally free for adoption. Similarly, 67 children with special needs (30 boys and 37 girls) are awaiting adoption, according to the State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA) of the State Women and Child Development (WCD) department.

Usually, children in the age group of 0 to 2 years are the most preferred for adoption in the State. Of the children legally ready for adoption, five normal and four with special needs are in the age group of 0 to 2, while the highest number of 117 children (97 normal and 20 differently-abled) are in the age group of 14 to 18.

Child rights activists, however, state that the number of children legally ready for adoption must be much more. Prior to Covid-19 outbreak, the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (OSCPCR) had identified 33,000 orphans in the State. Of them, around 8,700 are housed in child care institutions. During the pandemic, nearly 25,000 children were orphaned.

Every year in South Korea, some 2,500 adolescents leave the foster care group homes where they spent their formative years, forced to stand on their own two feet.

Trying to figure out life on their own, these young people often face financial and psychological difficulties, but their struggles go unheard, as they are legal adults.

Last month in Gwangju, two such young people gave up on their lives just days apart, which has brought attention to the strife of those who have aged out of the state care system.

The Korea Herald talked to two of them.

Future on hold

ANNEX “SEARCH FOR ORIGINS” COLOMBIA ACCESS TO ORIGINS IN COLOMBIA Historical context of adoption in the country Adoption was initially defined in the Civil Code Arts. 269 to 287, and the grounds for withdrawing the adoption were the same as those that served as grounds to disinherit a legitimate beneficiary. With the entry into force of Law 140 of 1960, the notion of adoption changed into a protection measure for children, acceding to the fact that, those who had no offspring could have it with the purpose of making the child a beneficiary of the adopter’s parental care and affection, but it denied the possibility of extramarital children being adopted by their father. This changed with Law 75 of 1968. Law 5 of 1975 proposed the irrevocability of adoption in two ways: full and simple. In addition, it provided that only the ICBF and institutions duly authorised by the ICBF may carry out the Adoption Programme. Decree 2737 of 1989 (Juvenile Code) eliminated simple adoption, focusing on the express concept of a protection measure. It also established that all documents and proceedings relating to the adoption process would be kept for a term of 30 years. From this moment on, adoption records began to be preserved and kept in the different archives of the ICBF and IAPAS. Subsequently, Law 1098 of 2006 aligned adoption with the requirements of the CRC and the 1993 Hague Convention on Adoption, structuring the entire rights reinstatement protocol, leaving adoption as the last resort to provide a protection measure for a child. In addition, the legal reserve was reduced to 20 years. The only people who would have access to them are those established by law. For the purpose of a more careful and rigorous approach regarding confidentiality and safekeeping of documents, some years later, all documents pertaining to adoption processes are centralised, either in the Central Archives of the Regional Offices or in the Central Archive at the Headquarters of the Directorate General of the ICBF, where they remain to this day. Source: Miryam Alejandra Toro Mesa. Adopción en Colombia: concepto, evolución legislativa frente al consentimiento y trámite como medida de protección dentro del proceso de restablecimiento de derechos, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2019; Questionnaire on the practical operation of the 1993 Adoption Convention Prel. Doc. No. 3 of February 2020 for the Special Commission meeting for 2021, Question 1.

Six countries are in focus in the government investigation of the international adoption agency to Sweden: Sri Lanka, Poland, China, South Korea, Colombia and Chile.

BACKGROUND - In Veur de Drood, well-known Achterhoekers answer infernal positions. In episode 43 the editor-in-chief of Omroep Gelderland from Zelhem: Sandrina Hadderingh (50).

By André Valkeman

1) My mental mood is:

“Full of energy. I can't sleep well with the heat, but not tonight. I'm completely asleep.

I clean up the bed and breakfast for new people. My husband runs it with me as an assistant. Whether it's occupational deformity, I don't know, but we devour Max Bed & Breakfast.

Once every 4.5 years, countries assess each other on the extent to which human rights are observed during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The Netherlands will be assessed in November this year and the pre-session is in Geneva this week. During this pre-session, the Children's Rights Collective will talk about the children's rights situation in the Netherlands. We ask other countries to make recommendations to the Netherlands to better respect children's rights in our country.

In March 2022, the Children's Rights Collective prepared a contribution to the UN Human Rights Council with several recommendations that the Netherlands can follow to improve the children's rights situation in the Netherlands. The Children's Rights Collective used the information gathered during consultations with more than 140 organizations and experts for the NGO report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2021, and supplemented it with the most recent developments.

Talking about children's rights in Geneva

The Children's Rights Collective is in Geneva today for the pre-session in preparation for the session in November 2022, where the Netherlands will be assessed. We welcome this opportunity to talk about children's rights in the Netherlands and to explain our contribution from March. We are allowed to make a statement to the permanent representatives of various countries at the United Nations. The purpose of this is that these permanent representatives make recommendations to the Netherlands to improve compliance with children's rights. In addition to our statement, we will also engage with a number of permanent missions in Geneva to discuss our views and recommendations and answer any questions you may have. The Netherlands will be under review in November and will therefore receive the recommendations to which the state must respond.

Statement Children's Rights Collective

The 16, including children, senior citizens, disabled children and adults, were separated from their families and went missing over the years with some of them going missing as far as over a decade. They were rehabilitated by NGOs or adopted by new families.

APPLICATIONS FOR the Aadhar card helped to reunite 16 missing people from Nagpur with their families. Files of the 16 others are being processed by Nagpur’s Aadhar Kendra to reunite them with their families as well.

The 16, including children, senior citizens, disabled children and adults, were separated from their families and went missing over the years with some of them going missing as far as over a decade. They were rehabilitated by NGOs or adopted by new families.

When these individuals applied for Aadhar, their applications were rejected multiple times. Officials from the Aadhar Seva Kendra (ASK) at Nagpur guessed that this could happen because their biometric information was already linked to an existing Aadhar identity, dug up the information, and reached out to the original families.

Honorary Captain Anil Marathe, centre manager of the ASK at Mankapur in Nagpur, who had been driving the initiative, said, “These people come to the centre to get an Aadhar card. However, their applications got rejected multiple times after which they approached us with doubts, enlisting our help. When I examined their case, it came to my attention that there has to be a reason their application gets rejected, possibly because their biometric information is already linked to an account. I referred such cases to the regional Aadhar centre in Mumbai and the technology centre in Bengaluru. Detailed information received from such escalations revealed their original identities that were registered with us. We have then contacted their families and reunited the missing persons.”

For years, Celin Fässler believed she knew who her biological mother was. Until she discovers irregularities in her documents. The story of an officially made impossible search for identity.

Celin Fässler's adoption story begins three weeks too early. She was not yet three weeks old when she was brought to her new family in a neighboring community of St.Gallen in 1982 by the adoption agent Alice Honegger and the Sri Lankan lawyer Rukmani Thavanesan. According to the law, the child must be at least six weeks old. It's not the only inconsistency in Fässler's adoption story.

She grows up sheltered, but realizes early on that she is different from most children. And yet she is not the only exotic creature on the playground. Three other children from Sri Lanka are growing up in her family. Other families in the community are also taking in Sri Lankan children. Fässler remembers common occasions. She can no longer say whether the adoptive parents met for friendship or for other reasons. Did they also talk about Alice Honegger's machinations at the time and about the fact that the canton had meanwhile withdrawn her license to broker adoptions? Or about the fact that Celin Fässler's adoption happened at the time when Honegger didn't have permission?

When she is 17, her parents give her the adoption papers. "I asked so many questions back then, I needed that," says Celin Fässler. It contains an address just outside of Negombo, a coastal town north of Colombo that is characterized by fishing and tourism. It is the address of the woman who is listed as the mother on her birth certificate. Back then, in 1999, Fässler knew nothing about baby farms, about the acting mothers who posed as the mothers of these babies to the authorities for money and signed declarations of consent, and about the fact that children were also snatched from their birth mothers from childbirth. To this day she does not know the circumstances under which her birth mother gave her away - voluntarily or involuntarily.

Celin Fässler's Sri Lankan passport

The US annually conducts the largest number of domestic and in-bound intercountry adoptions of any country in the world. In 2008, approximately 150,000 children were adopted in, or to, the US. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption) However, there are 129,000 children with no permanent solutions languishing in our public child welfare system, and 24,000 children age out of care annually. (Youth Aging Out of Foster Care: Identifying Strategies and Best Practices: NACO, February 2008) It is essential that we take a hard look at our domestic and intercountry adoption practices to ensure that everything is being done to promote solutions that protect the permanency, safety, and well-being of all children. This requires that the principle of subsidiarity be at the center of all discussions about best practices in child welfare.

The principle of subsidiarity, as applied to child welfare, states that it is in the best interest of children to be raised by family or kin. If immediate family/kin is unable, or unavailable, domestic placement with a foster or adoptive family is the next best option. Finally, if neither of these alternatives is viable, then permanent placement with an appropriate family in another country through intercountry adoption is best.

This article describes the origin of the principle of subsidiarity, discusses the two multilateral treaties that include language about the principle, and explores what subsidiarity means for the practice of child welfare in America.

The principle of subsidiarity was the result of a landmark judgment: Laxmikant Pandey v. Union of India in 1984. The Supreme Court of India found that preference must be given to finding homes in India for orphaned children before considering intercountry adoption. Supreme Court lawyer Laxmikant Pandey initiated this case. Pandey wanted to alert the judiciary to alleged fraudulent practices and illegalities involving intercountry adoptions. He petitioned the government to investigate current practices and develop standards for when it is appropriate for Indian children to be adopted by foreigners. The decision reflected a revolutionary approach to intercountry adoptions. It would be another five years before the principle was present in multilateral treaties. (http://csa.org.in/SC1984Feb06.htm).

The principle of subsidiarity was introduced in 1986, in the UN “Declaration on Social and Legal Principles Relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children with Special Reference to Foster Placement Nationally and Internationally.” Article 17 states: “If a child cannot be placed in a foster or an adoptive family or cannot in any suitable manner be cared for in the country of origin, intercountry adoption may be considered as an alternative means of providing the child with a family.” In 1989, Article 21(b) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child stated, “Intercountry adoption may be considered as an alternative means of child’s care, if the child cannot be placed in a foster or an adoptive family or cannot in any suitable manner be cared for in the child’s country of origin.” The US has signed, but not ratified, this treaty.

International adoptions

Authorized bodies

Authorized adoption bodies have the task of following the path of the couple who want to start an international adoption. They are bodies called, after agreement with the Commission for International Adoptions, to act as intermediaries with foreign authorities and with the Italian court. They have a central role because they are the ones who guide the couple in the adoption procedures, in the organization of the trip to meet the child in the foreign country and in the management of the whole adoption process.

GVS is authorized to carry out adoptions by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in agreement with the Ministry of Grace and Justice with the Decree of 29 September 1994.

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