JANET OGUNDEPO writes about the cartels trafficking in babies

After 31-year-old Chineye Odoh allegedly agreed to sell her newborn twins for about N3m, sadly Odoh was allegedly killed by some women collaborators who purportedly facilitated the process.

The Enugu State Police Command said that the suspects, after selling the twins, gave the mother an amount lesser than what was agreed. They were said to have later poisoned Odoh’s food when she resisted their action.

Upon the arrest of the suspected women by the police in Enugu in August, the women were arraigned in court and the case was adjourned to October 5 for trial.

The Lagos State Police Command on the same day, August 26, reportedly arrested a man for allegedly conspiring with his doctor and a nurse to sell his three-month-old baby for N400,000.

MHB police personnel have been caring for a day-old infant found in a garbage dump, plan for her future as they try to trace parents

A call from the Control Room in the morning of September 5 led MHB Colony police to Shivaji Nagar, Borivli West to find an abandoned newborn at an auto stand, whom they now refer to as “MHB ki beti”. The girl is currently undergoing treatment at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital, Kandivli. The cops, apart from filing a case against unknown people for abandoning the child, have also taken it on themselves to ensure their “beti” gets education and financial support.

A bakery owner near an auto rickshaw stand at Shivaji Nagar had heard the cries of a baby and called the police control room, which in turn relayed the information to MHB police. When cops reached the spot they found the crying newborn wrapped in a white towel. The baby had blood all over and her umbilical cord was also intact.

Assistant Sub-Inspector Shobha Yadav and PSI Vanita Katbane who were deputed on mobile van rushed the baby to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital in Kandivli where she underwent a medical check up which concluded that she was in good health. Police officers now take turns to visit the hospital to check up on her every day.

Looking at the baby, Assistant Inspector Suryakant Pawar decided to take responsibility for the baby’s future education. Other cops have started crowdfunding and the amount will be kept as a fixed deposit in a bank so that she won’t have to suffer in future for money.

In May 2022, Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health) wrote to the House of Representatives that he wanted to make IVF surrogacy part of the basic insurance. But that wouldn't apply to everyone.

Ten patient organizations and interest groups are therefore calling on the minister to make IVF surrogacy part of the basic insurance for all family types.

IVF SURROGACY

In his proposal, Kuipers wrote that he wanted to adopt the advice of the National Health Care Institute on the reimbursement of IVF surrogacy. The Zorginstituut recommended expanding the basic package of the Health Insurance Act with IVF surrogacy 'in case the intended mother has a medical indication that means she cannot bear fruit herself, but does have her own eggs'.

The ten organizations, including the Royal Dutch Organization of Midwives (KNOV), Patient Federation Netherlands, COC Netherlands and the Transgender Network Netherlands, believe that this advice does not take into account 'the diversity of family forms in 2022', “because the reimbursement does not apply for everyone".

The United Nations said that accusations that Moscow's forces had taken children from Ukraine to Russia for adoption were "credible". Ilze Brands Kehris, the assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, expressed concern that the Russian authorities had adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care and these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families.

Geneva: The United Nations on Wednesday said that accusations that Moscow's forces had taken children from Ukraine to Russia for adoption were "credible", reported AFP. Russia allegedly took children from Ukraine for adoption as part of larger-scale forced relocations and deportations.

"There have been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian occupied territory, or to the Russian Federation itself," Ilze Brands Kehris, the assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, told the Security Council, as quoted by the news agency.

Brands Kehris expressed concern that the Russian authorities had adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care and these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families. She also accused Russia of running a "filtration" operation as Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories were subjected to human rights violations.

The UN assistant secretary-general for human rights told a Security Council meeting that during filtration, Russian forces subjected people to body searches and sometimes even forced nudity. Brands Kehris further alleged that during filtration procedures, their mobile devices were searched and their fingerprints were taken.

Our Leadership

Michelle Bernier-Toth

Special Advisor for Children’s Issues
U.S. Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs

Sold as a baby, Jessi Fraud is now on a mission to expose the truth about the market in Romanian babies.

Jessi, a vibrant young Canadian journalist, is travelling the world to expose the post-communism practice of selling Romanian babies to adoptive parents by exploring the fate of Romanian children born to families too poor to care for them.

According to the vision of former President Nicolae Ceau?escu, babies should be born to boost the communist state’s decrepit economy.

As we become absorbed in Jessi’s journalistic quest, we slowly come to realise that it is more than a professional investigation. Jessi herself was sold as a child to an adoptive family in Canada.

An estimated 30,000 children were sold to adoption brokers in post-communist Romania. International buyers and local sellers met in hotel lobbies around Romania and negotiated prices that ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 for new-born Romanians.

Under considerationPE1958: Extend aftercare for previously looked after young people, and remove the continuing care age cap.

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to:

Extend aftercare provision in Scotland to ‘previously looked after’ young people who left care before their 16th birthday, on the basis of individual need;

Extend continuing care throughout Care Experienced people’s lives, on the basis of individual need; and

Ensure Care Experienced people are able to enjoy lifelong rights and achieve equality with non-Care Experienced people. This includes ensuring that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the findings of The Promise are fully implemented in Scotland.

Terre des hommes (Tdh) was founded in 1960 and is the leading Swiss organisation for children’s aid.

Terre des hommes Foundation has been active in Romania continuously since 1992, contributing to the improvement of the child protection system and to the reform of social assistance. We also facilitate the participation of children in the development of their communities.

Each year, thousands of children and parents benefit from the projects that Tdh implements in Romania.

Priorities

In Romania, the Tdh Foundation is active in three areas of intervention:

Feminist and capitalism-critical perspectives on egg cell transfer and "surrogacy"

Online series of events organized by the Genetic Ethical Network eV in cooperation with the fem*ini network against reproductive exploitation

The traffic light coalition plans to explore ways to legalize "egg donation" and allegedly altruistic "surrogacy," according to the coalition agreement. The liberalization of these reproductive medical practices has been the subject of controversial debate for years. It is always about throwing the Embryo Protection Act, which has been in force since 1990, overboard. Little is made of the fact that these practices are being established in a field of commercialized medicine. On the one hand there are the parents who wish to have children and on the other hand the women who provide these services with their respective interests. Above all, there are those who exploit bodily substances and bodily services economically. This difference in interests is made socially acceptable under the veiled terms "donation" or "gift" and popularized with reference to alternative family forms. Against this background, it is necessary to shed light on these positions in order to critically intervene in the upcoming debates. In the online event series, we want to talk to invited guests about different aspects of the topic.

To register, please send an email to eizellspende[at]gen-ethisches-netzwerk.de.

program

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.