ABSTRACT

Most academic studies and public debates about transnational adoption prioritise the experiences of adoptive parents and the voices of professionals, but the perspectives and voices of birth families are rarely heard. I address this shortcoming through a critical analysis of the transnational adoption system by exploring the narratives and experiences of Nepali birth families. Drawing on a 14-month ethnographic study, I explore how birth families’ search for their children illuminates the concept of ‘agency-in-waiting’ and opens up new possibilities for thinking critically about the politics of adoption and the experience of ‘waiting’. The invisibility of birth families in scholarship about adoption belies the fact that many birth families actively search for the children they lost to adoption. This research makes visible the power inequalities that shape family policy and opens new avenues for deconstructing hegemonic narratives that exist in transnational adoption by focusing on birth families’ narratives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the families who have opened their hearts to me and shared their painful experiences. Susan Frekko provided feedback on this manuscript and edited the English.

Disclosure Statement

The Tuam Babies Family Group is “sceptical” of Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s pledge that a mass exhumation will go ahead at the former Galway mother and baby home next year.

Members claim the children’s minister is being “opportunistic and reactive” as he made the pledge following the broadcast of The Missing Children documentary on RTÉ One last Tuesday.

Annette McKay, whose sister Mary Margaret died at the Tuam mother and baby home in Co Galway, said the minister was “out of touch” if he truly believed exhumation could go ahead next year.

“There are a number of issues with what Roderic O’Gorman said. First of all, who is in charge of the exhumation? Is it gardaí, a coroner? Legally, that has to be decided,” she said.

"There is an ongoing criminal investigation by gardaí. That must be considered. Has it been? Ideally, we would like to see a coroner appointed to oversee this next step. But all of this will take considerable time.

Swedish Yle reported (29.10) that serious errors in adoptions are examined in Sweden, and that irregularities can also occur in Finland. Patrik Lundberg, one of the journalists behind Dagens Nyheter's series of articles on Swedish international adoption activities, says that if it is a question of the same adoption countries, there is also great reason for Finland to review its adoptions. This is because the same orphanage has adopted children to several different countries in the western world, and because the same lawyers and corrupt people have been involved. According to Lundberg, control has been particularly poor in countries classified as dictatorships.

With reference to other countries' investigations of international adoptions, and given that Finland has in many cases used the same adoption contacts as, for example, Sweden, we demand that Finland also appoint its own independent inquiry. The issue of adoptions that have not gone right is not only limited to Sweden, whose government recently presented directives for an inquiry expected to be completed in the autumn of 2023, or the Netherlands, whose government earlier this year stopped all international adoptions after a comprehensive inquiry showed that children have been stolen or purchased from their biological parents.

We, who signed this submission, demand that the state of Finland investigate the international adoptions that have taken place to date, from all countries of origin from which Finland has adopted children. This also includes adoptions that took place after the Hague Convention was ratified. The inquiry shall be independent and autonomous and no members of the inquiry group may have any connection to the adoption mediation adoption organizations.

The inquiry should engage experts and research competencies in the field, such as lawyers, historians and researchers, so that the international adoption activities in Finland can be fully examined. The investigation must be given sufficient resources, both personnel, financially and in terms of time. In addition to adoptions mediated by adoption organizations, the inquiry must also examine independent adoptions (private adoptions) and the role of the Finnish state in international adoption mediation in Finland.

The inquiry shall contain proposals for measures on how to ensure that today's adoptions take place legally and ethically. The adoption agency must be quality assured and followed up in a comprehensive way. The inquiry must ensure that corruption does not occur in connection with adoptions today.

Thiruvananthapuram: Phone conversation showing that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan

knew about the adoption of Anupama’s child before it came out through media has been

leaked. The conversation between the complainant Anupama and CPM leader P K

Sreemathy has been leaked.

P K Sreemathy can be heard saying to Anupama that the Chief Minister said that the

Immediately after her birth in Sri Lanka, Sharinda Nathaliya Wolffers (33) was adopted by Dutch parents. This year she saw her biological mother for the first time. "People who can't have children and therefore adopt, give me a bad taste."

“You are not able to take care of your baby, sisters in the Sri Lankan monastery, where I was born, told my mother. You better give your daughter up for adoption.

My mother was not married to my father during the pregnancy. That is really not possible for a poor woman in Sri Lanka, who has little money to live on.

My adoptive mother realized that her happiness meant my birth mother's grief

Sharinda Nathaliya Wolfers

The 30-year-old biological father of the child is currently under judicial custody after he was arrested last month for allegedly killing his partner

More than a month after a 10-month-old toddler was abandoned by his father outside a cow shelter in Gandhinagar, the state child rights agency Thursday said the baby is now eligible for adoption.

According to Jagriti Pandya, chairperson of the Gujarat State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the biological father of the toddler has given his consent for the “permanent surrender” of the custody of his child. “Since the child’s biological father is in judicial custody and not able to take care of him, he has given his consent for the permanent surrender of the child if a caring family is up for adoption. The child will now be registered on the website of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA). There are families who have already signed up for adoption on this website and we will proceed to see if they are willing for the child’s custody,” said Pandya.

The 30-year-old biological father of the child is currently under judicial custody after he was arrested last month for allegedly killing his partner at a flat in the Bapod area of Vadodara on October 8 night and then abandoning his son outside a cow shelter in Gandhinagar the same night.

The child was found by a few pedestrians who informed the local corporator who, indeed, brought the child to a Gandhinagar civil hospital. The next day, Gujarat Minister of State (MoS) Home Harsh Sanghavi arrived at the hospital and made an appeal on social media to track the parents of the child.

Thiruvananthapuram: Former student activist Anupama S Chandran is

preparing for another round of agitation, this time before the office of

the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare over the controversial

adoption of her child.

She alleged that the inquiry into the case was not going on in the right

{This is an abridged version of a 2021 undergrad research paper on the controversy surrounding international adoption and its history}

Examining International Adoption

Amber Moore Jimerson

When numbering the list of controversial topics today, it's unlikely many would think to include international adoption. For many, international adoption (IA) is a wholesome relief, a welcome example of the goodness of humanity in a world plagued with violence and tragedy. Not only are many unaware that IA has been in steep decline since 2008, with nearly nonexistent rates during the time of COVID, but for those who are aware of the declines it is common to view them as unjust and uncaring. Among the IA community, however, the causes for this decline are disputed, as are the controversial practices, history, and future of IA.

As the designations "pro-adoption" or "anti-adoption" are reductionistic, we will consider the general sentiments of IA "advocates" and "critics." Both seek to remedy a problem: advocates for IA see the plight of orphans and vulnerable children as the overriding issue to address, saying the benefits of adoption greatly outweigh the risks (Bartholet). Critics see the corruption, exploitation, kidnapping and fraud incentivized by the availability of IA and its unregulated profits as the primary issue, which the general public often does not realize are deeply intertwined with IA (Smolin). Critics wish to see greater emphasis on alleviating the root causes that would force families to relinquish their children, and some fear IA de-incentivizes funding for long-term solutions and community-building (King 464). As such long-term solutions are not overnight possibilities, advocates suggest IA provides a real option for those stuck between a rock and a hard place in the meantime. While advocates in various ways acknowledge the existence of corruption, critics worry they largely invalidate the pervasive nature of these dark realities, minimizing the need for reform under the guise of the "best interests of children." The United States' failure to give due diligence to these scandals and the system which empowers them has led to many shutdowns and moratoria in adoption programs among various countries (Smolin 83). This, the critics say, is what we can expect if we continue to use the "best interests" as a mask for practices which border on child trafficking. Only by fairly facing the wrongs and considering dramatic restructuring will we prevent the inevitable disfavoring and decline into nonexistence of intercountry adoption.

American parents who yearned to contribute their quota to the world by adopting an orphan ended up exposing a child-trafficking ring following a shocking discovery.

For Jessica and Adam Davis, adoption was more than adding one more child to their brood. It was a way of making the world a better place, at least for one helpless child.

Hence, they felt their world almost shatter when they learned the shocking truth behind their adopted daughter, Namata, almost two years after joining the family.

LENDING A HELPING HAND

After welcoming four children, the kind-hearted couple decided it was time to make that difference in the world. Hence, they resolved to open their home to an orphan, to give her a new life.

Miss Belgium Kedist Deltour (24) visits her father, who left her in an orphanage 15 years ago: "I feel lighter, that's what I had hoped for"

Her father put Kedist Deltour in an Ethiopian orphanage as a child, along with her brother and sister. Because after the death of their mother, he chose a new life with a new wife. Fate led her to Belgium and put a crown on her head, but the past continued to gnaw. Therefore, Kedist is now back in her homeland, to confront her father after fifteen years. It was a reunion in tears, but not always with conclusive answers. "But I forgive you."

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