Here is some career advice by Alex Yuster, for our non-retired readers, based on experience! For those of us who are retired: Does it ring a bell?

Early career: make note of how your supervisors and other colleagues further along in their careers treat others. You’ll surely notice this anyway, and discuss it with your friends over coffee or a beer from time to time. Remember what you like, and what you don’t, about how these colleagues treat others – so you can apply these lessons when the time comes for you to lead others.

I’ve had mentors to whom I’m forever grateful; I’ve seen generosity and openness, and colleagues who have encouraged everyone to contribute. There have also been moments of humiliation or worse. You can learn a lot about leadership from all these experiences.

Mid career: I may have joined a long time ago, but some things about UNICEF culture do seem to remain the same. You often have room to innovate, to create your job, to convince others of a good idea. If you feel there is something that needs to be done within your area of professional responsibility, you should do all you can to make it happen. Yes, flexibility is important, but so is tenacity and the power of our convictions. My proudest accomplishment over my entire career [1] came from acting on such a conviction, finding and working with allies, often in other organizations, and keeping my focus to make it happen – often despite naysayers. A few others were the result of bold, quick actions. My few regrets involve instances when I did not act, was dissuaded, or gave up on an idea I knew mattered.

Mid/late career: As we advance up the career ladder in UNICEF, whether in management or technical areas (I did both), it becomes more and more important to focus on empowering others. This starts early on – from the first time you supervise even one person, and the responsibility just grows. While I find it personally rewarding, it is also the way to achieve the most. I guess this is obvious, but I wanted to state it here, since I would say that during my two final postings – as a Rep and then a PD section chief, most of my most significant professional contributions were a result of supporting the ideas and ambitions of my colleagues.

Kinjal V Shah started this petition

We are a Jain family from Gujarat living in Berlin, Germany where the father is posted on work as a software engineer. We are all Indian citizens, including our child.

Our child, a baby girl breast feeding child, has been in the custody of German authorities for the last 8 months (since September 2021). We need your help and support to help get our child to be repatriated to India under the care of her maternal family.

Our daughter was found with a serious injury which parents did not understand and took her to the doctor about. Parents' were being asked to explain the injury. Initially, parents themselves were confused & did not know what happened. Later the paternal grandmother informed that she had accidentally caused the injury while visiting us the child in Berlin.

The parents' immediately informed lawyer and the German authorities. The grandmother has submitted a detailed affidavit on what happened in the German Court.

Introduction

1Why has international adoption become a frequent recourse to allow couples or wealthy individuals in the countries of the North to satisfy their desire for a child? What does the transfer of children from poor countries teach us about the new international division of social reproduction? And what is the leeway mothers who decide to give up a child for adoption 1 ? Answering these questions involves knowing the experiences and feelings of mothers / parents who have separated from a child. With the exception of a few testimonies published in the North (among others Jones 2000; Kelly 2005; 2009), the lived stories of mothers living in the South have not attracted attention. Previous research conducted in India (Bos 2008) allowed - for the first time - to document the decision-making process of young pregnant women faced with the following alternative: raising their unborn child themselves or abandoning it for adoption. A two-year stay in the field and meticulous ethnographic work were necessary to identify these mothers and to create safe and confidential meeting conditions. Indeed, mothers who decide to abandon a child for adoption, in India and elsewhere, are often stigmatized and insist on secrecy. The difficulty of conducting research among mothers / parents who have abandoned a child for adoption and the taboo surrounding this "social group" (which is not one) explains the lack of research highlighting their perspective2 .

2In fact, given the difficulty of accessing mothers, most of the existing research is carried out among professionals and organizations that provide support to mothers in distress or children placed in institutions. The available knowledge consists above all of an institutional discourse onthe mothers. These surveys propagate the image of irresponsible or deviant mothers, unable to raise their children (Mykytyn-Gazziero 2006; 2010; Bos, Reysoo and Dambach 2013). This dominant discourse on an alleged “good motherhood” and a “responsible parentage” is the reflection of moral values ??conveyed by the professionals of social assistance or child protection from the middle classes. They generally defend bourgeois norms of marriage and conjugal sexuality. Any mother who, for a variety of reasons, does not correspond to the dominant norm of the “decent mother” is confronted with mechanisms of social exclusion and actions aimed at getting her back on the right path.

3Our contribution in this volume on the international transfer of social reproduction aims to present some of our ethnographic data, more particularly those that have been collected in Vietnam, in order to show how the construction of femininity and gender inequalities shape the field of international adoption. Indeed, the scope of international adoption includes the transfer of children from poor countries, born to certain categories of mothers, to rich countries and certain categories of couples / foster families. If, at the quantitative level, the number of children who migrate within the framework of intercountry adoption - 40,000 per year (United Nations Population Division 2009, 74) - is not significant in the global statistics of the migration,

4The questions underlying our contribution relate to the sociological profile of mothers who consent to abandon a child for adoption and the circumstances in which they make this decision. It is not uncommon to hear that children adopted by wealthy families in the West come from poor mothers without agency and unable to raise their children on their own. This image ignores complex social dynamics as well as hidden power relations.

This is an adoption story that might just stay with you for a very long time.

A woman has shared her heartbreaking story of adopting a baby girl only to lose her in a few days because her birth parents had a change of mind.

Sarah Howell, a registered nurse by profession, had already endured the biggest heartache of her life when doctors told her she had just a 1% chance of conceiving naturally. But the inability to bear a child did not deter her spirits of becoming a parent someday.

After having approached an adoption agency with her husband, Sarah was delighted to have matched a newborn. The joy for the family was overwhelming because Sarah had miraculously fallen pregnant at the same time.

But just five days after they did all the adopted the baby from the hospital and took her home, the child's birth parents came calling and said they had changed their mind.

Ayear back, a 2 year, 3-month-old baby was kidnapped and sold to a Hindu couple who did not have children. And now the baby is reunited with biological parents and it also has Hindu parents who took care of the baby for more than a year.

In November 2020, a Muslim child goes missing from the Byatarayanapura police limits of Bengaluru. A missing case was filed, but the police could not solve the case then. But recently police started reinvestigating the case and new evidence and facts surfaced. Based on a tip-off, police managed to arrest one Karthik, who allegedly kidnapped the baby and sold it for Rs 60,000.

Karthik had a girlfriend near the boy’s home in Byatarayanapura. Karthik was a habitual offender and earlier arrested in a bike theft case and sent to judicial custody. After being released on bail, Karthik started a vegetable shop in Hosur, on the outskirts of Bengaluru which is in Tamil Nadu.

One of his friends told him that a couple who doesn’t have a child is looking for adoption. Karthik had noticed a baby playing near his girlfriend’s house in Byatarayanapura. Then he met the childless couple and told them that, a baby is orphaned after both of its parents died due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The couple trusted him and agreed to get the child.

Later, he abducted the baby and took it to Hosur. The couple was so happy that they got the baby and they asked Karthik for documents for legal adoption. Karthik said he will get it the next day, but he never returned to the couple.

Madurai: Timely intervention by an unknown caller and the Madurai city police resulted in an illegally adopted newborn baby

girl being returned to her mother in less than three hours on Friday. No case was registered but the mother, her aunt and

couple to whom the child was given were let off with a warning after the district child welfare committee (CWC) obtained a

statement in writing from them.

CWC member B Pandiaraja told TOI that the baby’s mother, 30, from Paravai was married to a man nearly twice her age 10

A few days ago a heart-wrenching video went viral, where Yomna Dahrog, founder of ‘Kafala in Egypt’ narrates the story of a husband and wife who adopted a girl then a couple of years later they decide to return her back to the orphanage because the wife got pregnant! Yes, you read that right! Just think about it for a moment, a 3-year old girl living normally in a house with a family finding herself one day in an orphanage where everything she ever had was taken away from her in a blink of an eye. Can your mind comprehend the pain she went through that very first night she got abandoned?

In the video, Yomna broke into tears at the cruelty of this incident pleading with devastation that people should think before they adopt and ask themselves if they will be really up to the responsibility and challenges they will face throughout this journey. Through the campaign ‘Adoption Is Not A Trend’, Yomna urges families with adopted children to share videos and stories about their journey where they speak about the downtimes before the happy time so that people know beforehand that it’s not always rainbows and butterflies and think 100 times before they break yet another innocent child’s heart.

Having kids is a huge responsibility, and yes it may not be for everyone; let alone adoption where you have to put the same effort, love, and care into a kid who is not biologically yours. Think if you are really up for it and if you can handle it. An adopted child should not be abandoned after they found a home to keep them safe, secure, and loved just because the parents adopted them in a time of need to satisfy their longing for parenthood.

These panels formed to prevent crimes against children

V. Ramaraj, Member of Tamil Nadu Commission for Child Rights, said the State government should provide legal status to child protection committees formed at various levels.

Mr. Ramaraj along with Prison Superintendent Senthil Kumar and other senior officials inspected the Salem Central Prison and Women’s Prison on Friday to assess whether any children of convicts are in the prison and whether they are provided with facilities. Mr. Ramaraj also interacted with a few inmates.

He told presspersons the State government through a Government Order had formed child protection committees at six levels including Block, Village and Corporation to prevent crimes against children. These committees should be given legal status and the Commission would recommend it to the government.

Mr. Ramaraj said the government was also looking at strengthening the child protection offices.

Save the Children is deeply concerned about the safety of children from children’s homes and children who have lost their parents in the recent earthquake in Haiti, as they are at risk of neglect, different forms of abuse, or even trafficking.

An estimated 30 percent of 48 children’s homes in the south of Haiti that care for about 1,700 children were damaged by the earthquake on Aug 14, according to reports, forcing children onto the streets and sleeping outside. Some children are now being cared for by foster families.

The 7.2 magnitude earthquake claimed around 2,200 lives with thousands more injured, and an unknown number of children likely losing their parents. In crises like these, unaccompanied children face a higher risk of abuse and neglect, Save the Children warned.

Fabienne*, 24, lives in one of the children’s homes where she helps to care for other children. She goes to a nursing school and was inside the building when the earthquake happened:

“Because of the earthquake, we cannot go inside. We are sleeping outside, and looking at the house with no possibility to enter again. And also school has stopped, this is shocking.

Pope Francis has released a video with an encouraging message for pregnant mothers that also asks Catholics to be open to life through adoption.

“I want to say to every woman expecting a child: You are God’s awesome instrument to welcome and offer new life to the world,” Pope Francis said in the video issued on Aug. 25.

“Every child that arrives is God’s gift. Every baby, in every case, and in whatever situation is to be welcomed,” the Pope said.

Pope Francis said that to adopt and give someone a family is an act of love by which a man and a woman become mediators of God’s love.

“Adoption is a Christian choice,” the Pope said.