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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This article is the 21st in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Han Boon-young, a Korean who was adopted to Denmark as a young child, returned to Korea in 2004. Here she shares her perspective as an international adoptee on this nation's official birth documents. ? ED.

By Han Boon-young

Overseas adult adoptees have resettled in Korea since the mid-/late 1990s but not before the early/mid-2000s was there a critical mass return. I doubt that Korea was ready for this influx and we might not have been quite ready for Korea either. My motivation for resettling in Korea was largely driven by a general interest and curiosity about this mythical-like place: a country which grants me special rights and privileges solely due to my overseas adoptee status, but at the same time, also a place that does not recognize or protect my most basic human rights for the very same reasons.

The reality of these arbitrary and discriminatory standards of both inclusion and exclusion had, at the time, already fostered healthy expectations and rich opportunities within the adoptee community to engage with locale stakeholders. We learned from scratch and we learned from each other, with a collective understanding that our position in history is in itself political.

The history of overseas adult adoptees' political engagement with Korea, and advocacy for adoptees' rights, often begins with our inclusion in the Act of the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans, commonly referred to as the F-4 visa, in 1999. In the following years, Global Overseas Adoptees Link (G.O.A.'L) was able to hire its first paid staff, several major universities began to offer Korean language scholarships and various groups with specific political platforms came and went.

This article is the 21st in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Han Boon-young, a Korean who was adopted to Denmark as a young child, returned to Korea in 2004. Here she shares her perspective as an international adoptee on this nation's official birth documents. ? ED.

By Han Boon-young

Overseas adult adoptees have resettled in Korea since the mid-/late 1990s but not before the early/mid-2000s was there a critical mass return. I doubt that Korea was ready for this influx and we might not have been quite ready for Korea either. My motivation for resettling in Korea was largely driven by a general interest and curiosity about this mythical-like place: a country which grants me special rights and privileges solely due to my overseas adoptee status, but at the same time, also a place that does not recognize or protect my most basic human rights for the very same reasons.

The reality of these arbitrary and discriminatory standards of both inclusion and exclusion had, at the time, already fostered healthy expectations and rich opportunities within the adoptee community to engage with locale stakeholders. We learned from scratch and we learned from each other, with a collective understanding that our position in history is in itself political.

The history of overseas adult adoptees' political engagement with Korea, and advocacy for adoptees' rights, often begins with our inclusion in the Act of the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans, commonly referred to as the F-4 visa, in 1999. In the following years, Global Overseas Adoptees Link (G.O.A.'L) was able to hire its first paid staff, several major universities began to offer Korean language scholarships and various groups with specific political platforms came and went.

The children will start a new life in Italy under the loving care of the religious sisters.

On August 25, 2021, a plane from Kabul landed on the tarmac of Rome’s Fiumicino airport. On board: 270 passengers, exhausted after hours of anguish. In just a few days, their lives were turned upside down with the chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the Taliban’s lightning offensive.

Everyone remembers the images of the Kabul airport besieged by thousands of Afghans fleeing the oppressive regime of the Taliban. Amidst the most total confusion, the embassies present on site strove to organize themselves to evacuate the maximum number of people. The Italian authorities were hard at work, among others; between August 13 and 27, they exfiltrated more than 5,000 people from Afghanistan.

“We’re devastated. Everything is over. There is no hope in Kabul.”

Among the 270 passengers arriving this past August 25, 14 children and young adults in wheelchairs were the first to walk through the doors of Fiumicino’s Terminal 5. They were between 6 and 20 years old, and disabled.

For the first time, the organization that manages sperm donor data is willing to voluntarily reveal a donor's identity to their children. This is apparent from correspondence between this Foundation Donor Data Artificial Fertilization (SDKB) and 23-year-old Maria, who filed a lawsuit to find out who her donor father is.

Until recently, it was practically impossible for descendants of a certain category of donors, such as Maria, to determine the identity of their donor father. Now the SDKB has determined that Maria will in principle still be told who her father is. Other children of such 'B donors', whose details have been registered, can also receive help from the foundation. The SDKB speaks of a change of course compared to the old policy.

In June, the court in The Hague ruled that five other donor children had the right to know who fathered them, unless their father could demonstrate that protecting his anonymity is more important. Based on that ruling, the SDKB now believes that Maria is also entitled to such a balancing of interests.

B-donor

Maria's mother had herself intentionally inseminated in 1997 with the semen of a B donor known as 'K34'. As a result, her child would be able to contact the biological father from his 16th birthday. Later, however, K34 opted for anonymity, so that Maria could no longer find out who he is. Since 2004, due to a change in the law, only non-anonymous donations may be made.

The cradles and homes that housed abandoned children have moved from communism to democracy without the transition meaning a change in institutionalization practices. Long after 1989, the protection system continued to function as a camp. The current child protection framework was built on its ruins. We set out, in the Journal of the Decree, to understand this founding heritage. | Photo: Mike Abrahams

"In the village, they call me the one from the hospital ," says ZI, a teenager institutionalized in a home-hospital in Romania, in an interview conducted twenty years ago.

His testimony and the testimonies of other young people with destinies broken by the child protection system inherited from communism are recorded in a 2002 study, "Child Abuse in Social Protection Institutions in Romania", conducted by the Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child (IOMC ). The Jurnalul Decretului team is in possession of this document

ZI's life, reported dryly in several papers included in his medical record, began with his abandonment in the dystrophic ward of a hospital in the summer of 1983. And continued with a series of random transfers to communist state "protection" institutions. .

Romania was going through the Golden Age - but it was going through, especially, the era of Decree 770 which had banned in 1966, almost completely, abortions on demand. Against the background of the decree, an entire system of child protection had been developed. But protection was just a joke. Ceausescuism needed the abandoned to live at birth and that's it - otherwise, their lives didn't matter to anyone.

CAPE TOWN - The reopening of the country’s borders in the early 1990s has exposed South Africa and its population to way too many things.

Some of the phenomena are known and people talk about them daily.

These include the influx of migrants, coronavirus and currency fluctuations.

On the other hand, there are many positives like readmission to international sports and freedom of movement that have come with the opened borders.

Hidden to public knowledge are crimes gruesome acts that, when narrated, one can hardly imagine that humans are capable of performing.