Last week, a study showed that the adoption of children from India between 1973 and 2002 was often without the consent of the biological parents. What does this mean to you?
Monika Pfaffinger: I am very concerned. Since I have been dealing with the topic for a long time, these study results are unfortunately no surprise. But the extent and regularity of the violations of the law, which the investigations of the individual files in particular have revealed, are shocking. This is all the more so because it is not only the practices in Switzerland that are riddled with such irregularities. The concept of irregularity is important to me.
About the person

Expert in family law
The legal scholar Monika Pfaffinger heads the expert group on international adoptions on behalf of the federal government. She has specialized in family and adoption law, among other things, and is a private lecturer at the University of Basel.
Why?
The legal framework that applied in the 1970s to the 1990s was different from today. The study on India found that the law was already being violated at the time. But there may now be aspects that are only illegal today. There were also practices that violated moral and ethical principles. In addition, the spectrum of actions worthy of criticism is very broad. All of this is covered by the term irregularity proposed by the expert group on international adoption.
As a result of the reporting on the study on India, an adoptive father got in touch. He has often been to India and is shocked by the conditions faced by children affected by poverty there. He referred to their extremely precarious living conditions and the possibility of leading a life in Switzerland through adoption. What do you say about that?
In the expert group, we talked for a long time about this narrative of a possibly better life. We came to the conclusion that the end does not justify the means. We must be able to guarantee in all cases that the children who are taken in here are not affected by child trafficking.
The adoptive father in question also said that the study results had given him sleepless nights. Although the authors prove that the authorities failed, their findings have aroused great fears in him that he himself had made a mistake. What advice do you have for families who are struggling with such tormenting questions?
I recommend that they seek support in this dispute. This was also addressed at the press conference. The state should guarantee and provide the necessary resources.
When asked the relevant question, however, the cantonal representatives appeared helpless. They were referred to the affected organizations or immediately given the floor.
The affected organization "Back to the Roots" has built up a great deal of expertise in the area of ​​tracing origins and supporting adopted children. However, it specializes in Sri Lanka and is mandated and financially equipped for this purpose. This is not enough. There are also responsible bodies in the cantons that can help with questions about international adoptions. However, I cannot judge how well prepared they are for this. Addressing the dark past must now be done as a priority, in a coordinated and timely manner.
How can it be ensured that illegal adoptions never happen again?
The expert group has only two options. Either Switzerland ends the practice of international adoptions or it needs far-reaching and comprehensive reforms. Until the appropriate measures are in place, a moratorium could come into effect. This is a well-known instrument. Only those adoption procedures that are very advanced could be completed. All others would be stopped.
What reforms do you consider essential?
There needs to be a well-founded selection of states with which Switzerland will cooperate in international adoptions in the future. There must be a relationship of trust with them and reliable evidence that everything is done in accordance with the rules. One possibility is that all countries of origin have signed the Hague Convention and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This would already lead to a reduction in the number of possible cooperation states. In addition, the current law must be adapted in various areas - for example, the recognition of adoptions made abroad. Institutional responsibility must also be reconsidered. A central office at the federal level would make sense given the small number of international adoptions. Another issue is how financial flows can be better controlled and regulated.

How much security does the Hague Adoption Convention, which came into force in Switzerland in 2003, provide?

We don't know that for sure.

https://www.adoptionscentrum.se/nyheter/adoptionscentrum-arrangerar-sin-forsta-gruppaterresa-till-indien?fbclid=IwAR3QfYA3bEOBf3AqFmT8uFxCo3SpQfSXskZ81BFIWMQGWEh45uW_e1WTP6s_aem_AUf2HxzG-La5CJi_5uM7Pa0GXp_YggPgvrj-V4X5765uLI6RO3kzONIW9l55mBfaMbM

The adoption center has for many years arranged group return trips to Colombia and South Korea, and now we want to expand our offer with a trip to India.

The purpose of the trip is to get to know India as a country, and give you an opportunity to explore your cultural roots. We will not be able to assist with a root search or meeting with biological family in connection with this trip.

Before we put this plan into action, we want to see what interest there is in such a trip.

Source: Center for the Study of Learning and Performance

CSLP Manager Zeina Ismail-Allouche was recently in Lebanon for two invited presentations under the title From our forgotten history: Children from Lebanon and the issue of illegal adoption .

The sessions took place under the auspices of the Lebanese Association for History and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and the aim was to help raise awareness and engage a variety of stakeholders in discussions around the case of the forcibly adopted children during the 1975 – 1990 war period.

Police arrest con man who duped woman of ₹9 lakh promising legal adoption of a newborn, misused her documents to buy a motorcycle.

MUMBAI: The police on Thursday arrested a con man who duped a Kandivali woman of ₹9 lakh by promising legal adoption of a newborn. According to Samta Nagar police officials, the accused, identified as Sahil Abdul Hameed Sheikh, pretended to be an employee of an NGO and had promised she could adopt a newborn. In addition to cheating the victim, the man also misused her documents in order to buy a new motorcycle.

The complainant, a 46-year-old Kandivali East resident, is a nurse and has been working as a patient caretaker for decades. Officers said that the woman was unable to conceive despite trying during the span of her 15 years of marriage. She then decided to adopt a child. When she started asking around about the adoption procedure, one of her friends introduced her to Sheikh, who in turn promised the complainant that he would find a child for her to adopt through the NGO where he worked.

In November 2020, Sheikh called the complainant and told her that there was a girl child who was put up for adoption by her mother. Sheikh showed the woman a photo of the girl child and made the woman fill a form with her particulars and also took ₹1.5 lakh as processing fees. After a few days when the woman enquired, Sheikh told her the girl had died after she contracted Covid.

He then offered her another girl child who was living with her grandmother, who could not take care of the baby. The woman then gave Sheikh ₹7.5 lakh to be paid to the grandmother of the girl child for giving up the child. After stalling the complainant for more than a year, Sheikh stopped responding to her calls and messages.

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Parents will now have to separately state the religion of the father and mother in the proposed Birth Report. A national-level database will be set up to keep records of births and deaths for various purposes.

Parents of new-born children will have to record their religion individually in the proposed Birth report, in a departure from the existing ‘religion of the family’ declaration, The Hindu reported.

The new form is in accordance with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs’ Model Rules. It will have to be notified to state governments and adopted by them before it comes into effect. The religion of the parents will have to be recorded individually for adoption also.

A national-level database will be established to keep records of both births and deaths. This database could potentially be utilised to refresh various other databases, including Aadhaar numbers, property registrations, ration cards, electoral rolls, passports, driving licenses, the National Population Register (NPR) and more.

Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023

The sisters- Rani and Sushma used to live in the Children National Institute Orphanage in Uttar Pradesh when they were taken to Denmark by a Danish woman in 1962. They were thrilled to visit their childhood abode and had a fun time with the children at the institute.

Prayagraj: Back in 1962, two sisters from the Children National Institute orphanage were adopted by a Danish woman. Almost 62 years later, the duo- Rani and Sushma returned home in India and reminisced their sweet childhood here.

Their childhood memories were refreshed when they reached the Children National Institute Orphanage on April 2, after 62 years. Recalling where they lived, both of them visited every corner of the campus in their two-day trip to their childhood abode. They were also accompanied to the market for shopping, and showered with enormous gifts.

The duo also went around on a tour of the philosophical places of the city. 'They were eagerly waiting to come to Prayagraj for years. Despite growing up there, this orphanage in Prayagraj holds a special place for them. They often spoke of the memories they created here but regretted the fact that they could not be back here in all these years.

However, in March, they planned to visit India. They travelled to Delhi from Denmark and then went straight to the Swaraj Bhawan complex and visited the Children's National Institute, where they had spent a great chunk of their childhood.

Inconsistent jurisprudence related to adoption for Muslim couples renders parents and the young rudderless. These circumstances are enabled by a backward looking and rigid politics of the Muslim Personal Law Board (MPLB).On March 4, 2024, Live Law published a report of the Supreme Court rendering an important judgment in a custody matter in which both the parties were Muslims. What made this March 4 verdict quite distinct and path breaking? The SC didn't just reiterate the jurisprudence in matters of custody while highlighting the inconsistencies of the Orissa HC order, but also called out the flaw of court in framing the issue erroneously.In this article, the author engages with some case law on the subject to show how inconsistency creeps into judgments and what the extant jurisprudence on the matter is.

Legal certainty is one of the cardinal guarantors of the rule of law. However, when judgments end up losing sight of legal certainty, and infirmities and inconsistencies creep into jurisprudence set by constitutional courts — either by way of framing of issues or through analysis—it is the rule of law that gets undermined. The evolving jurisprudence of child’s custody, in cases where both the parties are Muslims is one such domain wherein one can witness such glaring legal uncertainty.

On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court in Shazia Aman Khan & Ors vs The State of Orissa & Others (hereinafter ‘Shazia’) while setting aside an order passed by the Orissa High Court altering the custody of a minor girl child observed that “she cannot be treated as a chattel at the age of 14 years”. This is a very important and much needed judgment in terms of setting the record straight on jurisprudence on custody between Muslim parties in India.

In Shazia, the Supreme Court essentially made two important points. Firstly, unlike the Orissa High Court which observed that “in absence of adoption, the custody of the minor child is liable to be termed as illegal detention”, the Supreme Court did not just make the fine distinction between adoption, custody, and guardianship, but also noted that the three concepts (or definitions) are neither same nor interchangeable.

Secondly, in matters of custody, besides welfare, the Apex Court underscored, “Stability of the child is also of paramount consideration”. These two observations by the Apex Court, significantly, didn’t just further the principles of natural justice, but are also in conformity with the mandate of and jurisprudence under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890. The glaring error that the Supreme Court identified in the High Court order, might have occurred on two counts. This could be either due to a misreading of these legal concepts (adoption, custody and guardianship) and their relationship to the stance of the Muslim Personal Law Board (MPLB) or may have been rendered in sheer haste in keenly framing the issue.

Erik Staal (59) has recently been called Redering again: the surname he was given by his biological mother. Erik was adopted as a child via the transition home Moederheil in Breda. And that adoption was annulled by the judge last week. That is quite unique at his age: it only happens once a year. Still, Erik had no choice: "It is a bizarre situation that you can be an orphan in the eyes of the law but still sit next to your mother."

Erik's mother José de Vos (75) gave her son Erik up for adoption in the 1960s at the Moederheil maternity clinic. She did so under great pressure, but that happened more often in those days. José was not married and an unmarried woman who had a child was a disgrace to the entire family.

At a later age, Erik was 46, he went looking for his mother. When children get to know their biological parent at a later age, the contact is sometimes difficult and distant. There is too little in common. But with Erik and José it went more than well. They feel a deep bond with each other and see each other every Thursday.

“Why didn't I do it sooner?”

For years Erik had been thinking about undoing his adoption. He had no good contact with his adoptive parents and they have since passed away. So Erik went to court, with José at his side.

Patna: Two girls, rescued from Patna and Rajendra Nagar railway stations when they were barely a few months old, were adopted by two couples — a Dubai-based and another one from Kerala — in the presence of Patna district magistrate (DM) Shirshat Kapil Ashok here on Tuesday. The adoption took place as per the recommendations of the Adoption Guide (2022) issued by the Union ministry of women and child development.

The girl adopted by the Dubai couple was rescued at Patna Junction platform 1 when she was just a month old, while the other was found deserted at Rajendra Nagar Railway Station when she was just nine months old. Both the girls were staying at District Child Protection Unit-operated Arunodaya, a special adoption institute in Patna.

Assistant director of DCPU, Uday Kumar Jha, said that nowadays couples were more interested in adopting a girl child rather than a boy. “Couples are even ready to wait for two to three years to adopt a girl child. In the last five years, 92 children were adopted, including 61 girls,” he said.

Earlier, children could be adopted only through family courts, therefore in a bid to make the procedures simple, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, was amended and henceforth the DM was authorised to issue orders relating to adoption.