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Shashitu Rahima Tarirga, Thereza De Wannemaeker and Temesgen Mees were adopted from Ethiopia.

SHASHITU RAHIMA TARIRGA , THEREZA DE WANNEMAEKER AND TEMESGEN MEES February 21, 2024, 3:00 am

Through the VRT documentary Francisco Desir, the audience gets an insight into the emotional journey of adoption. For us adoptees, the emotions that Francisco goes through are all too recognizable. It takes a lot of courage to start the search for your first family. As adoptees, we can only applaud the fact that Francisco wants to share this quest with the general public.

Thoughtful opinions, sharp pens. All unmissable opinion pieces in your mailbox every week.

The Delhi High Court has ruled that the right to adopt cannot be raised to the status of a fundamental right within Article 21 of the Constitution of India, nor can it be raised to a level granting Prospective Adoptive Parents (PAPs) the right to demand their choice of who to adopt. Justice Subramonium Prasad said that there is no right at all to insist on the adoption of a particular 

There were emotional reunions and long embraces at the airport in Chile’s capital on Sunday 18 February as families met face-to-face with some of the adults who were illegally put up for adoption as children.

Romina Cortés hugged her sister, Maria Hastings, whose existence she learned of just a month ago.

Maria is one of tens of thousands of Chilean children who were trafficked or illegally put up for adoption during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

She now lives in Tampa, Florida.

The illegal adoptions – 20,000 of which are being investigated, according to Chile’s justice system and other social groups – extend back to the 1960s.

The illegal adoptions — 20,000 of which are being investigated by Chilean justice officials and other social groups — extend back to the 1960s. Largely poor, young and indigenous women in vulnerable situations were either forced to give up their children or were told they died shortly after childbirth.

Warning that neglect in safeguarding the rights and well-being of children could perpetuate cycles of abuse and hinder educational opportunities, the Bombay High Court recently directed the State government to fill vacancies in various child welfare institutions within three months. This includes posts in the Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, State Child...

Alicia Johansen spent her childhood moving with her drug-addicted mom from one place to the next, trying to brace herself for the moment when the water and the electricity would get cut off. So at 22, when she had a chance to run Dolittle’s pool hall in the ranching town of Akron, Colorado, she was intent on making some money. She kept the bar open deep into the night, after the older guys who bet on horse races departed, and the truckers and the younger crowd, with the meth, drifted in. Meth, she soon discovered, helped her work longer hours.

An occasional customer was Fred Thornton, a former high school baseball star in his early 30s. Fred was sometimes a roofer and at other times unemployed and homeless. They began dating casually and using together, and he told her of his own complicated childhood: placed in foster care as a toddler, after allegations of neglect, and later adopted.

Alicia’s period was irregular because of the meth, which also dimmed her self-awareness. She was six months along before she realized that she was pregnant; a month after that, she woke up in pain. She had preeclampsia, which caused dangerously high blood pressure, and needed an immediate C-section. She was airlifted to a hospital in Denver, a hundred miles away. Her and Fred’s son, Carter James Thornton, was born on Aug. 6, 2019 — two and a half months premature, 2.5 pounds in weight, and, according to his lab work, exposed to meth and to THC.

That first week at the hospital, Alicia hovered over Carter, who was curled beneath a web of tubes and wires, before going home to get baby things. The third week, she and Fred visited their son and held him skin-to-skin. The fourth week, back in Akron, they faltered: They had no gas money for a return to the big city; they were bickering; they were high. On the fifth week, when Carter was stable enough to leave the neonatal intensive care unit, Alicia returned, but foster parents from Akron were the ones who took him home.

Carter’s drug exposure and his parents’ weekslong absence had triggered a call to child protective services and then a neglect case against Alicia and Fred in the juvenile court of Washington County, where they lived. To get their son back, the judge informed them, they’d need to take a series of steps laid out by the county’s human services department: pass random urinalysis drug tests, with missed ones considered positives; secure stable housing and employment; and make it to regular supervised visits with Carter. During the next three months, as the department steadily recorded Alicia and Fred’s positive drug tests and missed visits, none of their excuses were entertained, a hard line for which they would later be grateful. In December, they decided that if they wanted to raise their child together — and they did — they would have to get sober for good.

Vacancy: PROJECT COORDINATOR (FULL-TIME)

Obtaining documents on international adoptions from 1974 to 1981.
Circumstances of the Korean government’s ‘connivance’ of illegal overseas adoptions.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs avoids responsibility for “private level issues”

On May 2, 1978, Belgian Consul Vanhove met with the Director of the Department for Women and Children of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs of the Republic of Korea and reported that Korean children were being traded illegally. Data National Archives of Korea
The Truth and Reconciliation Committee is conducting a large-scale investigation to reveal allegations of illegal acts by adoption agencies and collusion and condonation by the Korean government during the international adoption of Korean children in the 1970s and 1990s. , a document containing a conversation in the 1970s in which a foreign government protested the Korean government's practice of accepting money from adoption agencies in exchange for adoption and urged improvement was confirmed.

At the time, the Korean government remained ignorant, calling it a 'private level problem', but this document is evaluated as showing that the Korean government's 'connivance' was behind the spread of illegal overseas adoption.

According to documents related to 'international adoption of orphans' written by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1981, obtained by the Hankyoreh from the National Archives on the 12th, the Belgian government at the time raised several issues surrounding the overseas adoption of Korean children, including the involvement of illegal brokers, but the Korean government turned a blind eye. Several circumstances are confirmed. The Belgian government became desperate and even requested a meeting with President Park Chung-hee.

“I advised the Korean ambassadors, but no action was taken.”
On May 1, 1978, Vanhove, the Belgian consul in Korea, met with the Director of the European Affairs Bureau of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and said, “A Lebanese-born woman named Born , who was working in connection with the Holt Children’s Welfare Association, was 1. “Korean orphans are being sold (to Belgium) for 800 to 1,200 dollars per person,” he said, adding that he would meet President Park Chung-hee and tell him this because the matter was urgent. Until the late 1970s, Belgium was the country with the largest number of Korean children adopted, following the United States, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

 

The Belgian government appears to have taken this seriously because if money is exchanged in exchange for adoption, it can be considered child trafficking. Consul Vanhover told the Director of the European Bureau, “I met with the Director of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs last year and raised this issue, but I did not get any results. He strongly protested, saying, “I advised the Korean ambassador to Belgium to have the Korean government step in and stop (the broker’s intervention), but no action was taken.”

Suspicion of officials sharing adoption fees was also mentioned.
Adoption-related commissions were illegal under domestic law at the time. The Enforcement Decree of the Special Adoption Act, enacted in 1977, stipulates that 'an adoption agency may receive compensation for all or part of the costs incurred in adoption mediation from the prospective adoptive parents.' This means that only actual cost conservation is possible.

During the interview, Consul Vanhover also mentioned rumors in Belgium that high-ranking Korean government officials were sharing the adoption fee. There was pressure as to whether there was some kind of cartel between private companies and the government.

Director Koo Joo replied, “Please meet with the director of the Women’s and Children’s Bureau (Ministry of Health and Social Affairs), who is in charge, and talk about it.” However, on June 27, 1977, a year before this meeting, Consul Vanhover had already met with the Director of the Department for Women and Children of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs and complained with a similar point. As no further action was taken, the case went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, a year later, and was sent back to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.

The director of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Women’s and Children’s Bureau met with Consul Vanhover the next day and said, “The issue of orphan adoption is a private-level project. The Korean government is not involved. “If there are brokers taking commissions, that is a Belgian problem,” she replied.

 

We are in the year 2000 or 2001, I don't remember well. The legal team of the association for which I work in Guatemala City, Casa Alianza, handles cases of children stolen and given up for illegal adoption during the eighties and nineties. Guatemala has become a country that exports girls and boys and the network of illegal adoptions that destroys families and snatches babies from mothers in vulnerable situations is in full swing. I am sent to support a journalist from National Geographic magazine who is investigating the issue. After seeing white couples carrying babies from Guatemala in the lobby of the Camino Real hotel, the NatGeo journalist and I headed to a home in the historic center of the city run by Orthodox nuns. It seems there are babies there to give up for adoption, we want to investigate. I had never seen Orthodox nuns in Guatemala. The nun who takes us from one home to another is afraid of the street and she accompanies us with an armed man. I'm walking in line, in zone 1, with an Orthodox nun and her imposing black headdress on top of her head, her leading the way, I think I'm a second in Greece or Russia. The American journalist, blonder than the sun, walks behind her; Then me, looking like a foreigner too, and bringing up the rear with an armed man. The situation borders on the ridiculous, ubuesque and painful, similar to everything that will be investigated. I, who walk very often in zone 1, make myself uncomfortable having a man with a machine gun escorting me.

That childhood torn from their families in those years is now 30, 40 or 45 years old. We are in 2023 and I know Javier on Facebook. A Frenchman born in Guatemala in 1977, stolen from his mother in zone 18 in 1980 and adopted by a European couple.

On October 11, 2023, the day of his 46th birthday, Javier – a pseudonym he chose for security reasons –, after a report he filed for having been robbed in his childhood, is in his native country, Guatemala. It is his first time in Guatemala since he was robbed. In January 2024, Javier returned to Guatemala, I wanted to meet him in person, as well as his story, and I invited him to have breakfast at my house. I am moved by his questions: «So this little package that says “Ducal”, are beans?», «But beans are also eaten in another way, right?» It makes me a little sad that the new Guatemalan doesn't see beans cooking in the pot, but rather packaged beans. But I told him about the difference between strained beans and standing beans. “And when is mango season?” he asks. Then he tells me, very happy, that he took Guatemalan cooking classes and that he already made his first pepián.

Javier tells me about his two different identities and I get a little lost there, but he explains: «I have two identification documents, a French one and a Guatemalan one, with different last names. Precisely because I am one of the stolen children of Guatemala. It's not just having several different surnames, it's having two very different identities, each with its own nationality. In 1980, my brother and I were stolen from my mother through a Casa Canada home, now Casa Guatemala, making us believe that we were so sick that only a stay in a hospital in the United States could cure us. This subterfuge took us out of the country, and in reality they took us to France. "We have never been to the United States and in France they have never treated us for a serious illness."

Obtaining documents on international adoptions from 1974 to 1981.
Circumstances of Korean government’s ‘connivance’ of illegal overseas adoptions.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs avoids responsibility for “private level issues”

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee is conducting a large-scale investigation to reveal allegations of illegal acts by adoption agencies and collusion and condonation by the Korean government during the international adoption of Korean children in the 1970s and 1990s. , a document was identified containing a conversation in the 1970s in which a foreign government protested the Korean government's practice of accepting money from adoption agencies in exchange for adoption and urged improvement.

At the time, the Korean government remained ignorant, calling it a 'private level problem', but this document is evaluated as showing that the Korean government's 'connivance' was behind the spread of illegal overseas adoption.

According to documents related to 'international adoption of orphans' written by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1981, obtained by the Hankyoreh from the National Archives on the 12th, the Belgian government at the time raised several issues surrounding the overseas adoption of Korean children, including the involvement of illegal brokers, but the Korean government turned a blind eye. Several circumstances are confirmed. The Belgian government became desperate and even requested a meeting with President Park Chung-hee.

“I advised the Korean ambassadors, but no action was taken.”
On May 1, 1978, Vanhove, the Belgian consul in Korea, met with the Director of the European Affairs Bureau of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and said, “A Lebanese-born woman named Born , who was working in connection with the Holt Children’s Welfare Association, was 1 “Korean orphans are being sold (to Belgium) for 800 to 1,200 dollars per person,” he said, adding that he would meet President Park Chung-hee and tell him this because the matter was urgent. Until the late 1970s, Belgium was the country with the largest number of Korean children adopted, following the United States, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.
 

The Belgian government appears to have taken this seriously because if money is exchanged in exchange for adoption, it can be considered child trafficking. Consul Vanhover told the Director of the European Bureau, “I met with the Director of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs last year and raised this issue, but I did not get any results. He strongly protested, saying, “I advised the Korean ambassadors in Belgium to ask the Korean government to step forward and stop (the broker’s intervention), but no action was taken.”

Suspicion of officials sharing adoption fees was also mentioned.
Adoption-related commissions were illegal under domestic law at the time. The Enforcement Decree of the Special Adoption Act, enacted in 1977, stipulates that 'an adoption agency may receive compensation for all or part of the costs incurred in adoption mediation from the prospective adoptive parents.' This means that only actual cost conservation is possible.

During the interview, Consul Vanhover also mentioned rumors in Belgium that high-ranking Korean government officials were sharing the adoption fee. There was pressure as to whether there was some kind of cartel between private companies and the government.

Director Koo Joo replied, “Please meet with the director of the Women’s and Children’s Bureau (Ministry of Health and Social Affairs), who is in charge, and talk about it.” However, on June 27, 1977, a year before this meeting, Consul Vanhover had already met with the Director of the Department for Women and Children of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs and complained with a similar point. As no further action was taken, the case went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instead of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs a year later, and was sent back to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.

The director of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Women’s and Children’s Bureau met with Consul Vanhover the next day, saying, “The issue of orphan adoption is a private-level project. The Korean government is not involved. “If there are brokers taking commissions, that’s a Belgian problem,” she replied.
 

A transcript of a conversation regarding overseas adoption of Koreans delivered by the Belgian consul to the Director of the Women's and Children's Bureau at the office of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs of the Republic of Korea on May 2, 1978. At this meeting, the Director of Women and Children's Affairs responded as if she was avoiding responsibility, saying, “The issue of orphan adoption is a private-level business and a Belgian problem.” Data: National Archives of Korea
Afterwards, the problem was not resolved and international adoptions expanded further. According to a Blue House report document written by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs in 1988 reported last year, “Four adoption agencies are receiving an adoption fee of $1,450 and airfare per child from adoptive parents, and in addition to the child support fee, they are also receiving an additional placement fee of $3,000 to $4,000.” ” contains the content.

Recognizing the problem, the government held a meeting of agency heads to improve the adoption business system. At this meeting, content such as 'A huge amount of real estate is being acquired with the proceeds from the adoption agency', 'We are wasting a lot of money on huge sales expenses', and 'We are receiving a lot of money from adoptive parents as a kickback fee', etc. comes out.

Noh Hye-ryeon, a professor of social welfare at Soongsil University who worked at Holt in the 1980s, said, “It appears that the Korean government used children for diplomacy against Nordic countries, which had a large demand for adoption.” Jung Fierens (47), who was adopted by Belgium in 1977, said, “It is shocking that the Korean government at the time turned a blind eye to the wrong adoption practices.” It is considerable. “If the Korean government had taken the necessary measures, adopted children like me would not have been separated from their biological parents and taken to a country on the other side of the world,” he said.