According to the data presented by Irani, 6,971 orphaned and abandoned children, including 3,990 girls, are available for adoption in 488 specialised adoption agencies across the country.

ccording to ministry of women and child development, about 8,677 children, including 5,033 girls, are available for adoption at child care institutions and specialised adoption agencies across the country right now.

Even though so many parents are not able to have their own kids, adopting is still considered an uncomfortable taboo in India

In reply to a Lok Sabha query, WCD Minister Smriti Irani presented data of the state-wise number of children available for adoption at child care institutions (CCIs) and specialised adoption agencies (SAAs) across the country.

According to the data presented by Irani, 6,971 orphaned and abandoned children, including 3,990 girls, are available for adoption in 488 specialised adoption agencies across the country.

Those who violate the rights of children deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law

It is a grim truth that when it comes to sexual exploitation, no child is immune.

Child rights activists have pointed out again and again that while there are laws and policies in the country designed to protect children, implementation continues to lag behind, leaving many children vulnerable as a result.

Statistics of abuse, when it comes to children, are notoriously unreliable, because they do not speak to the whole picture -- a vast number of incidents simply go unreported and unnoticed.

Of all groups of people, children are the ones most in need of legal and institutional protection, and needless to say, ours is failing them badly.

Children were made to believe they had been sexually abused and were sold to foster parents

Italian police have arrested 18 people, including a mayor, doctors and social workers, for allegedly brainwashing vulnerable children into thinking their parents had abused them so they could then be sold to foster parents.

Police in the northern city of Reggio Emilia made the arrests after an investigation, started in 2018, revealed an alleged network of carers who used methods including electroshock to make the children believe they had been sexually abused.

The network then allegedly gave the children to foster families in exchange for cash, while keeping gifts and letters sent to the children by their real parents hidden in a warehouse that was discovered by police.

The alleged abuse was reported by Italian media and confirmed to AFP by police in Bibbiano, near Reggio Emilia, on Thursday.

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Sherin Mathews was first reported missing from her Texas home in October 2017, triggering a large search operation

A US father accused of killing his adopted three-year-old daughter has been sentenced to life in jail after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

US media said the unanimous verdict came after Wesley Mathews confessed to "injury of a child by omission".

A Perth couple who were accused of abusing their adopted daughter and making her sleep in a shipping container have been found guilty by a jury.

After a 10-day trial, the jury retired to deliberate on Thursday and returned with a guilty verdict late on Friday afternoon.

The couple were found guilty on two separate charges of deprivation of liberty, and having control and care of a child and engaging in conduct that could result in the child’s suffering.

The guilty verdict comes after the jury heard the girl, who along with her parents cannot be identified for legal reasons, told a child protection worker her adoptive parents beat her with a metal pipe and tennis racket and cut her hair off.

The girl said on more than one occasion, her mother dragged her out of the house and beat her with a metal pipe.

Bina is an Indian intercountry adoptee residing in the Netherlands. She has been active in the field of adoption since 2005. She began as a volunteer chairperson at Wereldkindern in the northern Netherlands region. She attempted to give intercountry adoptees a voice in a world where adoption organizations (agencies) and adoptive parents usually speak for adoptees.

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In January 2015, she co-founded and currently co-administers DNA India Adoptees which is a Facebook community with more than 425 Indian adoptees from the Netherlands, Belgium, and other parts of the world. This is a platform for and by Indian adoptees where they share opinions, ask questions, discuss Indian culture, DNA testing, roots and searching, etc. Since 2018, Bina was invited and has represented DNA India Adoptees several times to discuss relevant issues with the Dutch government.

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Bina is a Senior team manager with an educational background of applied psychology, NLP and Systemic work. Recently, Bina began her own practice Bina Coaching and is also part of the Adoption and Foster Coaching (AFC) network founded by Hilbrand Westra. AFC is an organization of adopted adoption coaches with the aim to support mature adopters who need pre-adoption care. Bina does all this alongside her professional work as an Operational Manager at the Dutch Tax office.

The number of children adopted from foreign countries is down and adoption organizations believe they know why.

Tens of thousands of foreign children are adopted annually by American families, who rescue many of them from orphanages, but by 2018 the number had dropped to a little over 4,000.

The problem can be traced back to the U.S. State Department and to one person in particular, Susan Jacobs, who oversaw the federal agency's adoption division during the Obama administration.

Jacobs, whose State Department title was special advisor for international children’s issues, penned an April op-ed acknowledging the drop in adoptions but denied the federal agency is responsible for what she called “plummeting” numbers.

The adoptions have decreased, she claims, because foreign countries have tightened their rules due to loose federal oversight that endangers children’s safety.

Wesley Mathews, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of causing injury to Sherin.

Wesley Mathews, the adoptive father of Sherin Mathews – the three-year-old who was found dead in a Texas culvert in 2017 – has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in his sentence. At his trial for murder, which happened on Monday, Wesley pleaded guilty on charges of causing injury to the child by omission. This charge comes with a lighter sentence than capital murder and tampering with evidence – the other charges against him.

Wesley, who hails from Kerala, had been charged with capital murder after his special needs adoptive daughter was found dead. If he is convicted under this charge, he faces the possibility of a life sentence without parole. However, having pled guilty to first-degree injury to a child by omission, Wesley may get probation or life imprisonment with possibility of parole after three decades.

His guilty plea was apparently not a deal with the prosecutors or a bargain.

Wesley and his wife Sini, who were natives of Kerala, adopted Sherin from an orphanage in Bihar in July 2016. Sherin disappeared in October 2017, and Wesley initially claimed that he had sent her out in the wee hours of the morning on October 6 that year as punishment for not drinking her milk. On October 22, 2017, Sherin’s body was recovered from a culvert under a road about a kilometre from the Mathews’ home. The cause of Sherin’s death could not be investigated as the body had decomposed.

Volunteering and orphanage tourism abroad

Do you want to do volunteer work in a developing country? Top! It is important that Dutch people come into contact with other cultures and commit themselves to another. But prepare well and avoid involvement in projects that are harmful to vulnerable groups.

It happens regularly: Dutch people who are committed to a private development project. Or Dutch young people doing an internship or volunteering abroad. Well-known destinations are Cambodia, India, Philippines, Nepal, Kenya, Suriname, Uganda, Zambia and South Africa.

Volunteering in orphanages in particular is popular, but often has (unintended) negative consequences. The Dutch government does not recommend volunteering in orphanages.

Poverty