Marco Griffini confirmed to the presidency: "We leave behind the most difficult three-year period"

With new enthusiasm, with a strategic plan in three points and after the most difficult three-year period in its history, the activity of Ai.Bi. - Amici dei Bambini. Once the previous three-year mandate expired, the Governing Council of the organization was renewed, with its main institutional headquarters in San Giuliano Milanese. The shareholders' meeting resolved its composition in the past few days, electing the five members.

Marco Griffini was reconfirmed as president, Cristina Riccardi, former president of the AiBi Foundation, was elected vice president as general secretary Ermes Carretta, former president of the AIBC Social Cooperative, and further members were Giuseppe Salomoni and don Massimiliano Sabbadini , respectively the next president and spiritual adviser of "La Pietra Scartata", the Association of the faithful made up of adoptive and foster families of abandoned minors.

In addition, the constitution was approved, in view of the forthcoming revision of the statute, which must be approved within the deadlines set by the reform of the Third Sector Code, of a "National Council of Ai.Bi." composed of all the regional coordinators of the association .

"The assembly - explains the president Marco Griffini - wished to express heartfelt thanks to the outgoing Board of Directors, which had to face one of the most difficult, perhaps the most difficult, periods of the association's more than thirty-year life, culminating in the crazy attack of the former CAI vice president Silvia della Monica supported by the Renzi government and by the weekly L'Espresso against the very idea of ??international adoption. The tireless work and the tenacious resistance of the members of the Governing Council, the regional coordinators and all the collaborators of the association, as well as the unshakable trust and support of the hundreds of families have allowed Ai.Bi. not only to be able to overcome the numerous obstacles ... but above all to be able to trace the guidelines of a strategy, which the new leaders will have to implement, during their mandate, to relaunch the whole sector of the reception of those who are in family difficulties ”.

Draft – to be agreed at the International Conference on Children's Participation in Decision-Making and Policy-Making at European Union level, on 6-7 May 2019, Bucharest

Children from all over the European Union have gathered in Bucharest to present their commitment and to call on the leaders of EU Member States and of the European Union to make child participation a priority and a reality.

We are dreaming of a European Community that enables and encourages the involvement of children in decision-making. Why? Because we want to be consulted on issues that influence our lives directly, both as citizens of our respective countries and as Europeans. Because we are a significant part of Europe’s population and we are writing our own story through marches, vocalization, and representation. Because our opinions, feelings and voices are forming now and we belong to the present just like the seed of the plant in the spring, before the flower blooms. We want to live in a Europe that requires and values our involvement in the decision-making process.

THE CONTEXT

Thirty years have passed since the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by all EU countries. Under Article 12, it stipulates the right of all children to be heard and have their views given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity.

The home where everything started

Cologne / New Delhi At the end of the 1980s, a couple from the Westerwald had the courage to adopt a child from India. At the age of 28, Mario Tony Rötzel visited the orphanage where his mother left him for the first time.

In January 1989, a young Indian woman gives birth to a son. A baby with whom the probably unmarried woman feels overwhelmed. A baby she can not or will not keep. In New Delhi she is looking for a place where loving hands take care of her child. She knocks on the Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity orphanage, handing the infant, Tony, a few days, into the hands of the nuns. And then she leaves without leaving her name. That's why this is not the story of the young woman, but that of Mario Tony Rötzel.

28 years later the day has come. He had always felt that yearning to return to the place where it all began. He had pushed the journey for a long time. Because he was well in Breitscheidt, the small Rhineland-Palatinate village in which he was allowed to grow up. Because he had friends and could play football. Because he studied and found a job in Cologne. "Before my 30th birthday, I really wanted to go to India."

Mario Rötzel is no fuss to note. Neither at Cologne Central Station or at Frankfurt Airport, nor nine hours later, when the young man in New Delhi enters Indian soil again. He is wearing a cap, black T-shirt, sunglasses. The fact that he wears socks in his sandals could have been an indication of his origin. Nevertheless, the employees at the airport ask for their documents in the local language Hindi.

Investigations into the Namakkal child adoption racket have shown that the gang exploited gaps in health and registration services to provide an almost one-stop service for childless couples.

NAMAKKAL: The Namakkal child adoption racket that recently came to light has revealed how lapses in health and registration services could be exploited by unscrupulous individuals. It has also shown how brokers were able to target childless couples as well as poor families with too many children.

In fact, if investigators are to be believed, the accused were successful as they leveraged contacts to provide a virtually one-stop service for childless couples. Using contacts with health officials, they were able to target poor women and sell their eggs to fertility clinics in the region.

Through the connection built through sale of the eggs, they were able to allegedly find childless couples for whom fertility treatments hadn’t worked and offered to sell them babies instead. Through contacts with health officials, they were able to know which babies had been born at which government hospital to what kind of families and thereby narrow in on vulnerable families that they would allegedly convince to give up their babies. The racket, which has allegedly gone on for years, only came to light last week after an audio recording of a retired government nursing assistant offering to sell babies went viral.

After detaining the woman, Amuthavalli, for questioning, police arrested her and her husband Ravichandran, who worked at an urban cooperative bank, as well as one Sengarai who was an ambulance driver at the Kolli Hills primary health centre. So far eight people have been arrested under several sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2015. As many as 14 children who had been sold into illegal adoption had been traced in Erode, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, Kanniyakumari and Madurai districts.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: ACT

Date: Sun, 5 May 2019 at 11:10 AM

Subject: Re: FW: adoption world conference

To: Gus Baliarda

(Reuters Health) - Children who are adopted, whether domestically or internationally, have unique healthcare needs that should be assessed as soon as possible, according to new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Pediatricians and other healthcare workers should play a significant role in the adoption process, the guideline authors emphasize.

“Adopted children often don’t have full medical histories or have experienced trauma in life, which leads to a more complex medical exam when it comes to physical, mental or behavioral concerns,” said lead author Dr. Veronnie Faye Jones of the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

“We’ve learned more in recent years about what prior trauma can do, especially for brain development,” she told Reuters Health in a phone interview. “We should remind families that we’re here to help them along the journey.”

In the new guidance, Jones and co-author Dr. Elaine Schulte of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York City outlined trends in domestic and international adoption. They also review components of the health evaluation, the preadoption visit, the initial medical history review, the initial physical exam and chronic health concerns.

LUCKNOW: Members of the LGBTQ community, who found their voice after Section 377 was decriminalised by Supreme Court

last year, have decided to use the poll platform to fight for their right to not just love, but also to marry and adopt children

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/adopt-children).

"An equitable law for marriage and adoption is the need of the hour. In the US, any LGBTQ couple can marry, adopt and raise

kids. In our country, civil partnership is still not legalised. LGBTQ members should be allowed to have children either through

Rani T’Kindt was abducted as a child for adoption: "My mother was panicking"

"Under the disguise of adoption, I was abducted as a baby in India in 1980," says Rani T'Kindt. The instructing party was De Vreugdezaaiers. In 2011 the adoption agency lost its recognition; half a year later, Ray of Hope, who had now been discredited, took over all the files.

"I have been illegally adopted and have therefore received residence papers in an illegal manner," said Rani T'Kindt (40), who won the Beijing Express TV program in 2003. "Yet nobody called on me to deport me, not even Vlaams Belang."

On July 5, 1980, the then one and a half year old Rani arrived by plane from India in Belgium. "My biological parents were among the lowest caste in the city of Puducherry," she says. "My mother gave birth to a girl, and my father wasn't happy with that. He abandoned her. Mama stood in the street with her newborn daughter and didn't know what to do. The nuns of the Catholic orphanage offered her a job as a cook. As a little baby, I grew up among the orphans. "

"At night mom had to sleep on the street; I got a bed between the other children. My Indian mother could not read or write, but like many other illiterates, she could put her name on paper. The nuns had her draw forms so that she gave me up without realizing it. One morning she arrived at the orphanage, and I was gone. "

(Reuters Health) - Children who are adopted, whether domestically or internationally, have unique healthcare needs that should be assessed as soon as possible, according to new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Pediatricians and other healthcare workers should play a significant role in the adoption process, the guideline authors emphasize.

“Adopted children often don’t have full medical histories or have experienced trauma in life, which leads to a more complex medical exam when it comes to physical, mental or behavioral concerns,” said lead author Dr. Veronnie Faye Jones of the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

“We’ve learned more in recent years about what prior trauma can do, especially for brain development,” she told Reuters Health in a phone interview. “We should remind families that we’re here to help them along the journey.”

In the new guidance, Jones and co-author Dr. Elaine Schulte of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York City outlined trends in domestic and international adoption. They also review components of the health evaluation, the preadoption visit, the initial medical history review, the initial physical exam and chronic health concerns.

Reduced punishment for the rapist when the victim was adopted abroad

"The view and handling of the bodies of the adopted adopts reveals the majority-Swedish ambivalent approach to race," writes Maria Fredriksson and Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, since a perpetrator of rape against children received reduced punishment due to uncertainty about the age of an adopted foreign girl.

Dagens juridik writes on April 29, 2019 about a man, convicted of rape against children, who have been released on several points where the victim was a foreign-adopted girl. The girl came to Sweden in 2008 without any fixed date of birth, and - just like thousands of other foreign adopted - then registered with an estimated date of birth based on medical examinations.

Initially, the district court went on booked dates and the man was sentenced but in the court of appeal a disagreement arose about whether the girl could possibly be born earlier and the case was passed on to the Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court, it was stated that there was no certificate that could certainly determine the girl's age, in Sweden as well as in the girl's country of origin. However, there was a certificate from a medical examination that was done when the girl was estimated at 8 years, who showed in early puberty and that it could not be ruled out that she could be 10 years old.

Because of the uncertainty surrounding the girl's age, that is, she could have been older than 15 at the time of the crimes, the man was released on these points and was sentenced to imprisonment.