649 children legally available for adoption in Central Visayas

Published February 3, 2019, 5:55 PM

By Minerva Newman

CEBU CITY – Some 649 children in Central Visayas had been declared legally available for adoption from 2014 to 2018, according to Clavel Saycon, head of the Adoption Resources and Referral division of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Regional Field Office.

Last year alone, 62 children were placed and endorsed for adoption, Saycon said.

Klokhuis presenter Habtuma de Hoop has made a special trip to his native Ethiopia. He was reunited there with the woman who cared for him for several months as a baby. Habtuma de Hoop is presenter of the Klokhuis and councilor in the municipality of Súdwest-Fryslân. He is a real Frisian: he speaks Frisian, lives on a rural farm and in summer you can find him on the handball fields.

However, his appearance is not typically Frisian, because he has a dark complexion. Habtuma was born in Ethiopia and, when he was a few weeks old, was abandoned in a cafe in Addis Ababa. Police officers took baby Habtuma to an orphanage.

Captured

He was there for a few weeks until he ended up with a wealthy Ethiopian couple who took in and cared for orphans. When he was eight months old, Emke and Tineke de Hoop from Wommels picked him up. They adopted Habtuma through the organization Wereldkinderen. Habtuma knows nothing of his past; He got his name in the orphanage and his second name Emke comes from his Frisian father. Even his real date of birth is unknown.

Now, twenty years later, Habtuma has returned to Ethiopia with his family. A real culture shock. People who have more than fifteen children and a few cows and sheep live in small huts. In the capital Addis Adeba there are many beggars and homeless people are sleeping on the street under some cardboard.

The number of international adoptions still down

Posted on Saturday February 2nd, 2019 at 0:28

Updated on Saturday, February 2, 2019 at 4:12 pm

Bernard Barbeau

While it is well known that China is the home country of many small Canadians adopted abroad, there are now more coming from the United States. But overall, the number of adoptions across the border has been steadily decreasing over the past decade.

Exclusive: 130,000 children sent to ex-colonies up to 1970s under ‘misguided’ programme

Child migrants from Britain sent thousands of miles from home to Australia in what was described as a “misguided” programme are to be given £20,000 (A$36,000) in compensation by the British government.

Under the programme, more than 130,000 children were sent to a “better life” in former British colonies, mainly Australia and Canada, from the 1920s to the 1970s.

The children, aged between three and 14, often faced a life of servitude and hard labour in foster homes. The majority came from deprived backgrounds and were already in some form of social or charitable care. Many ended up on remote farms, or in state-run orphanages and church-run institutions. They were often separated from siblings and some were subjected to physical and sexual abuse.

Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you

Abida Rahman Chowdhury

It was just a few years after the Liberation War in 1971. Caroline Amena Lauritsen was a child then. She does not remember how old she was back then, but her adoption papers say she was three years old.

With a group of children, all from the same “baby home” as hers, Caroline flew to Denmark on November 13, 1975. The only memories she has from her life back in Bangladesh are a few words—words that she finds hard to pronounce now.

“Amena no ghum” and “paani” are the only words that she remembers, she tells me, as we settle down for a chat in a cosy apartment in Dhaka and I ask her what she remembers of her life in Bangladesh, decades back. She also has one lasting memory of her best friend “Moti”.

“The first thing I named when I arrived at my parent's house in Denmark was their cat. I called it Pilai.”

Par Jean-Claude Perrier, le 01.02.2019 (mis à jour le 01.02.2019 à 15h14)

ANTHOLOGIE/FRANCE 11 FÉVRIER FRANÇOIS DE COMBRET

Proust l'irréductible

AFFICHAGE

PETIT

It was just a few years after the Liberation War in 1971. Caroline Amena Lauritsen was a child then. She does not remember how old she was back then, but her adoption papers say she was three years old.

With a group of children, all from the same “baby home” as hers, Caroline flew to Denmark on November 13, 1975. The only memories she has from her life back in Bangladesh are a few words—words that she finds hard to pronounce now.

“Amena no ghum” and “paani” are the only words that she remembers, she tells me, as we settle down for a chat in a cosy apartment in Dhaka and I ask her what she remembers of her life in Bangladesh, decades back. She also has one lasting memory of her best friend “Moti”.

“The first thing I named when I arrived at my parent's house in Denmark was their cat. I called it Pilai.”

Caroline Amena Lauritsen is now a woman in her late forties and is visiting Bangladesh in search of her lost family.

It was just a few years after the Liberation War in 1971. Caroline Amena Lauritsen was a child then. She does not remember how old she was back then, but her adoption papers say she was three years old.

With a group of children, all from the same “baby home” as hers, Caroline flew to Denmark on November 13, 1975. The only memories she has from her life back in Bangladesh are a few words—words that she finds hard to pronounce now.

“Amena no ghum” and “paani” are the only words that she remembers, she tells me, as we settle down for a chat in a cosy apartment in Dhaka and I ask her what she remembers of her life in Bangladesh, decades back. She also has one lasting memory of her best friend “Moti”.

“The first thing I named when I arrived at my parent's house in Denmark was their cat. I called it Pilai.”

Caroline Amena Lauritsen is now a woman in her late forties and is visiting Bangladesh in search of her lost family.

Are you distantly related to Beyoncé? You should probably find out.

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06:56

«It pulled away the ground under my feet»

Legend: Audio "It has pulled away the ground under my feet" play. Running time 06:56 minutes.

06:56 min, from Regional Journal Ostschweiz of 30.01.2019.

She is one of about 700: The 37-year-old St. Gallen Tamara Kramer was most likely illegally adopted from Sri Lanka in Switzerland like hundreds of other children in the 1980s. These "Sri Lanka adoptions" have been a big topic in the media over the last few days and weeks - not least because the canton of St. Gallen published a report in a new window at the beginning of this week .