John Ondeche, expert on children’s rights and adoption in Kenya, to visit UNC

John Ondeche

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John Ondeche, director of the New Life Home in Kisumu, will visit Chapel Hill the week of March 27 for a series of events sponsored byCarolina for Amani.

Ondeche is an expert on children’s rights and adoption in Kenya, and this is his first visit to the United States.

Morgan Abbott, a public policy and religious studies major from Raleigh who is pursuing a minor in entrepreneurship, founded Carolina for Amani to support the work of The Amani Children’s Foundation and the New Life Homesin Kenya.

On March 28 at 8 p.m. in Dey Hall 206, The Roosevelt Institute is sponsoring a conversation with Ondeche, who also is a member of the Kenyan Adoption Board, regarding the creation of progression of children’s rights legislation and adoption policy in Kenya.  

On March 30, from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in the Faculty Lounge of the Campus Y, Carolina for Amani is hosting a sale to welcome Ondeche to Chapel Hill. Attendees will have the opportunity to converse with Ondeche while shopping for Kenyan bags, scarves, gifts and jewelry made from beautiful hand-painted Kenyan beads from the clay of Mt. Kenya. All proceeds will benefit the New Life Homes in Kenya.

On April 1 at 2:15 p.m. in Gardner Hall 08, the economics department is sponsoring a lecture by Ondeche regarding international development, specifically in the context of New Life Homes.

Trafficking of women and children is an organised crime: DGP

Bhubaneswar, Mar 26 (PTI) Identifying trafficking of women and children for the purpose of commercial and sexual exploitation as an organised crime, DGP Manmohan Praharaj today opened up an Integrated Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (IAHTU) at the crime branch headquarters in Cuttack."Trafficking in persons, particularly women and children for various purposes such as commercial sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced marriage, domestic servitude, adoption and begging is an organised crime," Praharaj said. Trafficking as such violates basic human rights of a person."I am determined that Orissa police will combat human trafficking of all types," the DGP said adding that the IAHTU at Cuttack would have jurisdiction over whole of the state.Abhay, IG of Police explained the role of IAHTU. He informed that all five IAHTU have been opened by redistribution of manpower and sanction of posts is still awaited from the state government.Besides timely collection, dissemination and utilization of intelligence about human trafficking, the IAHTU would help in rescue of maximum number of trafficked persons, attend to post rescue care and attention of survivors, carry out professional investigation to bring all offenders to book, Abhay said.IAHTU would also ensure effective prosecution and strive for maximum and expeditious conviction of offenders and undertake all post-prosecution/conviction activities as per the law, he said.A Nodal NGO will be identified to support each IAHTU, he said.

Want to Adopt a Japanese Orphan? You May Be Out of Luck

 

REUTERS/Kyodo

You may mean well, but Japan doesn't need your adoption help. Haiti, however, still does. And that's a major difference between developed and undeveloped countries.

Tazuru Ogaway, director of the Japanese adoption agency Across Japan, tells FoxNews.com that people from the United States suddenly looking to Japan for adoptions doesn't sit well there. Japan says it can take care of its own just fine, a sharp contrast to the response—and needs—experienced after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. A State Department report says the U.S. fast-tracked over 1,000 adoptions in Haiti after the earthquake. We won't see the same trend from Japan.

(More on TIME.com: See how you can help the quake victims, other than adopting them)

Not only do the Japanese feel Americans just want to take what they want from the disaster—the kids—but also their cultural makeup generally provides for displaced children. “I don't believe there's going to be a true orphan situation in Japan in the wake of this disaster,” says Martha Osborne, spokeswoman for the adoption advocacy website RainbowKids.com. “That extended family system is going to consider that child their child.”

Even outside of crisis situations, adoptions in Japan are rare in a country where bloodlines have great significance. Only about 30 international adoptions took place from Japan last year. “Japan is very capable, unlike many undeveloped nations, of caring for its own,” Osborne says.

And even if Japan was open to adoption, as rescue workers still sort out the missing from the found, the hope to reconnect children with their families remains. Maybe the best idea for those interested in helping is to instead donate to organizations providing emergency relief. (via Fox News)

UNICEF Concern Prompts Cambodian Investigation of Orphanages

Robert Carmichael | Phnom Penh March 23, 2011

Photo: AFP

Cambodian orphans play together as they wait for adoption at Kien Klaing orphanage center in Phnom Penh, (File)

The Cambodian government has begun investigating the country’s orphanages; just days after the United Nations Children's Fund expressed its concerns that nearly three out of four children in the country's orphanages have at least one living parent.  

Earlier this week, UNICEF said most of the 12,000 children in Cambodia’s orphanages are, in fact, not orphans.   Nearly three-quarters of them have one living parent, yet the number of children in care has more than doubled in five years.

UNICEF said the number of orphanage centers has nearly doubled, to 269 facilities in the same period.

Just 21 of those are run by the government.  The rest are funded and run by foreign donors and faith-based organizations.

Tourism 

UNICEF country head, Richard Bridle, told VOA he is concerned many centers have turned to tourism to attract funding and that, by doing so, they put children at risk.

Bridle says even the best-intentioned tourists and volunteers are funding a system that is helping to separate children from their families.

International studies have shown that children are better off in a family or community setting. 
That also happens to be a much cheaper way of caring for them, says Sebastien Marot, the founder of Phnom Penh’s respected street kids organization called Friends International, which was established 17 years ago.

Money-making venture 

Marot says the figures from UNICEF indicate a serious problem:  Either there is a misconception about stability in Cambodia in the 21st century, or "unscrupulous people" are engaging in a charity business and using children to make money.

"We have been working 17 years and we haven’t placed kids in an orphanage.  And, we are working with the most marginalized kids that have the most difficult families.  We haven’t placed any in an orphanage in eight years, except for heavily disabled or very, very sick, because the families are really in no capacity for taking care of them.  And, that is the real situation," Marot said.

Marot acknowledges that most tourists going to orphanages are acting out of pure motives when they visit the children and give money.

But he says there is little doubt that some Cambodian orphanages have been set up to make money from foreign tourists.

Visitors to Cambodia’s tourist centers of Phnom Penh, the temple city, Siem Reap and the beach resort, Sihanoukville, are regularly bombarded with pleas to visit orphanages.

Marot’s advice is that tourists should behave as they would at home. 

"The real question is:  Would you do this in your own country?  No.  Have you ever visited an orphanage in your own country?  No.  Why?  Because an orphanage is a safe place for kids and has to have a child protection system - it is to protect those children," Marot noted. “They are already totally vulnerable.  Having people coming from outside is just not acceptable."

A spokesman for the Social Affairs Ministry, which is carrying out the inspections, admitted this week that the government does not know whether the thousands of children in care are being treated well or badly.

The spokesman says it is unclear how long it will take to inspect all 269 orphanages, but promises that those found to be sub-standard or in contravention of the law will be closed.