In 2022, an employee alerted the adoption agency DIA that they were mediating adoptions from Madagascar on a misleading basis. Still, DIA continued with the adoptions.

When Denmark's only adoption agency, Danish International Adoption (DIA), received an official warning from the Danish Appeals Board in November this year, the message was clear: 

DIA's adoption mediation in the African island nation of Madagascar was in violation of conventions and the adoption law. 

The backdrop for the warning was, among other things, illegal money transfers and an unnecessary delay in the adoption cases of two children. But Danwatch can now reveal that DIA has brokered adoptions to Denmark, even though they knew that the children's papers could contain incorrect information about their biological parentage. 

Danwatch has gained access to a number of children's cases from recent years that contain conflicting stories about the children's past, while there are also two cases where there is doubt as to who consented to the adoption. 

Amicus Curiae Advocate A. Parvathi Menon on Monday informed the Court that subjecting the children of rape or POCSO victims, who had thereafter been given in adoption, to DNA tests would tantamount to defeating the purpose of 'the divine concept of adoption'. "An adopted child cannot be at any point of his/her/their growth be violated of his/her/their privacy. There are instances where...

The 31-year-old has bottomless love for his adoptive mother after a good upbringing in Molde. Still, she wishes she was never adopted from Sri Lanka.

In 1992, Turid Fiskerstrand and Nils Harald Oterhals traveled from Molde to Sri Lanka to adopt a little girl. She was only 13 days old when they held her for the first time.

The language differences meant that the Norwegian couple and the Sri Lankan mother, Pojani, could not talk to each other. But they met daily for several weeks.

- I had a heart rate of 120 before our first meeting. It was a huge moment for us, but I don't know what Pojani was thinking. That's why I asked the manager at the orphanage if she could interpret for us, explains Turid.

They sat down together and looked at albums from Molde. Turid wanted to show Pojani where her daughter Priyangika would live and grow up. Explain that she was going to go to school and that they were going to take good care of her. Give her lots of love.

They were deprived of their roots in Sri Lanka, but they never felt really Swiss either: a study by doctoral student Surangika Jayarathne shows for the first time the consequences for children who were adopted in Switzerland.

SWI swissinfo.ch: For your study you interviewed 12 people who were adopted as children from Sri Lanka. Was it difficult to find people willing to talk about their experience?

Surangika Jayarathne: It certainly took a lot of time and effort to locate them and then to win their trust. In the end I was able to have very intimate discussions with these people. The foundation Back to the Roots Switzerland, which advocates for the rights of Sri Lankan adoptees in Switzerland, was of great help.

SWI: Many of the interviewees had similar experiences as children growing up in their Swiss families. What did their adoptive parents tell them about Sri Lanka?

S.J.: The parents said Sri Lanka was a beautiful country, where poverty and war reigned and women had fewer rights than men. The children were told that they came from underprivileged families who had not been able to provide for them. In this way Swiss parents tried to rationalise the adoption. They told their children that in Switzerland opportunities for education, food security and shelter were better. They probably meant well, but these statements were not always true.

New Delhi, 18th December 2023: The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, and “Where are India’s Children” (WAIC), an NGO dedicated to securing family rights for abandoned and orphaned children in India, are thrilled to announce a groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to advance child welfare and adoption initiatives.

Under this pioneering partnership, CARA and WAIC commit to enhancing collaboration through research and data-based evidence to promote the well-being of children. The MoU marks a new era in public-private partnerships and innovation, focusing on noninstitutional care of children and rehabilitation through adoption.

Leveraging technology, CARA and WAIC will expand the legal adoption pool, offering more children the chance to find their forever families. The organizations will also advocate for the adoption of special needs and older children, while raising awareness to prevent unsafe child abandonment

Tripti Gurha, CEO of CARA, stated, “This MoU is a significant step forward in ensuring the well-being of every child. Collaborating with WAIC allows us to pool resources for positive change.”

Meera Marthi, CEO of WAIC, added, “We are proud to join hands with CARA to make a lasting impact on vulnerable children’s lives, providing the love and care they deserve.”

Kim Catford was born in Vietnam as Ha Van Tuan in February 1973, towards the end of the Vietnam War. At about 6 months of age, he was abandoned and taken to the Sancta Maria Orphanage in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).

50 years ago, in November 1973, he was adopted by the Catford family from South Australia. He was 9 months old at the time.

Georgette Mulheir, the leading global expert on transforming systems of care and protection for children visited Republican Pedagogical-Psychological Center on December 5th.

The aim of this visit was to get acquainted with the works and activities carried out by Armenian partners.

RPPC director Lilit Mnatsakanyan presented the process of organizing total inclusive education in Armenia, as well as the process and features of assessment of SEN and provision of pedagogic-psychological support.

The partners of the “European Disability Forum” spoke about the challenges of the deinstitutionalization process. Questions related to the process of organizing the education of children in need of 3rd and 4th level of support, particularly for children in establishments for caring, were discussed. The participants of the meeting emphasized the importance of sharing experience and the need to develop further joint strategies as well.

At the end of the meeting, the guests took a tour in the Center and got acquainted with the activities of RPPC departments.

Growing up without worries. That is what this year's De Warmste Week is all about. A theme that is close to Hinda Bluekens (35)'s heart. She spent the first years of her life in an institution. Together with Danira Boukhriss Terkessidis (33) she looks back on that missed start in a two-part documentary.

“I really don’t find it easy to share this,” says Hinda Bluekens halfway through the first episode of Start gemist . She is sitting at the table with Danira Boukhriss Terkessidis and leafing through a thick folder containing photos and reports that document the first four years of her life. A period that she was forced to spend in a ckg, a centre for childcare and family support as it is called in full. “Even the fact that you are even touching that folder, I find intense,” she confesses to Danira.

“Sharing the contents of that folder with an outsider affected me much more than I had anticipated,” she says a few months after that fateful day of shooting. “The whole story that is described in it is not new to me. I have carried it with me for more than thirty years. But when you show that folder to someone who does not know that past and who asks questions that you have never thought about, you start to look at everything in it in a different way. Photos that you have seen a hundred times suddenly take on a different meaning. That released quite a few emotions.”

These unexpected emotions did not cause any doubt about the plan to share her past not only with Danira but also with the television viewers of Flanders. Hinda, who is known on Instagram as Hinda House, has worked as a journalist, columnist and video reporter for Flair , De Standaard and Gazet van Antwerpen in recent years and has written for the VTM GO series Only Friends in the past year , had been thinking about doing something about that past for some time. “I just didn't really know what that 'something' should be. Did I want to write about it? Should it be a television project? Or maybe a podcast?”

The lawyer, who agreed that adoption should be encouraged, however, added that in the case of adoption, there is no biological connection of the child with the couple.

New Delhi:

The Delhi High Court Friday said the law regulating the procedure of surrogacy is intended to curb the exploitation of surrogates and no one wants India to become an "industry of renting a womb".

The court made the observation while hearing a plea by an Indian-origin couple living in Canada challenging the March 14 notification issued by the Centre amending the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act to ban donor surrogacy by altering Form 2 under Rule 7 of the Surrogacy Rules, 2022.

"This reproductive outsourcing was supposed to be curbed by the legislature and that too at the instance of the Supreme Court and we cannot go beyond it," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Mini Pushkarna said.

Sorin with his adoption file. — © Joris HerregodsIn the years that followed, Sorin grew up with his adoptive parents in Antwerp. “Although my parents never lied about my adoption or my origins, I always had many questions about it. However, I didn't feel like I could ask that. I felt like I should be grateful because they rescued me from the Romanian orphanage. I was afraid of losing my parents by asking too many questions. Outsiders never even asked how I felt as an adopted child. Presumably out of fear of hurting me or my adoptive parents. That way it is never talked about and you lose part of your identity. Adoption simply took away part of my identity. That is the case for many adopted children.”

Adoption Support CenterIn 2016, he took matters into his own hands and contacted the Adoption Support Center, a non-profit organization that promotes the rights of adoptees. They search for his biological parents for him in the hope of reuniting them. Only months later does he receive a letter from his biological mother. She writes to him that she was too ill to care for him and that is why she gave him up. When she was better, she wanted to take care of her children again. Sorin's sister was returned to her mother, but the orphanage management told her that Sorin had died. “When my birth mother discovered that I was alive and adopted in 2016, she broke down,” says Sorin.

Sorin's mother writes that she wants to meet up. His biological sister also really wants to see him. Shortly afterwards he goes to Romania to meet them. “It was a very strange meeting, because we were strangers to each other,” he says. “Yet we spent four fantastic days together. My sister's children had even drawn pictures for me. I was no longer able to see my biological father, because he had already died. My official father, who is listed on my birth certificate, wanted to see me, but I held off on him. At the time, he signed the document in which my parents renounced me.”

Not the only oneAfter the meeting, Sorin collapses. “It was a very emotional period in which I was able to close things. We had little contact afterwards and we are actually very different. We come from a different culture, but I am still very happy that I took the step towards my biological family. They are a part of my identity that I have not known for a long time.” Sorin is not the only one who can tell such a story. Between the fall of Romanian dictator Ceausescu in 1989 and the Romanian adoption freeze in 2001, an estimated 30,000 children found their way to the West through adoptive parents.

At the height of the orphan crisis, more than 100,000 children lived in Romanian orphanages. — © ©John Vink/ Magnum PhotosIn Romania, at the height of the orphan crisis, more than 100,000 children lived in orphanages. The situation was a consequence of Ceausescu's demographic delusion. He believed that a strong country with a healthy economy needed many young people. That is why he required by law that families must have at least five children and banned any form of contraception. However, many parents were too poor to care for so many children, so the state took over. Orphanages sprang up like mushrooms all over Romania in the 1970s and 1980s.