The UAI initiates a worldwide dialogue whereby adoption, the position of Adoptees and children rights, should be the center point of developing (inter)national social, political and cultural policies regarding adoption. The UAI believes that Adoptees should participate and be involved in the field of International Adoption, and if necessary, enforce influence on the (adoption) society where the rights and lives of Adoptees and children are endangered and neglected everyday.
The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family opened a central adoption information service center Wednesday to provide post-adoption services to adoptees searching for their birth families. However, there's one significant problem that the ministry has ignored: adoptee access.
This center is meant to fulfill the requirement of a ``central authority'' by the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. Click on the central authority's new Web site (www.kcare.or.kr) featuring images of adoptees for whom their birth families are searching and you'll find it is completely in the Korean language. Can an overseas adoptee whose first language is either English or French read or use this?
Since 1953, South Korea has sent over 160,000 Korean children abroad to 14 Western countries. It is the oldest and largest adoption program in the world, despite South Korea's economic miracle.
Reunion with birth families is a primary reason for adoptees to return to South Korea. From 1995-2005, the ministry reported that 78,000 adoptees came to South Korea to search for their families. Yet only 2.7 percent were reunited. What accounts for this low success rate?
Mads Them Nielsen, former director of post-adoption services at Global Overseas Adoptees' Link (G.O.A.L.) from 2001-2003, said, ``In a given year I received approximately 240 requests including e-mail inquiries. I have reunited only 10 cases. The main problem was getting information from the agencies.''
The lack of adoptee access includes not only records and translation, but also active adoptee representation.
Although the central authority has prominent representation by adoption agencies, an overseas adoptee who lives in Seoul, who was a potential candidate for the board, was dropped without explanation.
His replacement, Steven Morrison, is an adoptee living in the United States who is head of Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea. He cannot regularly attend meetings or events in Seoul important to the information service center's decision-making process due to his overseas residence.
At an institutional level, the ministry continues to view adoptees as a whole as children and discriminates against them as ``orphans'' and ``foreigners'' who cannot represent their own interests and who should not make decisions about themselves.
However, adoptees continue to struggle to make their voices heard. The ministry's second hearing on the revision of South Korea's civil and overseas adoption laws on July 1, sponsored by the Korean Women's Development Institute (KWDI), marked the first time in 56 years of international Korean adoption that a critical mass of overseas Korean adoptees were able to directly communicate their own interests in a governmental forum. The KWDI provided professional, simultaneous translation services.
This public hearing was originally intended to be the last one before the ministry sends its suggested revisions to the Adoption Law to the National Assembly.
However, after seeing the number of adoptees and supporters who turned out to voice their opinions, Park Sook-ja, director of the ministry's family policy bureau, announced that another public hearing might be necessary to further discuss adoptee and single mother concerns.
But the ministry has not released information about a third public hearing. Instead, it has rushed toward opening the service center both online and onsite without consulting overseas adoptees and without any regard for the comments they gave at the last public hearing.
The ministry intends for the center to bring South Korea into compliance with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption.
In accordance with the convention, it should hold the records of the adoptees and assist with birth family searches. It should also serve as a watchdog over the agencies. However, the center is incorporated as a private entity, not a governmental agency with sufficient oversight.
The center's facilities and problems are the same as the old GAIPS (Global Adoption Information and Post Services Center) Adoption Information Center.
In fact, it is located in the old GAIPS office ― they have yet to even change the sign on the door. GAIPS failed to establish a sufficient working relationship with overseas adoptees because it was not willing to provide language access.
Despite appearing to make improvements, the South Korean government continues to deny the adoption community authentic access and services. Fifty-six years and counting of adoption history, overseas adoptees are still waiting.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, professor of English at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, is the author of ``Paper Pavilion.'' Jane Jeong Trenka is the author of ``The Language of Blood, Fugitive Visions,'' and co-editor of ``Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption.'' They are members of Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK), a group advocating for transparency in adoption practices both past and present to improve the lives of Korean families and adoptees.
Ten Russian orphans are in Hilton Head on the adventure of a lifetime. At the end of the trip some of them will get to come back to the U.S. permanently, because some of the children’s host families intend to adopt them.
The State Department says Americans completed more than 17,000 international adoptions in fiscal year 2008. Guatemala topped the list with more than 4,100 children adopted from that country. China was second and Russia third in adoptions to the U.S.
Over the next three weeks, the kids will get to experience their first car ride, their first visit to a beach, and their first outings with their new families.
A big bedroom, a doll, and a loving home await 6 year-old Veronika in Hilton Head. Wendy and Scott Cummings say they’ve always wanted a fourth child.
“It’s a leap of faith. We don’t really know anything about her, except for she’s adorable. We know she’s ours,“ said Wendy.
“When this opportunity kind of came through the school, Wendy talked to me and we talked a little bit about it, and it was pretty clear cut that this was what we’re supposed to do,“ said Scott.
“I’m scared and excited at the same time,“ said 8 year-old Grey Anne, the youngest of the family’s 3 children.
The family says they’re ready for any challenges.
“Veronika speaks no English, and being that she’s only 6, they don’t start school until they’re 7. So she not only doesn’t speak English but does not read Russian,“ said Wendy.
“Trying to help one child get a better chance at life. We have so much here, if we can give a small portion of it to somebody else then that’s great,“ said Scott.
Finally, the moment they’ve been longing for at the Savannah airport, as they get to see Veronika for the first time.
They’ll spend the next few weeks getting to know each other, and the children who don’t have adoptive families yet will get to meet prospective parents.
“[We’re] having families come to the area from other states and from around this area who are interested in adopting to meet the kids and to get to know them a little bit and see if they may be a fit, to see if their families are a fit. Our goal is to find each of them a family before they go,“ said Christina Carr, director of Operation 127, the local sponsor of the trip.
The Cummings and some of the other families have already started the adoption process for four of the 10 visiting children. Through this program with International Guardian Angels Outreach, it will only take about two or three months before the adoption is complete and the kids will get to come home to their new families.
Sobrevivientes has begun a hunger strike. The intent is to attempt to get the courts to annul the three adoptions involving the notorious three cases of kindappings.
I believe that everyone in the Guatadopt community wishes that these cases could be resolved in some fashion. And as always it is imortant to remember that these cases are not representative of the thousands of adoptions that occurred.
So that no one thinks I am editing, censoring, etc... I will not be on my computer much if at all the next two days. So expect a delay in approving comments. And in advance, I ask that everyone go out of their way to be courteous and clear in their comments. These are challenging times for our community, let's not let that tear us apart.
The Russian Ministry of Education and Science has banned the bodies of Russian regions to accept adoption applications submitted by 113 U.S. organizations not accredited in Russia, announced the spokesman of the Ministry Levistkaïa Alina.
MOSCOU, 15 juillet - RIA Novosti. Le ministère russe de l'Enseignement et de la Science a interdit aux organes compétents des régions russes d'accepter les demandes d'adoption transmises par 113 organisations américaines non accréditées en Russie, a annoncé la porte-parole du ministère Alina Levistkaïa.
Selon le ministère, 16 enfants russes sont morts au cours des 17 dernières années dans le cadre d'adoptions par des étrangers.
"Aujourd'hui nous n'avons pas reçu les rapports concernant 376 enfants russes. Dans la liste (des parents ne satisfaisant par les engagements), on en trouve pas une seule organisation américaine accréditée en Russie. Il ressort que celles qui sont accréditées respectent leurs engagements, les autres 113 restantes, non", a-t-elle fait savoir.
Les personnes ayant adopté un enfant en Russie doivent envoyer des rapports cinq, 11, 23 et 26 mois après l'adoption, avec des informations concernant son développement, sa santé, ses conditions de vie et ses contacts avec son entourage.
Suite à une récente rencontre entre des représentants du ministère et la secrétaire d'Etat américaine adjointe Michele Bond, la partie américaine se serait engagée à lever les questions en suspens concernant ces organisations.
Les parties ont en outre convenu de signer un accord russo-américain sur l'adoption d'enfants russes, permettant de réglementer les obligations des parents adoptifs américains.
"Il serait bon qu'un tel document soit signé par l'Espagne, la France, la Finlande et l'Irlande", a déclaré la porte-parole du ministère.
ANP, EFE
Gepubliceerd op 15 juli 2009 09:40, bijgewerkt op 09:42
HANOI -
De politie in Vietnam heeft een netwerk van babyhandelaars ontmanteld. Zij heeft zeven personen die worden verdacht van het verkopen van 33 pasgeborenen aan klanten in China, opgepakt.
Dat liet de politie woensdag weten. Zij is nog op zoek naar twee personen die wisten te ontsnappen. Het gaat om het grootste netwerk van babyhandelaars dat ooit in het Aziatische land is ontdekt, aldus inspecteur Truong Tho Toan.
De handelaren verkochten de baby's voor omgerekend 1000 euro per stuk. Ze haalden de baby's uit ziekenhuizen en dorpjes in de armste en meest afgelegen gebieden van Vietnam. De handelaren boden net bevallen moeders zonder geld aan hun baby te adopteren. In sommige gevallen doodden ze de ouders.
De Vietnamese politie is dinsdag begonnen met de zoveelste campagne tegen mensenhandel. Daarnaast voert ze controles op aan de grens met China en Cambodja. Daar worden ook veel vrouwen verhandeld voor de prostitutie. De economische crisis heeft de mensenhandel verergerd.
The number of adopted children who have been returned to care homes because their new parents cannot cope with them has doubled in the past five years.
Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the number has increased by a third in the past year alone as parents struggle with often challenging children who have suffered years of neglect or abuse in their natural families.
Going back into care after living with an adoptive family is a traumatic experience for children, and for the adoptive parents who have to accept their only chance of having a family has gone. It is also a huge cost to an already over-stretched system with the children likely to need expensive specialist care.
The increase in breakdowns comes despite a fall in the number of children being adopted. Only 4,637 children were adopted in 2007, the lowest number since 1999.
The data on breakdowns is in a survey of local authorities, conducted by More4 News and shared with The Times. More4 News will broadcast its special report tonight at 8pm.
Experts say the figures show that many children are being left to suffer at the hands of dysfunctional natural parents for too long before being taken into care by social workers. By the time they are adopted, many have severe emotional or behavioural problems.
Local authorities are not obliged to keep any data on adoption breakdowns and the vast majority of those contacted by More4 News had no figures or only partial records. However, according to the numbers kept by 92 out of 450 local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, 57 children were returned to care in 2008-09 compared with 26 in 2004-05. If the pattern is repeated across the country, it means more than 250 children were returned to the care system last year.
The Adoption Act of 2002 was supposed to speed up adoption so that children do not have to languish in the care system for too long. However, the bigger problem may be that they are allowed to stay with their natural parents for too long before social workers remove them from their home.
Lord Laming, Britain’s foremost expert on child protection, highlighted this issue in the wake of the Baby P tragedy. He urged social workers to be far more realistic about parents’ ability to turn their lives around and to act more decisively when there are problems.
The figures are also a reflection of the changing face of adoption. Before the 1970s, most adopted children were babies born to single mothers, but today more than three quarters have been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. The increase in alcohol and drug abuse among parents is also a growing factor in care proceedings, with parents often being given several chances to break their habit before children are removed.
According to data provided to More4 News by the local authorities, last year only four per cent of adopted children were babies, with the majority aged between one and four. A quarter were aged between five and nine.
Adoption UK, the charity which supports adoptive families, said not enough was being done to help parents to care for a challenging child.
Jonathan Pearce, of Adoption UK, said: “The figures starkly illustrate the difficulties and complexity of modern-day adoptions from care and also highlight the lack of support for adoptive families in their challenging task of being therapeutic parents for traumatised children.”
The charity says the system is still too preoccupied with the intense and lengthy approvals process for would-be adoptive parents, rather than preparing them in advance and helping them afterwards.
Case study ‘I had naively believed in love’
Initially, the adoption seemed to be going well. But Kate discovered that Alex, whom she had adopted when the child was four, had an attachment disorder and heard voices.
“She never left my side, ever,” Kate says. “She couldn’t watch television, she couldn’t play, she didn’t want to play with other children. There was nothing that she could do by herself.”
Alex’s behaviour deteriorated rapidly and she began to torture the family cat. She tried to kill her rabbit. Social services had warned Kate that her daughter’s background was “as bad as it gets”. Alex’s natural mother was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
“I naively believed that with enough love and enough attention and security we could make it all better for her,” Kate says. “But it became a nightmare caring for a child who isn’t attached to you.”
Here is the TRACK petition for Adoptees' Right to Participate in Korean Adoption Law Revision. These petitions will be taken the Ministry of Health and Welfare this summer, and also the National Assembly later in the year.
You have to go to these links to sign in French or English.
Le droit de l’adopté de participer à la révision de la loi sur l’adoption coréenne
Au ministère de la Santé, du Bien-être et de la Famille de la Corée du Sud.
Madame Park Sook-ja,
Nous soussignés, adoptés coréens nationaux et internationaux, parents adoptifs, parents de naissance, mères célibataires et monoparentales, et partisans alliés, vous exhortons vivement à inclure les adoptés et leurs familles de naissance (ci-après « parties investies ») en tant que partenaires égaux dans la création, le développement, la discussion et l'administration des révisions de la loi sur l'adoption de la Corée du Sud.
Pendant les 56 années d’adoption internationale de la Corée du Sud, le gouvernement sud-coréen a discuté sur ces parties investies, en essayant de représenter leurs meilleurs intérêts. Toutefois, le gouvernement a encore à travailler *avec* elles sur le processus qui influe leur vie de manière irrévocable.
Les familles de naissance des adoptés coréens sont des citoyens coréens. Les adoptés ont commencé leur vie comme des citoyens coréens. Seule la loi de l'adoption internationale de la Corée du Sud a fait d’eux des étrangers. Bien que les adoptés internationaux n’aient pas la citoyenneté sud-coréenne, ils possèdent l’autorité morale et le droit de participer aux procédures gouvernementales qui continuent à les créer.
En n’incluant pas ces parties investies, les audiences sur la loi de l’adoption du ministère de la Santé, du Bien-être et de la Famille ne tiennent aucun compte de leurs vies et celles de leurs familles (environ 1.000.000 citoyens coréens) qui continuent à être réduits au silence par le plus vieux programme d'adoption au monde. Depuis les années 1950, la Corée du Sud a envoyé le plus grand nombre d'enfants au monde en vue de l'adoption internationale. Une adoption internationale coûte aujourd’hui 17000$. Combien l'adoption internationale a rapporté à la Corée du Sud depuis sa création est actuellement inconnu.
En incluant ces parties investies, les révisions de la loi sur l’adoption de la Corée du Sud reflèteront démocratiquement les 1.160.000 d’années combinées d’expériences vécues par les adoptés et leurs familles (1 an pour chaque vie).
En tant que pays ayant le plus vieux et le plus important programme de l'adoption internationale au monde, la Corée du Sud peut établir une nouvelle norme éthique pour une représentation vraie et juste de ses membres les plus vulnérables de la société dont les vies sont affectées de manière irrévocable par les lois d’adoption de la Corée du Sud. Nous exhortons le gouvernement sud-coréen à ne pas manquer cette occasion.
Sincèrement,
les soussignés
Qui peut signer la pétition: les adoptés, les parents adoptifs, les parents de naissance, les mères célibataires et monoparentales, les personnes alliées et les organisations connexes.
To: South Korean Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family
Dear Director Park Sook-ja:
We -- the undersigned Korean domestic and overseas adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, unwed and single mothers, and allied supporters -- strongly urge you to include overseas and domestic adoptees and their birth families (henceforth “invested parties”) as equal partners in the creation, development, discussion, and administration of South Korea's adoption law revisions.
In the 56 years of overseas South Korean adoption, the South Korean government has talked about these invested parties, attempting to represent their best interests. However, the South Korean government has yet to work *with* them on the very processes that irrevocably affect their lives.
The birth families of Korean adoptees are Korean nationals. Adoptees began their lives as Korean nationals. OnlySouth Korea’s international adoption law made overseas adoptees foreigners. Though overseas adoptees lack South Korean citizenship, they have the moral authority and right to participate in the governmental procedures that continue to create them.
By not including these invested parties, the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family's hearings on adoption law ignores their lives and those of their relatives (an estimated 1,000,000 Korean nationals) who continue to be silenced by the world's longest-running adoption program. Since the 1950s,South Koreahas sent away the greatest number of children for international adoption in the world. An international adoption today costs $17,000. How much money international adoption has brought intoSouth Koreasince its establishment is currently unknown.
By including these invested parties,South Korea’s adoption law revisions will democratically reflect over 1,160,000 combined years of adoptee and adoptee relatives' lived experience (1 year for each life).
As the world's largest and oldest international adoption program,South Koreacan set a new ethical standard for the true and just representation of its most vulnerable members of society, whose lives are irrevocably affected bySouth Korea’s adoption laws. We urge the South Korean government not to miss this opportunity.
Numbers of adopted children whose new families break down have doubled in the past five years
Numbers of adopted children whose new families break down have doubled in the past five years, new figures indicated today.
They suggest that around one in 15 children who are adopted by new parents fail to bond with their new families and end up back in the state care system.
The growth in the level of failed adoptions is the latest blow to hit the system for finding new families for children who cannot live with their own parents which has been surrounded in deepening controversy for a decade.
Only slightly over 3,000 children a year now win new families by adoption from the state care system.
Numbers have dropped despite Tony Blair's 2002 adoption law which was intended to push up adoption totals back towards the high levels of the 1970s.
Many of the children who are adopted from care are not babies but older children who have been put up for adoption by social workers only after years of failed attempts to persuade their birth parents to look after them properly.
Most have spent years in care homes or living with a succession of temporary foster parents.
The Labour adoption law did, however, open the door for more single parents and gay couples to adopt children.
The new figures, gleaned from freedom of information requests, show that 57 children were returned to the state care system in the year that ended in April following failed adoptions from 92 local authorities with children's services departments.
The figure compared with 26 in 2004/05.
It suggests that among the 300 councils with children's social services there may have been almost 200 failed adoptions last year from around 3,200 adoptions of children from the care system.
The rising numbers suggest adoption may be coming too late to help many children. In the 1970s, when there were more than 20,000 adoptions from care every year, most adoptions were of babies given up by single parents.
But generous new benefits and housing for single mothers and the growing suspicion of adoption among social workers - who have been open about their dislike of the idea of supplying childless middle class women with families - cut numbers down heavily during the 1980s.
Many couples find it hard to pass the tests set for adoptive parents, which weed out those considered too old, too unfit, those with undesirable habits like smokers, and those with undesirable views on matters like race equality.
However social workers have been anxious to attract new kinds of adoptive parents since Mr Blair's law was passed.
They have been on the lookout for more single parents, sometimes on the basis that children who have grown up with single mothers should be placed with adoptive single mothers.
A series of Roman Catholic adoption agencies have been forced to stop finding homes for children because they object to placing them with gay couples, and in May, the main state-financed adoption agency, the British Association for Adoption and Foster, was forced to apologise after a publication called opponents of gay adoption 'retarded homophobes'.
Author on adoption and the family Patricia Morgan said of the new figures: 'Adopted children themselves have often suffered repeated attempts to re-unite them with their birth parents. Many have also been recycled through many foster homes and children's homes.
'By the time they are finally adopted they can be terribly disturbed and absolutely unmanageable.'
She added: 'There is also a matter of what the adoptive home is like.
'Far more children are now being placed with single mothers. There are figures which show half of placements of older children with single mothers break down.
'There are also increasing numbers of children placed with gay couples and we don't have information on breakdown rates.'
First f July there was a very important hearing of Adoptees (TRACK, ASK) and birthmothers (KWDI) in cooperation with the Korean ministry of Health Welfare and Family.
Conservative leader David Cameron has been accused of contributing to the closure of Roman Catholic adoption agencies in order to win homosexual voters.
In 2007 Mr Cameron voted for new ‘gay rights’ laws forcing adoption groups to consider gay couples as potential adopters without any protection for religious agencies.
Newspaper columnist Gerald Warner says the Conservative leader had “calculated that it was worthwhile insulting Catholics (8 per cent of the electorate) to please homosexuals (0.8 per cent) because he believed (correctly) that the former do not constitute a bloc vote and imagined (incorrectly) that the latter do”.
The new laws have now seen most of these agencies – known for their work with ‘hard to place’ children – either cut ties with the Roman Catholic Church or drop out of adoption work.
Mr Warner was responding to an article in The Catholic Times by Christopher Graffius commenting on the impact the closure of the agencies will have on children.
Mr Graffius encourages readers to “drop a line to David Cameron and ask him – in the context of the public spending freeze to come – why he felt it so necessary to destroy a third of the capacity of the voluntary adoption sector”.
He warns that “some of the most needy, disadvantaged and desperate children will be denied a chance of an adoption into a stable, loving family” as a result of the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs).
The SORs make it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services, including adoption services.
The decision to pass the SORs with no protection for religious groups “goes against the available evidence”, writes Mr Graffius.
“This suggests that same-sex co-habiting couples are more likely to suffer relationship breakdown than co-habiting heterosexual couples, where 52 per cent will have moved out of their relationship within five years.
“It does no favours to ‘difficult to place’ children, many of whom may have been physically or sexually abused, to place them with couples who will, in the majority of cases, suffer relationship breakdown.
“In these cases the interests of the child have always come first, except in parliament.”
Mr Graffius writes: “The irony is that Catholic Children’s Societies help people whom the state would turn away.
“The public services are so stretched that they will not seek to help anyone whose situation is not deemed to be ‘critical’.”
The two major parties have continued to compete for the ‘gay vote’ this week, with Labour Minister Chris Bryant pointing to a Conservative MP’s support for a free speech protection in the offence of inciting homophobic hatred as evidence of a “poor voting record” on these issues.
Last week David Cameron said he was sorry for supporting a law preventing local authorites from promoting homosexuality in schools, and reiterated his support for ‘gay marriage’.
KUALA LUMPUR, July 9 (Bernama) -- Bertha Hertogh or Nadra, who made world headlines in 1950 when she became the centre of a legal conflict between her Dutch parents and a her adoptive Muslim mother, died at her residence in Huijbergen, The Netherlands yesterday.
She was 72.
Hertogh or fondly known as Nadra when she lived in Singapore and Indonesia, died of leukimia, according to a statement from Malaysia's ambassador to The Netherlands, Dr Fauziah Mohd Taib that was e-mailed to Bernama here, Thursday.
After the judge assigned her to her Dutch parents, riots broke out between Muslims and Christians in Singapore, which resulted in 18 deaths and 200 hundred others injured.
Dr Fauziah said for many people, Nadra, who was born in Bandung, Indonesia, remained an icon in the battle against British imperialism and an example of what religious differences could lead to.
She later returned to The Netherlands, but her heart always remained in Malaysia and Indonesia, Fauziah added.
In 1999, Nadra returned to this region for the first time since the riots to film a documentary for a Dutch television station.
"According to Hertogh, her childhood had been the only period in her life that she was really happy. Bertha Hertogh is remembered as a loving and caring woman who continuously dedicated her life to others. Her own happiness always came in second," said Dr Fauziah.
At the moment, a motion picture titled Nadra is in pre-production stage in Singapore, Malaysia and The Netherlands.
The film captures the pespective of Nadra and the events that led to the riots and how she became a victim of religious and colonial conflicts.
The film is directed by Ben Sombogaart and is expected to be released in the fall of 2010.
-- BERNAMA
N E T H E R L A N D S Iedereen zwijgt over Adoptieschandalen - TROUW - 09.07.2009
Berichten over kinderdiefstal veranderen niets aan de praktijken rond adoptie
Opnieuw bereikte een adoptieschandaal de internationale pers. Eerder berichte Trouw in 2008 al over adoptieschandalen in China. Maar dat het daar niet bij zou blijven was gewoon een kwestie van afwachten. Al wilde de Nederlandse overheid er niet aan. Na de vele, zogeheten, incidenten in de jaren negentig en beginjaren van deze eeuw, zou het wel heel toevallig zijn, als het bij dit het ene bericht in 2008 zou zijn gebleven.
Nu zou je denken, dat de maat wel eens vol zou zijn. Na adoptieschandalen uit India, Sri Lanka, Haïti, en nu weer uit China, waar Nederland afgelopen jaren bij betrokken raakte, zou je zeggen, dat de Nederlandse overheid en het publiek toch wel wijzer zou zijn geworden. Maar niets is minder waar. Het parlement gaat rustig op vakantie en hoopt waarschijnlijk dat ook dit nieuws wel weer over zal waaien. Want Nederland is niet gediend met een debacle met de Chinese overheid over een ‘minor issue’. Diplomatieke belangen zijn ogenschijnlijk belangrijker dan levens van kinderen en hun ouders. Deze analyse wordt nog eens duidelijker na het bestuderen van de brief van de Chinese Centrale Autoriteit (CCAA), de instantie die over de adopties van kinderen gaat. Uit de brief van februari 2008, gericht aan de Nederlandse Centrale Autoriteit (Ministerie van Justitie), blijkt duidelijke dat er niet teveel vragen gesteld moeten worden over de misstanden in China als het gaat over kinderdiefstal in kader van deze kinderen die ter adoptie gereed worden gemaakt naar het buitenland. Ook wordt er in die brief te kennen gegeven; dat het beter is om de betrokken Chinese ouders niet in te lichten, om de adoptieouders die een band zijn aangegaan met het adoptiekind niet te verontrusten. En dit allemaal in het belang van het kind en binnen de regels en de geest van het Internationaal Haags Adoptieverdrag. Althans zo stelt de CCAA het in de brief naar Nederland.
Opnieuw blijkt dat de internationale gemeenschap niet gevoelig is voor dergelijke situaties en dat zij niet van zins is om in te grijpen om ouders in niet westerse landen te beschermen tegen diefstal, ontvoering en verkoop van hun kinderen voor de adoptie. Immers, adoptie is in het belang van het kind zo wordt altijd geredeneerd. Hierdoor wordt strafbaarheid in het internationaal strafrecht nog steeds niet als een noodzaak gezien. Want er zou geen sprake zijn van uitbuiting maar van een levensreddende handeling. Maar elk welnadenkend mens begrijpt dat dit bij dergelijke adopties niet van toepassing kan zijn. Maar tot nu toe weigeren landen om een aanpassing te maken voor dergelijke criminele activiteiten. Nederland incluis.
De vraag is waarom de internationale gemeenschap, met name adoptieouders en politici die vaak als eerste staan te roepen dat het om het belang van kinderen zou moeten gaan, zich nu, en telkens weer als dergelijke zaken opduiken, hullen in stilzwijgen. In het belang van geadopteerden is het in ieder geval niet. Die worden elk jaar geconfronteerd met vervalste, voorgelogen en incomplete adoptiedossiers. Maar geen enkele overheidsinstantie die bereid is ze juridisch en financieel bij te staan. Terwijl zogenaamde kindertehuizen, onder toeziend oog van Nederlandse diplomaten in desbetreffende landen, door wensouders contant worden ‘gesponsord’ voorbedragen van 2500 tot 5000 euro per kind, worden adoptieouders door de Nederlandse staat gesubsidieerd voor meer dan 3500 euro per geadopteerd kind in Nederland.
Maar waar moeten geadopteerden naar toe als ze achter komen dat er van alles mis is met hun adoptie ? Naar dezelfde overheidsinstellingen die voorheen meewerkten met dergelijke transacties en activiteiten, hopend op enige begrip en medewerking ? De eerste aanklacht van een geadopteerde tegen een dergelijk instantie is een kwestie van wachten geworden.
TROUW - 09.07.2009
Everyone is silent when Adoption scandals appear
By, Hilbrand W.S. Westra
Reports of abduction, trade and childtrafficking for adoption, does not change the practices surrounding adoption
Again another adoption scandal was published by the international press. Earlier the Dutch national newspaper ‘Trouw’ published in 2008 about adoption scandals in China, involving Chinese Adoptees from the Netherlands. But that it would not be the last one, was just a matter of waiting to happen. Even tough the Dutch Parliament did not want to believe these messages. After the many known, incidents in the nineties and the beginning of this century, it would be very coincidental, that this one post in 2008 would have been the last one.
After adoption scandals in India, Sri Lanka, Haiti, and now from China, where the Netherlands in recent years was involved with, you would say that the Dutch government and the public surely would have become wiser and would immediately take measures. But nothing is less true.. The parliament went on summer recess and hopes quietly that this news will blow over again as it did before. Because the Netherlands is not served by a debacle with the Chinese authorities on a ‘minor issue’ like this. Diplomatic interests are apparently more important than lives of children and their parents. This analysis is even more evident after studying the letter from the Chinese Central Authority (CCAA), the authority on the adoption of children in China. In the letter of February 2008, addressed to the Dutch Central Authority (Ministry of Justice), appears clearly, that “ It is better not to pursue, expand or elaborate on this issue further.” With other words, Don’t ask questions about the abuses in China when it comes to abduction, childtrafficking and childlaundering for making children adoptable for intercountry adoption. Also in the same letter the CCAA says. “..to keep secret for related families in order not to interrupt the bond established between the adoptive parents and the children and impose any unnecessary pressure on them.”. And all this in the interest of the child and within the rules and spirit of the International Hague Adoption Convention. At least according to the CCAA in the letter to the Netherlands.
Again this all shows, that the international community is not sensitive to such situations and that it is not willing to intervene to ensure that parents in non-Western countries being protected against theft, abduction and sale of their children for adoption. Because adoption is in the best interest of the child, it is always exclaimed. This is the reason why these criminal acts are still not punishable by the international criminal law. Because with adoption there is no question of exploitation, but a life-saving act, according to the international standards. Butevery human will understand that such adoptions can not apply to these principles. But until now, western countries refuse to adapt their laws to such criminal activities. Including the Netherlands.
The question is why the international community, especially adoptive parents and politicians, who are often the first to declare, that the interests of children should be safeguarded, are so silent when these kind of cases appear. It is in no way in the interest of adoptees.
They are faced each year with forged, lied and incomplete adoption records. But no government is willing to help them legally and financially to assist them to handle the many problematic issues they encounter. While so-called orphanages under agreeable eyes of Dutch diplomats in those countries receive cash donations by ‘would be parents’ ‘sponsoring‘ them for amounts from 2500 to 5000 dollars per child, adoptive parents are State subsidized for more than 3500 per adopted child in the Netherlands.
But where can Adoptees go if they find wrongdoings regarding their adoption? To the same governments that previously participated in such transactions and activities, hoping for some understanding and cooperation? The first indictment of an adoptee against such a body is a matter of waiting to become.
A Roman Catholic adoption agency has been given the chance to appeal after losing a bid to protect its pro-marriage ethos last month.
The Leeds-based charity, Catholic Care, was told by the Charity Tribunal last month that under the new Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) it would have to consider gay couples as potential adopters, despite its belief that children need a mother and a father.
However, the adoption agency has now been granted permission to appeal to the High Court over the matter which the Tribunal said was of “public importance” and “would be appropriate for the High Court to consider on appeal”.
Mark Wiggin, chief executive of Catholic Care, said the charity had not yet decided whether to pursue the appeal.
“We have to leave open the option,” he said.
The charity is one of several Roman Catholic adoption groups forced to choose between abandoning their beliefs on marriage, dropping out of adoption work or risking falling foul of the SORs.
The SORs make it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation when providing goods or services, and were controversially introduced in 2007 with no exemption for religious adoption agencies.
The agencies were given until the end of 2008 to comply.
Catholic Care had hoped to clarify in its charitable objects that it only placed children with couples in a manner which is in keeping with its religious ethos, but the Charity Commission refused its attempt last year.
Last month a spokesman for Leeds Diocese said he feared the decision would mean charities like Catholic Care “will need to close their adoption services and a flagship service of the charities will be lost”.
He added: “We are concerned about the possible impact this will have on potential adoptive parents and children.”
EUROPEAN Union countries are failing to protect vulnerable children from being trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation or organ extraction, and must step up efforts to fight it, an EU agency said yesterday.
Morten Kjaerum, director of the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency, said an unknown number of children are traded within the 27-nation bloc in what he described as "part of the modern slave trade."
"Little is done" within EU countries to protect children held in asylum shelters from being exploited and taken by criminal gangs active in trafficking, he said.
"The protection of every child is a duty for all states," Kjaerum said. "We have both a moral and legal obligation to protect children."
The agency's 159-page report said the EU needs to develop a standard definition of child trafficking, bolster enforcement of existing laws and improve care for victims.
EU countries are mulling new proposals presented by Jacques Barrot, the EU's justice commissioner, in March, which would allow police to use phone taps to hunt down culprits and to better protect the victims of trafficking, most of whom are forced into prostitution.
He is also urging member states to offer victims healthcare, housing and residency rights in exchange for information on human trafficking rings.
Kjaerum said existing measures were not enough to tackle child trafficking.
"Without improvements in the identification of victims and the conviction of perpetrators, laws designed to prevent child trafficking and protect victims will continue to exist only on paper," he said.
The report said child trafficking statistics for Europe are hard to come by, and several member states either deny it occurs in their country or reported numbers far below the projected level.
The European Commission says "several hundred thousand" people are trafficked into the EU or within the bloc each year.
EU spokesman Michele Cercone said child trafficking is "one of the priorities" of the EU executive which has recently increased efforts to coordinate a Europe-wide crackdown against trafficking gangs. < Aditional Info
De Europese Unie moet haar inspanningen in de strijd tegen kinderhandel aanzienlijk opvoeren. Die oproep heeft het Europees Agentschap voor de Grondrechten vandaag gelanceerd. Volgens een nieuw rapport van het agentschap weerspiegelt het extreem lage aantal veroordelingen geenszins de omvang van de problematiek in Europa.
Gebrek aan gegevens Elk jaar wordt een aanzienlijk aantal kinderen verhandeld met het oog op seksuele uitbuiting, zwartwerk, adoptie of het ontvreemden van organen. Volgens directeur Morten Kjaerum van het Europese agentschap strekt het probleem zich over de hele Europese Unie uit, maar de ware omvang valt door een gebrek aan voldoende gegevens moeilijk in te schatten.
Opvangcentra Wel staat volgens Kjaerum vast dat de opvangcentra een belangrijk doelwit zijn. Het grote aantal kinderen dat elk jaar verdwijnt uit deze faciliteiten, loopt volgens het rapport een groot risico om in de handen van mensenhandelaars te vallen. Zo verdwenen zo'n 400 van de ruim 1.300 minderjarigen die vorig jaar op het Italiaanse eiland Lampedusa arriveerden.
Genegeerd Het Europese agentschap stelt vast dat het probleem grotendeels genegeerd wordt. Tot dusver heeft slechts een handvol lidstaten het probleem aangepakt, bijvoorbeeld via de oprichting van gespecialiseerde centra voor minderjarige slachtoffers van mensenhandelaars, waar een vertrouwensband met de autoriteiten kan opgebouwd worden.
Illegalen Een bijkomend probleem is dat sommige lidstaten slachtoffers van mensenhandel vaak niet behandelen als slachtoffers, maar als illegalen of prostitués. Kjaerum pleit voor Europese wetgeving met minimumnormen die ervoor zorgen dat slachtoffers van kinderhandel in geen enkele lidstaat om die redenen bestraft worden.
Voorstel De Europese Commissie presenteerde deze lente een voorstel voor een betere aanpak van mensenhandel. Dat zou volgens het agentschap een grote stap vooruit betekenen voor de bescherming van en de zorgverlening aan slachtoffers. De lidstaten moeten het voorstel nog goedkeuren. (belga/lpb)
CHINESE CHILDREN ALSO ENDED UP IN BELGIUM
At least five stolen en trafficked children from Guizhou ended up in Belgium. The Belgium government followed the strategy of denial and tried to silence the issue hoping that the parliamentarian summer recess will ease the turmoil of this tragic news. The Belgium central Authority 'Kind & Gezin "denied yesterday that chldren from this trafficking scheme ended up in their country. But Belgium media reported that at least five Belgium families had stolen children from Guizhou. Chinese officials planned and executed a well run childtrafficking process from Zhenyuan. Media in China are reporting that at least 42 children but maybe even 80 or more children were taken from their families to be sold into adoption to the west.
At least four countries are hit by this baby trafficking scheme. United States, The Netherlands, Belgium and Canada. But probably also Spain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia are related countries were these children went.
No government is willing to consider stopping adoptions from China though. Not willing to risk the relationship with the Chinese government and economic and diplomatic relationship. Adopters and Adoption Parents saying that they are shocked by this news but are not giving up to adopt from China.
But year after year new adoption scandals appear and no government is willing to take serious measures to prevent and prosecute childtrafficking or to hold and stop adoptions from high risk areas in the world like China.
IRISH couples hoping to adopt children from Vietnam will be left in limbo for another month after talks to secure a new agreement failed.
Adoptions from Vietnam to Ireland were halted in May after a five-year agreement between the states come to an end without new procedures in place.
The move left up to 350 prospective parents, who had already been approved for adoption following a lengthy assessment, in the dark as to when their adoption could go ahead.
Last week, Irish officials held further talks with their Vietnamese counterparts to address the problem.
However, while Minister for Children, Barry Andrews, said good progress has been made, they had been unable to secure a new interim agreement.
A spokesperson for Mr Andrews said: "Adoptive parents will want to know if and when adoptions between Ireland and Vietnam will resume.
"However, it is not possible to be definitive on this, as a number of processes on both sides are required before a new agreement can be brought into force."
Shane Downer, chief executive of the International Adoption Association, said: "To date, more than 650 children have been adopted from Vietnam into Ireland, so it has been a very positive agreement.
relationship
"I think there is a very clear intent from both sides to establish a new agreement.
"We have had a very good relationship with Vietnam and the Vietnamese and Irish authorities are working well.
"I hope that, by August, we'll be nearly there, if not there already."
About 2,000 Vietnamese children are adopted overseas each year, a fraction of the overall birth rate, as the authorities there have been placing a greater emphasis on domestic adoptions in recent years.
Vietnam is due to adopt the Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption, which sets minimum standards for overseas adoptions, early next year.
Concerns have been raised about corruption in the adoption system there, with the United States suspending adoptions from Vietnam late last year.
A US investigation found examples of orphanages paying destitute parents the equivalent of almost a year's salary to hand over their children. These children were subsequently put up for inter-country adoption.
Foreign couples were also told to make cash donations.
Minister Hirsch Ballin van Justitie is bezorgd over de berichten uit China en heeft een onderzoek gelast door de inspectie Jeugdzorg naar de mogelijke misstanden en de gevolgen daarvan voor Nederlandse adoptieouders. De minister zal via de Nederlandse ambassade in China in contact treden met de Chinese autoriteiten.
Daarnaast brengt een delegatie van het ministerie van Justitie in augustus een werkbezoek aan China om over de handelwijze bij adopties te spreken. Ook staat versterking van de samenwerking op de agenda.
Nederlandse vergunninghouders die actief zijn in China informeren de adoptieouders die uit de provincie Guizhou hun kind hebben geadopteerd.
| TV| 03.07.2009 | International Issues| Adoption Scandals | Source: Netwerk |
De Chinese overheid heeft ouders gedwongen hun kinderen af te staan en boden hen ter adoptie aan. Een aantal kinderen is via adoptie ook in Nederlandse gezinnen terecht gekomen. Dat melden Chinese media volgens dagblad 'Trouw'.
Volgens deze media gaat het om een tehuis in het district Zhenyuan in de provincie Guizhou. Sinds 2001 zouden ongeveer tachtig kinderen zijn weggehaald van hun ouders, in dit tehuis zijn ondergebracht en ter adoptie zijn aangeboden. In China staat een boete op het krijgen van meer dan één of twee kinderen. Wanneer de ouders de boete niet konden opbrengen, werd het ‘illegale’ kind weggenomen.
Dit adoptieschandaal staat niet op zichzelf. Al eerder berichtte Netwerk over verdachte adopties uit China, nadat een groot adoptieschandaal in het district Shaoyang in de provincie Hunan werd onthuld in 2006. Families dienden daar een petitie in waarin ze hun afgenomen kinderen terugeisten.
Uit dat schandaal bleek dat Nederlandse adoptieorganisaties ook kinderen adopteerden uit kindertehuizen die bij het schandaal betrokken waren. Maar na de geruststellende woorden van China aan het Ministerie van Justitie bleef en blijft Nederland kinderen uit China adopteren.
Vanavond in Netwerk antwoord op de vraag hoeveel verhandelde Chinese kinderen via adoptie in Nederland terecht zijn gekomen.
Een nieuw schandaal stelt adoptie uit China in een kwaad daglicht. Maar komen deze praktijken vaak voor?
Geen adoptieouder zit te wachten op het bericht dat zijn of haar kind mogelijk met dwang is weggenomen bij de biologische ouders. En veel mensen rekenen daar ook niet op. Wie vanuit China adopteert, gaat ervan uit dat de kinderen echte vondelingen zijn. Het bericht in Chinese media dat in een district in de provincie Guizhou kinderen van hun eigen ouders zijn weggenomen door de autoriteiten en naar een tehuis zijn gebracht, haalt dat beeld onderuit. Maar zijn daarmee alle adopties uit China dubieus?
Dat niet. Vanuit China zijn 110.000 Chinese kinderen – meest meisjes – naar het buitenland gegaan, onder wie zo’n 5000 naar Nederland. Een flink deel, met name de gehandicapte kinderen, is afgestaan omdat de ouders niet voor hen wilden of konden zorgen. Een ande
r deel is vrijwillig afgestaan uit armoede of door bijvoorbeeld alleenstaande moeders.
Het grootste deel van de vondelingen komt door de ’eenkindpolitiek’ – die ouders één of twee kinderen toestaat – en dus onder druk van de wet. Maar daar zijn gradaties in. In veruit de meeste gevallen zijn meisjes te vondeling gelegd omdat de ouders liever een jongetje krijgen. Die kan later – zeker op het Chinese platteland – voor zijn ouders zorgen en de familielijn voortzetten.
De Chinese overheid grijpt echter ook zelf in. In het distr
ict Shaoyang in de provincie Hunan namen tussen 2002 en 2005 ambtenaren die verantwoordelijk zijn voor de bevolkingspolitiek, een tiental kinderen weg bij ouderparen. Sommige daarvan zijn vrijwel zeker biologische kinderen, hoewel de autoriteiten volhouden dat het ging om illegaal geadopteerde kinderen. De kinderen kwamen in een tehuis terecht. Van één kind is inmiddels aangetoond dat het in de VS verblijft.
Ook in het district Zhenyuan in Guizhou zijn kinderen weggenomen door de autoriteiten, in dit geval met zekerheid bij hun biologische ouders. Uit de Chinese media blijkt overigens dat die het niet eens in alle gevallen erg vonden. Sommigen hadden liever dat hun meisje onder staatszorg ging vallen dan dat ze boete moesten betalen vanwege haar illegaliteit. De kinderen zijn in een tehuis geplaatst voor adoptie naar het buitenland. Dat levert het tehuis donaties op: to
t vorig jaar 3000 dollar, inmiddels 5000 dollar.
Er duiken geregeld dit soort verhalen op – ook over kinderhandel (zie kader). Alleen kan zelden voor specifieke kinderen worden vastgesteld dat ze zo’n route hebben afgelegd. Tehuizen en autoriteiten in China veranderen de gegevens in de dossiers op zo’n manier dat de herkomst van kinderen nauwelijks te achterhalen valt. Ook in het Zhenyuan-schandaal kan alleen DNA-onderzoek definitief uitsluitsel geven over welke geadopteerde kinderen zijn weggenomen.
Er zijn dus vier verschillende categorieën: vrijwillig afgestane kinderen, vanwege de bevolkingspolitiek ’vrijwillig’ afgestane kinderen, verhandelde kinderen en door de overheid weggenomen kinderen. De verhouding tussen die categorieën is moeilijk vast te stellen. Het is nog steeds aannemelijk dat die laatste twee groepen veel kleiner zijn dan de eerste twee. Maar zolang er geen absolute duidelijkheid komt en er in China steeds nieuwe voorbeelden opduiken van wanpraktijken, zullen adoptieouders moeten leven met de mogelijkheid dat hun Chinese kind niet vrijwillig is afgestaan.
| Bericht| 03.07.2009 | International Issues| Adoption Scandals | Source: Trouw |Martijn Roessingh |
Weer adoptieschandaal China
Overheid pakt kinderen af van ouders en biedt hen ter adoptie aan, ook naar Nederland
De Chinese overheid heeft ouders gedwongen hun kinderen af te staan. Via adoptie belandden die elders, melden Chinese media.
In een district in China zijn sinds 2001 ongeveer 80 kinderen door de lokale overheid van hun families weggenomen en in een tehuis gestopt. Van daaruit zijn ze naar het buitenland geadopteerd. Uit het betreffende tehuis zijn ook kinderen naar Nederland geadopteerd. Volgens de China Daily is een van de weggenomen kinderen daadwerkelijk in een Nederlands gezin terechtgekomen.
Volgens Chinese media gaat het om het district Zhenyuan in de provincie Guizhou. Het bevolkingsbeleid in China dwingt families slechts één of twee kinderen te krijgen. Voor ’illegale’ kinderen krijgen ze een hoge boete opgelegd of kunnen ze andere straf krijgen. In dit geval moesten families die de boete niet konden opbrengen het kind afstaan.
Volgens de Chinese media vervalste het tehuis in Zhenyuan samen met de autoriteiten de papieren van de kinderen om hen voor vondelingen te laten doorgaan. Daarna konden buitenlanders hen adopteren. De donatie die bij zo’n adoptie hoort – 3000 dollar – werd gedeeld door het tehuis en de lokale autoriteiten. Hoeveel kinderen uit het tehuis naar Nederland zijn gekomen, was gisteren nog onduidelijk.
Er duiken geregeld verhalen op over lokale autoriteiten in China die families dwingen hun kinderen aan een tehuis af te staan. Soms kan worden bewezen dat die kinderen door buitenlanders zijn geadopteerd. Zo dienden in 2006 families in het district
Shaoyang in Hunan een petitie in waarin ze afgenomen kinderen terugeisten, een zaak waar onder meer het tv-programma ’Netwerk’ aandacht aan besteedde.
Van enkele van die kinderen is vastgesteld dat ze nu in buitenlandse adoptiegezinnen verblijven. Tehuizen in Hunan kochten in die tijd overigens ongeveer duizend kinderen van handelaren, ook voor adoptie naar het buitenland, maar onduidelijk is of het daarbij om echte vondelingen ging of eveneens om bij hun familie weggenomen kinderen.
Het bijzondere aan deze zaak is dat Chinese lokale media erover berichten. Ook heeft een ambtenaar uit Zhenyuan bevestigd dat veel van de kinderen uit het tehuis van de stad door de lokale autoriteiten zijn weggenomen bij hun familie.
SHANGHAI -- Authorities in southern China are investigating allegations that local officials took babies from their parents between 2003 and 2005 and delivered them to an orphanage that press reports said has offered children for overseas adoption.
The government said "related people" had already been punished for wrongdoing. The probe was announced Thursday, the same day that Time Weekly, a newspaper based in Guangzhou, carried accounts of two families in the county -- Zhenyuan in Guizhou province -- saying officials took their baby girls when they couldn't pay fines levied on them for allegedly violating family-planning laws that limit the number of children a couple can have.
Time Weekly's story, which was prompted by a whistleblower who posted the account of a third family online, said the practice was widespread in the county at the time. Dozens of children from the orphanage where the children were reportedly taken were adopted by parents from the U.S. and other foreign countries. Another Guangzhou paper carried a similar story Wednesday.
The government of the prefecture overseeing Zhenyuan county said in a statement issued Thursday, "We will not cover up" any problems and "will investigate every case."
Tens of thousands of Chinese children have been adopted by U.S. parents over the past two decades. China imposes strict rules on who is eligible to adopt Chinese children and the country's overseas-adoption system is generally considered to be very transparent and to involve little corruption.
An official at the Zhenyuan County Public Security Bureau said it had looked into the publicly identified cases -- the two in the newspaper stories and the one posted online -- and concluded that in two of them, the families had voluntarily abandoned their children. In one case, the official said a child was surrendered after "inducement by family-planning officials."
The official said that officials from the local government, family-planning office and orphanage have been "punished." He declined to be more specific.
According to the Time Weekly story, two couples were told that if they couldn't pay a fine of "tens of thousands" of yuan (10,000 yuan is around $1,500) for having too many children, they would have to give up their babies for adoption. One father said he agreed to send a daughter to the orphanage. The mother of another baby girl said that she initially agreed and then pleaded to get her daughter back, but was refused. She said officials told her not to worry because her baby would be sent to a family abroad, the newspaper report said.
With their four-year legal battle to adopt from Malawi, Ontario family paved the way for Madonna to do the same. But their stories have sparked fierce debate, as activists worry these cases are flouting the country's laws
The Globe and Mail by Geoffrey York Mchinji, Malawi — From Monday's Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2009
Before Madonna, before the hype and the fury over her Malawian babies, there were the Clementinos of Burlington, Ont.
The global spotlight never fell on the Clementinos. Nobody heard of their long struggle to adopt a little girl named Idah from Malawi.
But their victory, after a four-year, $35,000 legal battle, was a precedent that paved the way for the U.S. pop superstar to adopt a pair of children from the same African country. Their story raises the same awkward issues – of poverty and culture, of deciding what is best for a child's future, and for the future of a country.
“ We're doing it for the good of the child. If you can make a difference, why wouldn't you?”
Children like Idah – and Madonna's far more famous David and Chifundo – have sparked a fierce debate in Malawi, where activists worry that the phenomenon of foreign adoption is creating a commercial value for their children, and diverting financial resources that would be better spent on health and education.
But for her adoptive parents in Burlington, who have never been to Malawi, the issue is simpler. By removing Idah from the austere existence of an African orphanage, they believe they are giving her the nurturing that she needs to have a chance in life.
“We're not trying to remove Idah from her culture, but to give her an opportunity,” says Jane Clementino, a management consultant and mother of three other children. “We're doing it for the good of the child. If you can make a difference, why wouldn't you?”
Idah, whose birth name is Effina Chulu, is now a lively 11-year-old Grade 5 student and cross-country running champion at a school in Burlington, an outer suburb of Toronto. Last month she became a Canadian citizen, the culmination of a six-year effort by Jane and Carlo Clementino.
Like Madonna, the Clementinos persuaded a court to let them bypass a law that requires them to be a “resident” of Malawi if they want to adopt a Malawian child. As a result, Idah became one of the first children in the country to be adopted by foreigners.
Jane and Carlo Clementino are shown with daughter Idah and sons Lucas, left, Cole and Reid in their Burlington, Ont., home.
Children's rights groups are worried that these cases are making nonsense of their country's laws. In the past few years, they say, hundreds of children have been quietly removed from Malawi in violation of the national law and its clear requirement that only residents of the country can adopt.
But for the parents in Canada, the law is a bureaucratic obstacle that needs to be streamlined so that more children can be adopted by foreign families. With adoption in China becoming more difficult, a growing number of Canadians are turning to Africa.
Idah's journey, like that of Madonna's adopted son, David Banda, began in a village in Malawi, a small landlocked country of 13 million people in southern Africa where most people subsist on less than $2 a day.
Both children were considered orphans, although their fathers were still alive. Both were taken to an orphanage called Home of Hope in the ramshackle border town of Mchinji, near the Zambian border.
Idah was the first child to be taken from Home of Hope and brought to a foreign land. A few years later, in an eruption of global publicity, David was the last.
A brick wall surrounds the orphanage, topped by shards of broken glass to keep intruders out. “The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom,” says a painted slogan on the wall.
Inside the walls are 580 children and the orphanage's founder, Rev. Thomson Chipeta, an 80-year-old Presbyterian minister.
Also inside the orphanage is Idah's father, Patrick, who works here in exchange for the food he needs for his survival. He briefly meets me at a market outside the orphanage, but is reluctant to talk. “If they see me here with you, I'll be in trouble,” he says, before walking away.
There's no evidence that Mr. Chipeta is motivated by commercial factors. A former orphan himself, he seems sincere in his love of the children. Yet money, and a craving for foreign donations, is a recurring theme in almost everything he says to a foreign visitor.
Mr. Chipeta takes me on a tour of the orphanage, ending in a small brick building that bears the painted name “The Fax House to God.” Inside are the remains of a house built by South African missionaries in 1925.
“This is just a simple place where I have a direct line to God,” the minister says. “He provides all our needs.” Then he bows his head in prayer, asking for divine help so that I will publicize his orphanage “to tell many people that we need help.”
He has already given me a brochure with details of how donors can send a bank transfer to the orphanage. Madonna's charity, Raising Malawi, is providing about $300,000 annually to the orphanage, but he says it needs a further $500,000 every year.
Before Madonna came along, Canadians were the main supporters of Home of Hope. The biggest benefactor was a woman named Jane Glaves who raised tens of thousands of dollars for the orphanage from her church and Rotary Club in Brantford, Ont.
The minister calls her “Auntie Jane” and “a great gift from God.” He estimates that she raised $75,000 a year for the orphanage. Its nursery and primary school are named after her.
While he is keen to seek foreign money for the orphanage, Mr. Chipeta is less keen to discuss Madonna's role at his orphanage. “People will think we don't need help,” he says.
Pressed for his opinion on foreign adoption, he calls it a “very difficult question” that only the government can decide. Then he reaches for his Bible for an ancient precedent. “Is it good for a child to be adopted? It goes back to Moses.… The Bible confirms that Moses had a better education because of the family he was brought up in.”
Effina Chulu, one of the first infants brought to the orphanage, was renamed Idah in honour of a daughter of Mr. Chipeta who had died. Bright and friendly, she became a favourite of Ms. Glaves, the Canadian woman who visited the orphanage twice a year.
In 2003, Ms. Glaves decided to take two malnourished boys from Malawi to Canada for medical treatment. Five-year-old Idah was perfectly healthy, but she was brought to Canada as a “companion” for the boys, and was soon in the foster care of the Clementinos. All three of the children were eventually adopted in Canada, and several of the lawyers and officials who helped arrange those adoptions were later instrumental in helping Madonna with her adoptions in Malawi.
Ms. Glaves wrote later that the journey to Canada by the three Malawian children was “God's will” and a way to “teach the world what love is about.”
But activists in Malawi reject the idea that “God's will” is a sufficient reason to send a healthy child to a faraway country.
The huge sums donated by foreigners, especially after a successful adoption, are an incentive for unscrupulous people to set up orphanages for money-making reasons, they say. And the tens of thousands of dollars spent on a single adoption would be much better spent on supporting Malawi's schools and hospitals so that many more children could live healthy lives, the activists say.
Foreign adoption, they say, must only be a “last resort” when there is nobody in Malawi who can take care of an orphan. “The orphanages and the authorities haven't exhausted all the options in looking for places for the children,” says Maxwell Matewere, executive director of Eye of the Child, a Malawian children's-rights group.
“Many orphanages are acting as recruitment agencies,” he says. “They keep on recruiting children to justify their orphanage and to keep raising money. Once you start commercializing the process, the children lose out.”
He estimates that more than 300 children from Malawi have been adopted by foreigners in the past nine years without following the legal rules. Often their families are misled into thinking that the children are going abroad for schooling or medical care and will return home later, he says.
In the case of Madonna's adoptions, the children were given to her essentially as “a token of thanks” for her charitable work in the country, Mr. Matewere says.
In April, a high court in Malawi rejected Madonna's bid to adopt Chifundo, since the singer was not a resident of the country. Ignoring the residency rule “could actually facilitate trafficking of children by some unscrupulous individuals who would take advantage of the weakness of the law of the land,” Judge Esme Chombo ruled.
“Consider the consequences of opening the doors wide. Anyone could come to Malawi and quickly arrange for an adoption that might have grave consequences on the very children that the law seeks to protect.”
The ruling was overturned last week by Malawi's Supreme Court of Appeal, which criticized Judge Chombo for focusing on “some imaginary unscrupulous individuals.” The court said Madonna could be considered a “resident” of Malawi – even though she doesn't actually live in the country – because she has “a targeted long-term presence” with her charitable efforts and her “long-term ideas” of investing in projects to help its children.
Activists worry that this ruling will make it easier for wealthy foreigners to adopt Malawian children in exchange for charitable donations to the country. The definition of “resident” has been bent completely out of shape, they say.
Mavuto Bamusi, national co-ordinator of a Malawian rights group called the Human Rights Consultative Committee, rejects the idea that foreign adoption can be justified as a response to poverty. “If a child is adopted to take her out of poverty, it's like saying that the 13 million people of Malawi should be taken out of poverty – let us vacate the country,” he says.
“Instead of putting one child in a school in London, couldn't the same resources be spread across 15 children in Malawi? The real causes of poverty are not being addressed. Is adoption a sustainable way of protecting children? No.”
Another group, Save the Children UK, argues that foreign adoption can actually worsen the problems that it hopes to solve. “The very existence of orphanages encourages poor parents to abandon children in the hope that they will have a better life,” a spokeswoman said.
Back in Burlington, Jane Clementino sees it differently. She is convinced that Idah would have faced a “dismal” future if she had remained in the orphanage.
Ms. Clementino acknowledges that Idah has extended family in Malawi, including aunts, uncles and adult sisters. “Their intentions are pure, they would love to take care of their own, but they don't have the means,” she says.
“These children are in an orphanage because no one else could take care of them. My understanding is that there's not that many people in Malawi with wealth who are looking to adopt.”
The process of adopting Idah was “long and arduous,” she says. “The path isn't established – there isn't any easy way to do this. The adoption laws and the paperwork aren't easy to understand.”
In fact, if the Clementinos had never met Idah, they might have abandoned the idea of adopting a child from Malawi, she says. “But once you make eye contact, you become invested. It's a different journey.”
Due different views on adoption and the conflict of interests from Adoptees, the UAI was pressed to cancel the cooperation with the representatives of the Chinese overall Organisation called IOC.
In earlier meetings during the last two years the UAI and the IOC reached an agreement of cooperation regarding a National Day for Chinese Adoptees in the Netherlands.But suddenly the board and new members of the IOC committee (All Chinese) forced a new approach and the UAI had to tender a new cooperation while the cooperation for the day itself was already agreed upon.
With the termination of the position of one of the Dutch employees within the IOC the cooperation of the UAI and the new IOC committee was endangered. The focus of the IOC is strengthen the alliance with China instead of talking about Child rights and the other side of adoptions from China.
This andother reasons pursued the UAI to cancel the cooperation with IOC.
Afgelopen maand heeft u van de UAI bericht ontvangen dat wij in samenwerking met Inspraak Orgaan Chinezen (IOC) en Vereniging Nederland China (VNC) een nationale dag voor geadopteerde chinezen zouden organiseren (NDGC) op 7 november 2009.
De UAI heeft zich echter terug getrokken uit deze activiteit wegens onverenigbare belangen van het IOC en de UAI. Daarnaast zijn de eerder gemaakte afspraken met het IOC door hen niet nagekomen en de UAI voelt zich daarom genoodzaakt zich terug te trekken uit de organisatie voor de NDGC.
Het betreurt ons ten zeerste dat wij u moeten mededelen dat deze dag geen voor ons geen doorgang zal hebben omdat politieke en andere belangen van partijen de voorhand hebben gekregen inplaats de belangen van geadopteerden. Het stuit de UAI tegen de borst, dat een Nederlands Chinese Organisatie die de belangen van inwonende Chinezen, inclusief de ruim 5100 geadopteerde Chinezen, in Nederland zegt te behartigen, een duidelijke koers zet voor politieke - en handelsbelangen ter faveure van de Chinese Staat.
Ten slotte willen wij Angela Boone danken voor haar inzet om, in de voorfase, de NDGC op de kaart te zetten binnen het IOC. Wij vinden het dan ook meer dan treurig, dat deze activiteit, ertoe heeft moeten leiden, dat zij haar werk zal moeten neerleggen bij het IOC.
In de discussie over adoptie blijft de geadopteerde regelmatig buiten beeld
…The children who are adopted since the sixties and seventies to the Netherlands, have become adults and are no children anymore. They are getting more involved in the social debate regarding adoption. So there is a voice, now an ear that listens. It is the experience of this first group of adoptees who can make a useful contribution to the adoption debate. And yes, that their conclusions can be highly critical, should be a reason to listen.
And their question, is Adoption in the interest of the child ? Seems a conclusion that no politician wants to answer, because that is not in the interest of the so called ‘wishparents’ . Or was the topic raised because of the interest of the child ?...
Ms. Ime S. Vreken LLM
Senior Laywer at the Council of state
Article is a personal contribution the adoption debate and is a excerpt of the article: "In the adoption debate, the adult adoptees are many times kept out of sight"
Volkskrant 20-21 juni 2009
Bij adoptie staat het belang van het kind voorop. Als een soortmantra werd dit door elk Kamerlid opgedreund tijdens het algemeen overleg in de Tweede Kamer over interlandelijke adoptie op 11 juni (Binnenland,12 juni).
De belangrijkste uitkomst van het overleg was echter dat, ondanks eerdere berichten, de minister van Justitie Ernst Hirsch Ballin aan de wensen van de Kamerleden toegaf en erin toestemde dat deelbemiddeling uit de Verenigde Staten mogelijk blijft. Tot grote vreugde van de wensouders die het resultaat van hun lobby vierden en riepen: ‘We hebben gewonnen.’
Een ander geluid was te horen van Ina Hut, directeur vanWereldkinderen (de grootste vergunninghouder in Nederland op het gebied van adoptie), en oud-hoogleraar adoptie René Hoksbergen, die vooral door het gebrek aan toezicht en controle bij deelbemiddeling en het daarmee gepaard gaande risico op kinderhandel, voor afschaffing pleitten.
Onder de dekmantel van het belang van het kind is het uiteindelijk het belang van de wensouders geweest dat zegevierde. Wie tijdens het overleg buiten beeld bleven, waren de geadopteerden zelf, terwijl er wel degelijk een grote groep geadopteerden aanwezig was. Hoewel ik de uitkomst van het overleg zeer betreur en van mening ben dat adoptie zich in een richting ontwikkelt waar het nooit voor bedoeld is geweest, zou ik toch menen dat – los van de uitkomst – iedereen het op zijn minst zeer vreemd moet achten dat bij een discussie over adoptie politici, deskundigen en ook wensouders in beeld komen, maar geadopteerden buiten beeld blijven. Wellicht worden zij soms onbewust overgeslagen, omdat nog steeds het beeld bestaat dat een geadopteerde een klein kind is over wiens hoofd door volwassenen wordt bepaald wat in zijn of haar belang is.
De kinderen die sinds de jaren zestig en zeventig voor adoptie naar Nederland zijn gekomen, zijn allang geen kinderen meer en mengen zich steeds meer in het maatschappelijke debat. Een stem is er dus wel, nu nog een oor dat luistert. Juist de ervaringen van de eerste groep geadopteerden kunnen een zinvolle bijdrage leveren aan het debat. En dat die bijdrage soms zeer kritisch van toon is, zou juist een reden moeten zijn ernaar te luisteren.
Is adoptie wel in het belang van het kind? Dat lijkt echter een conclusie die geen politicus wil trekken, want dat is niet in het belang van de wensouders. Of ging het nu om het belang van het kind?
Op 11 juni debatteerde minister Hirsch Ballin met negen Kamerleden over adoptie. Het werd een beschamende vertoning, waarin niet het belang van het kind, maar dat van de adoptieouders centraal stond.
R
ené Ho
ksbergen
Doel van het Algemeen Overleg op 11 juni was met adoptie samenhangende problemen te bespreken en de minister voorstellen te doen om wetgeving aan te passen. Voor het televisieprogramma Netwerk zei ik later dat de discussie voor mij een teleurstellend verloop had. Mevrouw Hut, directeur van de grootste adoptieorganisatie Wereldkinderen, liet in ditzelfde programma weten dat zij boos was omdat economische en politieke overwegingen boven het belang van het kind gaan.
Beperkte bemoeienis
Het hele debat werd een beschamende vertoning. De discussie draaide voor 90 procent om de deelbemiddeling uit de Verenigde Staten. De dagen ervoor was namelijk duidelijk geworden dat de minister voornemens was deelbemiddeling aan banden te leggen, conform het advies van de commissie-Kalsbeek. Bij deelbemiddeling proberen aspirant-adoptieouders zelf ergens in de wereld een kind te traceren om het te adopteren. Bemoeienis van erkende adoptieorganisaties is beperkt.
Er bestaat geen ‘recht op een kind’, alleen dankbaarheid als je er een krijgt
De VS heeft het Haags Adoptieverdrag geratificeerd. Volgens dit verdrag kan alleen nog gewerkt worden via erkende adoptieorganisaties. Het is dan allereerst de bedoeling dat gezocht wordt naar mogelijkheden het kind in zijn eigen land te laten. In 2008 kwamen via deelbemiddeling 61 kinderen naar Nederland, van wie 56 uit de Verenigde Staten, allemaal Afro-Amerikaanse kinderen. Wanneer deze adopties worden beperkt, zullen met name homoseksuele paren nauwelijks kans op adoptie hebben.
Hoewel het om slechts een klein aantal kinderen gaat, ontslaat dat ons niet van de verplichting kritisch naar deze adopties te kijken. Kernpunt bij adoptie is immers de latere vraag van geadopteerde: was mijn adoptie noodzakelijk en zo ja, ook de overplaatsing naar een geheel ander land? In de Scandinavische landen en België heeft men adopties uit de VS om die reden reeds stopgezet. Het argument dat voor deze ‘zwarte’ kinderen uit de VS geen Amerikaanse ouders te vinden zijn, doet je afvragen waarom er dan zoveel kinderen uit bijvoorbeeld Ethiopië naar de VS gaan. In de VS worden elk jaar ongeveer twintigduizend uit het buitenland afkomstige kinderen geplaatst, onder wie tweeduizend kinderen uit Afrikaanse landen.
Gemakkelijk
Daarbij zijn er vraagtekens bij de adoptiekosten. Amerikaanse adoptieorganisaties werken graag met Nederlandse ouders, omdat over de geringe transparantie van de kosten kennelijk weinig bezwaar wordt gemaakt. Het gaat om bedragen tussen de 23.000 en 55.000 dollar. En het is gemakkelijk, er hoeft, ondanks het Haags Adoptieverdrag, niet ‘langer’ gezocht te worden naar een echtpaar in de VS.
Het COC kan tevreden zijn. Hun argument dat homoparen evenveel recht op een kind hebben als heteroparen heeft gewerkt. Dat er geen ‘recht op een kind’ bestaat, maar alleen maar dankbaarheid als je een kind krijgt, durven de Kamerleden kennelijk niet in de mond te nemen. De Kamerleden, en nu ook de minister, zijn ervan overtuigd dat deze adopties uit de VS moeten doorgaan, deelbemiddeling of niet.
Mening geadopteerden
Tijdens het debat werd door alle deelnemers voortdurend betoogd dat ‘het belang van het kind’ centraal staat. Dan zou je verwachten dat aan geadopteerden was gevraagd wat zij van deze kwestie vinden. Omdat buitenlandse adoptie al meer dan vijftig jaar bestaat, zijn er genoeg geadopteerden die een duidelijke mening hebben. Deze mening is niet gehoord. Misschien omdat bekend is dat zij zeer kritisch staan tegenover adopties uit de VS? De grote landelijke organisatie United Adoptees International heeft aan de minister en alle Kamerleden duidelijk gemaakt dat deelbemiddeling, waaronder die uit de VS, aan banden dient te worden gelegd, juist om het belang van het kind. Er dient allereerst gekeken te worden of er niet adoptieouders in het geboorteland gevonden kunnen worden. Zouden die in het rijkste land van de wereld, waar al zo veel zwarte kinderen worden geadopteerd, niet gevonden kunnen worden? Het geadopteerd zijn is al een uitzonderingspositie, het raciale element eveneens en daar zou plaatsing bij een homopaar als volstrekt onnodige bijzonderheid nog bijkomen?
Er speelt zo veel meer
Speelt hierbij het belang van het kind enige rol? Nee, slechts het belang van adoptieouders telt hier. En dat tekende de gehele discussie op 11 juni, terwijl er zo veel meer zaken rond adoptie spelen. Bijvoorbeeld die rond de bewaartermijn van dossiers van geadopteerden, nodig om informatie over hun achtergrond te verkrijgen. Op het voorstel van één Kamerlid de bestaande 30 jaar te verlengen tot 100 jaar reageerde de minister niet eens. Op het voorstel bij tweedekindplaatsing minder star het leeftijdscriterium van veertig jaar te hanteren, werd door de minister slechts vaag gereageerd. Over de handelwijze bij illegale adopties, koop van kinderen of adoptie van een gekidnapt kind werd nauwelijks iets gezegd. China is dan ook een te belangrijke handelspartner om al te openlijk over mistoestanden in de zorg voor kinderen aldaar te spreken. Over de invoering van de ‘zwakke adoptie’ in ons land schiep de minister geen enkele duidelijkheid. Zwakke adoptie is in het belang van pleegkinderen en hun –ouders. De pleegouder kan dan zijn reeds vele jaren verzorgde en opgevoede kind adopteren zonder dat de banden van het kind met zijn oorspronkelijke ouders geheel worden verbroken. Enkele Kamerleden wezen op de noodzaak van verbetering van de nazorg voor adoptieouders en speciaal voor volwassen geadopteerden. Veel verder dan te verwijzen naar het ministerie van Jeugd en Gezin en de bestaande jeugdhulpverlening kwam de minister niet.
De discussie op 11 juni had weinig met het belang van het kind te maken. Een nieuw Algemeen Overleg dat echt over adoptie zal gaan is absoluut nodig.
Dinner at the Hassoldts' Colorado Springs home resembles a spirited children's party at the United Nations.
Nine-year-old Kiana, born in China, and 8-year-old Landon, born in South Korea, talk quietly with each other while 7-year-old Garett, born in Vietnam, boasts of cleaning his plate.
Four-year-old Corbin, born in Tulsa, Okla., is told he can have no seconds until he finishes what he already has.
The Liberian-born children, Alia and Joeliana, both 4, joke loudly while 2-year-old Aiden sits in his high chair stabbing at his food and shouting.
Kalyn, 15, and Caresse,11, the only kids at this party who were born in Colorado Springs, help serve the younger children.
Overseeing the controlled chaos are Steve and Shonni Hassoldt, who clearly revel in the big family they've created: three biological children, one of whom is old enough to be out on his own, and seven adopted children. Next year, they hope to complete adoption of an Ethiopian child.
"I am in love with my babies," Shonni Hassoldt said.
But there's more to the couple's penchant for adoption than just a love of children. What started as a way for them to add to their family after Shonni had complications with a pregnancy has become a Christian mission to help the orphans of the world, as written of in the New Testament, and to raise children strong in faith.
"This is our answer to the great commission, but instead of going out into the mission field, we are bringing them to us to raise them up as disciples of Christ, and then let them out into the world," Steve Hassoldt said.
Christian adoptions on rise
Compelled by their faith and a push from churches and ministries, more Christian couples are doing what the Hassoldts have done and building their families through adoption. The churches and ministries do their part by instituting programs to help the families navigate the sometimes difficult road to adoption and to offer emotional and spiritual support.
Maddi Noleen, Colorado executive director of Bethany Christian Services, a global adoption group with a clientele that's mostly Christian, credits church and parachurch involvement with an increase in adoptions throughout the U.S.
"They have really stepped up to the plate," said Noleen, whose organization has facilitated 47 adoptions in Colorado so far this year, compared with 39 in all of 2008.
In Colorado Springs, Focus on the Family's three-year-old Adoption & Orphan Care Initiative has had great success at educating Christians and others about foster care adoption, Noleen said.
"We believe every child deserves a permanent family to call their own, and we are never going to give up on these kids," said Kelly Rosati, senior director of the Sanctity for Human Life division at Focus. "The churches are embracing this."
Last November, New Life Church hosted the Focus foster adoption program, co-sponsored by the Colorado Department of Human Services. Thirteen hundred people from various churches attended, and 260 families started the process to adopt kids in foster care.
Independent of that effort, hundreds of families who attend New Life Church have adopted children domestically and internationally, said New Life senior pastor Brady Boyd, who, with his wife, is raising two adopted children.
"There is a huge groundswell of interest in adoption among believers," Boyd said.
He's hoping more will become interested, especially in foster adoptions. To raise awareness among his approximately 10,500 church members, Boyd has set a goal of 100 foster-care adoptions.
At Rocky Mountain Calvary, which has a weekly attendance of about 3,500, seven families are part of the 6-month-old adoption ministry.
"We feel it is a biblical call. There shouldn't be orphans," said Kent Nolley, a mission pastor at the Colorado Springs church.
Vanguard Church, where 1,300 worship each week, hopes to officially launch its adoption ministry in a couple of weeks. Executive Pastor Rick Clapp, who will head the program, and his wife, Laura, adopted two Swaziland orphans, ages 1 and 2, in spring.
The Clapps, who have four biological children, said they decided to adopt, in part, because they saw devastating poverty during a mission trip to Swaziland and wanted to make a difference in children's lives, and caring for the world's children is biblically mandated.
"God laid it on our heart to adopt," Rick Clapp said.
Adoption challenges
The Hassoldts are members of Mountain Springs Church, which has a 2-year-old ministry that lends emotional support to congregants going through the adoption process.
The couple started adopting in 1999, and never thought they'd end up taking in so many children - especially given the challenges of adoption.
Though foster-care adoptions can cost as little as $500, domestic and international adoptions through private agencies can cost from $15,000 to $35,000. The wait to finalize some international adoptions can be three years.
Adoptive parents can also face scrutiny from friends and co-workers. Steve Hassoldt said people have told him that orphans from outside the U.S. would be better off being raised in their own country, that they can't save the world through adopting disadvantaged kids, and that adopting so many children in light of the couple's limited financial means is unethical.
Hassoldt, a claims team manager for State Farm Insurance, acknowledges that it's been a stretch financially. Because Shannon spends her day homeschooling their nine children, he's the only breadwinner.
The Hassoldts, however, have been helped financially by family, friends, State Farm - which offers $5,000 toward adoption costs - and tax breaks.
Even so, the couple has dipped deep into their savings to pay for the adoptions. But they have no regrets.
Shonni Hassoldt said she's learned through the adoptions how open-hearted children of different ethnicities can be toward one another.
"Sometimes I think how I have children from China, South Korea, Vietnam - all countries that are enemies of one another, but here they are brothers and sisters," she said.
The couple also view their colorful family as part of God's plan.
"This is our mission field," Steven Hassoldt said. "We let God's love come through us to them." --- Call Barna at 636-0367. To learn more about the Hassoldts, go to Barna's blog, The Pulpit, at http://thepulpit.freedomblogging.com/.
Once a while the UAI News want to present a person, article or activity which need to get attention or could use some more exposure.
The Spotlight article will receive attention and will be spread around the globe by this bulletin but also in our newsletters and emails.~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ IN THE SPOTLIGHT ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Every were in the world, adult adoptees are active and working to create dialogues with involved parties. This week the UAI is giving attention to our fellow international adoptees from the US >
International Adopt Watch and Stolen For Adoption are a labor of love and done by concerned volunteers.
All of the information on this site is gathered from multiple public sources and credible private tips we receive, which is compiled in one place for easier access. Our only intent and mission is to expose this information so these children can be located.
We only list children that may have been stolen for the purposes of adoption.
If you are in the United States, and you are missing a child, please contact your local police authorities.
If you are a parent in a "country of origin", or country where international adoptions take place and you suspect your child has been abducted for adoption, you must attempt to file a report with your local authorities. We understand that often times complaints made in these countries are unregistered or dismissed. We may be able to refer you to organizations not affiliated with police authorities that may be able to assist you. Please email us for information on these organizations.
If you have information to add, information you would like to see changed, or a child to add to the site (only found from another public listing source), please email us.
If you believe you may be an adoptive parent of of one of these children, please contact us and we can refer you to proper authorities. We will not act as intermediaries, and will only provide you information on the proper organizations to contact.
Because we are NOT law enforcement of any type, we do not intervene in investigations, make reports to authorities on your behalf, or intervene in any way in the judicial or investigative processes. We are merely a photolisting of compiled information.
PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL POLICE, NATIONAL POLICE, OR INTERPOL IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON ANY OF THESE CHILDREN.
This Newsportal is a part of the United Adoptees International information rescources and is meant to inform about the latest news and international adoption developments.
United Adoptees International
The UAI is an organisation run and managed by adoptees. Foremost in the Netherlands but with great help and support from adoptees and adoptee supporting organisations worldwide.
The UAI is a foundation focussing on helping Adoptees, data mining and reviewing and commenting on Human Rights issues endangering childrights everyday again. The UAI is not against adoption but against all the side effects which appears everyday with (especially) international adoptions.
We believe, that (Intercountry) adoption is a last resort for children in need for a family and not a third option for childless couples in the West. If adoption is an option, than all the requirements for a tracable and correct adoption procedure should be fulfilled before any adoption is executed.
The UAI became last few years an important opinion leader in the Netherlands and abroad in the field of Intercountry Adoption (ICA).
~
De UAI Nederland is een organisatie voor en door geadopteerden. Zij participeert actief in vraagstukken die het maatschappelijke, politieke en culturele hart raken met betrekking tot (interlandelijke) adoptie.
Haar beleid kenmerkt zich door drie pijlers. Bewustzijnswording, Ontwikkeling en Verandering van het adoptieveld in al haar facetten maar met name daar waar rechten en de belangen van kinderen en geadopteerden in het gedrang komen.
De UAI heeft zich de afgelopen jaren zich sterk ontwikkeld van een belangen organisatie voor geadopteerden naar een 'mensenrechten organisatie' die de misstanten omtrent interlandelijke adoptie aan de kaak stelt en geadopteerden als volwaardige partners om tafel wil zien te krijgen bij overheden, instanties en overige leden van de adoptieketen om de rechten en sociale onevenwichtigheid te verdedigen en aan te kaarten.
Support the UAI
The UAI is managed fully by volunteers. Due many request from all over the world for assistance like correspondence with official institutes, finding parents and family, academic information and so on, the UAI is in need for international support.
What could you do
- Starting National Branches Worldwide - Members for 'Buddy and supporting groups' - Becoming Contact Person or Correspondent - Academic Network Participant
Finance
Due the fact that not many NGO's are willing to support our work, we are funding the organisation fully out of donations and own personal contributions of board members.
As you might understand we can use any help to continue the organisation which proved to have additional and important added value for many adoptees and parents around the world.
Are you willing to donate ? Want to transfer a donation ? Please use the following information.
As an important member of the Political active Adoptee Community (PAC) The UAI Supports TRACK and their objectives.
TRACK is Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea. We are a group of internationally adopted Koreans, Korean nationals and diasporic Koreans, and supporters from around the world. We are based in Seoul, working within South Korea, toward the following:
Mission
TRACK advocates for full understanding of the practice of adoption, both past and present, to preserve the rights of children and families.
Vision
A world where the adoption community and Korean society have a mutual understanding and compassion that allows them to heal to create a bright collective future.
Goals
Provide an opportunity to reconnect and dialogue with Korean society. Research and document the history of international adoption from South Korea.
HIGH RISK ADOPTION COUNTRIES
OFFICIAL UAI WARNING LIST
If your adopt from one of these countries we want you to know that the adoption procedures is incorrect or the subsidiarity rule is not followed nor the relinquishment of the children are not (objective) controllable. Additional fees will be requested without any further explanation or the adoption itself is inconsistent. For some western countries there is an in-and out issue of children like Portugal, Belgium and the United States.
All these activities are against the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Children (CRC) and/or the Hague Adoption Treaty.
Be aware that many organisations abusing the definition of orphans to push adoption as a measure of childprotection. Which it is not !
The UAI cannot be held responsible for any content which is published here. Every piece which is written by any broadcast or/and publishing agency is for responsibility of the publisher.
The articles published on this News Portal are literary taken over without any editing or adjustments, except the articles written by the UAI itself. Every article is published with its original source by a web link referring to the original article.
This is the Flash Board of
By Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Jane Jeong Trenka
