Verslag Hoorzitting Commissie Kalsbeek.

UAI - 27 mei 2008 - 18.33 (local time)

Amsterdam - United Adoptees International was samen met Samenwerkingsverband Interlandelijke Geadopteerden (SIG) op 15 mei uitgenodigd voor een hoorzitting van de commissie Kalsbeek. Deze commissie onderzoekt hoe om te gaan met interlandelijke adoptie in de toekomst.

De UAI werd vertegenwoordigd door Hilbrand Westra –voorzitter- en Joan Hansink- vice voorzitter - .

Tijdens de hoorzitting is aan UAI haar mening gevraagd met betrekking tot de volgende onderwerpen: ethische verantwoording adoptie, leeftijdscriteria en verkrijgen na adoptie van de oorspronkelijke naam, aparte wachtlijsten hanteren voor special needs kinderen en voor- en nadelen van het stopzetten van adopties.

De UAI heeft de commissie als volgt geïnformeerd:

Voor- en nadelen interlandelijke adoptie

De UAI is niet tegen interlandelijke adoptie. De heer Westra verwacht echter wel dat interlandelijke adoptie op termijn zal uitdoven, gelet op het subsidiariteitsbeginsel. Het begrip 'institutionalisering' verdient een betere definiëring, omdat de wijze waarop dit gedefinieerd wordt van invloed is op de aantallen kinderen dat niet in een gezin(-sachtige situatie) opgroeit. Zo worden bijvoorbeeld welzijnsprojecten, zoals in Colombia het project 'Wonen bij de buurvrouw' vaak onder instituten gerekend terwijl het om wonen in gezinsverband gaat. Daardoor worden er meer kinderen gelocaliseerd die dan in aanmerking komen voor (interlandelijke) adoptie. UAI neemt o.a. het Haags Adoptieverdrag als uitgangspunt waarin gesteld wordt dat adoptie een laatste redmiddel moet zijn.

Aparte wachtlijsten special needs kinderen

De UAI is van mening dat internationale criteria moet worden geformuleerd voor special needs-kinderen, omdat ook hier de vraagkant een rol speelt. Tevens de ongelijkheid die door deze kwestie optreedt is tegengesteld tegen ‘natuurlijke’ vorm van het ‘krijgen’ van kinderen. Een voorselectie en levensoverschrijdende keuzes dienen niet bij voorbaat in wetten en verdragen te worden geregeld. Het gevaar van preselecties in kader van zogeheten special needs heeft ook bizarre gevolgen dat partijen en zelfs familieleden kinderen verminken om adoptabel te kunnen krijgen. Alleen hierom al is de UAI tegen een dergelijke ontwikkeling.

Leeftijdscriteria bij het aanvragen van de oorspronkelijke naam

Binnen UAI is een dialoog gaande of geadopteerden rond hun 16e of 18e jaar of al eerder hun oorspronkelijke naam terug zouden moeten (kunnen) krijgen, want er is ook de ervaring dat het krijgen van de naam van het gezin waar je bij opgroeit helpt bij het inburgeren in de omgeving waar je woont. De UAI is echter van mening dat de oorspronkelijke naam bij het krijgen van een nieuwe naam niet verloren mag gaan. Daarbij moet worden opgemerkt dat de procedure tot verkrijgen van de oorspronkelijke naam moet worden vergemakkelijkt. Ook verneemt UAI van volwassen geadopteerden bij het aangaan van een samenlevingscontract of huwelijk moeilijkheden ondervinden bij diverse gemeenten in Nederland. Omdat dan vaak een geboorteakte wordt gevraagd die veel geadopteerden niet bezitten.

Ethische verantwoording adoptie

De UAI is van mening dat door opnieuw over ethische vraagstukken in kader van interlandelijk adoptie te gaan hebben, het gevaar ontstaat dat de uitgangspunten in het internationale verdrag van de rechten van het kind (IVRK) en het Haags Adoptie Verdrag ter discussie komen te staan. De UAI ziet op dit moment niet de noodzaak om de discussie rondom interlandelijke adoptie opnieuw te voeren indien de de inhoud en reden van het tot standkomen van adoptie in het algemeen buiten beschouwing wordt gelaten. De UAI neemt genoemde verdragen dan voorlopig ook als uitgangspunt van haar beleid.

Download het gehele rapport. Rapport Commissie Kalsbeek

Transracialeyes because of course race and culture matter

How have your views on culture and race changed since you searched?

December 7, 2010 in Adoptee Roundtable with Leave a Comment
Tags: search

And what is its impact on your life?

The infinite moment: details that define adoption

December 4, 2010 in Adoptee Roundtable with 6 Comments

In answering the last question I started thinking about my search and my writing on adoption and I realize that much of it centers on rather banal discoveries which end up being defining moments, often devastating emotionally speaking. For example, for the thousands of times I had gone over my adoption documents, I had always managed to not really read the paper that gave jurisdiction to the orphanage to create a name for me. On my 40th birthday I was going over the papers again and found it and I recall the feeling of knowing that the one thing that I thought connected me to my country of birth was in fact bogus. This led to a later “infinite moment” when comparing my paperwork with another adoptee who had been given the same false name: We realized that there was, in fact, a list of false names that they simply cycled through. I thought I would ask everyone to contribute one or more of these “infinite moments” to this discussion.

So far, contributors are:

• Korean adoptees, raised in USA, Canada,
• Libanese adoptee, US
• Ethiopian adoptee, Swedon
• Chinese adoptee, Canada

The European Commission Forges Official Report

Battle of international adoptions reaches peak

The European Commission Forges Official Report

Autor: MIRCEA OPRIS

"If you don’t make the recommendation about the new agency, you do not get your money”

The European Commission has falsified an official report, released only partially exactly one year ago, during the Conference on Challenges in Adoption Procedures in Europe, in Strasbourg from 30 November to 1 December 2009. Exclusively for Jurnalul National several experts testified about the pressure put on their work by high-rank European Commission officials, in order to get to the conclusion that there is a need for the establishment of a European Adoption Agency.

The stake of the new agency: creating a "market" for European adoptions in which Romania would be forced to reopen international adoptions. Behind this decision are pro-adoption lobbies from France, Italy, Spain and the United States. On December 1, in Strasbourg - France, the European Commission and the Council of Europe organized a conference on adoptions. Originally it was to take place behind closed doors, but it became public after Jurnalul National revealed the backstage games behind it and the attempt to invite only the adoption lobby, through the mediation of the Italian EC official Patrizia De Luca. Surprisingly, at the end of the conference the conclusion of a report were presented, which recommended the need for establishing a European Adoption Agency. The long awaited report did not become public and was kept secret at the conference in Strasbourg. It was not made public until spring 2010, after pressure from several non-governmental organizations. Even so, the details of the report were never made public. One of the aims of the report, which needed the consent and approval of all Member States of the EU, was to reopen international adoptions at European level and thus forcing Romania to repeal the law 274, which forbids the adoption of Romanian children by foreigners.

One year after the scandal of this conference, Jurnalul National has been able to reveal what is hidden behind the report but, much worse, to also reveal pressure from the European Commission on the Belgian law firm, which drafted the report, in order to falsify data. The study has cost 250,000 euros, European public money, and consisted of interviews with more than 500 experts, lawyers, social workers, adoptive parents and adopted children. The study focused on the state of play of adoptions in the 27 EU member states. The final conclusion of the report was that clearly there was an urgent need to establish the European Agency for Adoption. In reality, however, this conclusion proved to be a factual lie, for which officials of the European Commission signed, under the pressure of lobby groups in several Western countries with direct interest in the reopening of international adoptions from Romania. The study and the report were prepared by the law firm DBB - Demolin - Brulard – Barthelemy in Brussels, an associate of the French law firm PDGB. Here is the stupefying testimony of one of the experts who prepared the country studies and the European Commission's report.

"We were asked to conduct a study and a report identifying the needs of children, social services, the needs of the adopters and solutions for each country in order to improve the adoption and care system. We developed a questionnaire for each EU country. Then we interviewed over 500 subjects. Most of them answered they want better social protection, support for adopted children, post adoption assistance for adoptive parents after adoption, and some country-specific problems. There was only one question on whether it is necessary to establish a European Agency for adoptions. Only a few lawyers, out of the 500 subjects considered the new agency as necessary. Finally, we presented the conclusions and the report to the European Commission. When they saw the results they went mad at us and refused to acknowledge the study and its recommendations. They said the study would only be accepted if we would follow their main recommendation of setting up a European Agency for Adoption. Or, in reality, only a few had said such an agency would be good. Our firm’s prestige was at stake. We have been forced in the end to accept this conclusion, although it is not the reality. However they added whatever they wanted. We have been put in a situation with no alternative, because our company has several contracts with the European Commission and other European institutions. We could also risk losing these as customers. If we did not do it, they would have gone to another company and get the result they were looking for."

"If you don’t make the recommendation about the new agency, you do not get your money”

this was the message of the European Commission ", Jurnalul National was told, on condition of anonymity, by one of the experts directly involved in the realization of the research and the report.

Lying was necessary for the lobby groups and adoption agencies in order to establish the "adoption market." "European States would have a limit, for example of two years, in which the children can stay in care, after which they would become adoptable. First in their country, and after a period of time they get on the European list. If not adopted this second time, then the children are put on the international adoption list. Such a system would take away the responsibility of the Member States to provide care for children temporarily or permanently deprived of parental care (UN Convention Rights of the Child). A European Adoption Agency – as EU institution staffed by EU civil servants – would take all responsibility away from national Member states and would create a full fledged free market. Adoption agencies from all over the world would be competing to get the children. Member States will have less incentives to create appropriate care for children, or to place children back into their own families, invoking that having the children adopted will save a lot of money on child protection and social protection costs. It is important to realize that children in care, foster and residential, have families and mostly are in contact with them. Adoption changes identity and cuts permanently all family ties”, said European official Roelie Post seconded to the NGO Against Child Trafficking. She says the number of children legally adopted internationally has declined.

Since Romania's accession to EU, the number of children available for adoption decreased worldwide from 40,000 to 20,000 per year. A future European Adoptions Agency will also have the problem of legality, because the EU has no legal powers on the issue of international adoptions, which are directly regulated by protocols between the Member States, and work under national competence.

Roelie Post followed this phenomenon and she believes that the report was meant to be used in the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child. Without success so far, the EU strategy on children's rights, announced since 2006, but not yet finalized. The initiative was called "the Frattini strategy”, then Vice President of the European Commission, and who concretized the fake report of the EC in 2010. Roelie Post wrote a book about the export of Romanian ‘orphans’ until the introduction of Law 273 and 274 of 2004 that stopped the business with adoptions from Romania.

The book and more information can be found at: http://www.romania-forexportonly.eu http://againstchildtrafficking.org

Voor NL, lees ook - De Wereld is van Iedereen

UNICEF's effective attack on inter-country adoption

HOW ADOPTION PARENTS KEEP PUSHING FOR MORE (UNREGULATED) ADOPTIONS

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

NEW YORK, N.Y. — UNICEF has undergone worldwide scrutiny in regard to its position on inter-country adoption. And for good reason. Its position that a child’s birthplace and culture is superior to a stable
home in any other place or culture has had dire consequences on some adoptees around the world.

In recent months there’s been some effort on the part of UNICEF to temper some earlier pronouncements, but the fact remains that the organization is fundamentally misguided when it comes to inter-country
adoption.

UNICEF claims that international adoption robs children of their heritage and culture. The organization’s has staked out a firm position: children must be given to birth parents, regardless of the circumstance. In lieu of that, children should go to extended family. Next, to his or her “community.” Finally, domestic adoption should be explored. Inter-country adoption is “one of a range of options” according to UNCEF and should be turned to as a last resort. The organization goes so far as to claim that international adoption must
be “subsidiary” to in-country adoption, at all costs.

UNICEF declares that inter-country adoption “is not as a good as being raised in their families of origin but better than staying in orphanages.” That would make sense if the world was a perfect place and this Polly Anna viewpoint had any basis in reality. But that’s not the world, nor is it the reality of millions of orphans around the world. Shared DNA does not make for the best families, contrary to UNICEF’s claims. Children wind up eligible for adoption for myriad reasons, ranging from poverty to abuse to neglect.

In some cases, UNICEF’s positions border on racist. In a position paper on inter-country adoption the organization states, that every effort should be made to keep a child “within his ethnic group.” Huh?
Some vague notion about cultural ties should trump the basic human rights of children? For what end UNICEF does not say.

There’s a disconnect between UNICEF’s position and the welfare of children. Somewhere along the way the behemoth organization lost track of advocating for children and began abstracting the issue.

You can even hear it in the language used in the organization’s Innocenti Digest entitled “Impact of International Legal Standards and the Safeguards of The Best interest of the Child in Domestic and
Intercountry Adoption,” where “different stakeholders” in intercountry adoption are mentioned. Stakeholders? What about the children?

To promote its agenda, UNICEF points out that abuses have taken place with inter-country adoptions. They are right. They have. Just as they have and do with domestic adoptions, which UNICEF advocates. The
Hague Convention was developed to provide guidelines for inter-country adoption with the hope of reducing abuses of the system and reducing the risk for child trafficking and profiteering from orphans. This
issue so often raised by UNICEF is a canard. C’mon. Who isn’t against corruption and abuse?

What’s so disappointing about UNICEF’s position is that for years the organization has been a leader in child welfare around the world. The work that they do to help feed and immunize children is unimpeachable.
And perhaps this is the problem. The organization’s success in this area has jaundiced UNICEF’s view on adoption.

Arbitrary national borders on a map have become a greater priority to UNICEF than the complicated issues of placing children with safe, loving families wherever those families may be.

UNICEF has repeatedly stated that it prefers the expansion of social welfare programs for poor families within countries, so that children can stay in kinship groups. The practical outcome has been that
unparented children are being denied the best homes so that UNICEF can score cheap points in the international arena about the insufficient aid poor countries receive. The pawns here are the children.

Harvard Law School’s Elizabeth Bartholet, an adoptive parent herself and a well-regarded child advocate, has publicly stated that “international adoption is under siege,” largely because of UNICEF’s unrelenting assault on inter-country adoption.

In Batholet’s paper International Adoption: The Human Rights Position she writes, “Preferences for what UNICEF calls permanent family or foster care [in country] are dangerous. UNICEF’s argument is that such
care could preserve children’s birth and national heritage links. But foster care doesn’t exist as a meaningful option in most sending countries – unparented children are instead relegated to orphanages.
UNICEF wants foster care expanded, but denying children adoptive homes now because in the future foster care might exist is unfair to existing children.”

The influence of UNICEF on the world community cannot be overstated. It has used its reputation as a leader in children welfare to lobby countries, including the United States, to reduce the number of inter-country adoptions. The results have had dire consequences for children around the world. International adoptions have plummeted and most countries are now closed to American parents.

The dark and highly influential shadow that UNICEF has cast on intercountry adoption has left millions of children around the world stranded, without homes and without hope.

Influential Adoptee from the US, Betty Jean Lifton passed away

Betty Jean Lifton Dies at 84

This week we received the sad news that Betty Jean Lifton, well known author from the book: Twice Born and Lost & Found, the adoption experience, has left her body.

On her website, the family of Betty Jean Lifton published this:

From Robert Jay Lifton and the family of BJ LIfton -- We wish to convey the extremely painful and deeply sad news that BJ Lifton, died on Nov. l9 in Massachusetts General Hospital of complications of pneumonia. We are planning a memorial and will post more information here soon.

United Adoptees International wants to pay sincere respects to the family and close relatives of Betty Jean, we are obliged to her for her work and activities and would like to thank her for her contribution to the adoption debate and her voice as an adult adoptee.

We wish her family and relatives time to mourn and to know that even she will not speak in person about her work and experience anymore, that her words and spirit will continue in many of us adoptees.

With respect,

United Adoptees International

“ Zeer invloedrijke Amerikaanse geadopteerde is Betty Jean Lifton is overleden. Zij werd op 11 juni 1926 als Blanche Rosenblatt geboren. Haar ongehuwde moeder was 17 en haar vader een (drank) smokkelaar en bon vivant.

Blanche werd in een tehuis voor pleegkinderen geplaatst en op 2,5 jarige leeftijd door Oscar en Hilda Kirschner geadopteerd. Deze noemden haar Betty Jean, in de adoptiewandelgangen B.J. Zij promoveerde op een psychologisch onderwerp en trouwde in 1952 met de bekende Amerikaanse psychiater Dr. Lifton.

Betty Jean schreef o.a. een gedeeltelijk autobiografisch gekleurde adoptietrilogie met de aansprekende titels: Twice born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter (1975); Lost & Found, the adoption Experience (1979); Journey of the adopted self: A Quest for Wholeness (1994). (Tweemaal geboren: herinneringen van een adoptiedochter; Verloren & gevonden, de adoptie-ervaring; De reis van de Zelf van geadopteerde: de zoektocht naar volledigheid). Boeken van haar zijn in het Japans vertaald.

Ook in 2010 gaf zij nog overal in de V.S. lezingen. Op 19 november 2010 is zij betrekkelijk plotseling aan de gevolgen van longontsteking gestorven. Een voor de V.S. en daarbuiten kernpersoon van het internationale adoptieveld is heengegaan. Vele malen heb ik haar mogen ontmoeten en van gedachten wisselen. Net als Jean Paton heeft zij grote invloed uitgeoefend op het meer aandacht krijgen voor de situatie van geadopteerden en hun verlangen naar openheid over hun achtergrond.”

Rene Hoksbergen

22 & 23 NOVEMBER FILM & DEBAT IN URECHT

PERSBERICHT

26 oktober 2010

MEDIA

Landelijk adoptiedebat, voorbij het taboe

Veerkracht, het verhaal na Spoorloos en de rol van de kerk en kinderhandel voor adoptie.

AFSTAND EN ADOPTIE

Stichting United Adoptees International (UAI) met ondersteuning van vereniging Wereldkinderen, streeft naar een evenredige vertegenwoordiging in het adoptiedebat voor alle partijen in de adoptiedriehoek, ouders, geadopteerden en adoptie-ouders. Maar de eerste groep, de ouders die hun kinderen vrijwillig of gedwongen hebben afgestaan, horen of zien we bijna niet.

Daarom heeft de UAI besloten, met name hen, uitgebreid te belichten en aan het woord te laten. Op 22 en 23 november organiseert de UAI in Kargadoor te Utrecht een landelijk debat met als thema’s: Veerkracht, het verhaal na Spoorloos en de rol van de kerk in kinderhandel voor adoptie.

NEDERLANDSE PREMIERE VAN RESILIENCE

Op maandag 22 november wordt de Nederlandse première van de documentaire ‘Resilience’ vertoond van filmmaakster Tammy Chu. Zij is een geadopteerd Koreaanse uit de Verenigde Staten die bekend werd door haar autobiografische werk ‘Go-Hyang’ over haar ontmoeting met haar Koreaanse familie en het werkelijke achterliggende drama.

In Resilience vertellen een geadopteerde Koreaan (Brent) uit de Verenigde staten en zijn Koreaanse familie openhartig over de achtergronden en emoties die de adoptie heeft teweeg gebracht. Na de documentaire zal een panel discussiëren over de documentaire en vragen uit het publiek beantwoorden. In het panel zijn vertegenwoordigd, Will van Sebille (ouder), Martijn Roessingh (adoptievader en schrijver van het boek: Waarom China mij twee dochters) en Tammy Chu (de documentairemaakster).

KERK EN KINDERHANDEL

Op dinsdag 23 november wil de UAI in de reeks taboedoorbrekende thema’s rondom afstand en adoptie, aandacht schenken aan de vaak onbekende rol van de kerken in internationale adoptie. Met een inleiding over de Europese als ook de internationale context door Hilbrand Westra.

Deze avond zal tevens schrijfster Carine Hutsebaut haar boek ‘Kleine Zondaars’ belichten waar het verhaal wordt vertelt van een Vlaamse moeder die haar kind verloor aan adoptie door toedoen van de kerk. Hoofdpersoon van het boek; Elise van de Venne, zal ook aanwezig zijn om het verhaal toe te lichten. Daarna zal een panel bestaande uit Carine Hutsebaut, Elise van de Venne en prominenten uit het onderzoeksveld rondom misbruik in de kerk vragen uit het publiek beantwoorden.

Without a Home and deported from Chicago, adoptee waits for Barack Obama’s visit

TIMES OF INDIA

Sans home and identity: A story from the US

Ambika Pandit, TNN, Nov 7, 2010, 04.17am IST

MUMBAI: Among the many looking forward to American President Barack Obama's visit to India was an anxious Jennifer Edgell Haynes. She has no interest in Indo-US relations. All she wants is to be reunited with her family in Michigan.

In an open letter addressed to the US president, which has been delivered to the office of the US consulate general at Lincoln House on November 2, this 28-year-old mother of two, sketches the shocking tale of an inter-country adoption gone wrong. Haynes was adopted by an American couple from a Mumbai orphanage in 1989. Unfortunately for the seven-year-old, her foster family didn't want her two years on. The adoption agency 'gave' Haynes away to another American couple in Michigan. If only that meant all would be well. Haynes claims that her new foster parents exploited her and she was forced to seek refuge in other foster homes, eventually ending up on America's mean streets.

Things settled down a bit when she married but that was an all-too brief period of stability. Haynes was deported to India when she was caught in a drug case in 2008. She was told she wasn't an American citizen and had no right to stay in the US.

Today, she says, "Till then I thought I was very much an American but when the immigration officials saw my papers, it came to light that the documentation process for my US citizenship was not complete. I was put in a plane and next thing I knew, I was being sent to India. That was July 2, ironically, also my wedding anniversary..."Haynes' letter to Obama asks for the chance to be united with her children Kadafi, 7, and Kassana, 6. She last saw them two years ago and her only link with them is the telephone line.

Haynes says her problems with being deported to her "home" country are similar to most adopted children. "I cannot relate to life in India. I have no family here. I cannot even get a job because I have no identity papers here. The last two years have been about moving from place to place and making ends meet with whatever little money I get doing some odd jobs. Where do I go?".

Activist Arun Dohle says Haynes's harrowing tale brings to the fore the dangers of inter-country adoption. Anjali Pawar, director of the NGO Sakhi, is supporting Haynes in her fight for justice. She says, "Her case reveals that the adoptive families did not do the needful to complete the formalities for an American citizenship after she was taken there. This entire adoption process needs to be examined." Pawar adds, "Ultimately, the government will have to focus on in-country adoptions."

Haynes, meanwhile, prays the US president's visit might end her run of ill-luck.



Deported from Chicago, adoptee waits for Barack Obama’s visit
November 10, 2010

From Daily News and Analysis:

Jennifer Haynes, 28, abruptly deported from Chicago in 2008, is eagerly waiting for US president Barack Obama’s visit to Mumbai in the hope that her letter will reach him and she may be able to go home to her husband and children.

In her letter to the president on November 2, Haynes has stated, “Until last year I believed that I was a US citizen. Now I realise that I was a victim of child-trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation.” Her letter was submitted to the US consulate in Mumbai.

Haynes was adopted by an American couple in 1989 at the age of seven. However, her experience in 50 different foster homes was traumatic, she has stated.

DNA had first reported Haynes’ case when she moved the Bombay high court seeking action against her adoption centre, which did not complete the necessary formalities at the time of her adoption and after being booked for a drug felony she was deported to India, 20 years after she had seen it last.

Her husband Justin and children Kadafi, 7, and Kanassa, 6, live in Chicago. Haynes, however, without a passport of either countries, lives in India with no family, no source of income and no documents to avail a job.

“Never did I think I was not an American citizen until I was arrested for a minor drug charge and sent immediately for deportation. Your country which had promised me so much hope, instead treated me like an object to be discarded like damaged goods,” Haynes had said in her letter.

“Can you please help me?” Haynes has asked president Obama. She has also said, “Now I am an American without a country; a lost child who was sent away from my home, my family and my children.”

Sangeeta Punekar of the Advait Foundation and Anjali Pawar of Sakhee, the NGOs supporting Haynes’ case, have also urged Obama to let her go back to the US.

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