Adoption Attorneys

Two-year-old orphan Renata from Khabarovsk needs an immediate surgery operation. The girl has a difficult case of heart disease, and our doctors can not help her. American doctors are ready to help, but the girl cannot get to the US. This story surfaced during one recent Round Table of Valdimir Lukin, Russian Envoy on Human Rights issues. The discussion in this Round Table concerned foreign adoptions in Russia.

There is one American family who is ready to adopt Renata and pay all the medical expenses. But the adoption agency that is a taking care of Renata’s parent search has an expired license. It is hard to renew the license because there is a government reform going on and the new Ministry of Education only now received the right to renew the licenses.

In the country there are 750,000 orphans and children left without parental care (so called social orphans – their parents are alive, but either refused from the kids or their rights were taken away by the court of law). The state data base shows about 170,000 children who are ready for domestic and foreign adoption. According to the Family Code, an orphan can be adopted by foreign citizens only after spending nine month in the state data base, which creates a real advantage for Russian adopters. In the meantime, in 2004 only 8 percent from the state data base found real parents – equally in Russia and overseas. According to Russian and foreign experts this is very low number.

During the Round Table, the non-profit organization The Child’s Right told the Renata story. And after that nobody brought up the girl’s name again. If during these talk was some outside observer, he would think that the girl was used as a starter for discussion and nothing else. But, other than that, the discussion was successful. The main question was in the Round Table agenda – Should Russia give up its orphans to foreigners, and if yes, then with what conditions and how many? Of course, there were some different opinions. On one side of the fence, there were representatives from the State Duma and Ministry of Social Healthcare. Their opponents were human rights activists and foreign organizations. The first ones, if they had the power, would not let a single child be adopted overseas. The other ones, instead, were defending orphans’ rights to have a foreign family. Everyone was doing a lot of talking. Each side was defending its own truth and as a result – everybody kept their own opinions. Nobody had won.

And only orphan Renata from Khabarovsk was not a subject of the heated discussions, except from very beginning. The outside observer, if he would be sitting by, could think: “Well, if we are not giving the girl to America, if in all the entire Russia they couldn’t find the new family for her, then why the region or the federal center would not pay for Renata’s treatment in the US? It cannot be that we are that short of money. “So what’s missing?” the observer asks himself. And I am afraid that competent authorities within this subject would not like the answer. If orphans are not needed by anybody in Russia, then why to refuse these kids the right to have a foreign family?

More : kommersant.com

Russia is reopening its doors to foreign adoptions, months after they all but ground to a halt due to bureaucratic barriers.

Seven U.S. adoption agencies have recently been reaccredited to work in Russia, Sergei Vitelis, an official at the Education and Science Ministry who deals with children’s issues, confirmed Wednesday.

Vitelis said he could not provide further details, and the ministry’s press service did not respond to questions sent by e-mail Wednesday afternoon.

But the National Council for Adoption, a U.S. research and advocacy organization, said the reaccreditations came over the past two weeks and more agencies are expected to have their licenses renewed soon.

“This will benefit many thousands of children,” Thomas Atwood, the organization’s president, said by telephone from Alexandria, Virginia.

Foreign adoption agencies working in Russia have not had much to cheer about in the past few years.

More : sptimes.ru

Russian authorities have suspended the work of foreign adoption agencies. That has put into limbo the plans of many Americans waiting to adopt Russian children, even as human rights groups say a growing number of institutionalized children in Russia are living — and dying — in wretched conditions.

Most of the nearly 800,000 children called orphans in Russia still have living parents.

Thirteen-year-old Sasha says he ran away from home at the age of 6. He now lives in a Moscow boarding school called Internat No. 8.

“I left because my parents behaved badly,” Sasha says. “They drank and took drugs and didn’t take care of me.”

Another Internat No. 8 resident, Tatyana, 12, was abandoned at birth. She says she likes drawing and sewing, and wants to become a doctor.

Compared with most children like them, Tatyana and Sasha are lucky. Their dorm rooms are clean, teachers are dedicated, and the children appear genuinely happy.

More : npr.org

To understand why international adoption is so controversial and so emotive in Guatemala, it’s important to know a few facts about Guatemala itself. This is a very poor, mainly rural country. About two-thirds of the population live in poverty; two-thirds live without electricity, a third without running water.

Guatemala is also predominantly Roman Catholic, which means no contraception and lots of children. In addition, it is only just emerging from a civil war, the longest conflict in the whole sad history of Central America.

Only four years ago the country’s military leadership signed a peace accord with the left-wing guerrillas and handed over the reins to a democratic government. In this thirty-six year long war about a quarter of a million people died or “disappeared” and one million - half of them children - were displaced.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Ekaterinburg is half a world away from Ellicott City. Even today, it’s an exhausting distance to travel. But for two local families, the long trip to this industrial Russian city set at the base of the Ural Mountains held the promise of a coveted parent-and-child bond at journey’s end.

Bayla Marina Caplan and Jenna Reshetova Daugherty began their young lives in that far-off city. Each little girl joined her American family when she was only nine months old. Laurie and Joe Caplan adopted Bayla in February 1999; Jenna was adopted by Susan and Jon Daugherty in December 2003.

The Daughertys and the Caplans had vastly different experiences going through the adoption process that eventually landed both families at the doorstep of Orphanage Number Two in Ekaterinburg. But their reasons for adopting from Russia were similar. “My grandmother is from Russia, and so is Joe’s,” said Laurie Caplan. “That’s why we decided to adopt from Russia.” All four of Susan Daugherty’s grandparents originally came from Slavic countries: Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

Laurie and Joe already had one biological child, their son Seth, when they decided they were ready to move forward with the adoption process. “When we talked about it, my husband and I looked at each other and said, ‘Not in the U.S.’ because of all the horror stories,” Laurie Caplan said. “And we didn’t want to go through that with our young son.”

More : theviewnewspapers.com

Once, in the heyday of Hollywood, it was a soft-top pink Cadillac. Now the evidence of screen success is a far smaller - and not necessarily pink - bundle of joy. But, like the oversized car, it can be easily purchased and driven straight back to the sprawling Los Angeles mansion. Now the off-the-shelf symbol of stardom is an adopted baby.

Last week, Angelina Jolie was pictured with the nine-month-old baby she and her husband had plucked from a life of Asian penury and little promise to a new luxury home in Hollywood. Twenty-seven-year-old Jolie, an Oscar-winning actress, had been introduced to the little boy last November in a Cambodian orphanage with her actor husband Billy Bob Thornton, 46, by her very beautiful side. Jolie joins a dynasty of overly endowed mothers who have bought rather than begat. Michelle Pfeiffer adopted baby Claudia Rose; Diane Keaton adopted Dexter Dean and Duke and Calista Flockhart adopted Liam. Now rumour has it that Pretty Woman Julia Roberts has contacted a number of adoption agencies.

Adoption in the US is not nearly as strictly regulated as in Britain and the laws vary from state to state. Although you cannot technically purchase a baby, large amounts of money exchange hands in the form of living costs and expenses. It can cost up to $20,000 to adopt a baby, with foreign adoptions coming up even more pricey due to travel costs and reams of paperwork. Age restrictions and marital status, which are all taken into account in Britain, do not need to be so in the US where you are still permitted to come to a private arrangement with a pregnant woman.

We tend to be cynical about those who can so easily take the waiting out of wanting. We believe their maternal relationship is indelibly tainted by the exchange of dollars. We worry that there is one rule for the rich, another for the not. Pfeiffer and Flockhart didn’t wait for Mr Right before becoming a parent, both adopting while they were single. Nor do these women need to pay attention to nature. Keaton was 50 when she adopted her first child. But why shouldn’t they be applauded for providing such an opportunity for those born underprivileged? And how are we to know what is really going on in what is essentially a very private matter?

More : guardian.co.uk

If theater “is a place where a nation thinks in front of itself,” as drama scholar Martin Esslin wrote, then the works on view at the 2005 Humana Festival of New American Plays revealed some serious cerebral thundering.

The six mainstage Humana plays presented by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Ky., were aired last weekend for a “special visitors” throng of theater critics, agents, producers and artists. Collectively, they tackled many headline concerns — while working in some trendy-but-tired elements of the quirky dysfunctional family riffs and magical realist fables in vogue at previous fests.

The war in Iraq and U.S. election fraud, foreign adoption and eco-terrorism, caregiver burnout and (most popularly) the sins of the news media were all addressed. Yet despite solid acting and stagings, few plays translated political outrage into truly stimulating, resonant theatrics.

Though the several fiery, topically-loaded plays by younger authors were more insistent, ultimately it was the most formally conventional tale (Carlyle’s “Pure Confidence”) that stole the Humana show.

More : seattletimes.nwsource.com

Israel’s Amatzia enlisted for adoption of infants from India Yehonathan Tommer Jerusalem, Nov 16 (PTI) An Israeli non-profit organisation, Amatzia, has been enlisted for inter-country adoption of infants from India on the recommendation of the Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

The enlistment was done

Source : accessmylibrary.com

One of the top officials in the Department of Social Development has been accused of twisting the truth to stop an abandoned two-year-old from being adopted by a US couple.

Director-General Vusimuzi Madonsela’s claims that there were five prospective ‘black SA’ parents who were ready and willing to adopt Baby R – today the subject of a major Constitutional Court appeal – fell apart when a court-appointed adviser questioned Johannesburg Child Welfare’s Pam Wilson about it. In addition to exposing several instances in which Madonsela’s sworn statements were contradicted by his own staff, court-appointed adviser and advocate Melanie Feinstein has quashed his suggestion that Baby R should be placed with a local family. And she has found 25 reasons why the Constitutional Court should grant guardianship of the little girl to the African-American couple, who have endured two years of legal wrangling. ‘I have come to the conclusion that it would be in Baby R’s best interests that she be placed permanently (with the US couple)’. She also slammed Madonsela’s department and its legal advisers for omitting important facts – that did not advance their case – from their court documents.

Source : legalbrief.co.za

The State Duma, Russia’s lower chamber of parliament, intends to discuss a draft parliamentary inquiry at a session on September 9 urging Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to take necessary measures to protect Russian children adopted by foreigners.

Vladimir Katrenko, vice speaker of the State Duma heading up this issue, said the instances of violence against children had become more frequent lately and parliamentarians were concerned over the fate of children adopted by foreigners and living outside Russia.

Katrenko said that before reaching the eligible age, these children remained citizens of Russia. There are about 64,000 such children, he said.

Russian parliamentarians say bilateral agreements on inter-state cooperation regarding child adoption would be the most effective instrument of protection for Russian children adopted by foreigners.

“This form will enable the state to maintain control over compliance with adopted children’s rights and interests,” Katrenko said.

He said the parliamentary inquiry would propose that as a priority orphaned children be placed in Russian families.

Yekaterina Lakhova, the head of the State Duma committee on women, family, and children, said that 14 Russian children living abroad had died recently, including an eight-year-old boy who died from hunger in the United States in August.

Source : en.rian.ru