förbi Nimal van Oort, adopted from Sri Lanka to the Netherlands. Founder of NONA Foundation.
About eighteen years ago, my twin brother Djoeri and I received a message from Sri Lanka that would change our lives forever. For a long time we had been looking for our mother in Sri Lanka, but the message told us that our mother had sadly passed away many years before.
The cause of her death made us sad and actually furious. She had been raped several times and was abandoned by family and the environment because she allegedly – by being raped – would have become a disgrace to the community. Because of this and the lack of protection and medical care, she died at the age of 21 .
To be fair, at that moment I really didn’t see life. Our biggest dream of ever meeting her would never come true and knowing that our mother had suffered so much injustice, I really didn’t know what to do .
I went to Sri Lanka then to be able to be at her grave. On the way – during my first days in Sri Lanka – I saw a lot of young girls who made me think of my mom. Because they were victims of sexual abuse too, they were abandoned by everyone despite their young age. These girls had no one.
When I was at my mother’s grave and my grandmother told me about her daughter’s short, but difficult life – I realised that I may not be able to help my own mother anymore, but I would out of love for her, and as tribute to her, I would start trying to help the girls of today.
Once back in the Netherlands I started preparing for this and I created the NONA Foundation. Honestly, nobody trusted my plans. Everybody told me that doing something from the Netherlands for girls and women in Sri Lanka who have no value for the society there, would be impossible. Above all, I was too young, inexperienced, and not highly educated enough to fulfil my vision .
Yes, I definitely had a vision, or actually a dream. I wish these girls and women of today never have to experience what my mother and a lot of other women went through. I wanted them to have a chance for a humane existence.
A royal award from the deputy mayor of Amsterdam. Nimal was appointed the ‘Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau’ award for his work in NONA Foundation (2020).
Today, 18 years later, we have actually been able to help over 1900 girls with shelter, care, education and empowerment facilities. Making them self-confident and independent remains our main starting point. I am also still very honoured that I have received a Royal Award in 2020 for this work and that we are also taken seriously at a high level in Sri Lanka.
What I’m most proud of is that we’ve really been able to help a lot of girls and women regain their passion for life and they’re now back in the middle of society. Most of them now have a nice family and a nice job. We are one big family in which everyone is equal: from the girls and women we help, to the board of directors, from the cleaner to the chairperson. We are one team with the same mission — to make the lives of these girls and women less risky and more meaningful; a life with freedom, justice and being treated like a human being .
Last month, a girl who needed our help badly in 2011 was appointed as a teacher with us . Isn’t this beautiful?
On Sunday 10 April, we will celebrate the NONA-Day in Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. On this day we will share more about our work in Sri Lanka, what we have done, but also about our ongoing projects and future plans. There are also inspiring guest speakers and various singing and dance performances. There will also be another delicious Sri Lankan – Indian buffet. I personally invite you to attend this, really everyone is welcome and you can register at www.nonadag.com.
And if you cannot make it to the NONA Day celebration, but you might want to contribute to our organisation in any way, please contact us because we could really use your help.
Many special thanks to my loyal board members Djoeri, Ad, Dhilani, Shivanie, Hartini and Varishna who have been fully volunteering for our organisation for many years.
On 30 December 2021, 7-9pm CST we gathered in social media application, Clubhouse to participate in an online vigil, created and led by Vietnamese adoptee Adam Chau. The event was organised in conjunction with Christian Hall’s family who created the physical in-person vigils at various cities around the USA. The purpose of the vigils was to honour Christian’s life, raise awareness about and bring the impacted communities together in solidarity to seek Justice for Christian Hall. You can read their latest articles här och här.
A number of adoptee guests were invited to share our thoughts for the online vigil: Kev Minh Allen (Vietnamese American adoptee), Lynelle Long (Vietnamese Australian adoptee), Kayla Zheng (Chinese American adoptee), Lee Herrick (Korean American adoptee).
I share with you what I spoke about in honour of Christian Hall.
My name is Lynelle Long, I’m the founder of Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV). I’d like to thank you Adam Chau for organising this online event today in honour of Christian. Thankyou Nicole, Christian’s cousin who is on our call, for allowing us to join in with this vigil. I’m so sorry for your family’s loss! It’s a privilege to be able to speak. I am a person with lived experience of intercountry adoption and like Christian Hall, I am of Chinese descent … except I was born in Vietnam and adopted to Australia, whereas he was born in China and adopted to the USA.
The common thread that unites me with Christian Hall is that we both experienced abandonment as an infant. No matter what age we are, for an adoptee, loss of our first family as abandonment/relinquishment is a raw and painfully traumatic experience. It stays with us throughout life in the form of bodily sensations and gets easily triggered. When this happens, these sensations flood our body as fear, panic, anxiety.
Worse still is that when our abandonment occurs as an infant, we have not developed a language as a way to understand our experience. We are simply left with pre-verbal feelings (bodily sensations). It took me over 20 years until I read the first book, The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier which changed my life in terms of coming to understand how abandonment and adoption had impacted me. That book was the first to help give words to the experience I felt up until then, as an entirely somatic experience, as uncomfortable sensations in my body, that I hadn’t understood, which I’d spent my life running away from every time they re-emerged.
The other common thread that unites me with Christian Hall is that we both experienced suicidal ideation and attempts. For him, it tragically meant the end of his life by police officers who did not understand his traumas. For me, after numerous failed attempts and ending up in ER, it meant a long process of awakening to the trauma I had lived. 20+ years later, I have spent most of this time helping to awaken our society to what adoption is really about for us, the adopted person.
Being adopted never leaves us. We might try to escape and pretend that it has no impact but deep down to our core, our abandonment wires almost every aspect of our being – most importantly, how we connect or not to others around us and to ourselves. At its core, intercountry adoptees experience loss of identity, race and culture. Unless we have supports around us that understand and help us to overcome the trauma of abandonment early on, we stumble in the dark, completely unaware of how our abandonment impacts us. Many adoptees call it “being in the fog” until we become awakened. Today, decades after Nancy Verrier first wrote her amazing book, we now have many, many books written by adoptees who are THE experts of our own lived experience. These books are a written testament to the complexities we live through adoption and how this impact us.
In the past 2 months, I have worked with others to speak out about the impacts of abandonment and adoption trauma and the direct connection to risk of suicide. I acknowledge that Christian’s family do not relate his tragic death to suicide, but I suspect his feelings of abandonment were triggered as key events led to him being on the bridge that day. I hope that more adoptive families will educate themselves about the complexities we live as people who get disconnected from our origins via intercountry adoption. There are almost 2 million of us worldwide and we are speaking out en-masse to help the world understand it is not a rainbows and unicorns experience. We require lifelong supports from professionals who are trauma and adoption trained. In America alone, there are hundreds of thousands of intercountry adoptees – America remains the biggest receiving country in the world. Too many are struggling emotionally every day, yet in the USA, there is still no free national counselling service for intercountry adoptees and their families. There is also NO national post adoption support centre in the USA funded to help intercountry adoptees grow into adulthood and beyond. Isn’t it a huge shortcoming that the largest importer of children in the world has no lifelong supports fully funded, equitable, freely accessible – how can America expect positive outcomes for children who are amongst the most vulnerable if we don’t fund what we know they need?
I never knew Christian personally. I only discovered him through his death. I wish I had known him. From the many intercountry adoptees I connect to, I know we gain so much emotionally from being connected to others just like us. Being connected to our peers helps reduce those feelings of isolation, helps us understand we aren’t the only ones to experience life this way, helps connect us to sources of support and validation that we know has worked. I wish Christian had met our community. I’ll never know if it would have made the difference so that he wasn’t there that day on that bridge. As an adoptee, I suspect Christian most likely wanted help that day, help to ease his hurting soul, not death.
Also, let’s take a moment to remember his biological family in China. Whether they ever truly had a choice in his relinquishment, we’ll probably never know but from my knowledge in this field, it’s most likely not. Christian’s adoption was likely the result of the 1-Child Policy era in China where thousands of families were forced to relinquish their children, many of them ending up intercountry adopted like Christian. Please take a moment to consider that through adoption, his biological family don’t even have the right to know that he has passed away.
The travesty in adoption is that trauma is experienced by all in the triad (the adoptee, the adoptive family, the biological family) yet the traumas continue to go largely unrecognised and unsupported in both our adoptive and birth countries. We must do better to prevent the unnecessary separation of families, and where adoption is needed, ensure that families undertake adoption education, learning about its complexities in full and having free equitable access for life to the professional supports needed.
My huge thanks to his extended and immediate family for being brave and opening themselves up thru all this trauma and allow these vigils where his life and death can be honoured for the greater good. I honour the pain and loss they’ve lived and thank them immensely for allowing our intercountry adoptee community to join in with them in support.
Thank you.
If you would like to support Christian’s family and their push for justice, please sign the petition här.
If you would like to better understand the complexities involved in intercountry adoption as experienced by adoptees, our Video Resource is a great place to start.Wouldn’t it be amazing to create a resource like this to help educate first responders to better understand the mental health crises that adoptees experience.
by a Chinese father who lost his daughter Marie via intercountry adoption.
Lone Sitting
Tossing High and Low
Longing for Understanding
Living with a Dim Hope
There was a notification on my Facebook that Marie is following me. Normally I don’t accept follower or friend requests, but the name was Marie, so I accepted and left it, not paying much attention. The next day as I was walking with my daughter to go Tesco to get some groceries for cooking that day, I received a message from Marie. “Hello, I am trying trace a Clement who knew Agnes in 1972, please let know if that is you?” I was totally shocked. I immediately answered back, “Yes” and asked who she is. She answered, “I am her daughter.” In my heart I knew it was her, the one I missed all these years. I have been living with a very dim hope of finding her all these years. I replied, “I hope I am not dreaming!” She replied, “I think you are my father”.
The next thing I asked her was about the day that I can never forget. “Is your date of birth 9 August?” She answered with a YES. Never had I imagined this day would come. My daughter Denise saw my expression and she asked me what was wrong. I told her my daughter that was given away through adoption has found me. “Ayoi, you give me goosebumps,” Denise said. I don’t hide my past from my children, only my private life. Time didn’t permit us to talk more over Facebook as I had to finish our shopping then rush back to cook and deliver the food, but I promised to stay in contact.
The whole episode of finding my daughter Marie was supposed to be a happy moment and it still is. But it was more than happiness. After sharing my part of signing her adoption papers and finding out about her life with some photos, she shared two photos which brought back all the memories of my time with Agnes, her mother. When I saw the photo of Marie and her husband, it was like looking at Agnes. She’s so much like her. Another photo of Agnes standing alone reminded me of the only photo both of us had taken as a couple, in a photo studio. She also wore a saree at that photo session.
My daughter Denise wants me to video call Marie. I told her with my bad hearing problem and Marie’s English slang it might be hard to communicate. But the truth is looking at Marie is like looking at Agnes. I am not yet ready. With all these memories coming back, I realise I have not forgotten or ever stopped loving her. I still miss her for all these years. Unknowingly, my love for Agnes has caused my marriage to fail. There was always a third person in our bed. My injustice to my children. I was once involved in Marriage Ministry and I realise I have created so much rubbish in my life.
I have lived a life of denial.
I knew Agnes in 1970 through her brother Bernard. We were close friends as we worked in the same school. He was a temporary teacher and I was the office boy in the school office. I spent most night at his house as my house was nearby. Bernard had three other brothers and three sisters. Agnes was the elder of the three sisters. Agnes always had a smile on her face and was a very gentle and genuine person. She had long ponytail hair. I got along well with the family and had Christmas with them. I started to have feelings for her and asked to go for a dance date on New years eve. She said yes but I had to ask Bernard for permission as he was more or less the head of the family. I asked him and he had no objection, so we went for our first date.
We enjoyed ourselves that night and I knew I was in love with her. Even though I had been with a few other girls previously, I had never experienced this feeling before. I realised that she was my first love. By the time we reached her house it was already 1am and New Years Day. After spending some time with the family and wishing everyone Happy New Year it was time for me to go home. Agnes walked me out of the house. I was alone with her and I expressed my feelings to her and asked her to be my girlfriend. She said yes but we would have a problem telling Bernard. I told her I would talk to him and we ended with our first kiss.
A few days later, I did speak to Bernard about my relationship with his sister but to my surprise, he did not object so I started to spend more time at her house. Bernard was good with his guitar and Agnes liked to sing. I can’t sing but I often jammed with them. I have many happy memories of that time. Agnes and Bernard were often invited to be guest singers at the Singing Talent time contest show. At one of the shows where they had invited Agnes to sing, just as she was about to go on stage she said to me, “This song is for you “. Looking at me she started to sing. She sang “Let it be me”. Can I ever forget that night with that song? NO, never in my life will I ever forget that night.
We were together for two years. As time went by, we became more intimate and one day she found out she was pregnant. We wanted to get married but we had a problem of getting her mothers’ approval. So we decided to go and see the Priest for advice and ask her parents approval. What we didn’t expect was that her mother not only didn’t approve of our marriage but also arranged with the priest for Agnes to go to the Centre for Unwed Mothers. I went to her house to plead with her mother but they chased me out of the house. The family knew all along about our relationship but they went against me. I went to see the Priest but he told me that Agnes would be leaving Taiping in two days time. My mother even went to her house to plead with their family but they said no. They didn’t even allow me to see Agnes before she left.
After two months I couldn’t stand it anymore, I missed Agnes and I worried about her. I went to see the Priest to find out her whereabouts, but he didn’t want to give me information about her. I pleaded with him crying in his office for a long time. In the end, he told me and even arranged for me to meet Agnes with the nun. She was taken to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Batu Arang, near Kuala Lumpur. That very night I took a train to Kuala Lumpur and went by bus to Batu Arang, quite a distance from Kuala Lumpur. I managed to see Agnes after two months. The nun was good enough to give us time together alone. Before I left that place the nun told me that I could only visit her once a month. During her stay there, I visited her four times. The last time I visited her was a few weeks before her delivery. During the last visit we talked about naming the baby. During her stay there, she was close to a nun by the name of Sister Marie. So, we decided to name her Marie if we had a daughter, or if we had a son, Mario. We even talked about working in Kuala Lumpur after her delivery. She was not keen to go back to Taiping. As for the baby, we would let my mother take care of her.
A few weeks later, I was at the church for early morning service and the Priest informed me that Agnes had been admitted for delivery the night before. I rushed to Kuala Lumpur by taxi. By the time I reached her, she had already delivered. When I saw her, she just out of the delivery room but I didn’t see the baby. She told me the nurse was washing her. When the nurse came out with the baby, she asked me if I was the father, I nodded, and she handed me the baby. I carried her for some time until Agnes asked what to give her as a second name. I suggested Geraldine and she agreed. She gave me her identity card to register the birth certificate. I handed over the baby to her and she smiled, saying to the baby “You are Marie Geraldine L__.” I was with her until after visiting hours. Before I left, I told Agnes that I would see her in three weeks time because I could only take the birth certificate in three weeks time. I did not know that this would be the last time I would ever see them both.
Two weeks later the priest informed me that I was summoned to court to sign Marie up for adoption. I panicked and told my mother about it and she asked me to bring Marie back. I went with a heavy heart. When I reached there, they gave me some documents to sign. I refused to sign and told them that I wanted to keep the baby. The person in charge told me that whether I signed or not, the adoption would be processed because the mother had full rights. I said I wanted to adopt Marie under my mother’s name. What he answered surprised me. A father cannot adopt a female child but if it had been a boy, there would have been a possibility. In one day, I lost everything. I had no choice but to sign the document and rush to Batu Arang. But the nun refused to see me and would not allow me past the gate. Two months later I went again. This time one of the nuns came out to meet me but would not allow me to go in. She told me that Agnes had left the place and the baby had been sent to the government welfare home. There was nothing I could do anymore but to leave with a heavy and angry heart.
For forty-eight years, every year I wished Happy Birthday to the daughter I have never seen but was just a shadow in my heart. I only knew she was somewhere on the planet. I wished her Happy Birthday and said a prayer for her. This is where I have done injustice to my other children. I have not wished a Happy Birthday to any of my own children who are with me. My children have not celebrated birthdays growing up. As time went by, to the time when I realised Marie should be reaching young adult age, I took opportunities to come to Kuala Lumpur shopping mall. I would sit in a corner watching as the girls went by, wondering if any of them could be Marie. It was just a dim glimmer of hope. I might have seen her without even knowing. It gave me some small comfort.
Thankfully this year on her 49th birthday, I can personally wish her happy birthday! All these years, it’s a moment I have waited for with a dim glimmer of hope. Thank you Marie for finding me!
Agnes there is always a place for you in my heart. May you rest in peace as our daughter has found us.
Next Week: Marie’s thoughts from reunion with her Chinese father.
förbi Kara Bos, born in South Korea and adopted to the USA.Kara became the first Korean intercountry adoptee to fight legally and win paternity rights to her Korean father.
Almost one year ago it was confirmed that 오익규 was my father. It’s the first time I’ve publicly shared my father’s name.
As I walk under these beautiful Cherry Blossoms and appreciate their beauty my heart continues to attempt to mend after being shattered into a million pieces over the course of one year. The confirmation in DNA in knowing who my father was, brought a sense of victory when I was constantly faced with uncertainty and being told I was wrong. The continued lack of communication, inhumane treatment and not allowing me to meet my father by his family pushed me to fight back, and reclaim my identity.
June 12th, 2020 marked the date that I was recognised by Korean law that 오익교 was my father, and I was added into his family registry as 오카라, which should have been done back in 1981 when I was born. This again was a victory of reclaiming what was lost, justice rectified. I was no longer an orphan, with parents unknown, and no identity. However, my one and only meeting will forever be etched into my memory and heart as a horror movie. One filled with regret and what if’s….as I found out later, from August he was taken to the hospital and stayed there until his death on December 3rd, 2020 (86 yrs).
If I hadn’t filed the lawsuit in November 2019, I wouldn’t have known in April 2020 that he was my father, I would never have met him and I wouldn’t know now that he has passed.
Even if this heart break has been immense, at least I know … that’s what it means to be adopted.
förbi Sabine Isabelle adopted from Haiti toKanada.
Restore the links between adoptees from Haiti born as unknown parents and their biological parents.
The dark side
Before April 1, 2014: date of the signing of the Hague Convention in Haiti. Thousands adopted without identity were adopted internationally with a mention born of an unknown mother and father or sometimes the first name of ‘only one parent. Among her children, several were unfortunately entrusted to non-full adoption through human trafficking of all kinds. Some children simply want to find their biological family because they feel they do not have access to their medical history, their legitimate identity.
Studies have shown that many children from adoptions live with traumas with psychological impacts ranging from suicide to neurodevelopmental effects that are due to their adoption. Several have been entrusted to benevolent adoptive families but ill prepared to welcome a child weakened by the injury of abandonment, moreover many of these have experienced a double abandonment of their adoptive parents by being placed in a reception center or a second adoptive family.
A tiny fraction of biological parents are slowly starting to find their biological children. Some testify that they did not knowingly give their children for adoption, but may rather have confided the assets temporarily and that on their return to the orphanage the child had been given up for adoption without their consent and without any possibility of information to find contact with this children in other cases of biological parents were told that the biological parent was dead when it is false and so many other situations not to all named. This is a child who was adopted said without real identities and / or without identities of their 2 biological parents was not beyond a reasonable doubt, adoptable. Surveys, theses, and numerous testimonies also show that only 10% of these children were in fact really orphans. Since some of us are now old enough to take steps to find our biological families, we are amazed to witness all these hidden defects.
Another problem is on the horizon: failures to be helped by the various establishments such as: orphanage, hospital that asks us to donate sums of money to obtain our legitimate information … So here we are newly confronted with so-called Good Samaritans who offer us to carry out our research for them also a sum of money, a unstructured and corrupt circle that continues. It’s a call to villainy. How do you distinguish the good from the bad foreign Samaritan? We have and will leave an empty legacy of identity that we will leave to our children and our future generations. As the pioneers of this experimental generation on international adoption in Haiti we ask for your support in all its forms in order to restore the balance.
Original submission in French
Rétablissont les liens entre les adoptés d’Haïti nés sous l’appellation de parents inconnus et leurs parents biologiques.
Le côté sombre
Avant le 1er avril 2014 : date de la signature de la convention de La Haye en Haïti .Des milliers adoptés sans identité ont été adoptés à l’international avec une mention nées d’une mère et d’un père inconnu ou parfois le prénom d’un seul parent . Parmi ses enfants, plusieurs ont été confié malheureusement à l’adoption non plénière à travers un trafic d’humain de tout genre. Certains enfants veulent tout simplement retrouver leur famille biologique puisqu’ils estiment ne pas avoir accès à leur antécédents médicaux, leur identité légitime.
Les études ont démontrés que plusieurs enfants issues de c’est adoptions vivent avec des traumatismes ayant des impacts psychologique allant du suicide aux effets neuro développementaux qui sont due à leur adoption. Plusieurs ont été confiés à des familles adoptives bienveillantes mais mal préparées à accueillir un enfant fragilisé par la blessure d’abandon, d’ailleurs nombreux de ceux-ci ont vécu un double abandon de leur parents adoptif en étant placé dans un centre accueille ou une deuxième famille adoptive.
Une infime partie de parents biologiques commencent tranquillement à retrouver leur enfants biologique. Certain témoignent ne pas avoir données leur enfants à l’adoption en tout connaissance de cause mai plutôt les avoirs confiés temporairement et qu’à leur retour à l’orphelinat l’enfant avait été donné en adoption sans leur consentement et sans aucune possibilité d’information pour retrouver le contact avec cette enfants dans d’autres cas des parents biologiques se sont fait dires que le parent biologique était mort alors que c’est faux et tant d’autres situation pour ne pas tous les nommés. C’est enfant qui ont été adoptés dit sans réel identités et/ou sans identités de leurs 2 parents biologiques n’était pas hors de doute raisonnable, adoptable. Des enquêtes, thèse, et nombreux témoignages présentent également que seulement 10 % de ces enfants étaient en fait réellement orphelins. Puisque certain de nous sommes maintenant assez âgés pour entreprendre des démarches de recherche pour retrouver leur famille biologique, nous assistons avec stupéfaction à tous ces vices cachés.
Un autre problème est à horizon ; fautes de se faire aider par les diverses établissement tel que ; orphelinat, hôpital qui nous demande de donné des des sommes d’argent pour obtenir nos renseignements légitime… Nous voilà donc nouvellement confronté à de soi-disant bon samaritains qui nous offre d`effectuer nos recherche moyennant eux aussi une somme d’argent, un cercle sans structure et corrompus qui se perpétue. C’est un appel à la villigence .Comment distinguer le bon du mauvais samaritain étrangé ? Nous avons et nous laisseront un héritage identitaire vide que nous laisserons à nos enfants et nos futures générations. En tant que pionniers de cette génération expérimentale sur l’adoption internationale sur Haïti nous demandons votre soutien sous toutes ses formes afin de rétablir l’équilibre.
förbi Atamhi Cawayu, doctoral researcher at Ghent University (Belgium) and the Bolivian Catholic University ‘San Pablo’ (Bolivia). Together with Vicente Mollestad and Teresa Norman, they run Network of Bolivian Adoptees.
This blogpost was initially posted on Atamhi’s Facebook profile and Instagram-account @displaced.alteño
Searching for first family and adoptee activism: Some reflections
In 1993 I got displaced/adopted to Belgium when I was six-month-old. According to my papers, I was found as a new-born in the city of El Alto in Bolivia. Since my twenties, I started to return and reconnect with Bolivia. In the past two years I live more in Bolivia than in Belgium and I consider myself ‘based in Bolivia’. In all these years, I have attempted to search for information about my pre-adoptive past. Since June, together with a fellow Bolivian adoptee friend, we started our search here in Bolivia by starting a big campaign to make ourselves visible.
Reflection 1: Putting up posters in the city
In June 2020, my friend and I started to prepare our searches for our Bolivian relatives by designing posters and putting them in various streets and neighbourhoods in the cities of La Paz and El Alto. It’s not the first time I engage in searching for first families, in the past years I have completed searches for other Bolivian adoptees, which sometimes led to reunions. However, searching is challenging, especially when you don’t have names, places or anything that might lead to our families.
In Bolivia there is a central authority responsible for international adoption, yet there is no support from organisations or institutions who can really help us. In our cases, we have limited information, but other adoptees have the full name of their mother, or names of family members. Even in their cases it’s often a bureaucratic journey to obtain more information. In addition, most of us don’t know the language, are not familiar with the system, and do not always have the time to search.
When I started to do my PhD on this topic, my goal has always been to have not only a better insight into the adoption system in Bolivia but also to ‘crack’ the system and understand which clues are necessary in finding one’s family. Besides I think it’s important to document the stories of the first parents and take their experiences into account if we really want to make an honest evaluation of the system of adoption.
When preparing the posters, making the design, paying the prints, I could only think of one thing: we as adult adoptees have the resources to start this search and do it in an almost professional way. Our parents probably didn’t have the same amount of resources, and even if they did, their stories were regarded as less interesting than ours right now.
Reflection 2: Engaging with TV media
After our first round of posters, we received a message from a journalist from a Bolivian TV channel who was interested in our stories. A few days later they interviewed us, and it was broadcasted one day later. Since then our story was covered by national TV media in Bolivia and it received lots of attention. The media is a necessary evil. It helped a lot in having our cases visible, yet it’s hard to control the questions. They also have their own narrative they want to show.
These experiences made me reflect about several things. Our stories were largely framed as ‘abandoned babies’ returning to Bolivia, after being adopted internationally, however this narrative already makes a lot of assumptions of our mothers abandoning us. When reading the comment section (I know I should not do this) a big part of the viewers didn’t understand why we would search for someone ‘that doesn’t look for us’. However, it’s so much more complex…
In my case I was found, but I don’t know what really happened. It’s easy to assume I was ‘abandoned’ by one of my parents, but I don’t know. In my research on first parents, I have encountered several parents who never gave up their child to adoption, did it in vulnerable circumstances, or were even pressured by intermediaries (and I’m not even talking about kidnap and illegal adoption). Yet, in many cases they were interested to know what happened to their children, if they were still alive, if they ended up well, etc. Part of our activism is also to speak about this other side of adoption. It’s not always a fairy-tale as many people think. We are part of system that exploits global inequalities, displaces poor brown/indigenous bodies from South to North, and prefers parenthood from the Global North over parenthood of the Global South.
It is irritating people don’t understand the complexity and violence relinquishment and adoption can entail. Even if our parents wanted to look for us, they wouldn’t be able to find us as we have been relocated and displaced to other continents. When I search for my ‘family’, it is to make myself findable, so they know I am here in Bolivia and willing to be in touch with them.
Reflection 3: The violence of international adoption
In the days after our first interview, various Bolivian TV channels called us for an interview. Our story was spread nationwide by radio, TV, newspaper. We tried to take advantage of this moment to open the discussion on transnational adoption.
During the interviews we tried to mention that for us adoptees there is no assistance for adoptees to search. Not in our adoptive countries, nor in Bolivia. We have to do almost everything by ourselves, and then I am not even talking about learning the language, understanding the documents, being familiar with the city. As my friend mentioned in several interviews, “searching is something political”. For me searching is doing something you were not supposed to do. It’s opening up histories that were meant to be hidden, it’s doing something within a system that tried to erase everything of your being.
Moreover, another dominant idea is to be lucky and fortunate when being adopted transnationally. One of the journalists said to me “you must be very fortunate”, “many people here would love to be in your shoes”. Throughout the years I have met many people, especially here in Bolivia, who told me I must have been lucky to be have been saved from my ‘miserable future’ in Bolivia and to have a ‘wealthy’ life in Europe. It’s like people think we only ‘won’ by being adopted internationally, but they often forget we have lost many things. I consider all the opportunities I have because of growing up in Europe as compensation for everything I have lost, and I have lost everything.
From my personal perspective, the violence implicit in transnational adoption is to be involuntary transcontinentally displaced, completely severed from our genetic ancestors, disconnected from our community, culture, language, nation, continent, and without any possibility to find our families ever again. For most of us Bolivia will become a country we once lived in. In addition, all our former identities are erased so we can be reborn, renamed, Christianised and assimilated with our adoptive countries. We grow up with complete strangers we are expected to love and call family. We are being brought into a society that doesn’t want us, that racialises us and discriminates us, without any community that provides shelter or understanding. This so-called child protection system – mostly in the benefit of well-off Western adoptive parents who wants to fulfil their heteronormative parental dream – erases everything from us. It is not the first time in colonial history child welfare systems are used to shape, control and erase indigenous children’s identities, and most children adopted from Bolivia have an indigenous background, be it Aymara or Quechua. Transnational adoption is for me an ongoing colonial project of civilising, controlling and managing children from the Global South, transforming them from ‘savages’ to ’civilised’ citizens in the benefit of the capitalist machine of the North. Transnational adoption would not have been possible without a history of colonialism and its ongoing colonial gaze towards countries in the South such as Bolivia.
The adoptee experience is something very diverse. I know some adoptees might disagree on this and that’s fine. I also know other adoptees might recognise themselves in what I write. Every experience is valid. However, my fight and activism are structural against a system that has caused a lot of injustices and is not in the benefit of first parents and adult adoptees. As another adoptee once told me: our parents maybe didn’t have the resources to fight for their rights, but we have, and we will fight for them.
There was an interesting post going around an adoptive family facebook group during National Adoption Awareness Month that I haven’t seen before. It got me inspired to share from the intercountry adoptee perspective what I would change IF we could.
The question was: “If you had the power to change any adoption laws, what would you change?” As you can imagine in an adoptive parent forum, many of the answers were adoptive and prospective parent centric. I did share a few of my initial thoughts, which unsurprisingly, in that group, not very popular. So let’s share my thoughts here as essentially this is the crux of what ICAV tries to do – we speak out to help policy makers and implementors think about what their processes and practices do to the child, the adoptees for whom it’s meant to be about. Some of the responses from ICAV members are incorporated as we did have quite an active discussion in our facebook group for adult intercountry adoptees.
If I could change adoption laws as an intercountry adoptee, in no particular order, I would:
make it illegal to traffic children via intercountry adoption and ensure a legal pathway for reparative & restorative justice — such as allowing us to return to our homeland and/or original family, if and when we desire;
make it illegal to rehome or return us;
make it illegal to change or falsify our original identity that includes DNA testing the relinquishing parents to confirm their parentage of us;
make it illegal to abuse us;
create a legal pathway to prosecute the agency for failing to adequately psychologically assess our parents to ensure no further harm is done via the adoptive family environment;
make it a legal requirement for all the actors who participate in the facilitation of adoption to provide lifelong post adoption supports that are free, equitable, and comprehensive, arising from a trauma informed model. It needs to be itemised what Post Adoption encompasses e.g., full search and reunion services, translation of documents, language courses, cultural activities, psychological counselling, return to homeland services, open access to our identity documents, etc.,
make it illegal to trick birth parents, to ensure they fully understand what relinquishment and adoption means;
make it illegal to adopt a child until it is proven beyond doubt that no immediate family, kin or local community can support and raise the child; this must include proof that the provision of a range of financial and social welfare supports have been offered;
create a legal pathway for orphanages, agencies, lawyers and judges to be prosecuted by birth families who are prevented access to their child, especially in situations where they change their minds;
create a legal pathway to prosecute countries who fail to give citizenship or deport intercountry adoptees; this includes removing these countries who accept or send deportees from any international convention;
make it illegal to separate twins;
centralise adoption, bring back full accountability of adoption to the State and remove the privatised model of intercountry adoption agencies to remove the conflict of interest and the blame shifting;
remove money and fees;
make it illegal for private lawyers to facilitate intercountry adoptions;
make expatriate adoptions go through the same process as intercountry adoptions in the adopting country rather than being able to by-pass the tougher requirements.
make all plenary adoptions illegal;
legalise a new form of care internationally that incorporates the concepts of simple adoption, kinship care, stewardship, permanent care, and guardianship models that provides for our care but not at our cost in identity and removal of connection to ALL kin;
create a law that allows adoptees the right to decline their adoptive parents as an adult if they wish;
create a pathway to ensure Dual citizenship for all intercountry adoptees that includes citizenship for our generational offspring, should they wish.
This is just a starting list for thinking about what laws would need creating or changing in order to protect the rights of adoptees! I haven’t even started to discuss what laws would be needed from our original family perspectives. It would be interesting to hear their perspective. One has to question the current bias of existing laws that are skewed and mainly protect the interests of the adopters instead of a balance between all three and prevent intermediaries taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of each of the triad members.
There will always be vulnerable children who need care but today’s existing Plenary adoption laws are archaic and outdated. We adoptees know from living the experience that there are many gaps and pitfalls in the current plenary adoption laws used in intercountry adoption today.
Hello everyone. My name is Jessica Davis. My husband and I adopted from Uganda in 2015. I would like to share my thoughts regarding a memory that appeared on my facebook timeline.
If you are at all familiar with timehop on facebook you know that almost daily either a photo, video or post from your past will show up on your timeline giving you the opportunity to reflect and share. Well, today this is the photo that popped up for me.
Four years ago today, we found out Namata’s visa was approved to come to America with us. As westerners, we tend to love pictures like this when it comes to adoption and in some ways that is understandable. If Namata had actually needed to be adopted, it would’ve definitely been a photo worth getting excited over!
The problem is that all too often, we want things to be just like this picture. Everyone smiling and things wrapped up neat and tidy. But real life, even in this moment pictured here, things aren’t always as they seem. Adam and I were definitely happy in this moment and ready to be home and begin our life together, and on the outside Namata was too. But on the inside, she was about to leave everything and everyone familiar to her, for reasons she was too overwhelmed by to even question. Thankfully, over the next year she was able to express to Adam and I her questions about how she ended up being adopted. Thankfully, Adam and I didn’t go looking for the answers we wanted to hear. We chose a road that was definitely filled with uncertainty, but one we hoped would lead us to the truth. Namata deserved that!
Intercountry adoption should never be about doing a good deed in the world or becoming a mom or dad. Yes, those reasons are normal and usually are the basis for beginning the process, but at the point when one begins the process to adopt, we need to recognize that those feelings are all about the adoptive parents and not the child or children we are hoping to adopt. Adoption for them stems from a complete loss of everything and everyone familiar to them. Recognizing this is vital to a healthy adoption process. I’m convinced we, as a society, have made adoption all about becoming a family. When we do this we tend to see adoption in this happy light that doesn’t allow the adoptee the freedom to express what adoption actually is for them — loss. There should be absolutely no focus on becoming “mom” or “dad”. While I do believe it can become a natural outcome through a healthy adoption scenario, I believe it needs to come when, and only if, the child feels that connection.
I often get asked how Adam and I did what we did when we chose to reunite Namata with her family in Uganda. While there are several factors that contributed to being able to do this, the main reason was that Adam and I had both committed to meeting the needs of Namata. Finding out that she had a loving mother and family that she was unlawfully taken from, made the decision for us. As a parent I could never have lived with myself knowing I was contributing to the Ugandan sized hole in Namata’s heart. Her family and culture should never have been taken away from her in the first place. I’m eternally grateful now looking back that even in the midst of our heartache in losing one of the most amazing little girls I’ve ever met, we were given the opportunity to make things right!
Currently, there is no legal precedent for situations like ours. There are kids here in America that have been kidnapped, their families lied to, and their adoptions produced from bribes and manipulation. There are families in Uganda, and all over the world that hope daily, just see their children, siblings, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.One way to address this madness is by fighting for intercountry adoption laws to be reformed. Another way is to help change the narrative behind intercountry adoption. Within our churches, social circles and places of business, we need to recognize that intercountry adoption has become infiltrated with money and greed. When we read the statistics that say 80-90% of children in orphanages overseas have families, we need to be doing more to ensure we aren’t contributing to a system that is actually tearing families apart. There are many Facebook groups and websites that delve into the intricacies behind intercountry adoption. Join these groups and visit these pages to learn. Appeal to legislators for change and become a person that stands up against these horrible miscarriages of justice.
