Mira Terada, head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, interviewed Arun Dohle, director of the Dutch NGO Combating Child Trafficking, which defends and protects the rights of minors and their parents. He spoke about how he himself was illegally removed from India and put up for adoption in Germany, why the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child no longer applies in the EU, and which countries are most involved in child trafficking.
Mira Terada: Hello! Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed by the Foundation to Battle Injustice. Please tell our viewers and readers what you do.
Arun Dohle: My name is Arun Dohle. I am the director of the Dutch NGO Against Child Trafficking (ACT). Our organization is engaged in human rights activities within the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. International adoption is the legalized sale of children. We want to stop this, and we are helping the victims. We help adults who were separated from their families as children and help parents find their children who have been abducted from them. I myself was adopted from India. That’s how I got into child protection.
M.T.: Could you tell us about your history of finding your biological parents? What difficulties did you face? Why did it take a long 17 years?
A.D.: My parents are Indian, but I grew up in Germany. When I started looking for parents, I didn’t know anything about India. This is in 1993. There was no internet. I didn’t know anyone in India. It is a completely different culture, a completely different language. It took me many years to find my parents.
CHILDREN FROM INDIA WERE FREQUENTLY TAKEN TO ANOTHER COUNTRY WITHOUT DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE PARENTS’ REFUSAL OF PARENTAL RIGHTS. THE AUTHORITIES OF THE HOST COUNTRIES JUST BELIEVE THAT THE PARENTS REJECTED THESE CHILDREN.
The same thing happened to me. I didn’t know my mother’s name or address. The Indian authorities refused to help me in my search, not only because of corruption, but also because my mother was not married. To separate mother and child just because the mother is not married is a crime against humanity. In India this happens all the time. This happened all over the world: in Ireland, in Belgium, France and Australia. The authorities of these countries have already apologized for this practice. It was a problem for me to get my mother’s identifying information and I had to go to the high court. I lost the case and went to the Supreme Court. Then I learned that many children were adopted just like me. Then I began to discover, step by step, that behind the beautiful façade of adoptions there was an outright trafficking of children. I looked into shelters and adoption agencies in Pune, India, and found out that they were involved in child trafficking. They were taken from unmarried mothers and poor families. These adoption agencies have made fortunes out of it. Later I found out that children from Chennai (India) were also abducted and sent for international adoption. After that, I began to help parents in search of their children. We founded ACT and began to bring parents to the Netherlands and provide them with legal assistance. Thus, my search for a mother resulted in the exposure of the legalized sale of children.
M.T.: You have already told us about your non-profit organization Against Child Trafficking and your activities. What obstacles prevented you from obtaining a ban on adoption by foreign families?
A.D.: There is a very strong lobby. When we exposed the scandal in the Netherlands, the founder of our organization, Roelie Post, published the book “Romania For Export Only”. She was invited to various TV shows as an expert. We contacted her and began to work together. Her story is also very remarkable. She has worked for the European Commission. The EU, in fact, does not have a constitution, but there are rules that must be followed in order to join it.
ROMANIA, WHICH IMPLEMENTED THE 1993 HAGUE ADOPTION CONVENTION, EXPORTED CHILDREN OUT OF THE COUNTRY BY THE THOUSANDS UNDER THE PRETEXT OF SENDING THEM TO FOREIGN SCHOOLS.
The old EU member states also took children abroad, but later they began to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As a result, the European Commission forced Romania to stop child trafficking and start implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Roelie Post led a project to bring Romania into line with EU human rights standards. Thus, in 2004, a law was passed in Romania prohibiting adoptions abroad. After that, lobbies who want to establish a new adoption policy in the EU have become more active. They are pushing for the adoption of the Hague Adoption Convention, which would legalize the adoption of children from poor countries by rich countries, which is essentially child trafficking. Because of these lobbies, we can’t stop child trafficking, but we don’t give up.
THE NETHERLANDS BECOMES THE FIRST COUNTRY TO CONDUCT AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION PRACTICES. RESEARCHERS HAVE CONCLUDED THAT INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION SHOULD BE STOP, BUT THE NETHERLANDS GOVERNMENT STILL CONTINUES THIS PRACTICE.
Another problem is that the EU intends to introduce a requirement to implement the Hague Convention on Adoption when joining the EU. A few months ago, the EU announced that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is no longer valid in the EU. This is terrible and needs to be talked about.
M.T.: Please tell us under what pretext most of the children were illegally taken away from their biological parents. To what extent were these decisions legally justified?
A.D.: From the 60s to the 80s, international adoptions were basically kidnappings. Now abducted children are telling their stories and these scandals are coming out. Now the system is more sophisticated. Children are removed from the family under the pretext that their parents cannot take care of them. The children are placed under state care. It can even be private shelters, but they still have the state license. The child is then given up for adoption to a new family. For example, according to the law of Romania and Bulgaria, if a child does not find a new family within the country within 6-12 months, the child is sent for adoption to another EU country.
M.T.: How do the cross-border family and child affairs clauses of Brussels II Revised facilitate child trafficking?
A.D.: I haven’t researched this issue, but my understanding is that Brussels II Revised is about parental abduction. There is also the Hague Convention on Adoption. These laws work together and lead to the risk that children from Germany may be placed under guardianship in Bulgaria. There are still problems with establishing jurisdiction in termination of parental rights proceedings. As far as I know, these laws are not often used by child protection services.
M.T.: There are reports that children are sent to orphanages to be sold. Estimate, please, scales of this industry.
A.D.: There are many reasons why children come to the attention of social services: abusive parents or poverty. Some people think that shelters are like boarding schools. Some parents go abroad to work and leave their children in shelters. For example, if a woman in India gets divorced and remains the sole breadwinner of a child, then often she does not have the opportunity to take care of her child, since she needs to work. That is why she can give the child to shelter. Many children end up in shelters for these reasons and not because of child trafficking.
M.T.: Which countries are most involved in child trafficking?
A.D.: EU countries, Australia and USA. In 2004, when there was a peak in international adoptions, 40-45 thousand children were involved in it. Half of them went to the EU and the other half to the US. Now the number of international adoptions has decreased by 95%, and the number of these adoptions is about 4,000.
M.T.: What are the most cruel and unfair cases of illegal confiscation of children that you have come across?
A.D.: There was a huge scandal in the Netherlands, because of which the government resigned.
THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT HAS ACCUSED A HUGE NUMBER OF FAMILIES OF CHILD BENEFITS FRAUD AND FORCED THEM TO RETURN THE FUNDS. MANY FAMILIES HAVE BEEN ON THE VERGE OF POVERTY, AND HERE THE SOCIAL SERVICES COME AND TAKE THE CHILDREN.
In the Netherlands, it is believed that after 6 months a child is attached to a foster family, and the child should not be returned to the family of origin, so as not to be traumatized. All this was done within the law. So formally it cannot be called illegal confiscation.
M.T.: Yes, the children were seized within the law, but for the parents it was the highest form of injustice. They believed that their children were kidnapped, and I asked the question from their point of view. During a recent interview with the Foundation to Battle Injustice, former US soldier Daniel Bosworth said that children in Europe are sold not only for adoption, but also for organ trafficking. Have you heard about these cases?
A.D.: I have no doubt that such cases do exist. Children can be sold for organs and for other purposes. There are cases of adoption of children by pedophiles. I don’t know the extent of this problem. There is a demand for international adoption of children, and the motives of potential guardians may be different. There were rumors that Romanian children were being sold for organs, but I have no confirmation.
M.T.: How would you comment on the numerous cases of forced removal of children from war zones by European and American military personnel? For example, the United States took several thousand children out of Afghanistan.
A.D.: Children must be evacuated from the war zone. They cannot be left there. I have little information about how many children were taken from Ukraine to Russia and for what reasons.
THE SAME ORGANIZATION THAT IN THE EARLY 90’S EXPORTED CHILDREN FROM ROMANIA TO FRANCE FOR ADOPTION IS NOW WORKING WITH UKRAINIAN CHILDREN.
We have evidence of the activities of this organization in Romania, but we do not have the opportunity to investigate in Ukraine.
M.T.: Why don’t international intergovernmental organizations such as the UN promote the fight against child trafficking while calling on governments to legalize sexual relations between adults and minors? Why do they benefit from the spread of pedophilia?
A.D.: This is a complex question, and I will divide it into two parts. There is UNICEF, which depends on US donations.
AMERICA IS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT HAS NOT RATIFIED THE UN CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD.
UNICEF receives part of its donations from the US and the other part from the EU. UNICEF’s position on intercountry adoptions is in line with the Hague Adoption Convention, not the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is also the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which should monitor how states implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, in 2004, the Committee began recommending that all states adopt the Hague Adoption Convention. I think there is corruption here. As for pedophilia, I did not study this issue.
M.T.: What measures should be taken at the international level to stop child trafficking?
A.D.: It is very simple. Once all countries comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, child trafficking will be eliminated. In order to respect the rights of the child, the state must support parents. This requires social security systems. Once these systems are in place, one of the main causes of child trafficking, poverty, will be eliminated. Moreover, the authorities of the countries where the children were trafficked should investigate these incidents.
WE HAVE PROOF THAT THE AUTHORITIES IN THE US, THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY KNOW ABOUT THE TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN IN THEIR TERRITORIES BUT DID NOTHING ABOUT IT. THE SAME IS FOR THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION.
We had evidence of the child trafficking from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We filed a complaint with the European Commission, and we were referred to the EU anti-fraud body. We thought they would start an investigation, but no one did anything. We even appealed to the European Court.
M.T.: What did they say?
A.D.: We lost the case. Nobody started an investigation. In addition, we often run the risk of being sued for defamation.