Adoption and Kafala

Adoption is the formal, permanent transfer of parental rights to a family other than a child’s own and the formal assumption by that family of all parenting duties for the child. Where a child’s parents are living and their parental rights have not been terminated, they must provide informed consent for adoption. In some countries it is not culturally acceptable to give the parental rights to a non-family member, and therefore alternative long-term care options must be pursued e.g. kinship care. In some Islamic countries, the term ‘Kafala’ in Islamic law is used to describe a situation similar to adoption, but without the severing of family ties, the transference of inheritance rights, or the change of the child’s family name.   

 

Displaying 21 - 30 of 617

Kyung-eun Lee,

South Korea experienced international scrutiny over its irregular intercountry adoption practices in the 1980s. However, it eventually came to be viewed as a model of transparent and efficient adoptions. This façade disguises an orphan adoption system that has become entrenched over the decades. Today, adoptees continue to lobby for their right to origins. This paper explores South Korea’s laws and policies, which nullified the rights of adoptees, and it calls for receiving countries to assume co-responsibility to restore these rights.

Harriet Ward, Lynne Moggach, Susan Tregeagle, Helen Trivedi,

This book presents new and vivid findings concerning the extensive vulnerability of this population of children at the point of entry to care. It also shows that there is much to learn at an international level from the experiences of those involved in mandatory face-to-face post adoption contact - a uniquely Australian policy. The book provides evidence which shows how continuing post-adoption contact was experienced by adoptees and their adoptive parents. This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.

Alliance for Children Everywhere (ACE) Transition Partners,

In this video Simon Kanyembo, Director of Social Services at ACE Zambia, addresses the following questions: why child welfare organizations should prefer family-based care to institutional care and response to children who are abandoned or unable to be reintegrated.

Republic of Kenya, Changing the Way We Care,

This framework was developed to guide the process of taking in vulnerable children by families, whether they are related to the specific families or not and bringing them up the same way they bring up their biological children.

Elvira C. Loibl,

A growing movement of illegally adopted individuals request remedies and reparations for the human rights violations that they and their biological families had suffered. This article explores a number of measures that the stakeholders in the receiving countries can use in an effort to repair the human rights violations caused by illegal intercountry adoptions, borrowing ideas from transitional justice. In order to effectively redress the harm inflicted upon victims of illegal adoptions, a policy on remedies should combine instruments of retributive justice, aimed at holding wrongdoers accountable, with measures of restorative justice that focus on the victims’ needs and interests.

Transforming Children's Care Global Collaborative Platform, Child Identity,

This webinar, the fourth in a series from the Transforming Children's Care Global Collaborative Platform, explored the importance of protecting the child’s right to identity in how it is created, how it may be modified and/or falsified in alternative care as well as the need to preserve information about the child’s identity, notably family relations.

JaeRan Kim - Child Abuse & Neglect,

This study sought to understand how intercountry adoptees with adoption discontinuity histories experience legal, relational, and residential permanency losses through the framework of ambiguous loss and trauma.

Heather A. Yarger, Teresa Lind, K. Lee Raby, Lindsay Zajac, Allison Wallin - Child Maltreatment,

The current study assessed the efficacy of the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up intervention for reducing behavior problems in 122 children adopted internationally.

Nuria Molano, Esperanza León, Maite Román, Jesús M. Jiménez-Morago, Carmen Moreno - ,

In the present study, the authors explored the adult-child interactions that took place in 116 families from Spain: 28 long-term non-kin foster families, 34 adoptive families, and a community comparison group made up of 54 families.

Ching-Hsuan Lin, Yu-Wen Chen, Chin-Wan Wang, Amy Conley Wright, Margaret Spencer, Sonja Van Wichelen - International Social Work,

This study explores issues on post-adoption services in intercountry adoptions based on the perspectives of adoption professionals from Taiwan and Australia.