Concerned over the declining variety of kids for adoption within the nation, a Parliamentary panel has expressed apprehension that this may increasingly level to an unlawful youngster adoption market and trafficking.
In its 118th Report on Review of Guardianship and Adoption Laws, submitted to Parliament within the just lately concluded Monsoon Session, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on personnel, public grievances, legislation and justice has famous “the paradoxical situation where on one hand there are a large number of parents willing to adopt a child, (and) on the other, there are not many children available for adoption”.
The committee, chaired by BJP Rajya Sabha member Sushil Kumar Modi, famous that in line with adoption statistics of Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), the variety of kids adopted throughout the nation declined from 5,693 in 2010 to 3142 in 2020-21. The variety of kids taken in inter-country adoption decreased from 628 in 2010 to 417 in 2020-21.
This, the committee reported, “is a reason for grave concern”.
“The committee has serious concern about decline in the number of children coming to adoption agencies over the years,” the report highlighted. “This decline, by and large, points to trafficking or a thriving illegal child adoption market. The committee is of the view that there is a need to increase surveillance, especially on unregistered child care institutions and adoption agencies/hospitals with a past record of trafficking.”
The report famous that as per info offered by CARA, 26,734 potential adoptive mother and father had been registered with CARA as on December 16, 2021, and had been ready for referral for in-country adoption. Another 1,205 potential adoptive mother and father awaited inter-country adoption as of that day, the report noticed.
As per info furnished by the Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry, the report famous, the common time taken for potential adoptive mother and father to get a referral for kids within the age group of 0-4 years is roughly two years.
“The committee takes note of the paradoxical situation where on one hand there are a large number of parents willing to adopt a child, on the other, there are not many children available for adoption, all this while the 2020 World Orphan Report estimates the number of orphans in India at 31 million,” the report acknowledged.
“Also, as per info furnished by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, as per Census 2011 there are 55,258 youngster beggars within the age group of 0 to 19 years within the nation,” it added.
According to UNICEF, virtually 10,000 kids turn out to be orphans each day. There are about 140 million orphans on the earth.
In the given scenario, the committee advisable that “a true picture of the number of children who are orphaned/abandoned” be ascertained via a district-level survey. This information must be up to date recurrently, it urged.
“There is a need to simplify the procedure further, besides bringing down the time required for placing a child in adoption to less than six months. The committee is of the view that a longer wait period often forces parents willing to adopt a child to resort to illegal adoption,” the report talked about.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
