This was submitted in 2017. Till date the Indian Foreign Ministry has no policy for this matter.

INDIAN-ORIGIN CHILDREN TAKEN BY WESTERN CHILD PROTECTION AUTHORITIES

SUMMARY OF PROPOSALS

1. Repatriation of Indian-origin children targeted for removal from parents by Western child protection authorities, so that they can be cared for by their relatives here, rather than strangers in foster care abroad.
2. Issuance of a travel advisory warning young families about child confiscation by Western child protection authorities.
3. Opportunity to make a detailed presentation to the Foreign Ministry by a small team comprising of one expert each from the United States of America, Norway and India.
4. India to build a coalition with like-minded countries for celebrating family values and more humane solutions for vulnerable children, rather than draconian child protection services as seen in the West.
5. The Issue

Every year, dozens of Indian-origin children, including babies, are being confiscated from their parents by Western child protection authorities on false allegations of abuse, neglect or parental incompetence.

In all cases, the parents are proving themselves innocent, but this takes several years. In the meantime, the children are placed in state-institutions or with state-paid foster carers, with little to no contact with their families.

The maximum number of cases we have seen are of IT professionals going with their young families to the USA. Another country where Indians often face this issue is Norway.

1. Repatriation of Confiscated Children

On request of their families, when the Indian government has intervened, for instance, in Norway and the USA, the confiscated children have been repatriated to their relatives in India. They are taken care of here by the extended family, instead of by strangers in foreign state care, while their parents prove themselves in the foreign system.

Such repatriation is permitted under international laws as it is internationally recognised that children have the right to be raised by their kith and kin, in the culture and religion of their birth. These rights exist regardless of nationality; we have had cases of babies with US passports being repatriated to grandparents, or aunts and uncles in India on these grounds.

However, in each case the repatriation process has been ad hoc and taken several months, resulting in needless trauma for the confiscated children.

We request that the Indian Foreign Ministry set up a protocol with Western governments under which when a foreign child protection authority proposes to remove an Indian-origin child from its parents, instead of taking the child into state custody, the Indian embassy is notified and, if the parents agree, the child is repatriated immediately to its relatives in India.

1. Travel Advisory

We would request that a travel advisory be issued warning young families of the following:

1. Western child protection authorities, including in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and Norway, have wide powers to confiscate babies and children from their parents. These powers exist even where the children are Indian citizens, or the family is abroad only for short- to medium-term work assignments.
2. In the USA, injuries, fractures or severe symptoms such as internal bleeding or seizures in babies/children are presumed to be caused by parental abuse. This often results in the immediate confiscation of the baby/child and all siblings from the hospital itself where the parents take their baby/child for treatment.
3. In Norway and other European countries, child protection authorities are empowered to confiscate children for reasons such as smacking a child, scolding a child loudly, feeding it by hand, sleeping with the child in the same bed, not using a nappy changing table safely, and so on.
4. Arranged marriage or a mother being young by Western standards (in the West, women tend to have babies at a later age than many Indian women) is looked upon with suspicion by Western child protection officials who are unfamiliar with Indian culture, and view these things as indicators of dysfunctional families.
5. Where the parents do not speak the local language with the local accent and idiom, or the children do not know the local language well, they are often misunderstood by child protection officials, leading to misplaced suspicion of abuse or neglect in the family.
6. Once confiscated, parental contact with the children is minimal – as low as only one hour every six months, and rarely more than once a week.
7. Each confiscated child is under risk of being placed for adoption to third parties, even as their parents fight to prove their innocence in court. Once adopted, the child’s name is changed and all contact with the birth family lost forever.
8. Presentation

Western child protection authorities are snatching children without due process, without proper judicial oversight and under cover of secrecy laws that were meant to protect the privacy of children, but are being used by these authorities to hide their mistakes.

Every year, thousands of children in developed countries, from the USA, to Europe, to New Zealand, are being snatched from perfectly normal families by child protection authorities. Both immigrant and native families are targeted. In each of these countries, judges, Members of Parliament, Heads of State, medical doctors, lawyers, academics and journalists are criticising child protection authorities for being overzealous, corrupt, racist and incompetent.

Over the years, hundreds of people in Norway, USA, Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom have connected with activists in India over this issue. They would like to make a formal presentation to the Indian Foreign Ministry on this issue. It need not be a public event, or produce any official outcome; the purpose is to inform the Indian government of the scale of the problem. The presentation can be made by a small group consisting of one expert each from the USA, Norway and India. We hereby request the opportunity to make a presentation on child confiscation in developed countries to the Foreign Ministry.

1. An Opportunity for India on the World Stage

India is seen as a leading light in the protest against the draconian Western child protection systems as it has successfully intervened in several high profile cases. The Hon’ble Foreign Minister, Mrs Sushma Swaraj, has been noted internationally for her forthright defence of Indian families abroad. There is great admiration in places like the Czech Republic, Romania and Lithuania for the way India has repatriated many of its confiscated children. In Norway, people say that it is easier for Indian-origin parents to win their children back from the authorities, than for Norwegians themselves to do so!

This presents an opportunity for India. In the field of child welfare, India can give a platform to activists in developed countries who are talking of human rights violations there, instead of only having to listen to such countries point out our shortcomings.

How can countries like Norway be ranked so high on human rights and “happiness” indices, when there is so much human suffering and systemic dysfunction in their state authorities? We can ask, for instance, why “happiness” assessments for India do not take into account the devotion with which Indians take care of their parents and grandparents, the cohesiveness of extended families, and the abstention of impoverished women from drug and alcohol use (addiction is a major cause of vulnerability amongst children of impoverished single mothers in Western societies). In making such an appeal, we would be enthusiastically joined by like-minded countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America.

The fact is that Western nations needed to develop a faceless and heartless government machinery for dealing with children because of the breakdown of family values in their societies. India should bring countries with similar family-centric cultures on a common platform to highlight this aspect of our societies, so important, not just for child welfare, but also for social stability, happiness and general welfare.

India is well-positioned to put together an international coalition of Asian, Eastern European, African and Latin American countries, that emphasises family values and humane solutions for vulnerable children, as opposed to the draconian snatching of children in the name of child protection in the West. We should seize the opportunity to take a stand on this issue on the world stage.