In Their Own Words: The story of DS and her family in Norway

“Later that month, I was arrested in Denmark with the children. We were taken on a night boat to K.. As we walked down the gangway the two younger children were crying desperately. An employee on the boat commented: “So terrible to hear” while we walked past where he worked. Nevertheless, CPS constantly claim that our children don’t want to go home.’

ML v Norway

Judgment of European Court of Human Rights on Right to Family Life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Date: 7 September 2017.

Chopping and Changing to Suit Its Ends by Suranya Aiyar

Suranya Aiyar writes: “The blanket confidentiality under which the Norwegian Child Welfare Service (CWS) operates is exceptional in family law and extraordinary for a public authority in a democracy……In the age of WikiLeaks, the Norwegian tolerance for a powerful public authority like the CWS deflecting inquiry by pointing to a confidentiality rule is strange.” Reflections on how confidentiality laws could be are shielding the mistakes and bias of the Norwegian child protection agency. Published in 2012 in the Hindustan Times.

What Does Gunnar Toresen Know About Children? by Suranya Aiyar

On the removal of children from a Bengali family by Norway’s notorious child protection agency in the famous Bhattacharya Case of 2012, Suranya Aiyar writes; “those who speak of racism and cultural intolerance only skim the surface of what is happening here. The question to be asked is what grotesque conception of family, of babyhood, of motherhood is at work here?” Published in 2012 by Kafila.

Norwegian Child Protection Hits Immigrants Hard by Aage Simonsen

Based on his experience monitoring child protection cases as member of a municipal monitoring committee, biologist Dr Aage Simonsen argues that the initially positive process of utilising the welfare state machinery to eradicate social divisions, has created an ideology with scant place for difference and a demand for uniformity, especially by Norway’s child protection services which view everything departing from a textbook standard as potentially harmful for children. This often results in foreigners and newcomers to the country being singled out.