Dr. Kaustav Bhattacharyya presents international “standards-setting” as a tactic by the European Union (EU) for exerting influence around the world. He argues that child welfare measures and best practices are an important tool in the EU’s exercise of “soft” empire. Dr. Bhattacharyya cautions that we in India should not blindly adopt the EU’s universalizing measures in child policy as research is showing that they have resulted in discrimination against immigrants, marginalized communities and ethnic minorities.
Category: Norway
How Norwegian experts came to reject biological kinship as relevant in child welfare policy by Professor Marianne Skanland
Professor Marianne Haslev Skanland writes about how experts in Norway came to ask for the exclusion of considerations of biological kinship – «the biological principle» – in formulating child welfare policy there. Indian readers will be intrigued to see just how far things can go once you set on the path of child rights as envisioned in the developed West today.
Norwegian MP’s Article on Child Welfare Services in India’s Sunday Guardian Makes News in Norway
“We need a child welfare that works to a greater extent with prevention and support measures at home, as well as using the children’s family or network when care is the only solution” writes Norwegian MP, Orsal Johansen in email interview with Filter Nyheter.
Norwegian MP Tears Into Their Child Welfare System
The most suspect and frustrating of all in child protection cases I hold to be the absence of any requirement of proof, of stated and reasoned cause, or of concrete answers. Allegations are made without any form of documentation, just expressions like “we think” and “our assessment”. The County Committees accept vague, undefined claims and arguments, and do not demand anything in the way of quality control and concrete justification for the CWS’s conclusions….They have in my view become a state within the state, they do not act according to existing laws and rules. It seems to me that they have one goal only: as many children as possible taken into care. This is not how the CWS should work.
Latest Norwegian CPS Fracas. Mother and Child Flee Norway for Asylum in Poland.
A Norwegian woman has requested asylum in Poland, fearing that officials in her home country will take her child away, according to a report.
How other countries have tried to reconcile with native peoples by Sahar Fatimah, The Globe and Mail, 2015
“Called the “Stolen Generations,” indigenous children and their families were routinely separated from the beginning of colonization in the 1700s. Governments and churches forced assimilation and conversion to Christianity by placing children in training institutes …”
Norway NRI kids row: The Untold Story by Sagarika Bhattacharya, Pravasi Today, May 2012
SAGARIKA BHATTACHARYA met her one-year-old daughter Aishwarya and three-year-old son Abhigyan on Wednesday. PRAVASI TODAY presents her version of what happened in Norway. Published in May 2012 by Pravasi Today.
In Their Own Words: The story of Ken and Vibeke in Norway
“It feels like everything is geared to losing invaluable time, so that we will be met with the argument that our daughter has got too attached to the foster home and that it will not be in the best interest for her to return to us.”
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.