Madonna has adopted a one year old Malawian boy, after bringing an eleven year old girl under the impression that she was going to adopt her, and then changing her mind.
:evil:
Quote:
Madonna files adoption papers
12/10/2006 15:30 - (SA)
Lilongwe, Malawi - Madonna filed adoption papers at a Malawi court Thursday, a government official said, confirming claims that the star planned to adopt a one-year-old boy.
Kingston Kilembe director of child welfare services in the Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare and Community Services, said the celebrity and her film director husband Guy Ritchie filed adoption papers before a judge at the Lilongwe High Court.
The singer has remained tight-lipped after a Malawian man claimed that she adopted his one-year-old son.
The man, Yohame Banda, said his son David had been adopted by the singer after the boy's mother died, a month after childbirth.
He said his son left the orphanage on Monday and was taken to Lilongwe, where Madonna and her entourage were staying.
Elaine
Re: Madonna's fashion accessory
André in Zuid-Afrika wrote:
Madonna has adopted a one year old Malawian boy, after bringing an eleven year old girl under the impression that she was going to adopt her, and then changing her mind.
:evil:
Honey, it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. I'm sure it's all good, but perhaps we're so jaded with all these celebrities publicly taking up causes (Africa seems to be the cause du jour).
André in Zuid-Afrika
Re: Madonna's fashion accessory
Elaine wrote:
André in Zuid-Afrika wrote:
Madonna has adopted a one year old Malawian boy, after bringing an eleven year old girl under the impression that she was going to adopt her, and then changing her mind.
:evil:
Honey, it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. I'm sure it's all good, but perhaps we're so jaded with all these celebrities publicly taking up causes (Africa seems to be the cause du jour).
Sure, but not when it means breaking a child's heart. This is entirely about what Madonna wants. There's no altruism here. :roll: She's promised to bring the boy back occasionaly to visit his family. She clearly doesn't realise that in two, three years' time the lifestyle of his family will be totally alien to the boy.
As for the girl, she was all packed and ready to go with her new "mom" when she was coldly informed that she will have to stay put.
Elaine
Re: Madonna's fashion accessory
André in Zuid-Afrika wrote:
Elaine wrote:
André in Zuid-Afrika wrote:
Madonna has adopted a one year old Malawian boy, after bringing an eleven year old girl under the impression that she was going to adopt her, and then changing her mind.
:evil:
Honey, it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. I'm sure it's all good, but perhaps we're so jaded with all these celebrities publicly taking up causes (Africa seems to be the cause du jour).
Sure, but not when it means breaking a child's heart. This is entirely about what Madonna wants. There's no altruism here. :roll: She's promised to bring the boy back occasionaly to visit his family. She clearly doesn't realise that in two, three years' time the lifestyle of his family will be totally alien to the boy.
As for the girl, she was all packed and ready to go with her new "mom" when she was coldly informed that she will have to stay put.
Hmm. With all her fortunes, I don't see why she couldn't take both of them. I wonder if the girl had some sort of malady that M eventually decided she couldn't overcome, or was she just being a cold, heartless biatch...
André in Zuid-Afrika
Quote:
Madonna's baby whisked out of Malawi
By Elsa McLaren and agencies
The African toddler that Madonna hopes to adopt was seen by witnesses being taken aboard a small private jet which took off from an airport in Malawi today.
The infant, 13-month-old David Banda, was accompanied by one of Madonna's bodyguards on his flight. They were believed to be en route to the South African city of Johannesburg.
Jonathan Clayton, Johannesburg Correspondent of The Times, said that if the reports were correct that it was likely that the baby would continue his journey to the UK onboard a scheduled flight.
"We are assuming that the private plane is only flying locally and won't fly all the way to Britain. There are five flights scheduled to depart for London today. The assumption is that the baby will fly on a commercial flight to Britain," he said.
Mr Clayton said the adoption and subsequent flight today was a "legal nightmare" and it was not yet clear how the child had managed to leave the country without a passport. Mr Clayton said if Madonna had already fully adopted the baby there is a possibility that it could travel on her passport.
But it is still unclear if the singer will be able to bring the child into the UK, where she spends much of her time with her husband, the British film director Guy Ritchie.
Legal experts say that as Malawi is not designated as an approved country under the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption, any adoption formalised there will have no status in the UK. That means that the singer will have to go through a 'readoption" process that could take up to two years.
Human rights groups had planned to file an application today asking the court to block the adoption, which they say is illegal. Malawian law prohibits adoptions by non-residents, but officials have granted an exemption for the Ritchies.
The Eye of the Child, the leading child advocacy group in Malawi, said that the request for an injunction would be filed in a magistrate's court in the capital Lilongwe on behalf of about five dozen non-governmental organizations
Boniface Mandere, a spokesman for the children's rights group said: "They [government] haven't followed the law. What has happened is a shortcut."
The couple arrived in Malawi on October 4 for a humanitarian trip and left last Friday.
A Home Office spokeswoman said that all people who arrive in the UK should have a valid passport or visa and that babies who arrive in this country without the correct documents are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. She said that in the UK babies need their own passport but that she could not comment on the criteria of other nations' passports.
While in the impoverished nation the world's highest earning female singer spent most of her time visiting orphanages as part of a campaign to publicise the plight of some 900,000 orphans.
She has pledged to donate about $3 million to the campaign to help these children, many of whom are infected with HIV, through her Raising Malawi charity.
A final court decision on the adoption was expected within two years, after officials have had a chance to monitor how the child relates to his new environment in the United States and Britain where Madonna and Mr Ritchie have homes, according to a senior government official.
The couple already have a son, Rocco, 5, and the singer also has a daughter, Lourdes, 9.
The baby's father, Yohame Banda, said last week that he was pleased the celebrity couple wanted to adopt his son, whose mother died soon after giving birth to him. He said Madonna had promised him to bring his son back to visit him when he is older.
I have no doubt that this woman has bribed the Malawian government to ensure that she could take the baby. The money she is "donating" clearly played a part, and much, if not all, will go into the pockets of govt members. In short, she has bought herself a baby.
As a Malawian journalist remarked on Sky today: "This is Africa, this is Malawi..."
On TV earlier tonight one of her muscle monkeys was shown threatening a camera man at Joburg Airport. Just who the hell does this woman think she is? :evil:
André in Zuid-Afrika
Pauline
Re: Madonna's fashion accessory
Elaine wrote:
it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind.
But this can destroy a child's life, then there are more consequences. I think it's not a good cliché, saying (or however you consider it ) that it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind.
Elaine wrote:
With all her fortunes, I don't see why she couldn't take both of them.
I agree.
Elaine wrote:
I wonder if the girl had some sort of malady that M eventually decided she couldn't overcome, or was she just being a cold, heartless biatch...
:evil: :evil: :evil: it's being a cold heartless bitch in both those situations. It's a girl's life, and now she will feel rejected forever. If because of malady, then even more. It's absolutely disgusting and horrible that this happened. If madonna did care for this boy, then she will give financial aid so that it's possible live near his father and family, but this is *not* the case : she want him for a fashion accessory. The title of this thread is exactly correct.
It's the selling on the market of poor people, without regard for the children, just the stupid rich celebrity get whatever she want.
Liz
Yes, as it is stated in the title of the thread - "fashion accesories". Exactly.
Now it's an in-thing to adopt children from the Third World countries. More and more celebrities do so, which wouldn't be a problem per se. The problem lies in the fact that most of them don't take it seriously. The reason why they adopt a child is not that they actually want children or they are genuinely interested in social issues. They just want to show off, knowing that they will make the impression of a charitable person. No matter how challanged they are emotionally, morally etc, what bad things they have done, these pseudo-humanitarian actions make them seen as angels. But when it comes to the issue of actually taking care of the poor child, they make up their minds or they simply employ a babysitter to look after the child. They are hardly ever willing to bear the consequences.
The worst thing is that ordinary people think it's a good example to emulate.
André in Zuid-Afrika
Exactly. There's talk now that Madonna wants to adopt another child from Malawi. I guess she wants a complete set.... or maybe she's just grown tired of the first one...
Liz
<<Exactly. There's talk now that Madonna wants to adopt another child from Malawi. I guess she wants a complete set.... or maybe she's just grown tired of the first one...>>
The second option is more likely, I reckon. Madonna is a material girl after all...She 's just trying to live up to the expectations, quite successfully. Just her poor victims can see the dark side of life.
At this point I'll stop being cynical...That won't be too easy.
Uriel
Well, you all may not be aware of this, but it is actually quite common for Americans from ALL walks of life to adopt children from third world countries. It's hardly something started by or confined to the rich and famous.
The US State Department has to issue visas for all foreign adoptees entering the US, and the numbers are pretty staggering: over 20,000 per year.
If you check out the tables on this government page, you can see that the vast majority are from impoverished nations.
China actually tops the list, and other sites say that up to 95% of all Chinese children adopted by Americans are little girls -- who would otherwise be abandoned by parents wanting boys. Pity and a sense of wanting to help the disadvantaged are pretty powerful motivators, in my experience.
I remember when the stories broke about the appalling conditions in Romanian orphanages back in the 80's and 90's, and those became keenly sought after, developmental and emotional issues notwithstanding.
I knew one black family who had lived in Korea and made it their business to adopt two or three half-black, half-Korean "orphans" (most likely they were simply abandoned due to their mixed parentage), and one of my vets had two or three siblings that her parents had adopted from the third world through their church group. Even my mother sponsored a Colombian child through the mail for most of my childhood, although they never met, and the girl had her own family.
It works the same way with animals, too -- many of the proudest pet owners I met when I worked at the vet clinic were those who had rescued their mutts from a a trash can, or found them dumped in the desert, or had taken in one with major physical disabilities or from an abusive situation -- far more than those who simply paid top dollar for a purebred, even.
André in Zuid-Afrika
True, but does America have no babies in need of adoption?
It's one thing when people adopt a child with the aim of helping a child, quite another when they do so to serve their own selfish needs. The whole way Madonna did it (including quite clearly bribing officials, promising a little girl she's going to adopt her, and then changing her mind, breaking the little girl's heart in the process, making sure the media is present while she goes in search of a baby, and then letting her muscle monkeys threaten reporters when the story explodes in her face), leaves huge doubts whether humanitarian motivations played any part in this.
Oprah Winfrey has set an example that these superstars may consider follow if they really want to help. She set up a state-of-the-art school in South Africa, for girls from poor houses, thereby creating a better future for not just one child, but eventually thousands of children.
Quote:
You don't have to be Oprah to help kids
EDUCATION | S. Africa school chief raises funds for local group
April 30, 2007
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter sesposito@suntimes.com
In the poor, rural Jim Crow South, generations of blacks were told education was not meant for them.
The women in Sonya Anderson's family didn't listen.
Even so, when Anderson, now the director of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, prepared to go to Yale University in the late 1980s, it took a generous gift from an elderly woman in her community -- a relative stranger -- to help pay the bills.
An ordinary savior
"This extraordinary woman, living a very ordinary life, was my savior, my dream come true," Anderson told a crowd of 350 mostly African-American women gathered at the Peninsula Hotel on Sunday afternoon.
Anderson drew on that experience, as well as her involvement with Winfrey's South African school, to urge the audience to do everything possible to help poor children get educated.
Anderson was the keynote speaker at a fund-raiser for the south suburban chapter of Jack and Jill of America, an African-American community service group with branches nationwide.
The group raised about $75,000 in scholarship money Sunday for college-bound south suburban students, organizers said.
Anderson said many have called, asking to volunteer at Winfrey's $40 million private all-girls school in South Africa, which opened earlier this year.
Anderson said she sometimes tells these well-meaning people: "You don't have to buy a plane ticket and fly to South Africa to be involved in a child's life."
About those family visits
The elite school made headlines in March after a couple of the students' parents complained about overly strict family visit rules.
Before her speech Sunday, Anderson said the criticism is "not necessarily founded on genuine information."
"At the same time, we have these girls in our care," Anderson said. "It's their home for the vast majority of the year.
"It's just like you have rules in your home. As a school, particularly as a boarding school, there has to be some kind of structure to protect the girls."
Uriel
You can't stand Madonna, and I can't stand Oprah.... I don't care HOW much good she does!
Quote:
True, but does America have no babies in need of adoption?
Sure. I've met plenty of people who were adopted as children, or have adopted children of their own. The local paper, in fact, runs pictures and profiles of adoptable children every week, in an effort to matchmake -- not always an easy task, when most of these kids are not babies, have been confiscated from their real parents by Child Protective Services and will probably have emotional and developmental issues....
According to a quick net search, about 55,000 children are adopted per year domestically, and about 20,000 are adopted from other countries. So that's a third of all adoptions!
My point is that it's a pretty common endeavor here, and not restricted to celebrities in the least, although they get all the press, of course.
But more than that, I'm a little curious -- is there something somehow offensive about Americans adopting abroad?
André in Zuid-Afrika
Uriel wrote:
But more than that, I'm a little curious -- is there something somehow offensive about Americans adopting abroad?
Nope, not at all. I just find it somewhat curious that Americans would want to go through all the trouble of adopting foreign babies, and leave thousands of American babies in orphanages...
And there is something offensive when someone like Madonna storms in, bribes her way to adopting a baby, poses for pictures, then have her muscle monkeys threaten journos when the story turns sour.
This isn't about liking or disliking Madonna, I can take her or leave her (or at least I could before she came shopping in Africa). This is about her serving only her own needs, and using a child to do so. I do wonder whether she has bothered to apologise to that poor 11 year old girl who already had her bags packed to go with Madonna, after promises to that effect, only to hear Madonna's not interested anymore...
Quote:
MALAWI: Calls for review of law in wake of Madonna adoption
LILONGWE, 17 October 2006 (IRIN) - Madonna's "bending of the rules" in her haste to adopt 13-month-old David Banda is sending a message to child traffickers that Malawi is open for business, a southern African child welfare organisation said.
Pop star Madonna, 48, who has an estimated fortune of US$462 million, was granted an interim adoption order last week in the High Court in the capital, Lilongwe, in contradiction of the country's laws, which state that "an adoption order shall not be made to any applicant who is not resident in Malawi". The baby was whisked to Madonna's English home on the second attempt, after the initial attempt to take him out of Malawi failed because he was not in possession of a passport.
Pam Wilson, an adoption supervisor at Johannesburg Child Welfare Society, a South African nongovernmental organisation catering for children in need, told IRIN there were international systems in place, which Madonna appeared exempt from, and that child traffickers now knew "there are loopholes, and that is the message".
According to Karen Blackman, of the counter-trafficking unit of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which monitors cross-border movements of people, "globally, adoption can provide a vehicle for traffickers if the laws are not followed correctly", but IOM had no evidence to suggest this was happening in Malawi.
Wilson said baby David's adoption procedure appeared to have flouted international norms, and reports that Madonna, nicknamed the Material Girl, had chosen the child from a line-up were "terrible - it's like shopping", and "no one else has that privilege", or should have.
Wilson, who oversees about 150 international adoptions annually in accordance with the Hague Convention, said a "well-known person", whom she declined to name, recently tried to adopt a child in South Africa, but had not adhered to the correct procedures and did not follow up after being informed of them. "I think that there is an element of rescuing a child [from the developing world]. It can be seen as trend with celebrities, who are adopting a lot."
The Hague Convention facilitates the inter-country adoptions of children under the age of 16. Signatories to the convention secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to, or retained in, a contracting state and ensure residence rights issued in one country are implemented and respected in another.
Malawi is not a signatory to the convention.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement that it did not have adequate information to comment on the legality of the adoption, but that "inter-country adoption can be a positive solution for some children who are in need of families, for whom other permanent placement options within their own country are not available. However, any inter-country adoption should be subject to the same safeguards and scrutiny as domestic adoption, as well as a few additional protections."
American actress Mia Farrow is recognised as starting the celebrity trend for foreign adoptions in 1973 and is now the mother of 14. Hollywood star Angelina Jolie is currently the most famous exponent, having adopted two children from the developing world: a daughter, Zahara, from Ethiopia, and a son, Maddox, from Cambodia. She recently had her own child with her partner, Brad Pitt.
Inter-country adoption between convention signatories is a well-established practice, and the flow of children is almost always from developing countries to developed countries, Wilson told IRIN. In industrialised countries fewer babies are available because social welfare systems provide for single parents, and populations are ageing.
Madonna's adoption is meeting resistance from the Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) in Malawi, an umbrella body of civic organisations. According to committee chairman Justin Dzonzi, "the law in Malawi does not allow cross-border adoption".
He said his organisation would pursue the matter in court, but other legal experts saw it as a case of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.
"Practically, there is an implication, should the courts overturn the earlier decision to have Madonna adopt the child. In fact, she has the right to do so and in most cases the court will look at the interests of the child," said Necton Mhura, Dean of Law at Chancellor College, part of university of Malawi.
Madonna's swift adoption is leading to calls for an overhaul of the adoption laws in one of the world's poorest countries, where three-quarters of its 12 million people live on less than US$2 a day, and about one million children are orphaned, primarily as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Samson Matewere, executive director of Eye of the Child, a child-rights activist group, said civil society organisations would lobby members of parliament "in the coming sitting of parliament to speed up the amendment to the adoption of children act".
"Madonna has only been granted a temporary order to adopt the boy for 18 months and government will have to monitor the child. But the question is: has the government got the resources to monitor the child in the UK or USA? The child can only be monitored properly by a government where the child is. And also, when you look at the adoption laws in Malawi they are not in agreement with international adoption laws. We need to review them so that we allow international adoption," he said.
According to the adoption act, any person considering adopting a child should be resident in the country for a minimum of 18 months. Madonna was in Malawi for about nine days.
A spokesperson for the opposition United Democratic Front party, Sam Mpasu, said the law should be reviewed to allow international adoption. "What is the fuss all about? This is a child whose father has agreed to have Madonna adopt him. People are jealous of the child."
Father of the child Yohane Banda, whose wife died during childbirth, was quoted in Britain's Mail on Sunday as saying, "The government people told me it would be a good thing for the country. He will come back educated and able to help us."
Deborah
Here's an interesting article about U.S. babies being adopted by non-U.S. parents.
You can't stand Madonna, and I can't stand Oprah.... I don't care HOW much good she does!