Adoption

Nearly two-thirds of children waiting for adoption in India are those with special needs, even as the overall adoption numbers have seen a record rise over the years, government data shows. According to the Union Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry's latest annual report accessed by PTI, 3,684 children were declared legally free for adoption in 2024 and 2,177 were available for placement through the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA)?. Of the 2,177 children, 1,423 or 65 per cent were those with special needs. Despite sustained efforts and awareness campaigns to encourage adoption of children with special needs, official records accessed by PTI through an RTI query show that the numbers remain much lower. Special needs adoptions peaked at 401 in 2018-19, plunged to 166 the following year, and the number has since remained between 300 and ?370 annually. In 2024-25, 328 children with special needs were adopted, including a child listed in the "other gender" category --

A South Korean commission found evidence that women were pressured into giving away their infants for foreign adoptions after giving birth at government-funded facilities where thousands of people were confined and enslaved from the 1960s to the 1980s. The report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Monday came years after The Associated Press revealed adoptions from the biggest facility for so-called vagrants, Brothers Home, which shipped children abroad as part of a huge, profit-seeking enterprise that exploited thousands of people trapped within the compound in the port city of Busan. Thousands of children and adults many of them grabbed off the streets were enslaved in such facilities and often raped, beaten or killed in the 1970s and 1980s. The commission was launched in December 2020 to review human rights violations linked to the country's past military governments. It had previously found the country's past military governments responsible for atrocities committed

Of the 18,179 adoptions recorded since 2019, only 1,404 involved children with special needs even as the absolute numbers of adoptions saw an increase over the next five years, according to official data. Though the number of children with special needs for adoption has risen, the adoption rate is still significantly low, activists pointed out. Children with special needs require additional support due to physical, developmental, behavioural or emotional challenges. In 2019-20, India saw a total of 3,745 adoptions -- 3,351 in-country and 394 international. Of the total number, only 56 boys and 110 girls with special needs were adopted, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) said in its response to an RTI query filed by PTI. In 2020-21, a total of 3,559 adoptions were recorded including 3,142 in-country and 417 inter-country. Only 110 boys and 133 girls with special needs were adopted in this year. The number of adoptions dropped marginally to 3,405 -- 2,991 in-country and

Under the updated Model Foster Care Guidelines, individuals aged between 35 and 60 can now foster children, regardless of their marital status

The Allahabad High Court ruled that the District Probation Officer's order, which declared the woman legally unfit to adopt the child, was mechanical and wholly vague

Unmarried couples, including queer couples, can jointly adopt a child, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday while striking down a Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) regulation that allows only married couples to adopt children. A five-judge Constitution bench of the top court on Tuesday unanimously refused to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriages under the Special Marriage Act, ruling that it is within the Parliament's ambit to change the law for validating such a union. Writing a 247-page separate judgement, Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud struck down Regulation 5(3) of the CARA, saying it is violative of the rights of the queer community and that the CARA has exceeded its authority in barring unmarried couples from adopting children. The five-judge bench, however, passed a 3:2 verdict against adoption rights for the LGBTQIA++ community. While the CJI and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul opined that queer couples should be given adoption rights, Justices Ravin

Hindu and Christian personal law treat adopted child on a par with natural-born ones

The ripple effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine have been devastating for families of all kinds including those who have seen their prospective adoptions put on hold.

Protests and controversies came to an end as Anupama S Chandran finally held her baby boy in her arms soon after she stepped out of a court complex here along with her partner Ajith

In a bid to ease inter-country adoptions, the Central Adoption Resource Authority has framed regulations under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act on the direction of the Union government

There aren't enough children available for adoption because the ratio of abandoned children to children in institutionalised care is lopsided