Vietnamese children aspire to become doctors, teachers

Vietnamese children aspire to become doctors, teachers

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese children aged 7-14 chose the profession of doctor as their top career choice in the annual children's career survey conducted by Adecco Viet Nam, a subsidiary of one of the world's largest human resources companies.

Illustrative image -- File photo

The other careers that young people dream of are teacher, policeman, fashion designer and chef.

Many children want to support people in need when they grow up, such as healing the sick, conveying knowledge or protecting people.

Asked what three things they would do if they became Prime Minister, many children said they would develop the educational sector, help poor people and protect the environment.

The company said this response could have been due to challenges in education in recent years.

Also, more than 50 per cent of the surveyed children said that mathematics was their favourite subject at school, followed by English, computers and science.

Their most enjoyable weekend activity was spending time with their friends or families.

This is the fifth year that Adecco Viet Nam has conducted the survey, which gives an insight into what the Vietnamese workforce of tomorrow thinks about the world they live in and their role in the future.

Tidarat Kanchanawat, Adecco's regional director for Thailand and Viet Nam, said: "The findings help us better understand our children's career dreams. Although they may appear as innocent dreams, they show how our children perceive the world around them and through this survey, we can support them in achieving those dreams."

The survey was also conducted in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and several other Asian countries.

    

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Stunning Vietnamese Children's Book Wins

Stunning Vietnamese Children’s Book Wins Asia-Wide Prize

• Nghệ sỹ Việt Nam ở nước ngoài

Posted on 02/11/2015

0

Original post on Saigoneer: Stunning Vietnamese Children’s Book Wins Asia-Wide Prize

When it comes to reading materials for kids, Vietnam is full of small, inexpensive paperbacks, but seldom does the country produce a colorful, high-quality storybook like The First Journey.

Created in just two weeks by author-illustrator team Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien, the children’s book recently took home the Scholastic Picture Book Award, an Asia-wide honor presented by the National Book Development Council of Singapore and Scholastic Asia. Their unpublished story, filled with dramatic, vivid illustrations of the Mekong, beat out 135 other entries from across the continent.

The First Journey tells the story of An, a young boy who crosses the Mekong Delta for the first time on his way to school, encountering floods, snakes and a mysterious forest with a giant crocodile.

Through workshops and collaborations with Room to Read, a nonprofit organization which works to promote children’s literacy in developing countries around the world, the duo were able to complete the book and submit it to the contest for consideration.

Since winning the honor, Quang and Lien have managed to become independent authors, creating their own high-quality childrens’ books in a country where engaging and age-appropriate reading material is hard to come by.

[Photos

Children - Vietnamese

Children respond to my request. 1  2   3 JUMP!!

Report warns families to accept gay children or lose them to the street | Look At Vietnam

Report warns families to accept gay children or lose them to the street 

May 26, 2012

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths fleeing discrimination at home face a much harder life on the street

Two shoeshine boys working on a street in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. Experts have called for more actions to support LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) street children.
Years ago, Yen’s father kicked her out of the house.
The transgender, who refused to give her real name, said she has struggled to survive on the street ever since.
“My father told me ‘If you can manage, just go. Once you’re gone, never ever come back!’” she told a team of researchers at the Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment (iSEE).
“Anyhow he’s still my father. Whenever I have money I bring him some. Usually I don’t stay long, only 5 or 10 minutes then leave,” Yen said, refusing to discuss how she earned her living.
Yen was among 25 LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) street children who agreed to speak to the iSEE team as part of a study which will be published later this month.
Le Quang Binh, director of the iSEE, said LGBT street children constitute a particularly vulnerable group that often goes ignored by mainstream society.
“Street children face threats of hunger, drug addiction, health problems and physical and mental violence,” he said. “But these threats are multiplied for LGBT children.”
Beating at home, bullying at school
The “Situation Assessment of LGBT Street Children in Ho Chi Minh City” was commissioned by the Save the Children in Vietnam. Researchers from iSEE compiled the findings from in-depth interviews with the children, their families and peers.
Many of those interviewed told the same story.
“My father beat me, saying: I won’t accept a homo in my house,” the report quotes a gay male respondent as saying. “You were born a real boy, I cared for you like the rest of my children, why do you do this to me?”
A transgender subject recalled a childhood that consisted of constant torment: “Day in and day out my parents bugged me about my gender problem. They scolded me, saying they could not accept a son like this. They said: ‘you’re something else, you’re not a human being.’ They insulted me everyday, it was terrible.”

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Binh said these children often become worried and embarrassed as soon as they become aware of their sexual orientation, due to the repeated reinforcement of heterosexual values.
“Many drop out of school due to bullying from other students,” he said.
A few respondents opted to enroll in vocational schools, where they continued to face discrimination.
“The school manager told me they would only take male or female candidates. As I appeared to be ‘in-between’ he was afraid that I would have problems getting along with other students because he assumed they were mostly homophobes,” one respondent told iSEE.
Family is key
Vietnam offers little help or hope, outside the traditional family support structure, for LGBT street children. Experts say the first step toward helping this demographic is alleviating the social stigma among families.
“The issues of homosexuality, transgenderism, and bisexuality are not new in Vietnam’s history,” said Natalie Newton, a PhD candidate at the University of California. Despite that fact, she said few Vietnamese NGOs and international organizations work to advocate for this demographic.
Newton, who studies the ways in which the global LGBT human rights movement has influenced lesbian community organizing in HCMC, stressed the importance that family support can play in preventing their children from falling into homelessness.
Donn Colby, medical director of the Harvard Medical School’s AIDS Initiative in Vietnam, said LGBT children have found their own community in the city, but they remain poor with no jobs, no income, and no place to sleep at night.
“Social services and support exist for children without homes or families, but they do not understand the special needs of LGBT children and, in the end, treat them no different than the places these children already escaped from,” he said.
“If families understood and accepted their children, including their sexual orientation, then LGBT children would not have to run away from home and live in the street. We need better information and support for families to accept the sexual orientation of their children.”
Despite a widespread association of the demographic with drug use, most of the respondents reported only occasional marijuana use. They had stayed away from hard drugs, like heroin, for fear that it would seriously damage their health. In some cases, the researchers found that fears about the dangers children might face if cast out of the home (e.g. drug use, prostitution) prompted parents to accept their children’s sexual orientation.
Street dangers
The 25 respondents to the forthcoming iSEE study described life on the street as dangerous on many fronts.
Binh said that young transgenders are often viewed as members of a dangerous subculture or “social evil.”
“Actually, they themselves are the victims of social evils and insecurity,” he said. “The police and militiamen, who are supposed to protect them, also consider them a social threat rather than vulnerable people.”
According to the iSEE study, most of the respondents were engaged in the sex trade; several suffered from HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
“Hazards existed at all times and a teenage (lesbian) told us she had been tested HIV positive and was pregnant at the time of the interview,” according to the study.
Nearly all participants feared the police or civil defense forces.
Twenty one respondents said they had been taken to a civil-defense post, eight said they had been taken to police precincts and two participants said they had been brought to a transit station to be sent to re-education or social service centers.
The study found that the police often believe these downtrodden street LGBT children are dangerous and should be handed over to state-run social welfare centers which provide shelter and other basic necessities.
“It’s all very clear,” a militiaman told the researchers. “Boys and girls sitting and talking at night is one thing. But two boys embracing each other, murmuring and kissing, what is it then if not evil?”

By Khanh An, Thanh Nien News (The story can be found in the May 18th issue of our print edition, Vietweek) 

Vietnamese parents now tend to award children with money | Look At Vietnam

Vietnamese parents now tend to award children with money

April 13, 2012

LookAtVietnam – A debate has been raised by VietNamNet’s readers about
whether to give money to children to reward for children’s efforts.

A lot of Vietnamese parents nowadays believe that giving money to children is
the best way to ask the children to do the things they want.
When asking the son, a 3rd grader, to go to the shop near his home to buy a pack
of cigarettes, Kien in Hoai Duc district in Hanoi, said: “Go and buy. I will
give you 5000 dong.”
The boy immediately left for the cigarette shop, without any words. 5000 dong is
the sum of money he always receives after fulfill a thing as requested by the
parents. Therefore, he believes that paying money is a must when someone is
served.
When asked why Kien promised to give the boy 5000 dong, Kien smiled and said
that if he had not offered the “award,” the boy would not have left for buying
cigarettes for him. As such, Kien now can earn his money by providing services
to his father.
Hue, a mother in Thanh Tri district, also thinks that it would be better to
encourage children with money. Every time when her child cries or refuses meals,
she would promise to give the child money.
“My child suffers from the anorexia. Therefore, I have to promise to give her
2000 dong to persuade him to eat meat,” she said. “Sometimes I have to give 5000
dong.”
When asked if this is a good way to use money to educate children, Vietnamese
parents all have a common voice that this should not be an education method.
Surprisingly, both Kien and Hue do not agree to the education method. However,
they still use the way every day to seek their wishes fulfilled.
Educators have warned the parents who try to use money to educate children that
the cash bonus would “harm” the children. They would always bargain with parents
about the sums of money the parents need to give them when asking them to do
something. Especially, they would not understand the value of the money, and
that their parents can only earn money from sweated labor.
Ha, the man in Quoc Oai district in Hanoi, related that one day, she asked a
niece to go buying a pack of cards for the guests to play after the family
party. As the niece said she did not want to go under the sun, Ha gave 2000 dong
to the girl, saying that this is the award for her.
However, to Ha’s surprise, the girl did not accept the “gift.” “You cannot buy
anything with 2000 dong now,” the girl said. Finally, she only left for the pack
of cards after Ha gave her a 5000 dong bank note.
“Instead of using money to stimulate children, why don’t parents think of
bringing the kids to the parks or buying the toys they like?” Huong, a parent
whose child goes to the Song Phuong Primary School questioned.
In the eyes of international labor managers, Vietnamese people keep a
combination of odd features: they are both frugal and squandered.
While the students in 1990s were told that money would associate with crimes,
the students in the 21st century believe that everything can be bought with
money, while they would not go to school if the parents to not give them money.
Nowadays, in many families, money is given to children when they fulfill normal
duties such as doing home exercises, cleaning rooms, washing dishes or taking
care for younger brothers.
Nguyen Hien

Experts suggest sex education for primary school children in Vietnam | Look At Vietnam

Experts suggest sex education for primary school children in Vietnam 

April 8, 2012

With children reaching physical development milestones earlier and having easy access to information on sex on the Internet, experts are advising early sex education in school.
Many parents in Ho Chi Minh City say their daughters had their first period during primary school and they regret not having prepared them for it.
A third-grade teacher in District 1 recalled a day when a girl screamed out suddenly as she bled for the first time.
“I called her mother and she was also surprised as the girl was so little,” the teacher said.
H.L.An, mother of a fifth grader from District 3, said, “My daughter got her first period in fourth grade and I still regret not explaining it to her earlier.
“She was totally scared because she was not prepared.”
An said several days before that first time, her daughter had asked about the use of tampons shown in a TV commercial, but she avoided answering as thinking that it would be a long time until the girl would need one.
Several schools in the city are now introducing gender education at fifth grade, with lessons about human body, eggs, sperm and embryo.
Some parents said fifth grade is too early and the education will only create unnecessary, or harmful, curiosity for the matter, but many said the lessons should come even sooner.
Tran Hoang An, a mother from District 5, said “Children these days develop quite early, so I’m afraid that [gender education] at fifth grade is a bit too late.
“When children develop and do not quite understand gender and reproduction health, they will fail to control their behavior and there will be consequences.”
Teenage pregnancies, abortions and teen boys going to jail for having sex with their underage girlfriends have made frequent headlines in Vietnam these days. In one case in central Vietnam last month, people around a girl only realized she was pregnant when her water broke at school.
Tran Xuan Kien, a primary school teacher in District 1, said children can learn about sex very early in this digital world, so they should be educated to understand it clearly and not try anything related to it in a bad way.
“We should start earlier, at second grade for example, with basic information about human body, gender and body hygiene, before reproductive health,” Kien said.
He said the education will also prepare children to protect themselves from rapists.
His colleague Nguyen Tran Diem Linh also noted that teachers taking gender education classes should appear confident to make the children comfortable.
“Children these days know more than we think. If the teachers are embarrassed, the class will fail,” Linh said.
Psychologist Do Hong Ngoc also encouraged parents to be their children’s first teachers and life-time supervisors in matters of gender and reproductive health.
“TV, books, magazines, movies and online games can be very strong sources of sex education. They can establish a mindset and set the behavior of a whole generation, so we must be responsible [about those sources],” Ngoc said.
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By Bich Thanh, Thanh Nien News 

Experts suggest sex education for primary school children in Vietnam  | Look At Vietnam

Vietnam men will have less woman in future for wifes

One in ten Vietnamese men will be unable to find wife: officials

June 12, 2011 about Social



Deputy Prime Minister called for stricter oversight of Vietnam’s gender selection practices


Children at a kindergarten in Ho Chi Minh City. Health authorities in Vietnam have warned against serious gender imbalance over the past several years.

When doctors at a private medical service in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 5 told Tran Thi Thanh Hoang that her unborn child was a boy, she was hit with a feeling of joy.

“I know it’s illegal to inform pregnant mothers about the gender of their babies,” said the 25-year-old employee of an advertisement company. “But I was too eager to know about that.”

Hoang said the doctor conducting the ultrasound scan had a clever way to inform her and avoid being detected by health inspectors.

“He had placed two small cards in a drawer, one reading ‘son’ and another reading ‘daughter.’ The doctor opened the drawer, pointed to the ‘son’ card and quickly closed it without saying a word,” she said.

Such violations, which sometimes inspire parents to abort their unborn daughters, have exacerbated Vietnam’s gender imbalances, officials say.

And the problem is only getting worse.

“The gender ratio has risen to 111 males per 100 females among children under four years old. This is much higher than in 2009, when it was 108.65 males per 100 females,” said Duong Quoc Trong, director of the General Office of Population and Family Planning in a statement issued on June 6.

Trong said the imbalance has gotten worse over the past decades. In some provinces, the ratio is as high as 130 males per 100 females. Provinces with the worst imbalances include Hung Yen, Hai Duong, Bac Ninh and Ha Nam, he added.

Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) has been rising steadily for the past few years, from the "average" 105 boys to 100 girls in 1999 to 110:100 in 2006. According to the 2009 Census, sex selection is practiced most in Vietnam’s Red River Delta provinces and among wealthier households.

Health authorities have warned that about ten percent of Vietnamese men, or two million men, will face problems finding a wife in the next 20 to 25 years.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan chaired a meeting on May 30 seeking strategies to curb Vietnam’s gender imbalance.

“Ultrasound scans, cheap abortions and the legality of abortion of first-trimester babies have contributed to the imbalance,” he said.

Nhan said that “the entire political system” should get involved in tackling the gender imbalance, with a particular focus on the ten provinces with the highest gender discrepancies.

He also instructed relevant agencies to enforce the laws banning the disclosure of prenatal gender information and tighten inspections of abortion facilities.

The Health Ministry was told to create an action plan for the ten provinces with the worst problems by the end of this month.

According to Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Viet Tien, Vietnam is among the countries with the highest abortion rate in the world. The abortion of female babies following ultrasonic scans was identified as the prime contributing factor.

A report presented by the Health Ministry at the May 30 meeting warned that there may be “unexpected socio-political consequences” when this lopsided generation reaches marrying age in 2025.

Many men will find it difficult to marry and this could lead to marriage with foreign bribes, which the report’s authors called “an unsustainable solution.”

Reported by Khanh An

Children from Sapa, Vietnam

Cambodia Is Ranked in the Second Tier for Human Trafficking in the 2009 US Report

photo:Chuck Kuhn
Phnom Penh: The 2009 report of the US Department of State shows that this year Cambodia stays in the Second Tier [of three] in the assessment on human trafficking. Though, in general the Cambodian government has improved in responding to trafficking, last year the efforts to fight human trafficking declined, especially in the prosecution of human trafficking crimes.

“The report of US Department of State gives some details that Cambodia is a transit country and is targeted for the trafficking of men, women, and children who are victimized by trafficking for sexual exploitation and for forced labor. Children and women are trafficked to Thailand and Malaysia to exploit their labor and for forced prostitution. Some Cambodian men who migrate to Thailand by themselves and to Malaysia to seek jobs are forced to do hard work as fishermen on fishing boats, as construction workers, and as agro-industrial workers. Cambodian women and men sent back to Cambodia recount that they were forced to work hard there, after they had left Cambodia to work there through Cambodian worker recruiting companies. Cambodian children were trafficked to Thailand and Vietnam to do begging and to sell candy or flowers, or to shine shoes. Sometimes, parents sell their children to work as servants or to beg, or they sold them to brothels for sexual exploitation, or to force them to work as house servants. In Cambodia children are trafficked to become beggars. They become scavengers or work at salt fields, at brick and tiles kilns, and at quarries.

The Cambodian government has not fully met the minimum standards of trafficking elimination. Although the government is making remarkable efforts to fight trafficking, the government has not really proven that there are improvements in the prosecution and punishment of human trafficking perpetrators as well as officials who had colluded with those perpetrators, and it has not shown how it is protecting human trafficking victims. Therefore, Cambodia is ranked second in the observation list. To improve this rank, Cambodia should do more to bring human traffickers and colluding officials to be prosecuted and punished.

“Based on the adoption of a law to protect victims of human trafficking in 2000, which was later amended, the US parliament requires the US Department of Sate to send annual reports to the US parliament. These reports on 164 countries are the most comprehensive reports worldwide about the efforts of various governments to fight human trafficking. The reports aim at encouraging activities and stepping up partnership arrangements worldwide to fight this new form of slavery. Countries defined as having many human trafficking victims will be included in any of the three following ranks. Countries evaluated as meeting “the minimum standard to eliminate serous human trafficking” as stated in the law will be put in the first tier. Countries assessed of not meeting the minimum standard but making significant efforts will be included in the second tier. Countries assessed as not meeting the standard and not making any significant efforts will be placed in the third tier.

“This report continues that the law even requires the US Department of State to deliver a special watch list for countries that have been assessed again temporarily for the report by 1 February every year. In addition to the assessments of various countries with improving ranks from third to second to fist, this special watch list even creates a fourth rank. This ranks includes countries in the third tier defined as (1) not making any efforts a year ago and (2) being able to avoid the third rank because of commitments to conduct reforms against human trafficking in the future or (3) having fairly many victims of human trafficking or having fairly increasing rates of human trafficking victims.

“The US Embassy waits to cooperate more with the Royal Government of Cambodia next years in order to achieve success to bring Cambodia to the first tier at last. It should be noted that in 2008, Cambodia was in the second tier also.” Koh Santepheap, Vol.42, #6679-6680, 18-19.6.2009

Adoption heartbreak - Parenting

Saturday January 10 2009
Foreign babies have brought joy to many families, including Brad and Angelina, but new regulations are set to close doors for Irish couples.
Despite the credit crunch, Irish couples desperate to have children of their own are still queuing up and spending tens of thousands of euros to adopt babies from abroad.
New figures published by the Adoption Authority this week show a dramatic rise in the number of people adopting babies from countries such as Russia and Vietnam, where adoption laws are loose and international treaties on child protection are not binding.
In 2007, 130 babies, the majority of them girls, were adopted from Vietnam by Irish couples compared to 68 the previous year. It costs a minimum of $11,000 to arrange an adoption from that country.
The number of children coming from Russia also increased, from 143 in 2006 to 160 the following year.
However, new adoption legislation to be published shortly could greatly limit the choices of aspiring adoptive parents. The new bill will give legal force to the Hague Convention, a multilateral agreement designed to protect children, birth parents and adoptive parents from dubious adoption practices.
From that time, adoptions will only be authorised from countries that are signatories to the convention or which have a bilateral adoption agreement with Ireland.
The overwhelming majority of children adopted to Ireland from abroad come from Russia or Vietnam, neither of which is a party to the Hague Convention. A bilateral adoption agreement exists between Ireland and Vietnam but no such so pact is in place with Russia, which will be closed off for adoptions once the Convention comes into force.
This is expected to bring about a further increase in adoptions from Vietnam, despite deepening international concerns about the adoption process in that country.
In recent months, the US has ended its adoption pact with Vietnam following reports that children were being kidnapped from their parents and sold to families in the West, including Ireland.
Almost 2,000 American couples who had applied to adopt children from the south-east Asian state have had their applications cancelled and have been told to look elsewhere. The decision follows a disturbing investigation by the US embassy in Hanoi which claimed that children had allegedly been sold and families pressured to give up their babies.
The report was commissioned after US officials noticed a surge in the number of "abandoned" babies offered for adoption. It found that unlicensed, unregulated facilities were operating across the country providing free room and board to pregnant women in return for a commitment to relinquish their children upon birth.
The report, which was dismissed by Vietnamese authorities as groundless, said that babies had been sent to orphanages by grandparents without the consent of their parents and that hospitals had passed newborns onto adoption agencies when their parents proved unable to pay medical bills. Fraudulent documents would then record that the baby was "deserted".
The report said that young Vietnamese mothers "more commonly" face pressure from health officials to place their babies in orphanages in exchange for a payment of around €200. They are told they can visit the child regularly and that it will be returned to them after a few years.
Two years ago, it was revealed that the sole facilitator for Vietnamese adoptions into Ireland was a convicted fraudster. A former lawyer described as a one-stop-shop for Vietnamese babies, My Linh Soland, who made more than €1 million finding babies for Irish people, had served three years in a US prison for forgery, conspiracy and intimidation of witnesses.
The Irish Adoption Board failed to pick up on her criminal past and identified her as "the person best suited for the role".
The 150 Vietnamese babies who ended up in Ireland as a result of her activities were not returned to their home country, following a decision by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who was Minister for Children at the time.
However, many of their histories remain unclear and it is still not known if their parents agreed to their adoption or if they know the whereabouts of their children today.
When contacted by the Irish Independent this week, a spokeswoman for the Viet-Irish support group, which helps families who have adopted children from Vietnam, said the group has a ban on media interviews.
However, concerns have been raised by representatives of adopted people who believe adoptions from Vietnam should be stopped immediately.
"We feel strongly that there may well be children coming into Ireland who have not been orphaned but have been taken from their parents without their consent," says Brian Cantwell of the Cork-based Know My Own organisation, a support group for adopted people and their families.
"Even if it is just one child that has been removed from their country of origin inappropriately, or one Vietnamese mother who has been left sitting in a jungle wondering where her baby is, that is unacceptable for us. There is no greater sadness than the loss of one's child.
"We are not against foreign adoptions per se and we understand how desperate many childless couples are, but these adoptions should not be taking place from countries that have not ratified the Hague Convention. There are no guarantees or sufficient safety nets in place in countries like Vietnam to ensure that there children have actually been abandoned."
Organisations like Know My Own are frequently contacted by adopted people searching for their roots in Ireland but believe it is only a matter of time before foreign children start knocking on their doors.
"I am convinced the day will come, as it usually does, when we have Vietnamese children turning up at meetings, asking questions about where they came from. The current group growing up in Ireland are still too young, but it is only a matter of time before they become curious. The vast majority of adopted people want to know about their roots. It is hard enough trying to do traces for people who have been in Irish orphanages but we would not know where to start looking in a country like Vietnam and that would leave those children with so many unanswered questions."
Compared to countries such as China which has clamped down on foreign adoptions, the process in Vietnam can take as little as one month once background checks are carried out. In 2007, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt adopted a child from Vietnam but there is no suggestion of impropriety in their case.
One factor which will also limit Irish couples' chances of adopting from Vietnam is a planned crackdown by the government there to stop couples having more than two children.
In a country of 86 million, two-thirds of whom are under 35, there are fears of a population explosion putting strain on health and education services.
Last year, a 10pc spike in the birth rate to couples who already have two children caused alarm and the government proposed a reintroduction of a two-child policy, which was first applied in the 1960s but scrapped in 2003.
In the last five years, more than 700 Russian children have been adopted by Irish people, thanks to straightforward adoption procedures which mean children can be adopted within months.
Further adoptions from Russia will be greatly hampered by the introduction of new legislation but also an ongoing crackdown by authorities there on foreign adoptions.
The recent case of a toddler who died of heatstroke in Washington DC after his father left him in a parked vehicle for nine hours has made headlines in Moscow, from where the child was adopted by American parents.
In December, the boy's father was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter in the US on the grounds that he had been "plainly negligent" but had "not shown callous disregard for human life", the legal standard for such a conviction.
The verdict led for calls in the Russian Parliament to restrict foreign adoptions and revived public outrage provoked in 2005 when two Russian-born children died after severe abuse at the hands of adoptive parents in Maryland and North Carolina.
Domestic adoptions have grown in Russia in recent years as the stigma that once existed towards orphaned children is eroded. The government also provides payments to relatives who care for abandoned youngsters, thousands of whom would have otherwise ended up in orphanages.
For Irish couples who cannot imagine life without children of their own, the choices will become more and more limited in the years to come as restrictions tighten. Challenges await the thousands more who have found the baby of their dreams in a foreign country, as their children face into adulthood and start to wonder who their birth parents were and why they felt compelled to give them away.
- Gemma O'Doherty

Cambodian Children protest Child Labour Day

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Cambodian school children took to the streets on Thursday to mark World Against Child Labour Day, calling for parents to send their kids to school rather than forcing them to work.
About 500 children marched through the capital carrying placards and banners with slogans such as: "Work is not necessary for children, but schooling is", and "Child labour is unjust for children".

The demonstration was organised by the International Labour Organisation with the Cambodian government.

One of the marchers, 15-year-old student Roeun Ra, said his parents used to make him work by scavenging through garbage.

"Many of my friends cannot go to school because their parents ask them to work for money," the boy told AFP.

The World Bank said that last year some 1.5 million Cambodians under the age of 14 were forced to work, often in hazardous conditions.

Chey Chab, undersecretary of state at the ministry of education, told marchers the government was working to prevent the children from being exploited.

"Children are like bamboo shoots and are the (future) strong force for the country," he said in a speech, calling on all people to "take care, protect, and think of the interest of children."

Following years of civil unrest and government mismanagement, Cambodia remains mired in poverty, with more than 30 per cent of its 14 million people living on less than 50 US cents per day.

A little boy who dreams of school

The five-year-old boy lost all trace of his previously shy look as he reached out to the performance on stage, a show of dazzling coloured lights at the Friendship Cultural Palace in Hanoi.
Five-year-old Nguyen Van Nam is seen at the window of the Trade Union Guesthouse before taking part in the International Children’s Day event.A performance like this may be nothing new for city children, but for Nguyen Van Nam, an HIV-infected child from northern Thai Binh Province, it was like a fantastic dream.
It was the first time Nam, not his real name, had ever visited the capital city. He was here to enjoy International Children’s Day. It was the largest-ever celebration for HIV/AIDS children in Vietnam.
Organised by the Ministry of Health, it was attended by about 500 infected children between the ages of five and 15 from 35 of the nation’s 64 cities and provinces.
Nam was born HIV-positive in 2003. One year later, his parents died of AIDS complications and he was left in the care of his grandparents, who are farmers.
Nam was too shy to talk about himself. His grandfather, who prefers to remain anonymous, simply wanted to say: "Thank you."
According to the Viet Nam Administrators for HIV/AIDS Control, there are more than 3,500 children under the age of 16 years living with HIV/AIDS in Vietnam. Of these, about 1,100 lack health insurance.
Deputy director of the ministry’s Treatment Department, Le Thi Huong, said about 80 per cent of the cost of their insurance would be paid by the Viet Nam Insurance Corporation, while the rest would be sought from other sources, such as the Viet Nam Fund for Poor Children – or funds for children infected with HIV/AIDS.
Simple things like eating and playing are very meaningful for children such as Nam, but something is missing. Nam’s grandfather, who took him to the Children’s Day, said the boy was stigmatised for carrying the virus.
Kept out
He said that discrimination from teachers and parents had blocked his grandson’s way to school.
Nam’s health has recently improved, thanks to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. However, no kindergarten in his area will enrol him.
"I know that the country’s law allows children infected with HIV/AIDS to study with normal children, so why is my grandson not welcome at school?
My wife and I are old. We worry about Nam’s future," said the grandfather. Nam is one of many children infected with HIV/AIDS who have been rejected by schools because of their health status.
A deputy principal of a Ha Noi-based pre-secondary school, who wants to remain anonymous, said she was willing to receive children infected with HIV/AIDS to her school as was required by Government’s regulation.
However, she said infected children would not receive special or separate treatment in class.
"If the children received special care, it would affect their integration. Besides, other children’s parents would boycott the kindergarten," she said.
Head of the Hai Duong Provincial Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control, Doan Minh, who took three affected children to the special event, said direct talk between consultants and parents was very important because it would decide whether the infected children could study in school.
"Once I was asked by parents if I would bring my daughter into a classroom where there were children with HIV," Minh said.
"Fear of a disease is very natural. I think if people understood it and knew about prevention, their worries would be dispelled."
Minh said his centre’s staff regularly visited localities to solve problems for children living with HIV/AIDS. It was frequently necessary to invoke the Government’s regulation that allows infected children to study together with normal children – and then organise direct talk with parents about HIV/AIDS.
"To prevent stigma and discrimination from the community, especially at school, it’s necessary to improve the knowledge of the local authorities, parents and especially the teachers, who have direct communication with parents," said Minh.
Nam’s road to education remains long, but his grandparents live in the hope that, one day, he will be able to go to school and be treated as a normal child.
(Source: Viet Nam News

Aid agency warns 30,000 Burmese children face starvation

An aid charity has warned that 30,000 Burmese children face starvation due to the delay in distributing international aid in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.
Save the Children said that under-fives living in the Irrawaddy delta were already "acutely malnourished" when the cyclone hit on May 2 and it believed some children in the stricken areas of Burma may now be dying from lack of food.
The foreign office minister Lord Malloch-Brown today criticised the "man-made bottlenecks" that were causing the crisis and preventing help from getting to the cyclone victims.
Speaking from Burma's biggest city, Rangoon, Malloch-Brown said: "Not enough aid is getting in and not enough aid workers are able to get out in the region, particularly international workers with long experience of disaster relief. That's a real problem."
The minister met aid workers and watched UK aid flights arriving, but was not permitted by the country's military junta to leave Rangoon to explore areas devastated by Cyclone Nargis.
Some aid was beginning to get through, he told the BBC, but there had been "bottlenecks in the relief operation, many of them man-made".
Jasmine Whitbread, Save the Children's UK chief executive, said: "We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger.
"When people reach this stage they can die in a matter of days. Children may already be dying as a result of a lack of food. They urgently need nutrient- and energy-rich food, and food containing all the elements of a balanced diet." She said aid from the charity had already reached over 140,000 people.
The country's military government has severely restricted distribution of aid supplies, leaving many of the disaster's estimated 2.5 million survivors in dire need of food, water and shelter.
Burmese authorities put the death toll from the cyclone at 78,000, with a further 56,000 people missing.
Save the Children also warned that the disaster had prevented many farmers in the Irrawaddy delta - the country's rice bowl - from sowing seeds in time for the monsoon harvest, leading to fears of the region being unable to feed itself in the coming months.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown said forced airdrops of aid were being considered, but noted that charities warned they could be "counter-productive".
"We rule nothing out and the reason we rule nothing out is that we want to get the aid directly to the people," he told the BBC's World Service.
Burma's government is insisting on controlling distribution of aid and has banned foreigners from entering cyclone-hit areas.
France angrily criticised the regime for refusing to allow one of its navy ships, Le Mistral, to deliver 1,000 tonnes of food and shelters for 15,000 people.
The French ambassador to the UN, Jean-Maurice Ripert, warned that the junta's refusal to allow delivery of the supplies "could lead to a true crime against humanity".
Britain is looking at channelling its aid to Burma through China and the countries that make up Asean, the Association of South-East Asian Nations.
The Royal Navy frigate HMS Westminster remains stationed 12 miles off the Burmese coast ready to help the British relief effort.