A public consultation on a draft of Ireland’s next State report under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) will continue until 5pm on Friday 12th November.

Ireland is due to submit its combined fifth and sixth State report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in February 2022, with an oral hearing before the committee provisionally scheduled for the second half of 2022 in Geneva.

The draft combined fifth and sixth State report responds to a list of issues report provided by the UN committee in November 2020 and the government is welcoming comments until the end of this week.

Written submissions on the State Report are invited from interested parties and can be submitted to the Department at the following email address: UNCRC@equality.gov.ie

Officials of Tongzhou district in Beijing shut down Golden Reed Kindergarten & Primary School Learning Center in September following an order to vacate the property and close the school, reported China Aid, a rights group led by Chinese exiles documenting human rights abuses and promoting religious freedom in China.

More than 100 mostly Christian students, including those with special needs like autism, studied in the school established by Golden Lampstand Church, an evangelical house church.

A woman and her husband are suing a fertility clinic in the US they say implanted a stranger’s embryo, lawyers have said.

The case resembles one before the Irish Courts in 2016 when a couple returned from abroad where they had picked up a child born through an IVF and surrogacy arrangement only to discover that the father didn’t have a genetic connection to the child, when he attempted to assert his paternity.

In the US case, when Daphna and Alexander Cardinale first saw their newborn daughter, conceived through IVF, they noticed the baby girl had jet-black hair and a much darker complexion than anyone in their family.

A DNA test several months later revealed the girl born in September 2019 was not related to either of them, and they had been raising another couple’s child.

Lawyers in Los Angeles say two laboratories connected by one doctor switched the embryos of two entirely separate couples and implanted them in the wrong mothers.

The couples eventually met and worked through the courts to gain custody of their genetic children.

Alexander Cardinale called the mix-up “heartbreaking”.

“Losing the birth child you know, for the genetic child that you don’t know yet… a truly impossible nightmare.”

The Catholic minority in Bosnia and Herzegovina are facing great difficulties and discrimination, according to a local Bishop.

Franjo Komarica of the diocese of Banja Luka told Aid to the church in Need (ACN) that the country is not a functioning constitutional state.

He said Catholics, who represent about 15% of the former Yugoslavian Republic, are “going under”. “We are going to wrack and ruin, there is simply no place we can call home.”

He said many Catholics have Croatian names and it can be very hard for them to get jobs in parts of the country, as it is clear by their name that they are both Catholic and Croatian (and not Muslim-Bosniak, or Orthodox Bosnian-Serb). He added that Catholics can live without much issue in West Herzegovina, but even there Catholics are leaving.

Bishop Komarica also noted that in his diocese of Banja Luka, 95 per cent of the church buildings were destroyed or severely damaged during the war. He thanked charities such as ACN for doing so much for them to help them rebuild.

Children who have a good relationship with their father are happier, feel less anxious and are more engaged in physical activity, according to major new research published by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). It confirms the importance of fathers in the lives of children.

Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study, the findings show that most 9-year-olds (78 per cent) report getting on very well with their father and most (84 per cent) say they would talk to them if they had a problem.

Over half of fathers reported sharing most care and play activities with the nine-month-old infant equally with their partners, though mothers were more involved in personal care (such as feeding, dressing and bathing the baby). Fathers reported greater involvement where mothers were in full-time employment and less involvement if they themselves were working long hours. Fathers being more involved in care was linked to greater bonding with the infant and this had a lasting effect on relationship quality measured when the child was aged five and nine.

As the child grew older, fathers were very involved in activities and outings with the child, especially reading to the child, playing games with them and being involved in sports or other physical activity.

The research focused on fathers’ involvement with their children from nine months to nine years of age in two-parent households. It also looked at non-resident fathers. It finds that children who are not living with their fathers are less likely to report that they get on very well with them (65pc versus 79pc of those living with their fathers).

The ESRI said the numbers of lone fathers and same-sex couples in the GUI sample were too small to analyse separately.

The Bulgarian Constitutional Court has ruled that the term ‘gender’ according to the Constitution should be understood only in its biological sense.

The decision was taken by 11 votes in favour and one vote against.

This resolves a dispute as to how the concept of “gender” is to be imported from international law into Bulgarian law.

This question arose three years ago when the ruling GERB party refused to move the Istanbul Convention for ratification in parliament.

The Istanbul Convention uses the concept of “gender”, which the convention regards as stereotyping of both sexes and can consign women to traditional roles. But ‘gender’ can also be used to assert there are no real differences between men and women and that men and women can ‘change’ gender.

The court said the legal status of transgender people can be further resolved through changes in legislation. Bulgarian institutions cannot be obliged to accept the self-determination of citizens to a sex that is different from their biological one.

The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has expressed his ’empathy’ for international commercial surrogacy even though almost every European country bans it on the grounds that it exploits women and commodifies children.

He was responding in the Dail to questions from deputies who support changes to Irish law to facilitate and encourage such arrangements.

Patrick Costello of the Green Party said he had been at a protest outside Leinster House by a number of parents of children born through commercial surrogacy who are “looking for the most basic of rights for those children to be recognised, namely, the right to a family”.

Commercial surrogacy usually involves paying a woman thousands of euro to carry a child on behalf of the commissioning couple or single adult.

Children’s Minister, Roderick O’Gorman, said the Government “must act” and said Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, would be bringing forward a proposal for a special Oireachtas committee on the matter.

Fianna Fail deputy, Christopher O’Sullivan made a plea to the Taoiseach to ensure that international surrogacy would be included in an upcoming assisted human reproduction Bill.

The Taoiseach replied that he was “very empathetic with the issue of international surrogacy”.

“A memorandum will be brought to the Government from those Ministers embracing their Departments with legislative proposals to deal with these issues. The purpose is to ensure that the rights, interests and welfare of all persons involved – children born through surrogacy, intending parents and surrogacy parents – are considered,” he said.

The HSE has admitted that they are not collecting data on complications associated with telemedicine, at-home abortions. The admission comes after reports of a significant increase in ambulance call-outs in Britain, related to women experiencing physical complications after taking abortions drugs at home.

The HSE was forced to comment on the situation in Ireland after Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó’Cuív requested information on the issue in the form of a Parliamentary Question to the Minister for Health.

Since March 2020, following the Covid-19 outbreak, it has been possible in Ireland to access an abortion, before 12 weeks gestation, without having any face-to-face contact with a health professional prior to the procedure. The Minister for Health has also indicated that telemedicine home abortions may continue after Covid-19 restrictions are fully lifted. This flies in the face of a commitment given by his predecessor that ‘DIY’ at home abortions would immediately cease as soon as the Covid outbreak ended.

Over ninety incidents were reported to the State Claims Agency related to adverse effects after an abortion. More than 13,000 terminations took place during the first two full years of the country’s new, liberal abortion regime.

The information came to light this week following a Parliamentary Question from Carol Nolan TD to the Minister for Health.

Commenting on the news, Eilís Mulroy of the Pro Life Campaign said the revelation demonstrates the “numerous risks” associated with abortion in Ireland.

“Whilst the details of these 94 claims are of yet unknown, the evidence suggests that adverse effects from abortion are happening and are being dealt with quietly behind closed doors. It is more important than ever to sound the alarm on the existence of dangerous side-effects of abortion,” she said.

“The Minister for Health has an obligation to disclose the precise details of the adverse events that have occurred in the interests of transparency and ensuring proper oversight of the new abortion law. The Government’s Three Year Review must take an objective look at these events and the other issues that have come to light since the law was introduced”, Ms. Mulroy concluded.

The Tanaiste has acknowledged the host of thorny issues impacting the rights of women and children that would occur if the State were to facilitate a regime of international commercial surrogacy.

In reply to questions in the Dail, Leo Varadkar said legislation on assisted human reproduction and international surrogacy is long overdue. However, he added that there are “complex legal and ethical questions that arise in respect of for-profit surrogacy services, children being moved from other countries to this country and the right to know who one’s biological parents are”.

“There are many very complicated ethical issues that have to be resolved, particularly in the context of our difficult history in respect of adoption and women giving up their children and so on”, he said.

The Tanaiste said there has been substantial work done on the issue since the formation of the Government, and in the coming weeks a memorandum will be brought to Cabinet on how to consider the issues and introduce any legislative change.

“It will propose the establishment of a time-limited special joint Oireachtas committee to consider the issue, including the issues arising from commercial international surrogacy, and to report with recommendations”, he said.

https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2021-11-02a.53&s=surrogacy#g82