Closing New Loopholes: Protecting Children in Uganda’s International Adoption Practices

Despite closing a legal guardianship loophole that enabled foreign prospective adoptive parents to bypass restrictive Ugandan adoption laws in 2016, corruption in intercountry adoption persisted, with the courts legitimating new end-runs around the requirements. But US sanctions issued in 2020 bring new hope for reform. By highlighting what children’s advocates are doing to fight back, I suggest strategies for effective child and family safeguarding practices against adoption corruption as well as efforts to seek justice for affected children and families.

La famiglia di Giovanni Boccaccio nelle pergamene olivetane

The essay focuses on a documentary corpus that belonged to the San Miniato archive: the papers of Banco di Francesco Botticini, which came to the monastery at the beginning of the 15th century. Botticini’s legacy can be reconstructed in about fifty parchments (represented here in an Appendix as register or excerpt), and offers interesting evidence on the Boccaccio’s family, linked to Banco Botticini by neighborhood relations and common acquaintances. Eleven ‘Olivetan parchments’ bear references to Boccaccio and are able to show different but still close relationships: from the sincere ones with messer Giovanni to the stormy with his brother, Iacopo, up to the long-lasting bond with the Iacopo’s sons, heirs of Boccaccio, who remained in the legal guardianship of Banco Botticini for many years.

Gloss to the Judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C 129/18, SM versus Entry Clearance Officer, UK Visa Section

The right of family members of Union citizens to live with them in the host Member State has always been considered essential for an effective freedom of movement of citizens. However, the provisions of Directive 2004/38/EC contain a different description of the scope of rights of family members of Union citizens taking advantage of the freedom of movement of persons as to the possibility of accompanying or joining EU citizens taking advantage of the freedom of movement of persons, depending on whether they belong to the circle of ‘closer’ or ‘distant’ family members. This issue acquires particular significance in the context of family members who are not citizens of any Member State of the Union. For individuals belonging to the circle of ‘closer’ family members, the EU legislator grants the subjective right to accompany or join a Union citizen exercising the right of the freedom of movement of persons. In the latter case, the legislator only obliges the host Member States to facilitate entry and residence for such individuals in accordance with their national legislation. The glossed judgment, by determining the status of individuals under legal guardianship within the framework of the Algerian kafala system as a ‘distant’ family member of a Union citizen, clearly touches upon a significant issue in the context of the Union’s freedom of movement of persons.

Age of Majority and Alternatives to Guardianship: A Necessary Amendment to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004

Federal law requires that schools provide students receiving special education services and their parents/guardians with notice, 1 year before the student reaches the age of majority, that all of the educational rights previously afforded to the parents/guardians will transfer to the student once they reach the age of majority. During this “transfer-of-rights” period, educational professionals often advise parents/guardians to seek legal guardianship over the student with disabilities without providing information about other options. As a result, many parents/guardians seek guardianship without knowing about or exploring less-restrictive alternatives that could help students retain their legal rights, provide opportunities to enhance self-determination, and build community participation skills that benefit them in school and as adults. This article will (a) provide an overview of the use and impact of guardianship and describe recent advances in developing and implementing less-restrictive alternatives to guardianship and (b) advocate for an amendment to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 that will require schools to provide students and their families with information about the full range of decision-making options during the “transfer-of-rights” period.

Social support, familial stigma and release

This chapter assesses interactions with individuals and agencies external to the caregivers' own social and family networks. Research has shown that families and children experience stigma through their association with a prisoner. Relatedly, the narratives of the caregiving kin bring sharply into focus the lived realities of the discrimination and isolation that accompanied their experience of maternal imprisonment. Anxieties about social acceptance, legal guardianship, and gaining appropriate support underpinned the caregivers' accounts while they negotiated the prison sentence and looked to the mother's future return to the family. The chapter has three main sections, exploring: challenges facing primary kin caregivers without legal guardianship for the children, and their experiences of identifying and securing statutory support; caregivers' experiences, perceptions, and management of familial stigma in media reports, their local community, online, and at the prison; and caregivers' expectations of the mother's release.

Opieka nad małoletnim. Wybrane zagadnienia

<p>The article addresses selected issues concerning legal guardianship of minors in Poland. The study points to the specific nature of legal guardianship and the purpose for which it is established. Legal guardianship results from the legal obligation and involves the exercise of custody of the person for whom it was established. Therefore, it covers the custody over the person, property management and representation of the ward. The appointment of a guardian, i.e. a specific person designated to exercise the custody, should be distinguished from the establishment of guardianship itself. In the process of selection of the guardian by the guardian court, the welfare of the child is the decisive factor. This is the overriding criterion and it comes to the fore of the proceedings. The principle of the child’s welfare also applies to other decisions made by the guardianship court during the guardianship. The article specifically discusses issues whose resolution may raise interpretative doubts. These include, i.a., the guardianship exercised jointly by spouses, the catalogue of negative preconditions excluding the possibility of exercising the guardianship of minors, and the obligation for the guardian to obtain authorisation in all important matters relating to the ward.</p>

Persons with Dementia Living at Home or in Nursing Homes in Nine Swedish Urban or Rural Municipalities

The methodology from the “RightTimePlaceCare” study of dementia care was tested locally in terms of relevance, acceptability and attrition. Comparing persons with dementia (PwDs) receiving home care (HC) with PwDs living in nursing homes (NHs), in urban versus rural areas, regarding their health conditions and informal caregiver burden was also done. Standardized measurements regarding sociodemographic, and physical and mental health was used. Questions related to legal guardianship were added. Interviews were conducted with PwDs and their caregivers in HC (n = 88) and in NHs (n = 58). Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used. The attrition rate was higher in HC. In the bivariate regression model, for HC and NH, living at home was significantly associated with more severe neuropsychiatric symptoms (p ≤ 0.001) and being cared by a spouse (p = 0.008). In NH, the informal caregivers were significantly younger (p = 0.003) and living in rural areas (p = 0.007) and more often in paid work (p ≤ 0.001). In the multivariate regression model, informal caregivers were significantly younger (p = 0.007) when caring for a PwD in an NH and caregiver burden was significantly higher in HC and in urban areas (p = 0.043). Legal guardianship was very low. Professionals should acknowledge that PwDs in HC have more behavioural problems and caregivers in urban areas report higher caregiver burden.

DIREITO FUNDAMENTAL DIFUSO DE ACESSO DAS PESSOAS COM DEFICIÊNCIA A ESPAÇOS URBANOS E SUA TUTELA JURÍDICA COLETIVA

RESUMO Esse artigo jurídico trata de um dos temas mais relevantes do momento das pessoas com deficiência e de suas famílias que vivem nos espaços urbanos brasileiros.O acesso das pessoas com deficiência aos espaços urbanos é um direito com expresso reconhecimento legal e esse direito vem sendo considerado como caminho indispensável para a inclusão social dessas pessoas. Acesso e inclusão, que tiveram suas trajetórias de consideração e inclusão na legislação da Organização das Nações Unidas e do Brasil, sempre foram considerados sob a ótica de direitos individuais, sendo certo que a busca de suas efetivações ocorriam por meio dos instrumentos processuais igualmente individuais, ou seja, ações civis para cumprimento de obrigação de fazer e para apuração de danos materiais e morais provocados por entidades públicas e particulares. Uma nova abordagem jurídica para esta situação de descumprimento do comando legal permitiu a identificação do direito de acesso das pessoas com deficiência aos espaços urbanos como sendo um direito fundamental, porque as previsões que o asseguram preservam a dignidade dessas pessoas e o direito à vida digna é um direito fundamental, e permitiu também a sua identificação como um direito difuso, por ser um direito transindividual, de natureza indivisível, cujos titulares são pessoas indeterminadas e ligadas por circunstância de fato. Sendo assim, a sua tutela jurídicapode ser efetivada por meio da poderosa ação civil pública, o que representa uma ampliação respeitável das possibilidades de acesso e inclusão para as pessoas com deficiência aos espaços urbanos. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Acessibilidade; Espaços urbanos; Direito Fundamental Difuso; Pessoa com deficiência; Tutela Jurídica coletiva. ABSTRACT This legal article deals with one of the most relevant issues of the moment for people with disabilities and their families living in Brazilian urban spaces. The access of people with disabilities to urban spaces is a right with express legal recognition and this right is being considered as an indispensable way for the social inclusion of these people. Access and inclusion, which had their consideration and inclusion trajectories in the legislation of the United Nations and Brazil, they have always been considered from the perspective of individual rights, being certain that the search for its effectiveness occurred through the equally individual procedural instruments, that is, civil actions to fulfill the obligation to do and to ascertain material and moral damages caused by public and private entities. A new legal approach at this situation of non-compliance with the legal command identified the right of access of disabled people to the urban areas as a fundamental right, because the predictions that ensure preserve the dignity of such persons and the right to decent life is a fundamental right, and also allowed its identification as a diffuse right, because it is a transindividual right, of an indivisible nature, whose holders are indeterminate persons and connected by de factual circumstance. Thus, its legal protection can be effected through the powerful public civil action, which represents a respectable increase in the possibilities of access and inclusion for people with disabilities in urban spaces. KEYWORDS: Accessibility; Urban spaces; Diffuse Fundamental right; Disabled person; Collective legal guardianship.

Second-parenthood realities, third-age ideals: (grand)parenthood in the context of poverty and HIV/AIDS

Within contexts of poverty and HIV/AIDS in (South) Africa, this chapter positions itself at the interface of the historical-moral engagement of grandparents caring for grandchildren and contemporary social realities and aspirations. The phenomenon of the oldest generation caring for younger generations builds on a long-established continuum of social structures and norms related to intergenerational support. However, in the context of HIV/AIDS they are increasingly being forced to take sole responsibility for their grandchildren, including legal guardianship. In this chapter I argue that the point of departure for these grandmothers is an obligatory contribution perspective which often overrides their own needs and aspirations with implications for their own care futures. During the past decade, however, an increasingly more rights-based / corrective discourse developed through which expectations and demands of younger generations are questioned and the obligatory contribution discourse is contested or at least relativized through negotiation..