#Meet the Cloud - F.A. e G.N.

Welcome to the Meet the cloud post series - a collection of posts featuring the Italian partners’ voice: constitution, members, goals, collaborations and successful activities.

Today we present Italian adoption cloudpartner - F.A. e G.N.

The Association

F.A. e G.N. stands for Figli Adottivi e Genitori Naturali (Adoptive Children and Natural Parents) it is the first Association in Italy of adult adopted, founded by Luisa Di Fiore, John Pierre Campitelli, and Monica Rossi.

It is based in Rome but is located throughout the country and is in contact with similar associations in other parts of the world (Greece / France / United States / Holland / Spain / South Korea and India).

Born as a natural evolution of the virtual community dedicated to this theme, FAeGN was founded in June 2000. Today, the Association can count over 3,000 associates and is engaged to:

- Offer assistance, moral and informational help, to birth parents whose child has been taken away and given up for adoption.

- Offer assistance, moral help and information, to people in the condition known to them as adopted children.

- Encourage cooperation with other subjects and entities interested in pursuing the above objectives. Hence to promote social awareness for the need to know one's origins and the consequential actions to request the modification of the current law.

- Organize meetings and debates aimed at raising public awareness on the issue of abandonment of minors and adoption in general, in particular concerning the rights and duties of adoptive children and birth parents about the current social context and legislative.

In addition to the efforts to amend the current legislation, the Association has established the first register of adopted children and Italian biological parents (http://bit.ly/registrofaegn).

The Association also launched the DNAdozione campaign in 2016 to exploit genetic genealogy as a further tool to trace one's biological origins.

Our goal is to assert the right of children not recognized at birth to be able to know their origins: aware, of what all this represents emotionally and psychologically, for the adoptive triad, we believe it is our right to claim a law that authorizes that.

Courtesy of FAeGN

Legislative process and FAeGN accomplishments 

The law currently in force (law no. 184 of 1983 and amendments made by law no. 149 of 2001) prohibits adopted children not recognized at birth from accessing the information on their origins for 100 years!

This law denies the fundamental Right to know the name of one's birth parents and that of any other brothers and sisters, depriving them of their personal history. Furthermore, it makes it impossible to know the existence of any hereditary and family pathologies, with severe repercussions on the Right to health. In 2013, with the sentence of the Constitutional Court no. 278/2013 which requires Italy to amend this law in the direction of balancing the Right of women to remain anonymous and the Right of the adopted person to know their biological origins, a real debate begins in the Parliament. Thanks to the help and commitment of the Comitato per il diritto alle origini biologiche (the National Committee for the Right to know biological origins), and the incessant and competent battle it puts in place, we have reached the first approval in the Chamber of the text (C.784 of 18/06/2015) which guarantees the Right to knowledge through the procedure of the interpellation, already sanctioned by the previous sentence no. 278 of 2013 of the Constitutional Court. Since 2015, we are still waiting for the text to be discussed in the Senate until the change of government which requires us to start again from the discussion in the House etc. Today we have a new draft in place by senators Pillon (Lega) and Urraro (5s) (see link) with some critical issues compared to the previous one but which we support and hope that finally, this Right will become law. However, thanks to the last sentence of the Court of Cassation (no. 1946 of 25/01/2017), the Juvenile Courts were urged to have a unified behaviour in accepting the requests of the adopted and to proceed according to what is indicated in the text approved by the Chamber.

The doors to our origins have opened, and incredible stories are emerging.

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Thanks to FAeGN President Luisa Di Fiore for the time and patience she has dedicated to this project.

Follow FAeGN on Facebook.

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