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In April 1973, amendments to adoption provisions that had first been enshrined in the Swiss Civil Code (CC) of 1907/12 came into force. [Anmerkung 1] Federal Act of 30. 6. 1972 on the Amendment of the Swiss Civil Code (Adoption and Art. 321), entry into force 1. 4. 1973. Cf. also: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/oc/1972/2819_2873_2653/de and Explanatory Report on the Amendment of the Civil Code (Adoption Law), 9.12.2013, https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/80032.pdf. These changes introduced a new legal concept. Until the new provisions were introduced, certain legal ties, such as rights of inheritance, were preserved between the child and the biological parents of the child. There had, however, been increasing criticism that this did not adequately integrate adopted children into their new families. In the 1972 revision, the concept of ‘simple adoption’ was therefore replaced by that of ‘full adoption'. Full adoption dissolved all ties between the child and their family of origin. In the adoptive family, the adoptive child had the same rights as biological children. This decoupling was anchored in a newly introduced provision on ‘adoption secrecy’. The biological parents were now no longer permitted to know who had adopted their child.
Despite this new approach, a basic principle of the adoption law remained unchanged: both biological parents had to consent to the adoption of their child. Only in exceptional circumstances could the consent of one of the parents be dispensed with. The examination of 24 adoptions of children from India in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau found that this legal requirement was not met. The deed of surrender proving the Indian parents' consent was missing in every case. [Anmerkung 2] Sabine Bitter: "An Analysis of 24 Cases of Adoption of Indian Children in the Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau", in: Andrea Abraham, Sabine Bitter, Rita Kesselring (ed.), Mother Unknown. Adoption of Children from India in the Swiss Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 1973–2002, Zurich 2024, p. 197–220. The deed of surrender was also missing from a further 24 cases in Thurgau. In total, this proof of the biological parents' consent was missing from 48 successful adoption applications.
In an interview, the Indian adoption lawyer Rakesh Kapoor said that the documents remain under seal in the archives of the courts to this date. [Anmerkung 3] Asha Narayan Iyer, "Provisions and Practice. International Adoptions and the Law in India," in: Andrea Abraham, Sabine Bitter, Rita Kesselring (ed.), Mother Unknown. Adoption of Children from India in the Swiss Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 1973–2002, Zurich 2024, p. 101. The original documents were systematically placed under seal and access to the biological parents' surrender documents by the Swiss adoption agencies and authorities was not provided for by the Indian authorities. The Zurich district and Thurgau cantonal council members that issued the decisions in adoption cases in the two cantons should nevertheless have requested these documents in order to fulfil the legal requirements under Swiss adoption law. Instead, they put their faith in documents in which Indian adoption agencies such as the Missionaries of Charity stated that the biological parents had completed a deed of surrender. In other cases, they stated that the child had been abandoned or was an orphan and that no documentation was available. The Swiss authorities did not insist on the submission of the biological parents' deeds of surrender or death certificates and failed to question the systematic absence of these documents. Each authority instead simply repeated the assertion that the child was parentless before handing the file over to the next authority. This approach, which covered up the problems and rights of the birth mothers, was also widespread in international adoptions of children from other countries. [Anmerkung 4] Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen, "Vom Verschwinden im postkolonialen Adoptionsarchiv. Südkorea – Westdeutschland, 1964/1979", in: In unsere Mitte genommen. Adoption im 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 2022, p. 109.
