Patrick Noordoven
Founder
Since 2014, Patrick has worked on a voluntary basis for the international NGO Brazil Baby Affair. Today, the organization continues as an independent information portal and public-interest resource, preserving its research, documentation, and guidance on access to origins and the human right to identity.
Patrick has more than 25 years of experience in family-tracing cases in Brazil, helping to address the practical, legal, and human consequences of being deprived of one’s identity.
During the investigation into his own illegal intercountry adoption, Patrick became dedicated to uncovering the international scale, institutional context, and long-term impact of such practices. For this purpose, he founded Brazil Baby Affair to place his expertise into a constructive framework: preserving evidence, supporting affected individuals globally, and advancing structural recognition of the right to identity.
What began as an individual investigation subsequently developed into systems-level institutional accountability work. Combining archival research, freedom-of-information procedures, policy dialogue, and legal analysis, Patrick learned to navigate fragmented public bodies, test institutional accounts against underlying records, and identify gaps in responsibility.
This work has had documented, far-reaching institutional consequences. In the Netherlands, formal information and access requests Patrick directed at the Ministry of Justice and Security brought to light indications of systemic involvement in illegal adoptions. As officially recorded, this discovery led the Minister for Legal Protection to establish the independent Commission on Intercountry Adoption in the Past (COIA / the Joustra Commission) in 2019.
The Commission’s subsequent findings led the Dutch government to suspend intercountry adoptions, commit to a multi-year phase-out, and establish the national expertise center INEA (Expertisecentrum Interlandelijke Adoptie). Patrick’s work constitutes an early, documented contribution to what is now a broader international reassessment of intercountry adoption across Europe and beyond.
His wider international public-interest work includes international presentations, sustained dialogue with national authorities – including Brazil’s National Justice Council (CNJ) – and participation in meetings of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). He has also published in the Nederlands Juristenblad (NJB) and the International Social Service (ISS) professional handbook.
Patrick holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) and a B.A. in Political History and International Relations. His 2019 LL.M. thesis examined the legal and institutional barriers preventing intercountry adoptees from obtaining meaningful access to their origins, while his B.A. thesis focused on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In 2026, Patrick completed WIFI Vorarlberg’s DACH-recognized Mediation & Conflict Management program. This qualification represents the consolidation of an educational and professional path developed across the Netherlands, Switzerland, Brazil, and Austria.
His diploma thesis analyzed the structural preconditions of mediative action in asymmetric institutional conflicts. It developed the concept of “institutional physics” to describe how knowledge, authority, and responsibility become dispersed across nested layers until no single actor is answerable for the whole. The thesis also examined how institutions escalate conflict through omission — by declining to verify, routing a question elsewhere, or closing a file before the underlying record has been examined.
This qualification consolidates more than fifteen years of systemic intervention with formal mediation practice and complex institutional navigation. These capacities are directly relevant to independent reality-testing, ombuds and integrity functions, complex complaint resolution, and organizational conflict management. Furthermore, Patrick’s earlier work as KLM cabin crew adds a vital operational perspective shaped by intercultural communication, de-escalation, procedural discipline, and calm judgment in safety-sensitive environments.
Patrick works across English, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. He holds Brazilian and Dutch nationality and lives in Switzerland.
Patrick Noordoven
Founder
Since 2014, Patrick has worked on a voluntary basis for the international NGO Brazil Baby Affair. Today, the organization continues as an independent information portal and public-interest resource, preserving its research, documentation, and guidance on access to origins and the human right to identity.
Patrick has more than 25 years of experience in family-tracing cases in Brazil, helping to address the practical, legal, and human consequences of being deprived of one’s identity.
During the investigation into his own illegal intercountry adoption, Patrick became dedicated to uncovering the international scale, institutional context, and long-term impact of such practices. For this purpose, he founded Brazil Baby Affair to place his expertise into a constructive framework: preserving evidence, supporting affected individuals globally, and advancing structural recognition of the right to identity.
What began as an individual investigation subsequently developed into systems-level institutional accountability work. Combining archival research, freedom-of-information procedures, policy dialogue, and legal analysis, Patrick learned to navigate fragmented public bodies, test institutional accounts against underlying records, and identify gaps in responsibility.
This work has had documented, far-reaching institutional consequences. In the Netherlands, formal information and access requests Patrick directed at the Ministry of Justice and Security brought to light indications of systemic involvement in illegal adoptions. As officially recorded, this discovery led the Minister for Legal Protection to establish the independent Commission on Intercountry Adoption in the Past (COIA / the Joustra Commission) in 2019.
The Commission’s subsequent findings led the Dutch government to suspend intercountry adoptions, commit to a multi-year phase-out, and establish the national expertise center INEA (Expertisecentrum Interlandelijke Adoptie). Patrick’s work constitutes an early, documented contribution to what is now a broader international reassessment of intercountry adoption across Europe and beyond.
His wider international public-interest work includes international presentations, sustained dialogue with national authorities – including Brazil’s National Justice Council (CNJ) – and participation in meetings of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). He has also published in the Nederlands Juristenblad (NJB) and the International Social Service (ISS) professional handbook.
Patrick holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) and a B.A. in Political History and International Relations. His 2019 LL.M. thesis examined the legal and institutional barriers preventing intercountry adoptees from obtaining meaningful access to their origins, while his B.A. thesis focused on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In 2026, Patrick completed WIFI Vorarlberg’s DACH-recognized Mediation & Conflict Management program. This qualification represents the consolidation of an educational and professional path developed across the Netherlands, Switzerland, Brazil, and Austria.
His diploma thesis analyzed the structural preconditions of mediative action in asymmetric institutional conflicts. It developed the concept of “institutional physics” to describe how knowledge, authority, and responsibility become dispersed across nested layers until no single actor is answerable for the whole. The thesis also examined how institutions escalate conflict through omission — by declining to verify, routing a question elsewhere, or closing a file before the underlying record has been examined.
This qualification consolidates more than fifteen years of systemic intervention with formal mediation practice and complex institutional navigation. These capacities are directly relevant to independent reality-testing, ombuds and integrity functions, complex complaint resolution, and organizational conflict management. Furthermore, Patrick’s earlier work as KLM cabin crew adds a vital operational perspective shaped by intercultural communication, de-escalation, procedural discipline, and calm judgment in safety-sensitive environments.
Patrick works across English, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. He holds Brazilian and Dutch nationality and lives in Switzerland.