Child traffickers target Haiti's legion of orphans
Tuesday January 26 2010
HAITIAN children made orphans by this month's catastrophic earthquake or separated from their parents face a growing threat from child traffickers or illicit adoptions, the government and aid groups say.
They fear unscrupulous traffickers may try to exploit the chaos and social turmoil following the January 12 quake to spirit defenceless infants out of the impoverished country through the airport or across the land border with the Dominican Republic.
A police unit tasked with protecting minors has sent officers to the border but officials said that like every other Haitian institution, the unit had been hit hard by the earthquake that killed at least 120,000 people and probably many more.
"We are very concerned that there are increasing reports that children are being picked up and trafficked out of the country," said Kent Page, a spokesman for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). However, he had no details of specific cases.
Authorities also fear that legitimate aid groups may have flown earthquake orphans out of the country for adoption before efforts to find their parents had been exhausted.
As a result, the Haitian government last week halted these types of adoptions.
There are no reliable estimates of the number of parentless and lost children at risk in Haiti's quake-shattered capital Port-au-Prince. Hungry, homeless minors fending for themselves are a common sight on the streets of the capital.
Danger
Around 700 children who lost touch with their parents have been registered and placed in camps and efforts at reunification are under way, said UNICEF.
But in an indication of the scale of the problem, a Haitian children's charity working in the capital said it had identified 3,000 children that it considered in danger.
Some children joined gangs of looters last week, smashing into stores in the city's main commercial district in search of food and goods to sell, said Alveus Prospere, the president of the Organisation for a Better Future for Children charity.
Many others have been taken in by relatives or neighbours now living in makeshift camps where food is scarce, he said.
Even before the quake, economic pressure and grinding hardship in what was already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere provided a powerful incentive for some Haitian parents to seek adoption for their children.
Child-protection experts fear the Haitian government's problems in maintaining control and oversight in the country, now hugely exacerbated by the quake, could also give freer rein to well-meaning potential adopters willing to cut corners.
- Matthew Bigg in Port-Au-Prince
Irish Independent
