Children missing from hospitals after quake, sparking trafficking fears

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The UN children's aid organisation UNICEF reported Friday that around 15 children have disappeared from hospitals. The agency had warned countries during the past week not to step up adoptions from Haiti in the immediate wake of the quake.
By News Wires (text)


AFP - Children have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti since the devastating earthquake struck, raising fears of trafficking for adoption abroad, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Friday.
 
"We have documented let's say around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time," said UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand.
 
"UNICEF has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti which existed already beforehand, and unfortunately many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption 'market'," Legrand explained.
 
The agency underlined that it had warned countries during the past week not to step up adoptions from Haiti in the immediate wake of the quake.
 
Several are fast-tracking adoption procedures already under way, including Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States.
 
Legrand said the situation was similar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Asia five years ago.
 
Trafficking networks were springing into action immediately after the disaster and taking advantage of the weakness of local authorities and relief coordination "to kidnap children and get them out of the country," Legrand told journalists.
 
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that child enslavement and trafficking in Haiti was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months."
 
The UN mission in Haiti has stepped up surveillance of roads, UNICEF officials said.
 
Legrand said there was separate but only anecdotal evidence of people taking children by road to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and planes loading children before they left the airport.
 
"We have seen over the last years many children being taken out of the country without any legal procedure. This is going on, this is happening now, and we are starting to have the first evidence of that, this is unquestionable," he claimed.
 
He was unable to give details on the 15 missing children or their condition, or clearly connect the anecdotal observations in Haiti's chaos with trafficking.
 
The cases were documented by social workers and by partner non-governmental organisations working for UNICEF in hospitals.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100122-children-missing-hospitals-earthquake-trafficking-haiti-unicef

France wants to bring back 394 adopted Haiti children

Over 300 French families are waiting for 394 adopted Haiti children while the judging process of Haitian authorities is underway, according to a press release on Thursday from the French Foreign Ministry.

Till now, the ministry has confirmed the adoption from 352 French families. Once the Haitian authorities finish the legal process of judgment, the concerned children will be transferred to France, ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

Considering transport conditions and the different situation of each case, these Haiti orphans will arrive in France in different groups, Valero explained.

He said the first group would include 42 children whose paperwork was completed before the earthquake.

As Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States launched fast-track repatriation of children adopted in Haiti, France seems more prudent to take action.

Some anxious families called on the government to lift bureaucratic hurdles and speed up the adoption process, but the government argued that adequate vigilance was necessary to avoid identity errors.

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90853/6875917.html



33 Haitian children head to new French families

PORT-AU-PRINCE – A group of 33 Haitian children, who have been adopted by French families, left a school where they had sought shelter and headed to the Port-au-Prince's airport Thursday.

Aged between one and six years old, they boarded a bus for the airport, each with their hands set on the shoulders of the child in front of them, singing "the little train."

French consul Jean-Pierre Gueguan told AFP the children would arrive in Paris on Friday evening to meet their adoptive parents.

All but one of them were good health, each child had a Haitian passport with the family name of their adoptive family but also their birth family's surname.

"It's very important that a child knows where he came from," one nurse said.

Some of the children were orphans, others were abandoned, but all were looking forward to a brighter future.

Several of the children had been living in a nursery that was severely damaged in last week's devastating earthquake, but "not a single child was injured and not a single adoption file was lost," Gueguan said.

According to the French embassy in Port-au-Prince, 740 Haitian children were adopted by French families in 2008, and around 600 were adopted in 2009.

In the days since the January 12 quake, families around the world in the process of adopting Haitian children have pressured their governments to speed up the adoption process.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20100122-248818/33-Haitian-children-head-to-new-French-families

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