Haiti: Concern for orphans whisked from home

Published on Saturday 23 January 2010 18:18

A GROUP of Haitian children adopted by French families have arrived in Paris.

• People demonstrate in Paris in front of the Foreign Ministry to obtain the repatriation in France of Haitian orphans. Picture: Getty

The 33 youngsters, aged between one and six years, were met at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as their new families and medical teams.

They are expected to join their adoptive families once their papers had been officially verified.

However, the arrival of the children coincides with fears that speedy adoptions could endanger the welfare of many orphans and result in them being targeted by people traffickers.

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

The US, Germany, France, Spain, Canada, Belgium and Holland are currently rushing through adoption applications.

Save The Children, World Vision and the British Red Cross have called for a halt to new adoptions until sustained efforts have been made to reunite families.

"Taking children out of the country would permanently separate thousands of children from their families – a separation that would compound the acute trauma they are already suffering," said Save The Children's chief executive Jasmine Whitbread.

The adoption row came as the United Nations said Haitian children had also been abducted from hospitals by people traffickers taking advantage of the chaos to trade "orphans" on the international adoption market.

A Unicef adviser in Geneva, Luc Legrand, said there was evidence of children being stolen in Haiti.

He said the organisation had received reports of unauthorised people taking children to the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

"We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals," he said. "We know the problem with trade of children in Haiti and many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market."

Several of the children arriving in France had been resident in a nursery that was severely damaged in last week's earthquake but "not a single child was injured and not a single adoption file was lost," said French consul in Haiti, Jean-Pierre Gueguan.

The children left the school on Thursday where they had taken shelter after the destruction and headed to the Port-au-Prince airport.

Each had a Haitian passport with the family name of their adoptive family but also their birth family's surname.

The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has insisted his country has strict measures to monitor the children saying the government did not want to be accused by Haitian authorities of "kidnapping".

However, Kouchner announced last week that France would immediately take in 276 children matched for adoption. French couples adopted 600 Haitian children last year.