Haiti - earthquake adoptions

Fast-track adoptions could break up Haitian families, NGOs fear

Article published on the 2010-01-22 Latest update 2010-01-22 12:02 TU

A member of the Royal Dutch Airforce carries one of 106 children from a Dutch relief flight arriving in Eindhoven from Port-au-Prince on 21 January 2010
(Photo:Reuters)

In the wake of the earthquake that has devastated Haiti, many countries around the world are fast-tracking adoptions to allow hundreds of Haitian children to be moved out of the country and settled with new families.

However, children’s agencies and charities such as Save The Children and World Vision have claimed that some children are leaving without having been properly assessed.

Furthermore, with the government in disarray and efforts still underway to trace thousands of missing people, they have warned that hastily-arranged adoptions could risk breaking up Haitian families.

France is expecting to welcome 276 Haitian children who have been matched with parents and were in the final stages of the adoption process before the earthquake hit. A group of 33 children, aged between one and six, began the journey to their new home on Thursday.

A total of 106 children being adopted by Dutch families arrived in Holland on Thursday while more than 50 Haitian orphans have been brought to the United States. Spain, Belgium, Germany and Canada are also speeding up the adoption process.

Susan Bissell, Child Protection Chief at Unicef, told RFI that it appears efforts have been made to allow children who received judicial approval to leave prior to the earthquake to join their foster-parents abroad.

But, she says, many children who have not yet been properly assessed or granted this authorisation are being moved as well.

“What we’re understanding is that large numbers of children who do not have such documentation are leaving the country,” she says.

“Some of them accompanied and going by air, some of them accompanied and going across land into the Dominican Republic, some of them unaccompanied and going to the Dominican Republic. So we have quite – I have to say – an alarming situation on our hands.”

 

Bissel explains that Unicef advocates international standards which require that, especially in an emergency, only children who have been fully assessed and received the necessary judicial clearance should be allowed to join their adopted family.

“The justice system is collapsed in Haiti therefore it’s very clear to us that the awarding of that judicial approval for more children is going to be very, very difficult at this moment.”

Unicef staff are working with other children’s agencies in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince to document unaccompanied children and to offer them assistance, she says. But the earthquake has made an already difficult situation much worse.

“We already had some pretty serious child protection issues before the earthquake,” she says. “We already had large numbers of orphanages that were not registered and hence large numbers of children not documented under even the previously existing law.

"So this situation was not perfect and then collapsed. It was highly in need of strengthening and improving and clearly we’ve lost momentum there.”