Haiti: Officials Rescue and Return to Their Parents 50 Trafficked Children; 100 Others Await Rescue

At the request of their parents and with the assistance of several non-governmental organizations , a group of 47 (some reports say 48) children, ages 2 through 7, were recently rescued from an illegal adoption center in Port-au-Prince, where they were reportedly awaiting international adoption, and returned to their parents. According to press reports, another 100 children are awaiting rescue from the same center.

These children were originally taken to the illegal center in Port-au-Prince after their impoverished parents, all from "major trafficking source communities," in southwest Haiti, had been tricked into "giving up" their children with promises of a better life--first, a better life for the children taken for adoption and,secondly, through promised help in setting up small businesses for their parents, a better life for the families and siblings left behind.

Not surprisingly, traffickers subsequently failed to follow through on their promises to parents. Not only did the parents not receive the help they had been promised in setting up businesses, but more seriously, the same parents found that their children who had been taken for international adoption and who were living at the illegal adoption center, were being seriously neglected.

"After learning that they had been misled by the traffickers and of the inhumane conditions in which their children were being kept at the centre, parents approached a local NGO, Initiative Departementale contre la Traite et le Traffic des Enfants (IDETTE) to denounce the owner of the centre and to ask for the return of their children. With the help of other NGO's, the parents filed a complaint against the owner of the centre in 2006 and campaigned for the return of their children."

The Haitian government, working through the Institute for Social Well-Being (IBERS--the Haitian government's agency to supervise adoptions), the Brigade of the Protection of Minors, the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Collectif contre la Traite et le Trafic de Personnes, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and several other local NGO's, effected the eventual rescue and return of the children.

After rescue, the organizations released more details about the appalling conditions under which the children had been kept at the illegal adoption center:

"The 48 rescued last week were found in conditions of extreme neglect by officials from Haiti's Social Well-Being and Research Institute (IBERS by its French acronym), the government agency that oversees legal adoption in the country. Most were suffering from malnutrition, severe diarrhea, dehydration, and skin diseases.

Many parents had difficulties recognizing their children upon their return home. "He was in such a state of neglect, it's as if I will need to bury my child," said a father after seeing the condition of his child.

One government official revealed that during an unannounced visit made a few days before the rescue, the children were hidden in the basement, frightened and filthy. Neighbours have confirmed that they often heard children crying.

In a statement to a local radio station, one of the presumed traffickers said that when the imminent rescue of the children was announced, those working at the creche restricted the amount of food and other basic care normally given to the children.

[Why spend their money on children who were not going to be able to be sold for adoption?]

Ten of the rescued children remain hospitalized, receiving treatment for malnutrition and contagious dermatological conditions. Most of the children will require long-term psychological support to overcome the trauma of the physical abuse and the separation from their families for periods ranging from many months to two years. Some children are further distressed by the separation from their siblings; 11 brothers and sisters of the rescued children are still at the creche."

News reports say that lack of funds are "hampering the immediate rescue of the remaining children." It is not immediately apparent from news reports exactly what the connection between lack of funds and inability to rescue the children is, but one could speculate that money is needed for efforts to identify the remaining children, to locate their first families, and to finance the judicial proceedings which would allow the children to be freed.

The organizations are providing care that goes beyond simply freeing the children and handing them back to their impoverished parents.

"IOM is also providing financial support for the immediate medical and psychological care of the children as well as reintegration assistance for both the children and their parents. This includes the payment of educational fees of school-aged children for one year while parents will be given micro-grants and training to set up small businesses to ease financial worries during the initial period of return."

According to press reports, some of the funding for these efforts and others aimed at protecting children and their parents from future trafficking schemes, has come from the Canadian government and also United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERG).

Beyond the rescue of these approximately 150 children, NGO's hope to address the situation which caused these children to be taken from their families in the first place:

"Funds would also be used to raise awareness of human trafficking in areas like Jeremie [the area from which these children came, and a favorite haunt of child traffickers], an impoverished, isolated, and desolate district in the southwest of Haiti and which is particularly affected by the problem. Many families have between six and eight children and the parents are often unable to meet the most basic needs such as food, health care, and education.

If urgent sensitization measures are not carried out in the region, there is a risk that destitute parents will continue to give their children away and these ruthless traffickers will continue to thrive in Haiti's more destitute areas, says Geslet Bordes, manager of International Organization for Migration's (IOM's) child trafficking program in Haiti."

This situation is not an isolated one. Hoping to cash in on Western demand for children, illegal adoption centers abound in Haiti:

"Pandya [an official with the International Organization for Migration, a human rights organization that tracks trafficking] said that according to the government [officials charged with overseeing adoptions in Haiti], many bogus centres are involved in the trafficking of children for international adoptions.

'However, a lack of resources means the government agency is currently unable to investigate all centres and to close down all those involved in child trafficking.'"

Where money for enforcement is lacking, child traffickers, whether for purposes of sex, slavery, or adoption, abound.

According to IOM, adoption trafficking is a problem because of "loopholes in the country's 1974 adoption laws."

"They offer children to rich Haitians and foreigners in return for processing fees reaching US $10,000."

Since 2005, the Geneva based organization International Organization for Migration (IOM) with funding from the US State Department's Bureau of Population, Refuges, and Migration, "has assisted with the return and re-integration" of 121 child trafficking victims.

Anyone who wishes to make a contribution to the effort to reintegrate these child victims with their families and provide for hope for the families' future through helping them get established in business or providing an education for their children, should contact IOM by clicking on the link below. Please remember that readers are responsible for evaluating a charity before contributing to it. Google to find sites that help you evaluate charities.

Desiree

International Organization for Migration

Articles:
Trafficked Children Returned Home, Press Briefing Notes, International Organization for Migration, Trafficked Children Returned Home, 10 August 2007

Haitian children saved from rogue adoption center, migration group says, International Herald Tribune, 10 August 2007

Haiti children leave “rogue” adoption centre, Reuters Alertnet, 10 August 2007

Trafficked Haitian Children Found, Returned Home, Hardbeat News, 13 August 2007

100 Children Remain in Hands of Traffickers in Haiti, The Anatolian Times, 17 August 2007

Press Release, International Organization for Migration, Ordeal of Children Victims of Trafficking for International Adoption Revealed, 17 August 2007

Europe: Bulgarian Mothers Tricked into Selling Babies

Curious about a sentence or two (in the BBC's story on child-trafficking) that alluded to the smuggling of pregnant Bulgarian women into Greece for child-trafficking purposes, I have spent the last few days researching and reading about the practice.

Here is what I've found....

According to BBC and other news reports listed below, the scheme is one that is played out hundreds of times a year.

An impoverished Bulgarian woman (who just happens to be pregnant) is approached and offered a "lucrative" job in Greece. She is told she will be given travel expenses, housing, and most important of all, the opportunity to work and earn good money.

Wanting to better her life, she jumps at the chance.

However, when she arrives in Greece, she finds there is no job.

Instead, the pregnant woman is sequestered--literally locked away... ...in an apartment with other pregnant women. There she stays--fed and housed but unemployed (except for the work her body is doing in gestating her child--the real "work" her "employers" were interested in all along) until the day that she gives birth.

Alone in a country where she knows no one, cut off from communication with home, prevented from leaving the apartment, having no money with which to support herself or with which to return home should she manage to escape, she has no recourse but to stay and wait...until she gives birth to the precious product she is producing...an adoptable child.

Meanwhile, arrangements are made to sell the child she is carrying.

Housed, fed, and cared for until she gives birth, the "birthmother's" care status will change with the birth of her child.

If she sells her child to her captors, she will be paid approximately 3,000 Euros and will continue to be cared for and eventually transported back to Bulgaria.

However, if she does not sell the child, then she and her vulnerable newborn will be turned out onto the street to fend for themselves. The reality of the prospect of caring for herself--a newly postpartum mother--and her tiny newborn baby, without local contacts, without a job, not knowing the local language, and with no money with which to buy food or shelter or with which to return home is ridiculous. The woman, of course, knows this.

She is--away from family, home, and community and the support it provides--at her most vulnerable.

She is trapped.

Through trickery and skillfully arranged circumstances, she is all but forced to "voluntarily" relinquish her newborn child.

Almost immediately after birth the child is transferred to the care of his or her previously identified adoptive parents--parents who have paid six times as much money for the child as his/her mother was been paid.

The woman who has produced the child receives about 3,000 Euros, while the organized crime ring which has "facilitated" the "adoption," receives about 20,000 Euros.

According to news sources, hundreds of women thus make the journey from Bulgaria to Greece, each year. Hoping for a better life through gainful employment, they instead find themselves captive and through circumstance forced to sell their own children.

Many of the women thus duped are Roma or gypsies. Typically unemployed, many live in squalid poverty in one of the wealthiest regions in Bulgaria. Their own poverty, a contrast to the wealth around them, serves as an ever-present motivator for them to change their lot in life. They would like to live like this. Those who prey on them know this. They know that their desire to do better in life will help to blind their eyes to dangers they would ordinarily see.

Those who prey on these women also know that there are equally desperate persons in Greece. With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, the demand for babies in Greece is very high. The number of babies legally available for adoption, however, is very tiny.

Experts estimate [that there] are currently 500 couple waiting to adopt [the] just 54 babies available across the country.

Combine the high demand and the serious dearth of legally adoptable babies, with a highly complicated, long, and bureaucratic adoptive process that may easily take up to five years to complete, and many couples decide either that the process may never work for them or else that is simply too long and too complicated.

Frustrated infertile couples get tired of waiting--waiting for the child that realistically may never come to them. Having the money to pay for a child and the burning desire to parent, they turn to the black market.

Where there are copious amounts of available money, high demand for a particular product, and little legal hope for filling that demand, criminals and organized crime has the opportunity to step in to fill demand and take make money.

Getting this trade under control has proved difficult.

[In 2006,] more than 20 suspected baby-traffickers and prospective buyers had been arrested in a series of police raids across Greece...

--news report in The Independent (as below)

This number is multiplied by the 33 people that the Bulgarian government has arrested on similar charges in the last 3 years since baby-trafficking was outlawed there. However, police believe these 33 people represent "only the tip of the iceberg." Eight separate cases of child-trafficking for adoption had been investigated in the first seven months of 2006 alone.

In its most recent report, Interpol says that Bulgarians have become the ringleaders of the European baby trading circuit and are being investigated in Greece, Italy, France, and Portugal.

But demand is increasing and the gangs are becoming wealthier, according to Greek police. 'The phenomenon is well organised, "said Dimitris Tsiodras of Athens police's organised crime unit. 'The gangs consist of five, 10, or even more people. You need such numbers in order to locate pregnant women [in Bulgaria], transport them through countries such as Austria and Italy to Greece, take them to hospital to deliver the baby and find a place for them to stay until the buyer is found." Most of the buyers--usually childless couples--are found in advance, and the baby is given away as soon as the mother leaves the hospital."

--news report in The Independent (as below)

As for the gullibility of the Bulgarian women...

It is not hard to see why women such as [the woman in the article] are prepared to follow anyone offering her a ticket out of this poverty. 'I was told that I would earn up to 45 Euros a day if I took the job in Greece. What do you think I should have done?'

Bulgarian mothers tricked into selling babies, The Independent, July 18, 2006

Criminal Groups From Bulgaria Among Leader in Europe's Child Trafficking Industry, Sofia Echo, 19 Jul 2006

Bulgarian babies for sale, BBC News, July 18, 2006

Watch a BBC Video Report on this issue: Pregnant Women Smuggled into Europe, BBC News, 18 July 2006
Desiree