In Haiti, the recent earthquake is feared to have worsened existing problems of international child trafficking.
UNICEF child protection official Jean Claude Legrand announced that sometime within the past 10 days, 15 children have disappeared from Haitian hospitals in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Legrand suspects that the children have been kidnapped and given away in international adoption markets. Other officials have said that the children have likely been sold. As of current reports, nothing else is known about the exact whereabouts of the missing children.
In-country UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau warned that “in this type of emergency, children are unfortunately the most vulnerable, especially those who have been abandoned.” In such emergencies, when usual government business has been put on hold to deal with immense humanitarian considerations, or is otherwise in a state of disarray, it is very easy for criminals to circumvent the laws of the state and any administrative controls.
UNICEF and like-minded child charities currently run numerous children’s shelters and orphans' homes in Haiti. These shelters receive thousands of children every day. Yet, more time is needed to determine whether or not children living in emergency shelters are indeed orphans, or whether they have merely been separated from their parents since the quake first struck. That their children now belong to families living across an ocean, millions of miles away, would be devastating for any parent to hear; moreover, it would surely bring with it many difficult legal complications.
For all of these reasons, the reunification of families in Haiti is of the utmost importance for child protection. This is also why child welfare officials are cautioning well-meaning countries such as Canada, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain from fast-tracking international adoptions.
On the domestic front, some speculate that the same conditions that have enabled child trafficking will increase slavery within the country. There are today 250 000 child slaves living in Haiti—they are sold and traded, forced to labour as domestic help, farm workers, prostitutes in brothels, or panhandlers on the street.
Worldwide, about one million children are trafficked each year. And unfortunately, human trafficking is not a new corollary of natural disasters. Criminal activity of this nature is dependent upon the lack of human security for vulnerable groups.
In 2005, for instance, in the tsunami-affected regions of Asia, increased child trafficking was facilitated by the defenseless of homeless and displaced people. At the time, a US Department of State spokesperson commented, “In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, when there is a lot of confusion it is important to put in place measures that prevent potential abuse and potential exploitation of a confused and relatively unregulated situation.” In other words, maintaining the rule of law while increasing the awareness of trafficking dangers among the population and relief agencies is paramount in disaster situations.