Yesterday's Saturday Telegraph ran a story stating that Haitian orphans are already being shipped off the island for new lives in other countries. A photo shows Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the First Lady of France, welcoming a group of 33 Haitian children at the airport. It is a hotly debated issue; not merely one of opinion, but also of intent, ethics and law
There have reportedly been cases of Haitian children being disappearing from hospitals already, some taken over the border into the Dominican republic, airplanes being loaded with undocumented children at the last minute and children sent to foster homes in the Netherlands because they hadn't been matched to families in the rush.
On the one side, it may seem entirely reasonable for richer nations to reach out to save children from the very real threat of disease or death in Haiti. Adoption agencies that had family arrangements already in process for specific children are fast-tracking those adoptions. The rationale is that it would have happened in time anyway and it would be better to get those children to a home with food, clean water, medical attention and safety.
That isn't really the issue. It's about the other, newly-orphaned children being taken from their native country before it is definitively ascertained that there are no other family members surviving and able to care for them. While well-meaning, rushed procedures could end up hurting children in the long run, through the loss of their history, national pride, culture, sense of belonging and biological family. Regardless of where these children eventually end up living, they will already have been traumatized by the event of the earthquake itself, the scene of destruction, possibly watching family members die, their bodies not found amidst the rubble or being heaved into mass graves.
Being adopted by a family in the United States, France, Spain, Germany, Canada and other countries would certainly provide the children with immediate relief from hunger, injury and structure. The word "abuse" was used in the article, not to convey physical mistreatment, but to warn of the children's emotional health in the future. Charities, including Save the Children, World Vision and the British Red Cross are concerned that taking children away from the place where they lived with their family members, now dead, could exacerbate their trauma. Forcing a permanent break from their country and surviving relatives could be worse for them than leaving them in the country of their birth, however destroyed.
One child campaigner, Roelie Post, of Against Child Trafficking, told Telegraph reporters that this situation will lend credibility to "an adoption industry driven by greed and money." Her anger and warnings seem to relate to the businesses that drive adoption, rather than to the potential adoptive parents. However, it suggests to me that the willingness and financial ability of Western couples to pay for foriegn adoption puts them higher on the priority list as parents than those in the devastated country, even if they are related. It's easy in this type of crisis, to claim moral superiority based upon wanting to help and an ability to end a child's suffering.
No one mentioned the adoptive parents waiting in the wings to receive a Haitian child. Their motives may be completley selfless. Haiti had the lowest standard of living in the West before this earthquake, so adopting a Haitian child under normal adoption and legal procedures may have been born from a desire to give a child a better future. Their motives may have been more about creating or adding to their family and wanting to parent and love a specific child they had met. My concern is about the potential "fast-tracked" adoptions. Which screening procedures will be missed? Will criteria be ignored? Could these children be adopted by a paedophile? Could they be "sold" on the international adoption market? Who is in charge?
What do you think? Is this quickie-adoption a condoned form of child trafficking? Or, does the love, care and comfort they will potentially receive from adoptive parents adequate compensation for losing ties to their relations, friends and country?
As I have been reading these stories I have wondered about lots of those same questions. Not an easy situation.
ICLW
Posted by: Junebug | January 25, 2010 at 01:52 AM