Haiti: Trafficking the children

Children taken for adoption are now in the care of SOS Children's Villages

The Haitian children at the centre of an illegal adoption row are being looked after by SOS Children's Villages, a Cambridge-based charity.

SOS has taken in the 33 children who were being taken to the Dominican Republic by members of an American Christian organisation.

Kathie Neal, from SOS, called the desire to adopt Haiti's earthquake orphans a "knee-jerk reaction".

She added: "We don't have a right to take these children out of Haiti."

While the authorities investigate the alleged illegal transportation of the children and the attempt to take them over the border without appropriate paperwork, the youngsters have been given a new home at an orphanage close to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

The SOS Children's Villages home at Santo was largely unaffected by the earthquake that hit the island on 12 January 2010, and a temporary hospital has been set up in its grounds.

Possible victims of child trafficking arrive at the SOS village

The Santo village was home to 140 children before the earthquake.

Since then, it has taken in a further 250 children, although at this stage, staff are not sure whether all of these displaced children are orphans and are working hard to trace any surviving family members.

Following the detention of members of the Idaho-based New Life Children's Refuge on 30 January, Santo's numbers have been swelled by 33 more children, aged between three months and 12 years.

'Terribly traumatised'

Kathie Neal, SOS's development director said: "Fortunately the children are all well - shall we say, physically well. One child - the baby - had to go to hospital because it was fully dehydrated, but it's back in the village now and is fine.

"All of the children have been terribly traumatised," she added. "They were lied to because they were told they were going to a camp which had a soccer field and swimming pool.

"The parents of these children - and there are many parents of these children - said that this is what they were told."

She continued: "Of course, in desperate situations, families want to make sure that their children are well looked after and are, in some senses, quite happy to hand over children.

"SOS Children's villages look after children in this way all over the world where there is poverty. This is not a new situation just because of the earthquake. Many of these people were in poverty beforehand and they see this as an opportunity, actually.

"They'll bring children to our village and say 'please look after these children' - and sometimes we don't know which children are truly orphaned and which are ones that the family wants us to look after."

Even experienced SOS staff find the situation in Haiti distressing

Future generations

Kathie Neal refers to the desire to re-home these children elsewhere as a "knee-jerk reaction that we might all make, because you think 'oh, this is terrible', but this is why SOS Children's Villages works within the country, because this is their future generation.

"We don't have a right to actually take these children out of Haiti, and to be so arrogant as to say that we have a better life than they do.

"What they need actually is just food and help, and that's what SOS Children's Villages is there to do.

"We have family strengthening programmes to help families stay together. We want to keep the children in their culture and with other orphaned children that are in the same situation. We keep the orphans - and their siblings - together."

Although SOS Children's Villages agrees that sometimes international adoption can be the right solution for these children, it advocates sponsorship as a more realistic way to help those who have lost their families in Haiti's earthquake.

In pictures

In pictures: Images of Haiti sent by staff at SOS Children's Villages in Santo