Lost children: Why they should stay in Haiti - thestar.com
Sun Jan 31 2010 by: Nicole Baute
There is no fool like the one who wants to be fooled.
Professor David Smolin wrote those words in 2005 referring to adoptive parents in the Western world. Eager to believe they are saving orphaned children from poverty, he wrote, they are easily fooled into accepting laundered children from the developing world.
He knows first-hand how such a thing could happen.
In 1998, Smolin, who teaches at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law , and his wife, Desiree, adopted two girls from India who did not take kindly to joining their large American family in Birmingham, Ala. "They had a very, very difficult time from the very moment that they arrived," Desiree Smolin says.
The sisters, roughly 10 and 12 years old, had been living in a hostel – what most North Americans would recognize as an orphanage – in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, until their adoption. But they were not orphans.
It was not until 2004, after a series of scandals halted adoption in that part of India, that the Smolins were able to confirm the story their adopted daughters had told them six weeks after their arrival – that their parents had sent them to a hostel for an education, and they had been adopted out, without their consent.
For the last several years, the Smolins have been researching international adoption to try to figure out whether their case was a tragic fluke, akin to an airplane crash, or whether there are systemic problems within the inter-country adoption system that make it inherently vulnerable to corruption and abuse.
"The answer has unfortunately been it is systemic," Desiree Smolin says.
David Smolin argues that children have been commodified and often made into "paper orphans." In one scenario, poor parents send the children to live in a hostel or orphanage to receive food, care and education; in others, developing world recruiters use false statements or money to separate kids from their parents, or persuade them to relinquish a child to repay a debt. Sometimes extended family members or strangers simply take them. Other times lost children are taken in and little effort is made to find their families.
The children in orphanages in many countries (including potentially Haiti, UNICEF warns) are not necessarily parentless children, orphans in the Western understanding of the word.
"Our assumptions are all off," Desiree Smolin says. "We assume that every child in an orphanage is an orphan."
There are opportunities throughout the expensive adoption process for recruiters, adoption agencies, orphanages, officials and attorneys to pocket thousands of dollars – and unless we limit the amount of money Westerners can spend on foreign adoption, the financial incentive will continue to fuel corruption, David Smolin argues.
"When my wife and I first began talking about this we got very negative reactions, overwhelmingly," David Smolin says. But he says that has changed in more recent years, with well-publicized scandals in countries such as Cambodia and Guatemala and fewer foreign adoptees coming into the U.S. since 2004, when the figure peaked at 22,884.
And the media have indeed started paying attention.
In 2008, E.J. Graff published an often-cited award-winning investigative piece in Foreign Policy called "The Lie We Love," describing international adoption as a corrupt industry driven by poverty and Western demand.
And just last fall, for example, the L.A. Times reported that instead of levying fines for failing to comply with one-child policies in some rural parts of China, officials were snatching babies for adoption, turning a $3,000 per child profit in the process.
COULD THE international adoption system be inherently flawed? The idea is understandably unsettling for people in Canada, a country that saw 1,908 international adoptions in 2008 – and in the past two weeks, has ushered two planeloads of Haitian orphans into the arms of Canadian families.
In 1993, Canada became a part of the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption, which was formed to better protect children from abuse and trafficking. Although it has a lengthy adoption approval process, Haiti is not a part of the Hague Convention.
Because of stricter regulation in many countries, it became more difficult for Canadians to adopt from abroad; between 2003 and 2006 the numbers dropped. They have since been edging back up.
Karen Shadd, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration, says adoption can be a lengthy process because of the need to ensure children are not being trafficked. "It's really not red tape ... the best interests of the child come first and we have to ensure that everything has been done, that the children have been legitimately placed for adoption," she says.
Even the system's skeptics and critics will say international adoption can be a good alternative for poor children in poor countries – if governments, parents and adoption agencies are vigilant.
The threat of trafficking for the purposes of adoption or prostitution becomes much graver during disasters like the current one in Haiti, which has left thousands of children orphaned or unaccompanied. Even before the earthquake, trafficking and kidnapping of children was a problem in the Western hemisphere's poorest country, and the post-quake chaos has reportedly made things worse.
In one case, a Canadian pastor told reporters that a man offered to sell him a little Haitian boy for $50. He refused.
Concern for the children's well being led Canadia and the U.S. to expedite adoptions already underway – Canada has welcomed 76 children and counting.
But it is not a time for haste. The Haitian government has since decided that the prime minister must sign off on every child that leaves the country. The U.S. government has asked its citizens for patience.
"We've heard quite a few who have suggested, `Why don't we just bring these children out (of Haiti) until things are better?'" says Patrick McCormick, an emergency communications officer with UNICEF. "Our problem with that is that it makes the whole registration, tracing process difficult to impossible, if they're kind of gone."
McCormick says UNICEF supports the decision to fast-track adoptions that were already approved, provided the paperwork is in order. But he says: "Now, post-earthquake, just because there is this disaster there's no reason to take any short cuts."
Sandra Scarth, president of the Adoption Council of Canada, agrees that the inter-country adoption system is flawed. She signed the Hague Convention as a non-governmental representative – and says, like the Smolins, that because it does not place a financial limit on adoption fees, tragedies will continue.
"I think until there is some agreement that no more than the actual cost plus a reasonable compensation for people doing the work (is allowed), I think we will continue to see people rush from one country to the next country," she says. "Then practices will be poor, they will then close that country down and start over."
KAREN DUBINSKY, a history professor at Queen's University with a 10-year-old son adopted from Guatemala, says the corruption in international adoption is a symptom of systemic poverty.
"Global poverty and political economy creates desperate people," says Dubinsky, whose book Babies Without Borders: Adoption and Migration Across the Americas, is due this spring. "One desperate person might snatch the child out of the arms of another desperate person, or one desperate mother might make her own set of decisions about needing to relinquish her child. I don't think it's adoption that creates that stuff – I think adoption responds to it, and it sometimes doesn't respond all that well."
Dubinsky says we must not assume that orphaned children in impoverished countries are isolated and alone – as if they live in cabbage patches, like the popular dolls of the '80s.
"When I see the imagery that comes through, sometimes in the media and certainly the imagery of adoption agencies, it's always children alone," Dubinsky says. "Children aren't alone. They may or may not have parents, but they have communities and they have extended family and they're not waiting for Western people to rescue them."
Dubinsky believes international adoption can indeed be done ethically. She knows her son wasn't stolen – she has met his biological mother and his foster family in Guatemala. She believes that in the "good" adoption scenario, we must respect the mother's decision to relinquish her child, whatever her reasons might be.
There is a lot of potential loss involved in international adoption, says Rachel Wegner, a board member on the international policy advocacy team of Ethica, a not-for-profit dedicated to ethical adoption. "There's a loss of culture, there's a loss of family and there's also a loss of friends and support networks the child has developed in the orphanage."
In an ideal world, Wegner says, foreign adoption would be the last resort for children – they would ideally be placed with extended family members first, and then in domestic placements to unrelated caregivers.
"Our fear in a lot of this is that those two steps are skipped."
Desiree Smolin puts it in starker terms. "I'll give you an analogy," she says. "Amputations are sometimes necessary, but you don't want every doctor that you see when you go in with your toe hurting, you don't want an amputation."
You need a doctor, she says, who is careful enough to know when the amputation is needed and when it isn't.
Showing posts with label Haiti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haiti. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Cruise Ships Labadee - Haiti
Labadee (also Labadie) is a port located on the northern coast of Haiti. It is a private resort leased to Royal Caribbean International. Royal Caribbean International has contributed the largest proportion of tourist revenue to Haiti since 1986, employing 300 locals, allowing another 200 to sell their wares on the premises, and paying the Haitian government US$6 per tourist.[1]...source
Cruise ships still continue to stop at Labadee even though 100 kms away in Port-au-Prince,as many as 200,000 people are believed dead. -
But the cruise line found itself on the defensive after criticism spread online. Melissa Bacchus, a Brooklyn, New York, teacher, was among several veteran cruisers to dominate message boards on sites like Cruisecritic.com with the debate.
'I do think morally it is wrong to go (to Labadee), where less than 60 miles away people are suffering,' Bacchus said in an interview. 'And because we have the resources, we have the wealth, we can frolic using the beauty of their island?' Haiti cruises cause controversy .
Could this paradise really be poor, desperate Haiti?
Cruise ships still continue to stop at Labadee even though 100 kms away in Port-au-Prince,as many as 200,000 people are believed dead. -
But the cruise line found itself on the defensive after criticism spread online. Melissa Bacchus, a Brooklyn, New York, teacher, was among several veteran cruisers to dominate message boards on sites like Cruisecritic.com with the debate.
'I do think morally it is wrong to go (to Labadee), where less than 60 miles away people are suffering,' Bacchus said in an interview. 'And because we have the resources, we have the wealth, we can frolic using the beauty of their island?' Haiti cruises cause controversy .
Could this paradise really be poor, desperate Haiti?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Baby Elisabeth and Anna Zizi bring hope to quake-hit Haitians
"It was the mercy of God," said her mother Michelene Joassaint, 22, as she breastfed her daughter on a makeshift bed next to the heavily damaged city hospital.
Anna Zizi had been praying in the cathedral when the earthquake struck. She was singing when they pulled her out alive.
"I talked only to my boss — God. And I didn't need any more humans," said the 69-year-old woman.
Anna Zizi had been praying in the cathedral when the earthquake struck. She was singing when they pulled her out alive.
"I talked only to my boss — God. And I didn't need any more humans," said the 69-year-old woman.
Earthquake victim Anna Zizi takes a drink of water after being carried alive from the rubble of Haiti's Catholic cathedral yesterday. (AP Photo / Paul Jeffrey, ACT Alliance HO)
Royal Caribbean cruise ships such as Navigator of the Seas still escorting vacationers to Haiti
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/01/18/2010-01-18_luxury_cruise_ships_escort_vacationers_to_haiti_despite_earthquake_devastation.html
BY Helen Kennedy
Royal Caribbean's gigantic 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas stopped at a north Haiti beach so tourists could parasail, snorkel and chow down on barbecue.
The tourists went ashore at Labadee, a lavish and heavily guarded private beach leased by the cruise line where passengers bounce on trampolines, sip cocktails in a hammock and shop at an ersatz "native market."
Even as people in the leveled capital of Port-au-Prince finally cracked after six days without help and began looting stores, Royal Caribbean passengers pretended to be buccaneers at a pirate-themed water park.
Royal Caribbean brushed off suggestions that cruising to a humanitarian catastrophe might not be in great taste, saying the ships are bringing pallets of supplies along with bikini-clad vacationers.
"People enjoying themselves in Labadee helps with relief," said cruise line CEO Adam Goldstein. "We support our guests who choose to help in this way."
The company also promised to donate the profits from its Haiti stops and noted the beach resort employs 230 Haitians who would be out of work if the ships kept away.
Meanwhile, a boat everyone is anxiously awaiting - the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort - was still en route from Baltimore and won't arrive until tomorrow.
An old oil tanker refitted as a high-tech medical center, the Comfort chugs along at 15 knots.
"It takes her a while, but she has been making that speed," said Navy Capt. John Kirby.
A new European Union estimate suggests a staggering 200,000 people died in last Tuesday's quake - on par with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that spread death across 14 countries instead of just one.
Even as the world mobilizes what may be the largest relief effort in history, hundreds of thousands of victims still struggled to find a cup of water or a handful of food.
Thousands of pounds of aid was offloaded by relief flights, but it wasn't getting to many people in Port-au-Prince.
"There is little sign of significant aid distribution," a Doctors Without Borders spokesperson said.
Some looting broke out, but the U.S. military said that despite dramatic TV pictures, the violence was isolated.
"The security situation is stable," said Navy Rear Adm. Michael Rogers, Joint Chiefs of Staff director for intelligence.
"We continue to be able to execute the full range of our operation. We have seen nothing that suggests to us widespread disorder. There is no sense of widespread panic."
Army Lt. Gen. Ken Keen said the poverty-filled streets actually were more law-abiding now than before the cataclysm. "The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels," he said.
About 2,200 Marines arrived, bringing the number of U.S. troops in the region to 7,000.
Ex-President Bill Clinton brought daughter Chelsea to visit a hospital, where he said "astonishing" doctors were performing surgeries "at night, with no anesthesia, using vodka to sterilize equipment."
Meanwhile, a growing stream of Haitians fled the shattered capital. Many packed onto buses bound for the countryside if they could afford the inflated ticket prices.
Since the quake, 71 trapped people have been saved. A college student who texted from under the rubble was rescued yesterday.
Search and rescue teams will keep looking through the night, but "obviously, we are getting closer to the time when you go from rescue to recovery," said Tim Callaghan, head of USAID's Disaster Assistance Response Team.
A team from the Centers for Disease Control is arriving today to help head off spread of any diseases.
hkennedy@nydailynews.com
BY Helen Kennedy
As surviving Haitians fought over scraps of food, luxury cruise ship passengers frolicked heedlessly Monday at a resort just 81 miles from the misery transfixing the world.
Royal Caribbean's gigantic 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas stopped at a north Haiti beach so tourists could parasail, snorkel and chow down on barbecue.
The tourists went ashore at Labadee, a lavish and heavily guarded private beach leased by the cruise line where passengers bounce on trampolines, sip cocktails in a hammock and shop at an ersatz "native market."
Even as people in the leveled capital of Port-au-Prince finally cracked after six days without help and began looting stores, Royal Caribbean passengers pretended to be buccaneers at a pirate-themed water park.
Royal Caribbean brushed off suggestions that cruising to a humanitarian catastrophe might not be in great taste, saying the ships are bringing pallets of supplies along with bikini-clad vacationers.
"People enjoying themselves in Labadee helps with relief," said cruise line CEO Adam Goldstein. "We support our guests who choose to help in this way."
The company also promised to donate the profits from its Haiti stops and noted the beach resort employs 230 Haitians who would be out of work if the ships kept away.
Meanwhile, a boat everyone is anxiously awaiting - the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort - was still en route from Baltimore and won't arrive until tomorrow.
An old oil tanker refitted as a high-tech medical center, the Comfort chugs along at 15 knots.
"It takes her a while, but she has been making that speed," said Navy Capt. John Kirby.
A new European Union estimate suggests a staggering 200,000 people died in last Tuesday's quake - on par with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that spread death across 14 countries instead of just one.
Even as the world mobilizes what may be the largest relief effort in history, hundreds of thousands of victims still struggled to find a cup of water or a handful of food.
Thousands of pounds of aid was offloaded by relief flights, but it wasn't getting to many people in Port-au-Prince.
"There is little sign of significant aid distribution," a Doctors Without Borders spokesperson said.
Some looting broke out, but the U.S. military said that despite dramatic TV pictures, the violence was isolated.
"The security situation is stable," said Navy Rear Adm. Michael Rogers, Joint Chiefs of Staff director for intelligence.
"We continue to be able to execute the full range of our operation. We have seen nothing that suggests to us widespread disorder. There is no sense of widespread panic."
Army Lt. Gen. Ken Keen said the poverty-filled streets actually were more law-abiding now than before the cataclysm. "The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels," he said.
About 2,200 Marines arrived, bringing the number of U.S. troops in the region to 7,000.
Ex-President Bill Clinton brought daughter Chelsea to visit a hospital, where he said "astonishing" doctors were performing surgeries "at night, with no anesthesia, using vodka to sterilize equipment."
Meanwhile, a growing stream of Haitians fled the shattered capital. Many packed onto buses bound for the countryside if they could afford the inflated ticket prices.
Since the quake, 71 trapped people have been saved. A college student who texted from under the rubble was rescued yesterday.
Search and rescue teams will keep looking through the night, but "obviously, we are getting closer to the time when you go from rescue to recovery," said Tim Callaghan, head of USAID's Disaster Assistance Response Team.
A team from the Centers for Disease Control is arriving today to help head off spread of any diseases.
hkennedy@nydailynews.com
Monday, January 18, 2010
Haiti, Miracle or just coincidence?
Miracle or just coincidence?
Six Days Without Sunlight: Woman Survives in Bank's Rubble
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb...10/haiti1_01-18.html
Transcript
JEFFREY BROWN: More troops and more aid reached Haiti today, but many remained desperate, as distribution problems and fears of violence continued.
We begin our coverage with two on-the-ground reports from Independent Television News, first, Bill Neely on the race to save lives.
BILL NEELY: In the ruins of Haiti, the signs aren't good. It's day six. The diggers tear at the rubble, making survival beneath unlikely. The scavengers at the banks search for money, not the living. One man looks on.
Roger still believes his wife, a bank worker, just might be alive. He rushes in every time ground is cleared. This time, someone hears a noise. He calls for silence, then for his wife, Janette.
MAN: OK, she's there! She's alive!
BILL NEELY: "OK, she's there, she's alive," he says. They scrape away stones to expose a small hole and allow the first light to reach the woman in six days, her husband overwhelmed
I can hear Janette talking. I put a microphone in and ask her if she's injured.
"Yes," she says. "My fingers are broken."
She tells me she needs water. "It would be a great pleasure. I'm thirsty, and I can't see," she says.
Then, a message for her husband: "Even if I die, I love you so much. Don't forget it."
The risk of her dying remains. Not her husband, nor anyone here has the equipment to get her out.
MAN: Would you like to take a look?
BILL NEELY: Suddenly, help arrives, firefighters from Los Angeles.
MAN: Her hair right there.
MAN: Yes.
BILL NEELY: They push a tiny camera into the hole, and Janette is revealed. Her head is moving.
MAN: All right. We're going to get you something to drink first.
BILL NEELY: They get her water and then begin cutting in to the cables and beams around her, then our first clear sight of her, dust in her eyes, smiling, wincing, but alive.
MAN: OK. All quiet.
MAN: It's amazing. She's in incredible shape for the time period she's been in there.
BILL NEELY: There is just one major worry now, an aftershock.
MAN: We may not have a whole lot of time. Once it goes, it goes.
BILL NEELY: On a camera, they have seen Janette's hand pinned under a beam. Free it, and she's free. A rescuer reaches her hand. She is in pain.
MAN: Hang in there, Janette.
MAN: All right, Janette, we're almost there
BILL NEELY: But, within three hours of first hearing her voice, she emerges.
MAN: One, two, three.
BILL NEELY: Her first words, "Thank you, God," and then an astonishing moment. The words of her song, "Don't be afraid of death."
She told me she always thought she would survive, but she wondered why this had happened to her.
Did you think you would live, Janette? Did you think you would live?
WOMAN: Yes.
BILL NEELY: Yes?
WOMAN: Live. Why not?
MAN: All right, nice and easy.
MAN: Hi, Janette.
BILL NEELY: Janette Samfour is alive. And, for her husband, it's a miracle.
But her survival is the exception in a city of death. She drove away as if nothing had happened to see for herself the horror that had been hidden from her.
Six Days Without Sunlight: Woman Survives in Bank's Rubble
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb...10/haiti1_01-18.html
Transcript
JEFFREY BROWN: More troops and more aid reached Haiti today, but many remained desperate, as distribution problems and fears of violence continued.
We begin our coverage with two on-the-ground reports from Independent Television News, first, Bill Neely on the race to save lives.
BILL NEELY: In the ruins of Haiti, the signs aren't good. It's day six. The diggers tear at the rubble, making survival beneath unlikely. The scavengers at the banks search for money, not the living. One man looks on.
Roger still believes his wife, a bank worker, just might be alive. He rushes in every time ground is cleared. This time, someone hears a noise. He calls for silence, then for his wife, Janette.
MAN: OK, she's there! She's alive!
BILL NEELY: "OK, she's there, she's alive," he says. They scrape away stones to expose a small hole and allow the first light to reach the woman in six days, her husband overwhelmed
I can hear Janette talking. I put a microphone in and ask her if she's injured.
"Yes," she says. "My fingers are broken."
She tells me she needs water. "It would be a great pleasure. I'm thirsty, and I can't see," she says.
Then, a message for her husband: "Even if I die, I love you so much. Don't forget it."
The risk of her dying remains. Not her husband, nor anyone here has the equipment to get her out.
MAN: Would you like to take a look?
BILL NEELY: Suddenly, help arrives, firefighters from Los Angeles.
MAN: Her hair right there.
MAN: Yes.
BILL NEELY: They push a tiny camera into the hole, and Janette is revealed. Her head is moving.
MAN: All right. We're going to get you something to drink first.
BILL NEELY: They get her water and then begin cutting in to the cables and beams around her, then our first clear sight of her, dust in her eyes, smiling, wincing, but alive.
MAN: OK. All quiet.
MAN: It's amazing. She's in incredible shape for the time period she's been in there.
BILL NEELY: There is just one major worry now, an aftershock.
MAN: We may not have a whole lot of time. Once it goes, it goes.
BILL NEELY: On a camera, they have seen Janette's hand pinned under a beam. Free it, and she's free. A rescuer reaches her hand. She is in pain.
MAN: Hang in there, Janette.
MAN: All right, Janette, we're almost there
BILL NEELY: But, within three hours of first hearing her voice, she emerges.
MAN: One, two, three.
BILL NEELY: Her first words, "Thank you, God," and then an astonishing moment. The words of her song, "Don't be afraid of death."
She told me she always thought she would survive, but she wondered why this had happened to her.
Did you think you would live, Janette? Did you think you would live?
WOMAN: Yes.
BILL NEELY: Yes?
WOMAN: Live. Why not?
MAN: All right, nice and easy.
MAN: Hi, Janette.
BILL NEELY: Janette Samfour is alive. And, for her husband, it's a miracle.
But her survival is the exception in a city of death. She drove away as if nothing had happened to see for herself the horror that had been hidden from her.
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