Red Cross Blogs

Why rushed adoption is not the answer for Haiti’s lost children

By Sarah Oughton
March 25, 2010 at 2:30 pm

Most of us have a story to tell from our childhoods about the day we got lost in the supermarket or at the zoo. Unless you were a particularly bold and adventurous child you probably remember the fear of finding yourself all alone among strangers – not knowing who to turn to, who to trust.

But few stories rival those I’ve been hearing lately about children separated from their family during Haiti’s earthquake.

Olivier, a youngster just eight years old, had been returning from school with his grandfather when the ground started shaking. He panicked, ran away and got lost. Somebody from the neighbourhood brought him to an orphanage outside the city.

Fortunately for Olivier, there was no knee-jerk reaction with him being put up for adoption – because more than one month after the earthquake his grandfather found him and they were reunited amid a stream of happy tears.

There’s been a lot of coverage in the media about people rushing to adopt Haitian children assuming that they are orphans. But however well intentioned people might be, it’s crucial that children separated from their parents in an emergency situation are not automatically assumed to be orphans and put up for adoption.

The International Committee of the Red Cross specialises in restoring contact between families separated by armed conflicts and natural disasters.

It has been working hard with the Haitian Red Cross to do just this since the earthquake on 12 January.

One 10-year-old boy, called Benoît, was with his grandmother on the airport road in Port-au-Prince when the quake struck. He heard a person shout there was going to be a tsunami, got scared and fled. He was rescued while wandering in the street and taken to the same orphanage as Olivier.

A third boy, 12-year-old Tiga, was out on the streets during the quake. He got lost trying to find his way home and was also taken to the orphanage by a rescuer.

A Red Cross tracing team went to the orphanage and registered the children, finding their families, however, was not an easy task. Olivier, for example, was able to tell the Red Cross the name of his street, but nothing more. The team went to the place carrying his photo, and knocked on doors until they found someone who recognised the young boy and pointed out his parents’ house.

Working for the Red Cross, doing this sort of job there must be both enormous highs and heart wrenching lows. But a few weeks ago, at the orphanage, was most certainly a day of joy, because the Red Cross managed to reunite all three children with family members!

Olivier got to embrace his grandfather again, Benôit joined his grandmother and Tiga found his uncle.

And here’s one more happy story, while we’re on a roll. A week later, a toddler who had been taken to a US Navy hospital ship for medical treatment after being rescued from under the rubble was reunited with his mother.

Little Kervins, who had been badly injured during the quake, had had his foot amputated. He was separated from his mother when taken to the ship, and she lost track of him when he was later transferred to a hospital in the north of Haiti. After he was finally traced to the hospital, and the kinship with his mother confirmed, the Red Cross brought him back to Port-au-Prince. His mother, who had also been injured during the quake, didn’t let her crutches get in the way as she joyfully greeted her small son.

For the Red Cross, no child should be considered an orphan until every effort has been exhausted to try and find a parent, or a member of the youngster’s extended family.

Images © ICRC

---

Comment (0) »

---

Tags: disaster, earthquake, Haiti, lost children, orphans, restoring family links

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---