'It makes you crazy,' says one parent of delays in getting previously processed orphans out of danger and into new homes
Ingrid Peritz
Montreal — From Friday's Globe and Mail
The boots and snowsuits are ready, the car seats installed. Dozens of Quebec parents remained in a state of high anxiety Thursday night as they awaited news about the arrival of the first planeload of adopted children heading to Canadian homes from Haiti.
An official at a Quebec agency responsible for 42 of the adoptions said she feared further delays in getting the children out of the quake-ravaged nation could put their lives at risk. Countries such as the United States and the Netherlands have already airlifted groups of Haitian orphans out.
“Others have moved quickly and we're still waiting. It's getting late,” said Ginette Gauvreau, head of the Haiti section for the Soleil des Nationsadoption agency.
“I understand that we don't want to give the impression we're kidnapping children. But the orphanages are running out of food and water. The children's lives are at risk,” said Ms. Gauvreau, who was in Haiti during the earthquake and visited the orphanages. “These children should have left already”.
The fate of orphaned Haitian children has surfaced as a contentious issue in post-earthquake Haiti. Groups such as UNICEF say children left parentless by the earthquake should be reunited with extended family, and foreign adoptions should be considered a last resort.
But the children expected in Canada were already in the process of being adopted before the disaster – in many cases, the parents' efforts began years ago.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday that Ottawa had identified 150 adoption cases being processed before the quake, and Canada was working with the Haitian government to accelerate them.
He said Canada has determined that all the children had survived the quake, although some are “ill and have health concerns”. The first group of adoptees should be in Canada by Saturday or Sunday, he said.
The days since last Tuesday have turned into an agonizing wait for people like Stéphanie Clément-Lapointe and Sylvain Mallette, adoptive parents of a brother and sister from Haiti named Scheneider and Naïka.
“It's been horrendous. We see the misery on TV; when it's your own children and you're thinking they may lack for things, it makes you crazy,” said Ms. Clément-Lapointe, who lives in the Montreal area and visited the children in Haiti last September. “Are they safe? Do they have shelter? All these questions go through your head”.
Corporal Julie Légaré and Captain Pascal Croteau, both soldiers based at CFB Valcartier, have volunteered to fly down to Haiti as civilians to help airlift the group of adopted Haitian children.
Theirs is a personal mission as well. Their own 30-month-old daughter, Lisa, is among the adopted children waiting to leave.
“In a way it's like I'm giving birth,” Cpl. Légaré said from Quebec City. Her husband, who served in Afghanistan, was touched by the plight of Afghans who brought their injured children to Canadian bases to be treated.
“I entered the armed forces to be useful and do concrete things. To bring children home from Haiti in a lightning mission is something special,” Cpl. Légaré said.
ASK US: THE GLOBE FINDS ANSWERS TO YOUR PRESSING QUESTIONS
Question: I heard federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney say on television that, after the 2004 tsunami “we saw confirmed cases of kidnapping, of child trafficking, of terrible things happening”. His fear was that children orphaned by the Haitian earthquake would be put in similar danger. But is it that true that children were kidnapped and sold after the tsunami?
Answer: It's not that cut and dried.
According to a September 2005 report by David A. Feingold, the international co-ordinator for HIV/AIDS and trafficking projects for UNESCO Bangkok: “Although the devastation wrought by the tsunami certainly rendered people vulnerable – mostly through economic disruption – investigations by the United Nations have yet to identify a single confirmed case of sex trafficking”.
A columnist for the London Times who looked into reports of child abductions in January, 2005 – shortly after the tsunami hit – concluded that they were urban legends. “The only report to date of a named child being abducted was revealed as untrue,” Mick Hume wrote.
And aid groups contacted by The Globe could not provide specific details of any such incident.
On the other hand, there was a famous case of an infant survivor of that disaster who was claimed by no fewer than nine sets of parents.
A U.S. State department spokesman said at the time that “there are sufficient credible reports to lead us to the conclusion that a real and present threat exists” that orphaned children in Sri Lanka were being co-opted to fight for guerrilla groups.
And experts say it is clear that children left parentless by calamity would be more vulnerable to child trafficking.
To buttress the Minister's apprehensions, Haiti is not a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of abduction and retention across international boundaries.
“We are concerned,” said David Morley, the president of Save the Children Canada. “A time like this when things are so chaotic is a time when children are really at risk. … There are those who would view children as a valuable commodity”.
– Gloria Galloway
The Globe and Mail
