Blogging About Haiti and Adoption

Bloggers have been busy and thoughtful. Four bloggers; 30 posts:

Bastardette

IT'S NOT ABOUT HAITI, DAMN IT! IT'S ABOUT ADOPTION. IT'S ABOUT US

Haiti: A Little Bit About Important People in Their Own Words

Haiti: Adoption Business Trumps Aid

Haiti: Women's Health Care: "All About Abortion;" Solar Powered Bibles in the Food Line

American Life League Says No to Condoms and Contraceptives for Haitians

Bastard Nation's Statement on Haitian Adoption and Babylifts

Operation Pierre Pan Postponed; Politicians Pander

Haiti Child Evacuation: A New Operation Pedro Pan (my keystone Haitian entry)

Haiti: Misc. Updates on Adoption and Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson and Adoptee Rights

Harlow's Monkey

Why some people are pushing to airlift orphans out of Haiti instead of sending resources to Haiti

Haiti

A comparison of the wellbeing of orphans in institutions

FamilyPreservation 

Soledad O'Brien's Eyewitness Report on the Haitian Relief Effort and Adoption

Israeli Social Service: Take Care of Our Own Kids Before Haiti's

International Adoption: A last resort 

Child Trafficking Feared in Haiti


Getting the Word Out re Haiti


Fast-Tracking Haitian Adoptions

The Word is Getting Heard  


Children are best left with their families 


Trgedy Exploited: A Sad History Repeating Itself in Haiti
Vietnam Operation baby Lifet all over again


Foreign Adoption last resort for Haiti quake orphans: Unicef

Quebec Exercises Proper Caution; Dutch Rush in: Haitian Adoptions

Haiti Update: Follow The Money

History Unlearned Repeats...Painfully and Shamefully

Haitian Adoptions: U.S. Caves to Demands

Not the Time to Adopt Haitian Quake Victims, Experts Say

Haitian Adoption UPDATE: Donaldson, UAI, and & My Perspective

Haitian Adoption Push

Reputable Ways to Help the Children of Haiti and Their Families

 

Birth Mother, First Mother Forum

Red Tape Holds Haitian Families Together

 

 

 

 

 

Chinese Baby Trafficking Ring Exposed

A family in China made babies their business

The lucrative trade in newborns was fueled by an adoption frenzy that saw government-run orphanages paying for children who they then made available to Westerners.

Duan Yuelin and Chen Zhijin, his mother, get children from the rural poor and adopt them out to foreigners, talk about their business in their home in Changning, China. Chen says the children are better off with their new parents. (Barbara Demick / Los Angeles Times / January 15, 2010)

When someone used the term "vulture" to describe the predatory ethos in adoption today, others were - quite naturally - offended. But else can you define these excerpt from the story:

"The telephones kept ringing with more orders and although Duan Yuelin kept raising his prices, the demand was inexhaustible. Customers were so eager to buy more that they would ply him with expensive gifts and dinners in fancy restaurants."

[Kinda flies in the face of the myth of "unwanted" baby hirsl; in China needing to be rescued by altruism.]

"What merchandise was he selling? Babies. And the customers were government-run orphanages that paid up to $600 each for newborn girls for adoption in the United States and other Western countries."

International Adoption: a last resort

“Adoption is a last resort” Two Views

Image Caption:

Flying planeloads of newly orphaned children out of Haiti is “reprehensible”, an adoption expert tells swissinfo.ch.

Marlène Hofstetter, head of international adoption at Lausanne-based organisation Terre des Hommes – Child Relief, warns of the dangers of rushing adoption procedures and says Swiss regulations are unsatisfactory.

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12 may have killed 200,000 people, with aid agencies estimating that tens of thousands of children had been orphaned.

Even before the quake, Haiti - one of the world’s poorest countries - had 380,000 orphans, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Some children lost their parents in previous disasters, including tropical storms and hurricanes that hit in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

Others were abandoned amid the Caribbean nation’s long-running political strife, which has led thousands to seek asylum in the United States – without their children – or by parents who were simply too poor to care for them.

swissinfo.ch: Is the adoption of Haitian children now going to boom?

Marlène Hofstetter: People are making enquiries into how they can adopt a child from Haiti – especially from countries where adoptions from Haiti had already been made.

swissinfo.ch: Wouldn’t it be a good thing for Haitian orphans to be able to escape poverty, homelessness and violence and come to a Swiss family?

M.H.: First of all you have to clarify that they are in fact orphans and don’t have other family members – uncles, aunts and so on – who could look after them.

You also have to check what condition the children are in. If they’re traumatised, it’s not necessarily advisable to whisk them out of the country and place them with a new family.

swissinfo.ch: On Thursday a Dutch adoption agency flew more than 100 children out of Haiti to start new lives in the Netherlands.

M.H.: I find it reprehensible when planes full of children fly out of Haiti. From what I’ve heard, only 55 of these children have been involved in an adoption proceeding. For some of the others, adoptive families haven’t even been proposed.

swissinfo.ch: Belgium wants to facilitate the adoption of Haitian children for families who had begun proceedings before the earthquake. Switzerland is also prepared to speed up adoption processes already in motion. Is that a good idea?

M.H.: It always depends on what you mean by speed up. In any case the situation of every individual child must be thoroughly examined – including now, after the earthquake.

There must be cooperation with the Haitian authorities. We can’t go about things like the Dutch, simply removing children from Haiti. The authorities must approve every adoption, so that children have the necessary papers for their adoption.

swissinfo.ch: The French foreign minister has warned rash adoptions could lead to accusations of “abduction”.

M.H.: In France there is talk of more than 1,000 children being involved in adoption processes – and it’s clear that such a number can’t leave Haiti all at once. The French authorities have also explicitly stated that they want to work with the Haitian authorities. The process will thus last a while.

French families wanting to adopt are certainly exerting a lot of pressure on the government to enable the children to leave Haiti. Paris initially said that for the time being all adoptions had been stopped – they’ve now changed their stance a bit.

swissinfo.ch: Haitian children are as a rule black. Does this create problems in Switzerland?

M.H.: I don’t think so. When they grow up it’s another story. It’s obviously not written on their forehead that they’re adopted and Swiss.

Of course they’ll have to reckon with xenophobic comments, but that comes from the fact that they are different, which can apply to any child whether they’re from Nepal, India or Thailand. It needn’t necessarily be a question of skin colour. But sure, anyone who looks different will encounter racism, be they adopted, an immigrant or an asylum seeker.

[There seems to be an absence of recognition of looking different that one's FAMILY. Suggest reading Tobias Hubeinette's "On Being Swedish and Not Being White: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents on Everyday Racism in Sweden"]

swissinfo.ch: In that case should we not refrain from adopting children with different colour skin or from other cultures?

M.H.: Adoption is a good solution and should in principle be employed to protect a child when there really is no other solution in his or her country – when the only alternative is growing up in an orphanage. In that case international adoption is a good solution, but only as a last resort.

[I suggest reading The Duke University report that sys that institutions are not all that bad. At least the kids can grow up looking at others who look like them and have plenty of playmates!]

You also have to bear in mind the age of the child and whether he or she is traumatised. It’s not advisable to remove traumatised children from their homeland and bring them to “well-ordered” Switzerland, where no one can imagine what they have gone through.

swissinfo.ch: Are Swiss requirements sufficient for potential adoptive parents?

M.H.: No. In many European countries parents have to attend preparatory courses, which can last several months, where it is explained in detail what adoption is and what they can expect to face.

That’s not the case in Switzerland. Yes, there’s a bit or preparation during the clarification process carried out by the cantons, but this varies greatly. Detailed preparation isn’t really carried out here.

Child Trafficking Feared in Haiti

Trafficking fears as Haiti children go missing

United Nations officials say children have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti since the devastating January 12 earthquake, raising fears of trafficking for adoption abroad.

"We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time," said UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand.

"UNICEF has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti that existed already beforehand.

"Unfortunately, many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market."

The agency said it had warned countries during the past week not to step up adoptions from Haiti in the immediate wake of the quake.

However several are fast-tracking adoption procedures already under way, including Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States.

Mr Legrand said the situation was similar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Asia five years ago.

Trafficking networks were springing into action immediately after the disaster and taking advantage of the weakness of local authorities and relief coordination "to kidnap children and get them out of the country".

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said child enslavement and trafficking in Haiti was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months".

The UN mission in Haiti has stepped up surveillance of roads, UNICEF officials said.

Mr Legrand said there was separate but only anecdotal evidence of people taking children by road to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and loading children on to planes.

"We have seen over the past years many children being taken out of the country without any legal procedure," he said.

"This is going on. This is happening now. We are starting to have the first evidence of that, this is unquestionable."

He was unable to give details on the 15 missing children or their condition or clearly connect the anecdotal observations in Haiti's chaos with trafficking.

The cases were documented by social workers and by partner non-governmental organisations working for UNICEF in hospitals.

Getting The Word Out re Haiti

As the Haitian situation will be with us for a long time, it is important that we continue to keep focus on it to avoid as much harm done tot he children and the nation as possible.

This VanCouver Sun headline makes clear that a very real threat still exists:

Earthquake prompts hundreds of B.C. families to consider adoption 

Those of us in the know, know that this is the worst time to first consider taking on the responsibilities of adopting a child who is likely older, may have been institutionalized, is surely traumatized and may or may not even be orphaned! But...

Heartbreaking images of hungry and homeless children in Haiti following last week’s devastating earthquake have prompted hundreds of British Columbia families to consider foreign adoption, according to local agencies.
“We are absolutely overwhelmed with phone calls and e-mails,” said Angie Appenheimer, adoption worker with the Hope Adoption Services in Abbotsford.

And they are comparatively bargain priced:

Appenheimer said couples who’ve been approved for the process can expect to pay between $15,000 and $20,000 and wait up to two years to pick up their child.

Note the set up I wrote about previously. You pay and then wait for "your" child!  There is something very wrong with this matching system that sets up expectations of entitlement to a fever pitch.

Closer to home, a FOX affiliate in Indianapolis reports: 

Haiti earthquake leads to more Indiana adoptions: Hoosiers touched by the disaster in Haiti are turning to adoption in surprising numbers. It's a blessing not just for children in the ravaged country, but right here in Indiana.

In a period of 24 hours, there were literally hundreds of families that were willing to accept these Haitian children," said John Ryan of the Indiana Department of Child Services. They are babies, toddlers, pre-teens and teenagers, some abused, most neglected. All vulnerable and in need of a safe and loving home. And thanks to the passion that's been stirred, more will find them. But more are still needed. 

We need to keep getting the word out that these are BAD ideas.  I am thus pleased that a very hastily written piece: "Tragedy Exploited: A Sad History Repeating Itself in Haiti" which was published by, Dissident Voice has now also picked up by Humanitarian Texts, Worldwide Aasian-Euraisan Himan Rights Forum. You can read it at either link or here on this blog. "What is the use of knowing, unless what is known to one be also known to others." -Emanuel Swedenborg 

Only in America!

In the "ya gotta be kidding" department - and right up there with legislation passed in Arizona and Tennesee prohibiting bars and other liqueur serving establishments from banning guns:

The bill (HB 315) would bar adoption agencies from asking potential parents whether they have guns or ammunition in their home. It passed its first hurdle, the Florida House Health & Family Services Policy Council, on a 15-0 vote. Sen. Thad Altman, R-Viera, is sponsoring the Senate version (SB 530).

The bill would delete questions about weapons ownership from adoption forms, but the news service said it also would require adoptive parents to acknowledge that they have received a copy of a state law requiring that anyone owing a loaded firearm keep it safely stored away from minors.
 
This flies in the face of the fact that while there is a constitutional right to bear arms - there is not one to adopt!  

The only significant challenge came from Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, who said she didn’t agree with Horner’s view about the motives behind the agency’s questions.

“I do object to the assumption that the question was asked for nefarious reasons,” Skidmore said. “The question was asked … to make sure that children would be safe in an environment they’d never been before and where people had not had children before, (not) to document people and register weapons.”

Say what? Securing the safety of kids in new environments is a bad thing, why??  Has the Florida sunshine fried all their brains?  And mind you, Florida is the state that worked overtime to ban same sex adoption!

I guess guns don't kill kids, gas do!  

Don't ask; don't tell - just shoot!

And this just a month after a five-year old boy, Daron Mayes, was shot by his 6-year old brother when by a gun he found in the house, a month after Darron and two other children were adopted!

Death Threats: PLEASE HELP!

Dear friends,

The following is from a dear friend, Lucia Munoz from MIA (MiAmericas), who has organized a short email campaign to help draw attention to the recent death threats against a mutual friend and human rights activist Norma Cruz. I know of Norma Cruz from my trip to Guatemala and my effort to expose the illegal adoption trade from Guatemala. Her voice and work in bringing justice and exposure to gender issues in Guatemala cannot be measured. Please take a moment of your day to help. Thank you!

Please:
1. copy and paste the letter below (in bold) to the below UN associated emails, and cc'd to miamericas@yahoo.com
2. send to your friends and colleagues this entire email so they can do the same

Thank you!

******************************************

MIA, Mujeres Iniciando en las Americas, GPDN, Guatemala Peace and Development Network and Three Days for Three Daughters issue this action alert and ask everyone and anyone to please join us.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon chose to kick off the United Nations campaign against gender violence  in Guatemala late in 2009.  It's a great choice to try to highlight gender violence in Guatemala, because we have so far to go in this area.

Here's the link to the UN campaign
http://www.un.org/en/women/endviolence/

As we all know our sisters and brothers in Haiti are going through the most unimaginable times.  Unfortunately this is the only way that developing countries show up in the main stream media.  During bad times developing countries  are perceived as hooligans with pictures that show us with guns, but the media fails to tell the whole story, on what gets us there and talk about things out of context.  Main stream media tells us that U.S. sending $$$ but fails to tell us how much is loans not grants.  It's no secret that loans will never allow Haiti to ever be self sufficient country.

I have contacted the UN  offices here in New York about the article in Diario Centro America about the death threats against Norma Cruz.  I don't know how many of you know Norma and her work, she's the founder and executive director of Fundacion Sobrevivientes, which gives social, legal,
and health services and shelter if needed to the victims of gender violence, she was given the Women of Courage award by Michele Obama and Hillary Clinton last year , and she's also a long time friend of mine.  Anyway, just 4 days ago I read that my friend and hero Norma Cruz is getting death
threats (again!) and we talked, and she's usually very casual about things like that, but now she really sounded scared.  So I asked the UN people what we could  do to help our sisters in Guatemala and they told me that they are now swamped with Haiti, and that they did not want to seem mean, but
Guatemala has to wait.

The article about Norma was put together by the Guatemala office of the United Nations, and you can find the article in attachment.

And  worse  a  congresswoman Evelina Ramírez  was killed last Wednesday (the day after Haiti earthquake) leaving a meeting and since then we have not heard about her case again. This is the norm in Guatemala my country of impunity. My fear is that again Guatemala will fall in the cracks like it
has for so many years, and the importance of this terrible story will be lost.

It's  especially important that this case of the murder  of the congresswoman be publicized and our friend Norma Cruz death threats not be forgotten, so I ask please send a letter to help bring this to the right people's attention to get these issues up before the UN so that our serious
issues in our little country are not forgotten.

Please cc me on your email and I will hand deliver them when I am in Guatemala next month. 
I promise to follow up next month in person, but we need your help via email 1st.  Emails are at the very bottom of the sample letter:

SAMPLE LETTER TO CUT AND PASTE:

Dear U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

As a citizen of the world I am really upset by the news of death threats against Norma Cruz, founder of Fundacion Sobrevivientes in Guatemala.

On January 14, 2010 I read in the Guatemala newspaper Diario Centro America an article from the Guatemala UN office denouncing these serious threats.

Also last week I read of the tragic death of Guatemala congresswoman Evelina Ramírez Reyes. 
We helped Congresswoman Hilda Solis pass a Resolution a couple years ago demanding that cases like this are not forgotten as is the norm in Guatemala.

You chose to kick off the United Nations campaign against gender violence in Guatemala late in 2009. 
It's a great choice to try to highlight gender violence in Guatemala, because we have so far to go in this area.

What else can we do to raise awareness and get action on these serious issues in Guatemala?

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME
YOUR LOCATION

Email addresses to send your sample letter:
valen.flores@gmail.com
petra.auer@unifemca.org
cc: miamericas@yahoo.com


Gracias,
Lucia