Senator Landrieu’s Press Release

Sunday January 31, 2010

Families for Orphans Coalition partners Tom DiFilipo of the Joint Council of International Children’s Services and Jane Aronson of the Worldwide Orphan Foundation took a bold trip to Haiti last week. An excerpt from Tom’s Blog indicates children are at grave risk in Haiti to trafficking for slavery.

Children, those being adopted, those previously without parental care and those newly separated from their families, continue to be at significant risk. Young girls in camps are exposed to sexual abuse. Young boys and girls can easily be taken into child slavery. Insufficient security at the border with the DR allows for very easy transport of children in child labor. After 17 days, holistic and comprehensive child protection is still missing.

Read the JCICS Haiti blog www.betheanswerforchildren.wordpress.com

January 26, 2010 2:12 p.m. EST

Washington (CNN) -- Dozens of lawmakers support legislation that would set up a more streamlined system for matching Haitian orphans with families in the United States, a U.S. senator said Tuesday.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, said that the initial focus of the legislation would be on children orphaned by the January 12 earthquake in Haiti but that in the long term, it also would address other adoption efforts.

She and other senators will press this week to get the Families for Orphans Act out of a Senate committee so it can go to the floor for a vote, she said at a news conference.

The bill would set up a separate office in the State Department to handle adoption issues, similar to the office that handles human trafficking, Landrieu said. The office would focus on the issues of orphans and adoptions.

"The old regular process, the old regular bureaucracy, is not going to work," she said.

Landrieu said there are 900 orphans for whom the U.S. and Haitian adoption process has begun, and some of the adoptive parents have waited years. Before the quake, Haiti had 380,000 children classified as orphans, she said, quoting figures from the United Nations.

The first priority, she said, would be to reunite a child with its family, or to find other relatives or a family in Haiti willing to adopt the child.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri said the red tape in Washington shouldn't slow down the adoption process for Haitian children.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, agreed.

"We have to have a better process here. These are extraordinary circumstances," she said.

Last week, 14 orphans heading to Pennsylvania weren't allowed to leave Haiti because they had no papers, said Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, who had gone to Haiti to accompany the group to the United States. The paperwork was lost in the quake, he added.

Finally, with intervention from several agencies and the White House, the U.S. Embassy approved humanitarian waivers, or paroles, for the children.

Several senators at the briefing mentioned the need to keep children safe from human trafficking while they are awaiting travel or in transit.

Their concerns echoed those expressed by charities, aid groups and Haitian officials in recent days.

"We know there have been reports that children left the country without going through the authorization of the prime minister or other authorities," Julie Bergeron, chief of child protection for the United Nations Children's Fund, said Sunday. "We have such reports. We are trying to discuss with different authorities to find a solution to prevent trafficking of children. ...

"But it's very difficult to have the overall picture at the moment. It's overwhelming particularly because there is no registration system. So now that is what we are trying to do: have registration of children so that we have a better idea," Bergeron said.

According to Haiti's minister of communication, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lessgue, "The Haitian government is very clear on this. We are facilitating all of the adoption applications already submitted. Other than those, no child will be leaving the country for adoption, only those whose applications are already on file."

Cinzia Angotti, a child protection officer for the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission to Haiti, said workers are trying to identify the children at risk, "the ones who are along without family, and to respond as quickly as possible to the lack of protection of children during this disaster."

Groups including Save the Children and World Vision have called for a halt to adoptions, saying that many children who may appear to be orphaned have simply been separated from their families.

January 25, 2010

Kidsave and the Families for Orphans Coalition convened child welfare organizations on Monday to share information and discuss strategies for a long-term focus on permanent family care for Haiti’s orphans. It was the consensus of the advocates’ conversation that the voice a much broader constituency than is usually convened by the US government is relevant to shift the direction of the Haitian orphan crisis to permanent family care rather than just reunification and institutionalization. Rebuilding of orphanages is not needed. Seeking quick solutions for best determination for children, reunification of families and strategies for permanent family care are essential. Indigenous networks need to be trained and used to support children and communities of faith on the ground in Haiti and in the US can be grassroots support for the next steps. Discussions continue as the group prepares for discussion with those spearheading US government and international NGO strategies on the Haitian orphan issues.