Risk of Child Trafficking Increases in Aftermath of Haiti Earthquake

Haiti has already been a trading ground in the past for traffickers, and the natural calamity is making the situation even worse now. Unicef adviser Jean Luc Legrand has reported that children have gone missing from hospitals, and we have started seeing the first evidence of trafficking. Trafficking networks are springing into action, taking advantage of the weakness of local authorities and relief coordination to kidnap children and get them out of the country.

It is clear that orphans are at risk of being separated from their family, and the well-meaning moves by Westerners to adopt the children could be considered abuse. Some efforts have been made by welfare groups to call for an immediate moratorium on new adoptions until sustained efforts can been made to trace and reunite children with their families.

When you see any child who has lost his or her family on the news, your natural instinct is to want to go and pick the child up. Of course, sometimes international adoption is the right solution for a child, but far more often it is not. Children who have started growing up in a community and lost their parents still have some inner security from knowing their environment.

Even though Westerners may find it a worthy cause to provide a lending hand to raise an orphan child, when the child turns 15 and is in enormous need of signpost for his identity, it would be difficult for him to undergo the trauma once again. It’s not abuse in the sense of mistreatment, but it’s abusive in the sense of making a permanent break.

The best option is to provide a loving environment that is culturally local where children can feel secure.

We as a social human race need to understand that children can be happy in their original habitat and with their families.

The most important message about children, whether they are orphaned or not, is the fact they desperately need our help at this point of time. Please help us prevent children from being sold into adoption. You can go to www.troniefoundation.org for more info on today’s slaves.
 

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About rani.hong

Rani Hong combines her nationally recognized business skills with her passion to effect change for exploited women and children. She has contributed to the passage of precedent setting laws in Washington State, making it a national leader for addressing the crime of human trafficking as well as advising U.S. Congress and other parliaments on the issues of human trafficking. In the fall of 2008, Rani was invited to a roundtable discussion on Human Trafficking at the White House. Rani has also participated as a United States American Embassy speaker for the Department of State domestically and abroad to lobby for human trafficking reform. She and her husband, Trong Hong, founded the Tronie Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting human trafficking education, policy change, and restoration for trafficking survivors. Rani's story has appeared in local, national, and international media, including on“The Oprah Winfrey Show,” where she shared her plight as a child slavery survivor in India. Rani has shared her story at numerous speaking panels, trainings, churches, evening events and press
conferences. In addition to being the spokesperson for The Tronie Foundation, Rani works with journalists in print, radio, and broadcast to be a voice for those enslaved. For the past 10 years, Rani has enjoyed sharing her story and working directly with over 50 survivors of human trafficking in 6 different countries and has earned the United Nations Human Rights award for her works.
 

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One Response to Risk of Child Trafficking Increases in Aftermath of Haiti Earthquake

  1. JasperV February 8, 2010 at 11:47 pm #

    A lot of kids are now being abused by many people. It may come into any form just like child trafficking or abused by their parents. I think we've all heard people joke that a person should be qualified before they're allowed to have children, and this nut job <a rev="vote for" title="Father waterboards daughter, 4, who couldn