Guardian UK Article - Too early to begin adopting Haitian children

Too early to begin adopting Haitian children, would-be parents told

Children's groups in the US have warned that mass adoptions could open the door to 'fraud, abuse and trafficking'

Children's groups in the US have asked people to wait before trying to adopt Haitian orphans, warning that mass adoptions or airlifts could break up families and open the door to "fraud, abuse and trafficking".

The Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS), a US advocacy organisation, said it had received 150 enquiries about Haitian adoption in the last three days. Usually there are 10 a month.

It also dismissed a plan from the Catholic archdiocese of Miami to airlift thousands of Haitian children displaced by the earthquake to Florida in an echo of the initiative that saw 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children begin new lives in the US in the early 1960s.

While it acknowledged that such rescue efforts came from an "obviously loving heart", it pointed out they could be premature and dangerous.

"Bringing children into the US, either by airlift or new adoption during a time of national emergency, can open the door for fraud, abuse and trafficking," JCICS said in a statement. "Every effort must be made in a timely fashion to locate living parents and extended family members. Many children who might appear to be orphaned may in fact be only temporarily separated from their family."

Tom DiFilipo, president and CEO of JCICS, said: "If you see a child fall over on the sidewalk, your natural tendency is to pick it up. People are seeing the disaster in Haiti and they want to help so they call us and say: 'We could take one of those children'. It's a fabulous sentiment but it's not good policy."

The US National Council for Adoption said that it, too, discouraged "the altruistic practice commonly referred to as baby lifts". It added: "Even in the name of humanitarian interest, we cannot risk the premature adoptions of vulnerable children who may have been separated from their families by this tragedy."

A spokeswoman for Unicef said the agency's priority was ensuring that children affected by the earthquake got the help they needed.

"We are working with children on the ground, trying to register them and reunite them with their families where possible," she said. "Discussions about fostering and adoptions are premature and it's highly likely many children have become separated from their parents. Our primary concern is safety and shelter for these children."

Their calls came as the Dutch government sent a chartered a plane to the Caribbean island to airlift 109 children who were in the final stages of being adopted by parents in the Netherlands when the quake struck.

Patrick Mikkelsen, a spokesman for the justice ministry, said all the adoptions had been conducted through two respected Dutch agencies. "We do not simply pick up children from the streets and bring them to Holland to be adopted," he said.

France, Canada and the US also said they would accelerate the adoptions process so that children who had been cleared for lives abroad by the Haitian government could be handed over to their new parents as soon as possible.

According to Unicef, Haiti had around 380,000 orphans under the age of 17 before last week's earthquake. It also estimates that 46% of the country's 10m-strong population is under the age of 18.