Port-au-Prince, Haiti (AHN) - The French government is proposing to set up a commission with the Haitian government to oversee the adoption of children orphaned by the Jan. 12 earthquake that ravaged the Caribbean country.
The French proposal follows the arrest Jan. 29 of 10 U.S. Baptist missionaries who sought to take Haitian children to the Dominican Republic.
Haitian prosecutors accuse the missionaries of acting without government permission, which means their attempts to transport the 33 children could be considered child abduction.
France's ambassador for international adoption, Jean-Paul Monchau, is in Port-au-Prince to discuss the plan for a bilateral adoption commission with Haitian authorities.
The French Foreign Ministry reports that at least 326 Haitian children have been adopted by French families since the earthquake, all with Haitian government approval.
The bilateral commission would examine files of pending adoptions to determine whether they should be approved when the adoptive parents live in France or other countries.
In some cases, records of the children's families were destroyed by the earthquake, meaning the commission would need to set up new procedures to manage the adoptions, according to Haitian officials.
Emmanuelle Guerry, spokeswoman for the charitable group SOS Haiti, said the Haitian government is allowing adoptions only after a review of each child's circumstances.
She urged that procedures for reviewing the cases for international adoptions be established quickly, but gave no details of any plans being made.
Nearly 800 Haitian children already have been brought to the United States for adoption. About 1,100 more are scheduled to arrive by the end of February.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department announced it would not intervene to block Haitian legal proceedings against the Baptist missionaries.
Instead, State Department officials plan to monitor the proceedings to ensure proper legal procedures are followed, just like with any other American detained overseas.
"This is a Haitian legal process," said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley. "The matters right now involve whether these individuals have broken Haitian law."
The missionaries made a court appearance Wednesday in Port-au-Prince before Judge Bernard Saint-Vil, who is investigating whether they should stand trial.
They testified that they had no bad intentions.
The missionaries, mostly from Idaho, said they were transporting the children from a damaged orphanage in Haiti to another orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
Some of the children later were found to have parents but media reports said the parents consented to having their children taken to the Dominican Republic.
Under Haitian law, Judge Saint-Vil has three months to decide whether to put the missionaries on trial.
They are receiving daily consular visits in jail from U.S. Embassy representatives, State Department officials said.
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