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"Orphanages have become a lucrative business in developing countries, leading to the trafficking of children to fill them," says this article from Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Foundation will be hosting its Trust Conference in London on Wednesday at which two charities, Forget Me Not and Lumos, will discuss orphan trafficking. This article highlights some of the facts around the issue, including that an "estimated 8 million children live in orphanages and other institutions worldwide, but 80 percent are not orphans." The article focuses on the situation in two countries:…
The government of Haiti has set out "to improve the deplorable status of the country’s children," through a partnership between the state child welfare agency and several international child-service organizations, by beginning to build a foster care system in the country, according to this article from the Washington Post. Haiti is "recruiting and training Haitians who buy into the idea that being a foster parent is a noble mission" in an effort to transition children out of institutions and into family-based care. "By itself, foster care won’t come close to resolving the plight of Haiti…
According to this article from ABC News and the Associated Press, ten senators from the United States have called on the government of Haiti to shut down an orphanage where a number of children being adopted by US families were allegedly sexually abused. "The letter said 'multiple' children at the Foyer Notre Dame de la Nativite orphanage on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince tested positive for the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia and reported that they had been victims of abuse," says the article. The director of the orphanage, Eveline Louis-Jacques, denies that any…
This article from the Miami Herald describes the vulnerability of children in Haiti, particularly along the Haitian-Dominican border, to trafficking, abandonment, and family separation. The article highlights the work of the International Organization for Migration, "which helps Haiti’s child welfare agency, the Institut du Bien-Être Social et de Recherches, or IBESR, reunite abandoned and separated children with their families." A safehouse supported by UNICEF and IOM in the city of Ouanaminthe along the Dominican border has become an important resource for these children…
"The mothers of Haiti’s 'peacekeeper babies' have filed the first legal action against both the UN and individual peacekeeping soldiers in paternity and child support claims," according to this article from the Guardian. The lawsuit is an attempt to make international UN soldiers who engaged in peacekeeping missions in Haiti provide support to the Haitian children they fathered. The suit is brought by human rights group Bureau Des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). The mothers, says Nicole Phillips, a lawyer on…
This article from CNN exposes the exploitation that many children experience in Haitian orphanages. The author cites a recent report from Lumos which indicates that the operators of many of these institutions use children for forced labor and to solicit donations, money that the children hardly ever see. The article describes the ways in which "child finders" venture into poor communities in Haiti to convince, or coerce, families into relinquishing their children to orphanages where they promise to provide healthcare, food, and education.
According to the article, Lumos has been working…
This news report describes how the foreign financing of orphanages in Haiti fuels the growth of a corrupt orphanage industry and enables unregistered institutions in the country to continue operating outside the law.
The Guardian discusses the repercussions of funding and volunteering in Haitian orphanages, based on the findings from Funding Haitian Orphanages at the Cost of Children’s Rights, a recent Lumos report.
This article discusses findings from the recent Lumos report Funding Haitian Orphanages at the Cost of Children's Rights, stressing the circumstances under which children enter into residential care as well as the prevalence of abuse within the care system.
A two month long inititative to evaluate the functions of children's homes in Haiti is underway; data will be used to identify which centres should be closed or refurbished as well as those that are compliant and licensed.