Quake adds to Haiti’s huge orphan population

THE five-month-old patient at the Israeli field hospital has a number rather than a name.

No one even knows who dropped the barely conscious baby at the makeshift medical centre after he was pulled from the debris of a collapsed building four days after last week’s catastrophic quake. Now recovering, doctors have a difficult decision ahead.

“What will we do with him when we are finished?” said Dr Assa Amit of the hospital’s paediatric emergency department.

No one knows who the boy’s family is, or whether any of his relatives are alive.

Tens of thousands of children have been orphaned by the earthquake, aid groups say – officials won’t venture a number. With so many buildings destroyed and growing chaos in the capital, it is conceivable that many children are alone.

“As yet they are still on the streets,” said Elizabeth Rodgers, of the Britain- based international orphan group SOS Children. “Without doubt, most of them are in the open.”

Even before the earthquake, Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, had 380,000 children living in orphanages or group homes, the UN Children’s Fund reports.

Some of the children lost their parents in previous disasters, including four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800 people in 2008, deadly storms in 2005 and 2004, and frequent massive floods since 2000. Others were abandoned amid the Caribbean nation’s long-running political strife, which has led thousands to seek asylum in the US – without their children – or by parents who were simply too poor to care for them.

International advocacy groups are trying to help, either by speeding up adoptions that were already in progress, or by sending in relief personnel who could potentially evacuate thousands of orphans to the US and other countries.

On Monday, the Dutch government sent a plane- load of immigration officials to Haiti to try to locate and evacuate 100 children who were already being adopted by Dutch parents.

Also on Monday, US-based Kids Alive International took 50 Haitian orphans to group homes in the Dominican Republic.

US Homeland Security spokesman Sean Smith said orphans who have ties to the US – such as a family member already living here – are among those who can get special permission to remain in the US.

The Catholic Church in Miami is working on a proposal that would allow thousands of orphaned children to come permanently to America. A similar effort launched in 1960, known as Operation Pedro Pan, brought about 14,000 unaccompanied children from Cuba to the US.

Under the new plan, dubbed “Pierre Pan”, Haitian orphans would first be placed in group homes and then paired with foster parents, said Mary Ross Agosta, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami.

Archdiocese officials said many details would have to be worked out and President Barack Obama’s administration would have to grant orphans humanitarian parole to enter the US.

In the meantime, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the UN is establishing a group whose mission on the ground in Haiti will be to protect children – orphans and non-orphans alike – against trafficking, kidnapping and sex abuse.

Sherrie Fausey had to evacuate 30 children from her Christian Light Foundation orphanage her facility in the capital was badly damaged in the quake.

Fausey, a former Florida school teacher who came to Haiti 10 years ago, said: “Wherever the Lord sends you, he’ll make you content to be there... I’d rather be here in all this rubble. It’s where my kids are.”

Three of the four orphanages operated in Port-au-Prince by Planting Peace, a Melbourne, Florida, non-profit, have been damaged. They are now trying to secure homes in Haiti for the children, the group’s founder, Aaron Jackson, said

“There needs to be some communication from the government level about what we need to do. Can we take these children?” he said. “We’re ready. We’ve already raised a fair amount of money where we can go out and get an orphanage running soon.”