Haiti takes prudent action to protect needy children

The arrest of 10 Americans in Haiti a week and a half ago has prompted both sympathy and outrage. In the days that followed, Haitian officials decided to begin legal proceedings against the Idahoans, most of whom are members of a Baptist congregation that went to Haiti to provide humanitarian assistance in the days after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The 10 were arrested while attempting to transport 33 improperly documented Haitian children across the country’s border with the Dominican Republic. They claim they were trying to take the children to an orphanage in the more stable country.

In a gesture to many individuals’ belief that these were well-meaning people whose behavior was illegal and uniformed, Haitian officials decided to charge them with abduction rather than the more serious crime of trafficking.

We feel strongly that these Baptists were uninformed and would have caused harm had they succeeded in their mission to remove the children, some of whom still had living parents, to another country.

The destruction caused by the earthquake will not be fixed, nor its attendant mass suffering alleviated, by adopting away the country’s children. Had the members of the congregation really sought to improve the lives of these children, they would have first sought to supply the country with basic necessities rather than rob it of its children.

Ironically, the Baptists’ faux pas has complicated the processes of evacuating those in need of immediate medical care.The New York Times reported Monday that pilots doing emergency medical evacuations are now demanding more rigorous documentation for those they would carry to hospitals in the United States for fear of being accused of kidnapping.

Fortunately, the dominant response to the devastation caused by the earthquake has not been the harmful, amateurish action of this particular group. Rather, Americans alone have donated some $600 million to relief efforts.

That said, the seriousness of human trafficking and the abuse of children in Haiti should not be down played. While it seems these particular Americans were more inept than malicious, Haitian officials were quite reasonable to take action to protect the country’s children. To date, it has done an inadequate job.

Haiti’s orphanages are woefully underfunded, its government is beset by corruption, and too many are willing to look the other way as children are taken advantage of by those who can afford to do so.

So while it was against the children’s best interests as well as Haitian law for the Baptists to transport the children to the Dominican Republic without any documentation, this incident should not be taken as proof that all foreign aid has been unhelpful in Haiti.

And as for justice? The government of Haiti should take steps to begin protecting its children and not simply save face by making an example of the Idaho Baptists.