Haiti kids taken by Americans 'have family': care centre

News Com AU 01/02/2010

HAITIAN police are holding 10 US citizens on suspicion they tried to slip out of the country with 33 Haitian children in a trafficking scheme.

Most of the children taken by a US church group "have family" that survived the earthquake, head of the international care center, Patricia Vargas said .

According to Ms Vargas' conversation with older children of the group, above seven years old, some of the youngsters "say their parents are alive, and some of them gave us an address and phone numbers," she said.

The children are being cared for at the center in Croix des Bouquets, a town west of the capital Port-au-Prince.

Haitian Social Affairs Minister Yves Christallin said the police arrested five men and five women with US passports, and two Haitians, as they tried to cross into the Dominican Republic with the children on Friday night. He said two pastors were also involved, one in Haiti and one in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mr Christallin said the US citizens did not have the proper documents to take the children out of Haiti, nor letters of authorisation from their parents.

The children were aged two months to 12 years and had come from different places, he said.

"What is important for us in Haiti is that a child needs to have an authorisation from this ministry to leave the country," he said.

US embassy officials were not immediately available to comment on the case.

Haitian officials have voiced fears that child traffickers will take advantage of the chaos after Haiti's massive January 12 earthquake to slip out of the country with children in illegal adoption schemes.

There is also concern that legitimate adoption agencies may rush to take earthquake orphans out of Haiti before proper checks have been conducted to confirm their parents have perished.

Haiti's quake severely crippled government agencies and pitched the country into a communications morass.

In an interview with NBC news, a family member of one of those arrested said the Americans were being charged with child trafficking, and that they believed the matter was a misunderstanding over documentation.

The Americans were identified as members of an Idaho-based charity called New Life Children's Refuge.

Carter Center Works to Eradicate Malaria in Haiti, Dominican Republic

VOA News: Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the last two countries in the Caribbean region with known cases of malaria, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says he hopes to see an eventual eradication of the disease in both countries. VOA spoke recently with the former president and to members of his Carter Center staff in Atlanta, Georgia about their efforts to curb the mosquito-borne illness.

Poverty and instability are part of life on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And, says former President Jimmy Carter, they are conditions that contribute to malaria infections in both countries, along with a lack of cooperation between the two neighbors

"The Dominican Republic government and the Haiti government, have never got along well. But both trust me, and trust the Carter Center," Mr. Carter said.