Adoption agencies warned off Haiti's orphans

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By Guy Adams, The Independent/UK

For newly orphaned children wandering the streets of Haiti's capital begging for food, it sounds like a dream come true. But agencies trying to evacuate children whose parents died in last week's earthquake have been criticised for bypassing proper adoption processes to rush them to families offering new lives in the West.

The Dutch government responded to the concerns yesterday, saying that "we do not simply pick up children off the streets and bring them to Holland to be adopted", after it emerged a chartered plane had been sent to Port-au-Prince to airlift 109 children to Amsterdam to be placed with local couples.

Adoption agencies collaborating on the airlift were unavailable for comment on the legal status of the children, but a spokesman for the Dutch justice ministry said they were "all known to us", and that the children were in the process of being adopted before the quake. However the move had not been rubber-stamped by a Haitian judge.

Children's advocacy groups have warned against new procedures instilled in the face of an emergency, saying recent natural disasters, particularly the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, created a free-for-all in which thousands of infants were rounded up and airlifted to nations without their family background being properly checked.

More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/adoption-agencies-warned-off-haitis-orphans-1871972.html