Remembering Haiti's children

by Anna Branthewaite

Emergency relief agencies assessing the devastation of January’s earthquake in Haiti are suggesting that it will take years to rebuild and rehabilitate the country.

As news reports of the unfolding disaster start to subside, the long and arduous recovery begins.

Some suggest that this tragic event will give Haiti a new lease of life – it has certainly grasped the world’s attention – but for how long whilst Haiti slowly heals its wounds, how long before its inhabitants can cope with the trauma?

“Trauma is a psychic wound on the normal sense of feeling protected...you can't think, you are still in the nightmare and that carries on even after the disaster,” explains Dr Dorothy Judd, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, underlining how hard the recovery can be.

An estimated 200,000 people are believed to be dead, up to three million homeless and infrastructures all but destroyed in a country already plagued by poverty and volatility.

Crippled

Two hundred years ago Haiti was a proud nation - the first independent state in Latin America and the first black-led republic in the world.

In the last decade Haiti has experienced a violent coup and a devastating hurricane whilst weighed down by crippling debt to the tune of $890 million.

Living under tarpaulin and tents, the new fear to emerge in the capital Port au Prince is of gangs who are targeting women for their food coupons.

Other reports relay stories of rape and sexual intimidation.

Women have always been second-class citizens in Haiti, where rape was only outlawed in 2005.

Aid groups are starting to offer special shelters for women and provide women-only food distribution points to deter men from bullying them.

“We Haitians are in a state of mourning and part of mourning is anger. Right now I’m angry”, says Anne McConnell, a Haitian living in London.

She continues: “I’m angry at the legacy of foreign policy and debt which drove so many Haitians into Port au Prince to find work, and who are now either dead or suffering.”

Haiti's children and adoption

For many Haitians, and in particular children, any chance of recovering physically and psychologically depends on access to pockets of security within the devastation.

“At UNICEF we have created a strategy called ‘safe spaces’ which are cornered off areas where children can play freely, away and off the streets, whilst being watched and supervised by our staff," UNICEF head of media relation Sarah Epstein said.

“It’s important to get the children back to school quickly as this gives them some kind of routine and a sense of security….little things like a football, drawing materials, are really important in for a child.

“One of the definitions of trauma is that you can't think, you're in the nightmare and that carries on even after the disaster.”

The heart-breaking images of traumatized orphans has driven some to orchestrate their own impulsive ‘rescue’ missions.

Ten American Baptist missionaries are currently being charged with abduction by the Haitian government, after ferrying out 33 Haitian children with no proper documentation, many of whom turned out not to be orphaned but still had parents.

A less obvious and yet very serious reason why this impulsive, evangelical form of fast-track adoption is dangerous is that it only encourages the rampant trafficking of children.

Some 300,000 of Haiti's youths, for example, are child slaves known in Creole as 'restaveks.'

Sarah Epstein at UNICEF continues, “Our main priority is the child and firstly trying to establish whether the child has family and can be reunited with them.

"Once it has been established that the child has lost its parents and family, then we would look at inner-country adoption.

"Outer-country adoption is really the last resort.”

Beginning of changes in child protection

Given how lax Haiti has historically been about legal protection of children, the government’s hard stance against the missionaries may be a positive sign of change.

It might get more foreigners to recognize that perhaps the best way to help Haiti's children is not by plucking them out of their country but by helping to rebuild Haiti so the children have a safer place to grow up in, whilst encouraging Haitians to recognize how wrong child trafficking is.

One thing is certain – the support, effort and commitment needed to rebuild Haiti is in for the long haul.