Behind Haiti's Orphan Crisis, Government Neglect

Thanks to the much-ballyhooed case of missionaries who went kid-snatching in Haiti, the plight of Haiti's orphans has gotten a lot more press in recent days. Not very discriminate coverage, though -- more of the shallow, headline-grabby variety. Which is why it's so refreshing to see the Stars and Stripes taking a deeper dive for readers in their latest story.

Prior to the earthquake, Save the Children estimated there were 380,000 Haitian children living in orphanages. And since the earthquake, the number of children who've lost their parents has more than doubled.

Long before the Jan. 12 earthquake, children in Haiti were often commodified by their poverty -- trafficked for labor, sold on the black market to adoptive parents, or driven into servitude. And, as the S&S writes, long before the latest gaggle of Baptists trooped into Haiti to stir up some headlines, there was an extensive history of missionaries behaving badly, as well.

There's the case of the pastor who in 2008 trolled Haiti for kids, telling their parents they would gain a better life at a U.S.-funded orphanage. (Within three months, out of the 28 children sent with the pastor, one child had died, and two dozen more were ill and emaciated.) Or the case of Douglas Perlitz, a Colorado missionary indicted by U.S. prosecutors this September on charges of extracting sexual favors from the teens he housed at an orphanage in northern Haiti. The list goes on.

The bigger issue, though, has been the Haitian government's near-total reticence on the issue. By its own account, the government inspects only half the number of documented orphanages in the country (and plenty of undocumented orphanages abound, too). In 2008, Amnesty International found that far from protecting children, the Brigade for the Protection of Minors, founded by the police to combat trafficking in 2002, had fewer than 20 officers and -- in an eloquent metaphor for how protection efforts have stalled -- lacked even a car.

What's more, according to the State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons report, Haiti has no law against human trafficking.

So far on the case of the 10 detained U.S. missionaries, the State Department has stayed publicly reserved, refusing to ask that the case to be transferred to U.S. court. Whether the U.S. should be reaching inside the Haitian justice system to scoop out 10 Americans is another debate -- but for now, the higher priority should be partnering with Haitian authorities to overhaul the lapses their case has helped bring to light.

Photo Credit: U.S. Coast Guard