Arrest of Americans deepens Haiti adoption debate

The debate over international adoption, already a bitter one, has intensified in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake and the arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the devastated country without permission.

Some groups are urging a long moratorium on new adoptions from Haiti, saying there is too much chaos and too high a risk of mistakes or child trafficking. Other groups fear any long-term clampdown will consign countless children to lives in institutions or on the street, rather than in the loving homes of adoptive parents.

Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption, said the arrests of the 10 U.S. Baptists would probably undercut his organization's push to expand adoptions from Haiti as soon as feasible.

"It was a critical mistake - the Haitian government has been very clear they did not want any children leaving without its express permission," Johnson said yesterday.

"Maybe the Americans thought they were helping 33 kids, but now there's going to be a much slower process and maybe even a ban on future adoptions - and that would be a tragedy."

The Americans, arrested Friday near Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, were being held in a police headquarters in Port-au-Prince while Haitian and U.S officials discussed their fate.

Even before the arrests, the Haitian government had called a halt to new international adoptions. Numerous organizations have endorsed the moratorium, some of them citing UN guidelines recommending that at least two years be spent tracing lost families before adoptions should be considered.

"No matter how horrific the situation looks . . . the full process of reuniting children with parents and relatives must be completed," said Deb Barry, a Save the Children child protection expert.

The next steps, says UNICEF, should be compiling a registry of children separated from their families, an extensive campaign to trace relatives, and development of safe, well-supplied places where these children can stay during the search process.