CPIU » Haiti

Munich: Human traffickers sell children to paedophiles

Aprediz de Paladín — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:29:42 +0000

An international band of human traffickers has been caught smuggling children to Germany from Haiti and beyond, then selling them to paedophiles, officials said Friday. The group allegedly posed as an aid organisation, luring the children with promises of a better life.

Two men from Berlin were arrested at the Munich airport this week while trying to illegally enter the country with a 10-year-old, law enforcement officials told daily Berliner Morgenpost.

They came under suspicion when immigration agents suspected the boy’s Brazilian papers were forged. He was later found to be Costa Rican, though most of the children involved have been from Haiti.

Arrest warrants have since been issued for both men, with investigators from the state criminal police (LKA) and state prosecutors manning the case.

The duo, a German and a Swede, are accused of organized human trafficking.

According to an investigator the suspects have been taking children mainly from Haiti, which is still chaotic following the devastating earthquake there in January 2010. There they founded an fake aid organisation to care for underage street children, “apparently not for humanitarian reasons,” the paper reported.

Latin American children like the Costa Rican boy discovered in Munich were also victims of the group.

“The children were probably lured to Berlin under the false pretence of leading a new and better life in Germany,” an investigator said. “Among them were also orphans.”

But the real aim of the suspects was selling the children to Berlin paedophiles for sexual abuse, the paper said.

“The children were placed in a relationship of dependence and then offered to the scene. Following the expiration of their visas after three months they were sent home – with emotional trauma that one can’t even imagine,” the investigator added.

The LKA is now working with the other countries involved to uncover the structure and breadth of the trafficking organisation and find out who their customers were.

“Whoever is making the effort to bring children in from abroad for sexual assault and then sending them back again must not only have a large circle of accomplices, but also some significant influence and significant financial means,” another investigator said.

Source: THELOCAL

Separated Haitian children risk being sold, trafficked or kept in slave-like conditions – UN human rights experts

whoiscarol — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:05:45 +0000

GENEVA ( February 2010) – “There is an increased risk of unaccompanied children in Haiti, including orphans and restaveks*, being abducted, enslaved, sold or trafficked, due to increased insecurity in the country,” a group of UN human rights experts warned Tuesday**.

The experts, who are mandated by the Human Rights Council to monitor slavery, sale of children, trafficking and violence against children, stressed that “protection of children must be at the heart of the relief operation in Haiti.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and Independent Expert on Haiti have also emphasized the critical need to protect children in the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake, and in light of the particular dangers posed by thousands of gang-members and other criminals who escaped from prisons damaged by the quake.

“Unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable and it is essential, wherever possible, to register, trace and reunite children with their families,” the UN experts said, adding that “during the evacuation efforts, it is imperative to avoid the unnecessary separation of families which may place children at higher risk, aggravate their trauma and distress and hinder their recovery and reintegration.”

The group praised the UN’s establishment of a ‘Child Protection Sub-Cluster,’ which is geared to safeguard children’s rights and prevent violence, abuse and exploitation, and highlighted the efforts of this body to set-up a rapid registration system for unaccompanied children. “One of their key goals is to register children under five, and older girls, children and youth with mental disabilities or serious injuries, as well as restaveks that have been separated from their ‘employers,’” the UN experts said. “We welcome this vital initiative.”

They also urged the international organizations and governments assisting Haitians “to ensure that the work on child protection remains a priority and continues to be properly funded and coordinated under the umbrella of the United Nations.”

(*) Restavek means “staying with” and refers to the Haitian system under which parents who cannot support their children send them to live with more affluent relatives or strangers from whom they are supposed to receive food, shelter and education in exchange for work. The Restaveksystem is prone to exploitation and sometimes leads to children being kept as virtual slaves.

(**) Ms. Gulnara Shahinian, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery; Ms. Najat M’jid Maalla, Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; Ms. Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children; and Ms. Marta Santos Pais, Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children.

Unicef says 15 kids snatched from hospitals in Haiti

whoiscarol — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:22:28 +0000

Geneva, (EFE).- At least 15 children have disappeared from Haiti’s hospitals since the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean nation, the United Nations Children’s Fund said Friday.

“We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time,” Unicef adviser Jean-Luc Legrand said in Geneva.

He said Unicef fears the youngsters may have been abducted by traffickers operating from the neighboring Dominican Republic.

“Unicef has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti that existed already beforehand,” Legrand said. “Unfortunately, many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market.”

“This is going on. This is happening now. We are starting to have the first evidence of that, this is unquestionable,” he said.

Unicef has therefore activated all available alert mechanisms to make sure that these kidnappings cease, and is organizing reception camps to shelter all unaccompanied children.

Legrand emphasized that these children “are not orphans.”

It must be reliably proved that they have neither of their two parents, according to Legrand, who also noted that even children who lost both parents were likely to have relatives in Haiti ready and willing to adopt them.

Unicef has established to date 20 reception centers for unaccompanied minors and attends 2,000 a day, but the goal is to be able to help 4,000 a day.

An estimated 3 million people – a third of Haiti’s population – have been affected by the quake, and as many as 200,000 may have died.

Legrand said that Unicef is not only concerned about the fate of children but also of young girls working as domestic employees who could easily fall into the hands of sex-trafficking rings.

The United Nations Population Fund, known as UNFPA, recalled that before the earthquake, Haiti was the world’s most dangerous country for a woman to give birth, a situation that has only become worse in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

Estimates indicate that some 63,000 pregnant women will give birth in the coming week, and UNFPA said Friday that some 10,000 of those women need medical attention now due to complications from their pregnancies.

Both Unicef and UNFPA warned that they fear outbreaks of sexual violence against women.

In order to ward off future illnesses, Unicef said that next week it will launch a vaccination campaign against tetanus, polio and measles for 360,000 children under 5.

With regard to the distribution of aid in general, Unicef spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said that drinking water is being distributed at 98 different points around Port-au-Prince for some 150,000 people, an amount she called “totally insufficient.”

Meanwhile, the spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program, Emilia Casella, said Friday that up to now 1.4 million food rations have been distributed to some 200,000 people.

She said that the situation could improve soon because some survivors now have the wherewithal for cooking, and are receiving cereals, legumes and rice to make hot meals.

With regard to criticism about the difficulty of distributing aid outside the capital, the spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Elisabeth Byrs, cited the difficulties being dealt with on the ground in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.