Paradise Preoccupied

We knew it was coming, and here it is, just as predicted a few days ago when I wrote:

There is no shortage of arrogant pinheads ready to scream “cultural genocide” and insist that any kid removed from Haitian hellfire is being robbed of his birth right, will suffer lifelong from the loss of said culture, and just may have some blood relatives still alive somewhere who are not too busy bleeding and killing and looting to take in an extra child or ten. In other words, demanding a hands-off-Haitian-children and leave-them-to-rot policy to rule.

At the top of the leave-’em-to-rot hit parade, as always, UNICEF, with their advisor in comfortable, safe Geneva coming out with this …

“We know the problem with trade of children in Haiti and many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market.”

Of course UNICEF knows the problems with children in Haiti, but what they’ve done to alleviate those over the years is, shall we say, unimpressive. They do good counts of dead kids and can usually tell us how many are undernourished, but how helpful is that to the actual children? Not so much.

And that bit about “links with the international adoption market” is nothing but a dirty swipe with a tarred brush meant to divert attention and cast adoption in the negative light UNICEF is so fond of.

Save The Children is jumping on this one, too; a natural response from an organization that supports its very large staff through donations to kids stuck in poverty and misery.

“Taking children out of the country would permanently separate thousands of children from their families – a separation that would compound the acute trauma they are already suffering,” said Save The Children’s chief executive Jasmine Whitbread.

The children being “rushed” out of Haiti are those who should have been home in the safety of their adoptive families long ago, having been cleared for adoption, abandoned or orphaned, paperwork ready, and held in orphanages simply because organizations like UNICEF demand they wait and wait and wait.

Several of the children arriving in France had been resident in a nursery that was severely damaged in last week’s earthquake but “not a single child was injured and not a single adoption file was lost,” said French consul in Haiti, Jean-Pierre Gueguan.

The children left the school on Thursday where they had taken shelter after the destruction and headed to the Port-au-Prince airport.

Each had a Haitian passport with the family name of their adoptive family but also their birth family’s surname.

For many, it’s impossible to comprehend a mindset that condemns the idea of families welcoming children into the fold, but the anti-adoption steamroller was bound to plow over Haiti’s disaster. As the press hops on for the ride, read well for motives … and look hard for anyone who bothers to ask the kids how they feel.