Adoption in Haiti

We’ve all been inundated with the news and images from Haiti as the living fight to survive disease and death in the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake that devastated their world January 14th. At the time of this writing more than 200,000 dead are thought to be dead and tens of thousands are unaccounted for. Over 1.5 million are homeless.

The devastation has brought the topic of adoption to the forefront. One adoption headline continues to be the plight of children and parents in who were matched and in the adoption process. The legal system is in shambles, paperwork missing and officials unaccounted for or dead. The first evacuated orphans in need of care landed today in the U.S. For children already identified eligible for adoption by the Haitian government and being adopted by US citizens, the State department has said that the “humanitarian parole policy” will be applied on a case-by case basis.

The other headline has been the skyrocketing interest in adopting from Haiti. One agency in Oklahoma has received close to 1000 calls about adopting from Haiti since the earthquake. The agency typically handles about twelve in the same period. Government officials are faced with making sure that every attempt is made to reunite families and that the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption is followed.

301 children were adopted from Haiti in 2008; last year it was 330. Unicef estimates there were already 380,000 children orphaned by one or both parents before the quake happened and now the number may be close to one million.  It will take a long period of time to determine the true number of children that have been orphaned by the catastrophe. Until then, adoption from Haiti will take an amazing deal of patience and persistence. 

Judy M. Miller’s essays and articles appear in parenting magazines. Her stories are included in A Cup of Comfort for Adoptive Families: Stories That Celebrate a Special Gift of Love , Pieces of Me: Who Do I Want to Be? and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Mom. She blogs at The International Mom’s Blog and facilitates classes for adoptive parents at Parenting Your Adopted Child with Judy M. Miller.