Orphanage trafficking recongised in TiP report - Anti-Slavery International

5.9.17

Orphanage trafficking recongised in TiP report - Anti-Slavery International:

Around the world, an estimated 8 million children are living in orphanages, despite the fact that 80% of these children are not orphans. Children who grow up in orphanages are denied their right to family-based care, which – with the right support – is entirely possible. The causes of institutionalisation are complex and varied, but Lumos’ work is increasingly showing there is a link between it and trafficking – and that unscrupulous individuals are making money from the abuse of the very children they purport to protect.


Lumos’ recent research in Haiti highlights numerous examples of orphanage directors paying ‘child-finders’ to recruit children to orphanages through deception or coercion in order to receive donations from abroad. Lumos found evidence of at least $70 million per year being provided by international private donors to just over one-third of Haiti’s 750 orphanages, which equates to one third of all US foreign aid to Haiti.


These vast sums of unregulated money incentivise traffickers to remove children from their families and exploit them.  However, progress is being made in Haiti – as recognised in the highly influential US Government Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, which this year upgraded Haiti from Tier 3 (the worst ranking) to the Tier 2 Watchlist, attributing this partly to the increased activity of the Haitian government’s interministerial anti-trafficking commission (TIP Commission).