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Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 13
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt:
Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Nicole Footen Bromeld, Ph.D., MSW
United Arab Emirates University, Department of Social Work
n.bromeld@hotmail.com
Karen Smith Rotabi, Ph.D., MSW, MPH
Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Social Work
ksrotabi@vcu.edu
Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, Volume 9, Number 1 (2012)
Copyright 2012, White Hat Communications
This text may be freely shared among individuals, but it may not be republished in any medium without express written consent
from the authors and advance notication of White Hat Communications
Abstract
Child trafcking, under the guise of intercountry
adoption, is a form of human trafcking that is of-
ten misunderstood by policy makers, governments,
the media, and nongovernmental organizations.
The aim of this analysis is to bring awareness and
attention to child trafcking disguised as inter-
country adoption, to provide an analysis of current
policies that address human trafcking and inter-
country adoption, and to suggest that in order to
support more ethical child welfare practices, social
workers and NASW, in particular, should take a
more aggressive role in the development of sound
approaches to international child welfare and the
protection of children, especially during humani-
tarian emergencies.
We use the 2010 abduction attempt of Haitian
children by American missionaries as a case to
demonstrate how existing policies are insufcient
to provide protection to victims and to prosecute
perpetrators of this form of child trafcking. We
conduct an analysis of the Trafcking Victims
Protection Act of 2000 and provide an application
of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000.
Key words: Haiti, child trafcking, intercountry
adoption, disaster, policy, human rights.
1. Introduction
The International Labor Organization
(ILO, 2010) estimates that at any given time
approximately 12.3 million people worldwide
are victims of human trafcking. Forms of
trafcking can include forced prostitution, forced
labor, involuntary domestic servitude, organ
trafcking, conscription of child soldiers, and
in some cases, intercountry adoption (ICA).
Intercountry adoption is much less known and
understood, although it has been discussed in
detail by a number of scholars, mainly from the
disciplines of social work, law, and social policy
(Bergquist, 2009; Hollingsworth, 2003; Rotabi,
2008; Rotabi & Bergquist, 2010, Selman, 2009,
Smolin, 2004, 2006; Triseliotis, 2000). Despite
efforts to bring attention to ICA as a form of
human trafcking, current U.S. and United
Nations (UN) policies related to trafcking and
child human rights abuses, as well as advocacy
efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
such as the National Association of Social Workers
(NASW), have not been adequate in addressing
or preventing this form of trafcking. Using the
2010 attempted abduction of Haitian children by
Americans in the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating
earthquake as an example, we analyze human
trafcking policies as they apply to the Haiti case
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 14
and recommend that NASW take a leadership role
in developing a rm policy position related to child
trafcking that occurs under the guise of ICA.
2. Dening Child Trafcking Disguised as
Adoption
While there have been thousands of
legitimate ICAs since its inception in the mid-
1950s as a global child welfare intervention,
the practice has a clouded history. For example,
Roby and Ife (2009) focus on adoption fraud
in the Marshall Islands and Romania. In their
analysis they include a discussion of human
rights and adoption reform efforts with a rights-
based approach, such as including those affected
(i.e., birth families) in the development of social
planning for child welfare and adoption. Dickens
(2009) further analyzes Romania’s history of ICA
and its ultimate moratorium, and his abolitionist
conclusions demand a cessation of ICA.
Mónico, Rotabi and Alverenga (in press)
present child abduction and adoption during El
Salvador’s war years, underscoring the complex
nature of child rescue during civil war. That
nation’s sad history of adoption fraud is now being
addressed more than a decade since the Peace
Accords were signed with biological families
desperately searching for their children lost to
adoption.
In neighboring Guatemala, adoption
problems and fraud have been analyzed by
Bunkers, Groza, and Lauer (2009) and they
include a discussion of payments for infants and
young children in exchange for birth mother
relinquishment signatures, an illegal practice in
that nation. Greshman, Nackerud and Risler (2004)
also discuss problems in Guatemala, analyzing the
pre-reform system, which allowed unscrupulous
entrepreneurs to engage in ICA. Rotabi, Morris,
and Weil’s (2008) ecological analysis questions
the role of ethical social work practice related
to the post conict and human rights context of
Guatemala, including violence against women.
Rotabi and Bunkers (2008) further explore
adoption fraud in Guatemala, in which they include
a discussion of birth mother recruiters who secured
healthy infants for adoption by orchestrating paid
and/or coerced child relinquishments.
Selman (2009), in his analysis of ICA
trends and the radical decline of ICA in recent
years, includes a discussion of child trafcking
concerns as it relates to ICA while cautioning
against over-generalizations. The relationship
between ICA and child trafcking is bolstered
by Smolin (2004;2006) who analyzes the ways
in which child trafcking is carried out in ICA
schemes, including what he identies as “child
laundering.” Smolin’s pragmatic voice is known
for his aggressive call for reform based on case
studies from nations such as Cambodia.
Hollingsworth (2003) provides important
discourse about the social structures that lead to
social injustice in ICA. Her argument focuses
on exploitation, fraud and abuse in unjust
environments with consideration for vulnerable
women and children. She also points out a
contrasting view of ICA, in which adoption
intervention is viewed as an act of social
justice given that children are being saved from
homelessness or life in institutions.
While concerns about wide spread
exploitation and fraud date back to at least
the early 1990s (Herrman & Kasper, 1992;
Ngabonziza, 1991) with documented evidence
(Altstein & Simon, 1991), ICA as a human right
is promoted by Bartholet (2007), who views
ICA fraud as ‘isolated events’ and the practice as
ethically necessary in a just approach to global
child welfare. Roby (2007) pragmatically explores
the human rights of orphaned and vulnerable
children across a continuum of care before,
during, and after adoption with a recognition
of ICA as a human right when planned and
executed appropriately. Roby sets forth this
discourse after researching adoption fraud and
human rights abuses in a number of nations,
including Cambodia and Ethiopia (see Roby &
Ife, 2009; Roby & Matsumura, 2002; Personal
communication, J. Roby, March, 2012).
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 15
3. Child Trafcking and ICA During
Humanitarian Emergencies
An early and infamous case of ICA that
received considerable public attention, including
serious social critique in the media, was the
Vietnam Babylift. “Although reports vary, 2500–
3000 children were evacuated, with the majority
own to the USA and the remaining to Canada,
Australia and Europe” (Bergquist, 2009, p. 2).
Hasty removal resulted in limited documentation
or inconsistent or incorrect paperwork regarding
the children’s orphan status (Joe, 1978). Bergquist
(2009), in her analysis of the Babylift, underscores
the issues and problems of child rescue in the
context of war and examines the more recent
Zoe’s Ark attempt to trafc children from the
Sudan region of Africa in 2007, by presenting the
incident in this war zone within a foster care and
adoption scheme anchored in France (Bergquist,
2009). She observes that there was lack of political
will in Chad and France to hold the group legally
accountable for their actions. Rotabi and Bergquist
(2010) again review the Zoe’s Ark scenario when
discussing Haiti and recent attempts to illegally
remove and trafc children into adoption from
that nation in the weeks following the earthquake
disaster in January 2010. This particular analysis
was presented with recommendations to prevent
child trafcking for ICA in the context of disaster.
More broadly, governments and
international NGOs have responded to human
trafcking concerns by recognizing that people,
particularly women and children, are more
vulnerable to becoming trafcking victims during
humanitarian emergencies. The 2004 Asian
tsunami disaster brought attention to this issue
as the media, multiple NGOs, and government
organizations voiced concern regarding the
potential for human trafcking abuses during this
emergency, including concerns about ICA abuses.
As the world responded with disaster assistance
and goodwill gestures, many NGOs took an
aggressive stance that ICA was an inappropriate
intervention during this crisis (Bergquist, 2009).
4. Guidelines for Child Removal During
Humanitarian Emergencies
Disasters such as the 2004 tsunami led to
the development of international child protection
guidelines, including the “Inter-Agency Guiding
Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated
Children” distributed by the International
Committee of the Red Cross (2004). This
report was developed with input from multiple
international humanitarian organizations and is
based on refugee law and international human
rights, in that it emphasizes the importance of
family unity. One of its primary recommendations
is that during emergencies, all efforts must be
made to avoid child-family separation. The
principle of family unity, that “all children have a
right to a family, and families have a right to care
for their children” (International Committee of
the Red Cross, 2004) is a theme throughout. The
guidelines also outline that
evacuating children without family
members should be a last resort, carried out
only after it has been carefully determined
that protection and assistance cannot be
provided in place and that evacuation of the
entire family is not feasible. Separation of
these children from their families is meant
to be temporary. (p. 24)
In 2006, in response to the 2004 tsunami
and the U.S. Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005,
the United Nations Inter-Agency Standing
Committee (IASC) published “Protecting Persons
Affected by Natural Disasters,” which provides
guidelines based in a human rights context, and
also emphasizes that early action should be taken
to protect children against trafcking. The United
Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) (2009)
developed alternative childcare guidelines which
is explicit in its assertion that children are not to
be removed from their countries during disasters,
except under very specic circumstances like
medical evacuation, in which case a relative
should accompany the child.
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 16
5. Ethical Relinquishment for Child Adoption
versus Child Rescue
Legal child relinquishment made with
the best interests of the child in mind cannot be
made under extreme duress (i.e., fear of loss of
life due to conditions of war or disaster). The
absence of duress is consistent with legal codes
in industrialized nations that have well-developed
systems of child welfare and ethical standards for
child adoption (American Academy of Adoption
Attorneys, n. d.). Such a relinquishment could
be considered as coercive or made without
full disclosure and capacity (Wiley & Baden,
2005) as the parent or guardian is not capable of
making a balanced and long-term legal decision
and ultimately due diligence for parental rights
is lacking. In other words, because of ethical
standards of care, it is impossible for biological
parents or relatives in guardianship of children
to make a permanent relinquishment decision in
the chaos of war or disaster. However, whether
the Vietnam Babylift, the Zoe’s Ark incident, or
the most recent “rescue” attempt in Haiti, this
conception has been challenged as humanitarian
interventions are organized in an ad hoc manner
during crises. Child and parental rights can become
blurred when privileged outsiders, who may not
understand the cultural and historical context
in which they are operating, are making the
humanitarian decisions. As a result, International
Social Services (ISS) stated the following on Haiti:
International adoption should not take place
in a situation of war or natural disaster,
given that these events make it impossible
to verify the personal and family situation
of children. Any operation to adopt or to
evacuate children that are victims of the
earthquake to another country must be
absolutely avoided. (ISS, 2010, p.1)
From a United Nations perspective, rights
of children to remain with their families and in
their birth nations, even in the most difcult crisis,
is identied specically in the 1948 Genocide
Convention (Article 2) in which the forcible
removal of children from one group to another was
recognized as a violation (Horvitz & Catherwood,
2006). Just after World War II, which was the
catalyst for this international convention, this
abuse was particularly obvious as Jewish families
were torn apart by the Holocaust, including the
forcible removal of children from their parents
for re-socialization with other families. Further
delineation of the rights of children are found in
the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC), which has multiple articles in reference
to the state’s responsibility to prevent illegal
adoptions and to support birth families (Roby,
2007; Rotabi et al., 2008).
In the U.S. history of genocide, the forcible
removal of Native American children from their
families resulted in the Indian Child Welfare Act
(1978) which explicitly protects children and
families from unethical practices and promotes
their rights. This code requires tribal involvement
in child welfare decisions, especially child
relinquishments and alternative care planning, to
protect cultural identity (Basic, 2007; Rotabi et al.,
2008).
Also in the United States, the orphan
trains that operated from 1854 to 1929 in which
orphaned or homeless children from Northeast
were transported by train to the Midwest for
adoption resulted in the relocation of well over
200,000 children. In review, these relocations
of children were unethical by today’s standards,
ranging from forcible removal of children to child
placements with families who, in some cases,
used the children for work such as farm labor
(O’Connor, 2004). Many of the “orphan train”
children were essentially trafcked internally for
servitude (Warren, 2006).
6. The Haitian Child Abduction-for-Adoption
Attempt
On January 12, 2010, Haiti was devastated
by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that resulted in the
deaths of more than 200,000 people with at least
another 300,000 injured (Telegraph, 2010). As in
previous disasters, international NGO’s and the
media regarding the potential trafcking of human
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 17
beings, especially children, raised immediate
concern. International child welfare experts,
including International Social Service (2010) and
other organizations in both the United States and
Europe (i.e., see Better Care Network, 2010, and
the International Committee of the Red Cross,
2010), called for ICA to cease in the context of
this disaster. Many of the children already in the
queue for adoption were expedited to families in
the United States and European nations (Bergquist,
in press). However, starting new adoptions was
not considered appropriate and this assertion
was made clear in the popular press and other
communications outlets (Rotabi & Bergquist,
2010).
On January 29, 2010, members of a
recently created American mission group, the
New Life Children’s Refuge (NLCR) (BBC
News, 2010), attempted to illegally remove 33
Haitian children ranging in age from 2 months to
12 years from Haiti into the Dominican Republic.
The missionaries were stopped at the Dominican
Republic border because of inadequate paperwork
and later were arrested in Haiti for attempting
to illegally remove children from the country
(Thompson, 2010). The NLCR’s plan was that the
children would be kept in a former hotel converted
into an orphanage and then later placed with
adoptive families (Thompson, 2010). According
to an NLCR (2010) document “The New Life
Children’s Refuge: Haitian Orphan Rescue
Mission,” the group would provide “opportunities
for adoption into a loving Christian family” (2010,
p. 3) and “opportunities for adoption through
partnership with New Life Adoption Foundation”
(2010, p. 3).
Members of NLCR claimed that they were
trying to rescue orphans but it was later found
that 20 of the 33 children had at least one parent
living and that some of the parents understood that
they could visit their children at any time (CNN.
com, 2010). The international press reported that
the group had talked with many of the parents
personally and knew that the children were not
orphans (MSNBC.com News Services, 2010).
This further underscores the complicated nature
of the conception of “orphan,” which implies
that children do not have parents to care for them
(Abebe, 2009), and in the case of these particular
children, the evidence is that many of them did
have at least one parent if not a fully intact family
(MSNBC.com News Services, 2010). NLCR’s
leader, Laura Silsby, reportedly negotiated with
some parents, promising that they could visit their
children in the Dominican Republic—ultimately a
false promise given her goal of eventually sending
the children to the United States as adoptees,
as implied in the NLCR’s Haiti orphan rescue
planning document (2010).
As media outlets carried details of the
case, Haiti’s Prime Minister Bellerive called the
missionaries “kidnappers.” However, 9 out of the
10 Americans were released quickly and press
reports indicated that Haiti was depending on
the United States to carry out justice (CNN.com,
2010), especially given Haiti’s limited capacity
during this time of devastation and rebuilding. By
May, 2010 Silsby was released without further
penalty (Rotabi & Bergquist, 2010).
A critical and particularly incriminating
piece of historical information about this case is
that Silsby had visited an orphanage in Haiti in
December 2009, well before the earthquake, and
had already signed a lease to rent the former hotel
space in the Dominican Republic (CNN.com,
2010). Silsby had been aware of the country’s
adoption procedures before the earthquake and
knew that she did not have the proper paperwork
to remove the children from Haiti. Ofcials of the
Haitian government have stated on record that they
warned Silsby not to carry out her plan and she
ignored their warnings (CNN.com, 2010).
Even with clear evidence of wrongdoing,
as the faith group returned to the United States
they were greeted with religious hymns and cheers
(CNN.com, 2010). As Rotabi and Bergquist (2010)
point out, there ultimately was no legal or political
will in Haiti to follow through with punishment of
these individuals for child abduction or attempted
trafcking. The United States government has
failed to prosecute their citizens for attempted
child kidnapping or human trafcking, including
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 18
conspiracy to do so on U.S. soil. The capacity
to prosecute, under current human trafcking
denitions and laws, is questionable, as will be
discussed below.
7. Human Trafcking Legislation: U.S. and
International Denitions
In considering the Haitian scenario, it is
important to examine some legal denitions. In
2000 the United States passed the Trafcking
Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in order to
combat human trafcking, both domestically and
internationally. The TVPA, which was the rst
piece of legislation worldwide to comprehensively
address human trafcking, is focused on three
areas: worldwide prevention of human trafcking,
protection of trafcking victims, and the
prosecution of trafckers.
About the time that the TVPA passed,
the U.N. adopted the Protocol to Prevent,
Suppress, and Punish Trafcking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children, which came into
effect at the end of 2003. The U.N. Trafcking
Protocol, also known as the Palermo Protocol,
is a comprehensive treaty with international
obligations for the prevention of trafcking,
the protection of trafcking victims, and the
prosecution of trafckers. To date the U.N.
Trafcking Protocol has 117 signatories, including
the United States, and widespread support. The
denition of human trafcking outlined in the
Trafcking Protocol (UN, 2000) is as follows:
(a) Trafcking in persons shall mean the
recruitment, transportation, transfer,
harbouring or receipt of persons, by
means of the threat or use of force or
other forms of coercion, of abduction,
of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of
power or of a position of vulnerability
or the giving or receiving of payments
or benets to achieve the consent
of a person having control over
another person, for the purpose of
exploitation. Exploitation shall include,
at a minimum, the exploitation of the
prostitution of others or other forms of
sexual exploitation, forced labour or
services, slavery or practices similar
to slavery, servitude or the removal of
organs.
This denition is particularly important because
it is the rst legally binding instrument with an
agreed-upon denition of human trafcking and
is meant to facilitate a convergence of national
approaches in establishing criminal punishments
for trafcking that would support international
cooperation in prosecuting trafcking offenses
(UN Ofce on Drugs and Crime, 2000). Just as
with the U.S. TVPA, this particular international
agreement failed to specically or explicitly
recognize cases of human trafcking being carried
out under the guise of ICA; however, it does
leave room for interpretation, especially when
one considers fraud and coercion related to false
promises.
Concurrent with the development of
U.S. and international denitions of human
trafcking, the U.S. Intercountry Adoption Act
(IAA) was passed in 2000. This legislation was
developed to implement the Hague Convention
on Protection of Children and Co-operation in
Respect of Intercountry Adoption. This particular
international agreement, referred to henceforth
as “the Convention,” was developed to “take
measures to ensure that ICAs are made in the
best interests of the child and with respect for
his or her fundamental rights, and to prevent
the abduction, the sale of, or trafc in children”
(Hague Conference on Private Law, n.d., p. 1).
Each Convention signatory nation, numbering over
80 nations, develops its own internal adoption laws
to regulate adoption processes to promote the best
interests of the child and prevent child trafcking.
For the United States, the IAA was
developed and passed in the year 2000 and as
per the Convention, the law identies the U.S.
Department of State as the nation’s “Central
Authority” and the Secretary of State as the head
of the organization. Other Convention-consistent
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 19
provisions are the denition of agency accrediting
or approval requirements in addition to denition
of the adoption services that require such
accreditation to prevent child sales and trafcking
(Rotabi, 2008; Rotabi & Gibbons, in press).
Further, an adoption agency accrediting body is
dened as well as the general obligations of the
accredited agencies in carrying out adoptions
between two Convention nations (e.g., the United
States and China). This particular criterion is
particularly relevant to this discussion because
Haiti has not ratied the Convention and, as a
result, the Convention and the IAA do not apply
to adoption-related activities or adoptions between
the United States and Haiti. Unfortunately, this
makes the IAA impotent in prosecuting the
American citizens involved in child abduction for
adoption from Haiti. However, it should be noted
that international child welfare experts responding
to the emergency have called for the spirit of the
Convention to prevent child trafcking in the
midst of this humanitarian crisis (Balsari, Lemery,
Williams, & Nelson, 2010).
8. Applying These Statutes to the Haiti Case
None of the aforementioned legal guidance
provides a satisfactory denition or structure to
prosecute child trafcking activities that occur
under the guise of ICA. According to the TVPA,
the Haiti abduction case does not constitute human
trafcking because the United States, (2000)
denes human trafcking as,
All acts involved in the recruitment,
abduction, transport, harboring, transfer,
sale or receipt of persons within national
or across international borders; through
force, coercion, fraud or deception; to
place persons in situations of slavery or
slavery-like conditions, forced labor or
services, such as forced prostitution or
sexual services, domestic servitude, bonded
sweatshop labor or other debt bondage.
In the Haiti case, a transfer of persons
through fraud and deception was attempted but
there is no evidence that the Americans were going
to attempt to place these Haitian children into debt
bondage, forced labor, or another situation that is
included in the trafcking denition of the TVPA.
In the case of the majority of adoption
fraud for trafcking of children, individual
children have been sold into “adoption” schemes,
and they join families who believe that they are
paying for legitimate adoptions (Smolin, 2004).
This fraud is a blatant form of exploitation
for all involved except the trafckers. What
confuses the exploitation issue is that the
children typically become middle- to upper-class
citizens of industrialized nations, with far greater
opportunities and markedly improved health and
well-being outcomes than they may have had
otherwise; as a result, the idea of exploitation gets
lost.
On an international level, the Haiti child
abduction case does fall into the U.N. denition
of human trafcking. The missionary group
attempting to illegally remove children from Haiti
used fraud and deception to exploit their families’
vulnerability (Thompson, 2010) and specically
compromised the children’s dignity, equality,
autonomy, and physical and emotional well-being.
Further, the missionaries engaged in fraud and
deception during conversations with the children’s
parents when making false and unrealistic
promises (CNN.com, 2010), as previously
discussed.
The United States does not use the
U.N. denition of human trafcking in order
to prosecute human trafcking occurrences in
the United States but uses the denition in the
TVPA. In 2008, the Trafcking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act of 2008, authorized the TVPA
for four additional years and expanded the reach of
U.S. criminal anti-trafcking statutes by allowing
the U.S. government to prosecute American
citizens who are engaged in human trafcking
outside of the United States. The criminal statutes
that pertain to trafcking and sex tourism prohibit
Americans from crossing international borders
to engage in sex trafcking with a child or adult;
American perpetrators who commit these offenses
outside of the United States now face prosecution
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 20
by the U.S. government. Unfortunately, these
statutes would not pertain to removing children
from a country illegally for ICA. International
kidnapping laws would also not apply in the Haiti
case because the children never actually crossed an
international border (Bajak, 2010).
Although the U.S. government claims to
be committed to eradicating human trafcking, the
denition used in its legislation is insufcient to
prosecute perpetrators of some types of trafcking,
such as the attempt by Americans to trafc
children out of Haiti. Interestingly, the U.S. State
Department has noted in the latest Trafcking
in Persons Report (2009) that “A more lasting
and effective way to secure a victim’s freedom is
through the application of law: holding trafckers
and those who exploit trafcking victims
accountable under criminal justice systems” (p.
24).
9. Implications for Social Work as a Profession:
The National Association of Social Work’s
Failure to Take a Position on Child Trafcking
for Adoption
In the United States, the legal capacity to
prosecute individuals implicated in illegal adoption
activities. Rotabi and Bergquist (2010) discuss
these concerns as they relate to the Haiti case.
Among their observations is that social work is
well positioned to take an active role in dening
the terms and practices of international child and
family intervention in times of disaster. However,
they also point out a limited and even nonexistent
policy or practice stance that various social work
organizations, including the NASW, have taken on
the Haiti disaster.
While NASW is a membership body
that does not specically carry out direct social
work practice, Rotabi and Bergquist (2010) hold
the organization accountable for taking a policy
stance and providing leadership in the problems
of child trafcking for adoption. These authors
state that NASW could, at the very least, remind
their members to take caution when working
in adoption-related activities related to Haitian
children, but the organization has failed to take a
position. This is particularly troubling when one
considers that NASW’s ethical code states,
Social workers should promote the general
welfare of society, from local to global
levels, and the development of people,
their communities, and their environments.
Social workers should advocate for living
conditions conducive to the fulllment of
basic human needs and should promote
social, economic, political, and cultural
values and institutions that are compatible
with the realization of social justice. (1999,
rev. 2008, Section VI)
The child abduction attempt in Haiti
reminds us that others who are not experts in child
welfare or social work often dictate “solutions”
during crisis. However, social work practitioners—
including members of NASW--often inherit the
consequences of poorly planned interventions or
a lack of legal attention to obvious infractions of
human rights. In the future, other vulnerable and
impoverished families may again suffer poorly
planned and illegal “orphan rescues” motivated
by adoption orchestrated during crisis, since there
has been a failure to punish trafcking perpetrators
in the Haiti case. The social work profession has
an obligation to understand the social justice
implications and exploitive nature of irregular and
illegal ICAs. The profession must also recognize
the primary right of children to be raised in their
own communities and cultures of origin and by
their own biological families (Hollingsworth,
2003). As a profession, it is important for social
workers to recognize and support the ideas
found in the Hague Convention, including the
internationally agreed-upon conception that ICA
should be the last resort for a child when all other
options have been exhausted in their nation of
origin, including family support and kinship care,
to ensure the best interests of the child (Rotabi,
2008).
Hodge (2008) notes the social work
profession’s lack of attention to human trafcking
issues. NASW enumerates its commitment to
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 21
social justice on the behalf of vulnerable and
oppressed persons in its ethical code and its
educational standards; given social work’s
commitment to the most vulnerable, especially
those living in extreme poverty; it is time for our
profession to call for the changes necessary to hold
child trafckers in all forms accountable for their
actions. Changes must include an improvement
of the denition found in the TVPA, as well as
a demand for changes in Hague Convention
implementation and IAA legislation to apply to all
ICA cases, promoting worldwide ethical practice
standards.
10. Conclusion: Child Relinquishment and a
Prevention Role for NASW
In the best of environments, birth
parent counseling and child relinquishment is
a challenging aspect of ethical child welfare
practice (Wiley & Baden, 2005; Joe, 1978). In
times of disaster, the practice requires aggressive
safeguards recognizing the nature of chaos and
coercion of vulnerable people while supporting
self-determination, a core ethical principle.
Further competence (NASW,1999) in social work
practice requires informed practitioners to be held
accountable for their involvement in fraudulent
adoptions.
While the international humanitarian sector
has taken a position against removal of children for
adoption during disasters, unfortunately, NASW
has failed to take such a stand—not even making
public statements to help prevent child trafcking
under the guise of ICA schemes. This was clear
during the Haitian earthquake. Holding NASW
accountable for a more aggressive role in the
development of sound approaches to international
child welfare and protection of vulnerable peoples,
especially in times of disaster, may seem like a tall
order and even beyond organizational boundaries.
However, part of NASW’s mission is to “seek to
enhance the effective functioning and well-being
of individuals, families, and communities through
its work and through its advocacy” (NASW, 1999,
p. 1). Furthermore, NASW’s involvement as a
powerful membership organization with 147,000
individual members (NASW, 2009a) in policy
processes is well known and the organization has
taken aggressive stances on other social issues,
including health care and political actions related
to race and gender. In December 2009, NASW
provided a statement of testimony on the U.S.
implementation of human rights treaties for the
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights.
In this statement NASW (2009b) suggested to
the U.S. government that it needs to do more to
address children’s human rights violations when it
asserted,
More must be done to ensure the protection
and care of child victims as well as to
address the root causes of trafcking.
Systems in place to protect children should
be adequately staffed and funded, and
they should provide services that reect
evidence-based practice and comply with
general child welfare practices . . . NASW
strongly supports the U.S. ratication of
the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC). (p. 4)
As stated in the introduction, the CRC
contains multiple articles that relate to the child’s
right to be reared in his or her state of origin and
the state’s obligations to protect against illegal
adoptions, such as Article 21 (Roby, 2007; Roby
& Ife, 2009; Rotabi & Bergquist, 2010). Also,
adoptions being carried out in the best interests
of the child are a paramount principle of child
welfare—a value system which social workers
have historically played a key role in dening.
As such, NASW should heed its own advice and
take on a greater responsibility to promote ethical
adoptions by protecting child trafcking victims
and advocating to inuence policy. NASW’s
ethical code requires a response. It is time for
NASW to step up its efforts to bring awareness
to and prevent human rights abuses and all forms
of human trafcking, including ICA abuses.
Specically, the organization should provide
greater leadership in improving human trafcking
legislation so that prosecution of individuals
Human Trafcking and the Haitian Child Abduction Attempt: Policy Analysis and Implications for Social Workers and NASW
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, Spring 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1 - page 22
involved in child trafcking for ICA is possible
in any U.S. jurisdiction regardless of the foreign
nation’s compliance with international standards
such as the Hague Convention. For to advocate for
such changes is to be true to principles of social
justice and human rights, core concerns of social
workers since the inception of the profession
(Healy, 2008).
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