The battle to combat child trafficking in Haiti FEATURE 08/19/2010

The battle to combat child trafficking in Haiti

FEATURE 08/19/2010 OUANAMINTHE — On market days, Clarine Joanice sits on a plastic chair by the crowded bridge marking the northern border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Every time a child walks by, she gently grabs its arm and asks the accompanying adults for travel papers. Joanice is a child protection officer with the Heartland Alliance, a small US-based rights group helping to track down child traffickers sneaking minors through Haiti’s porous border. Since January’s earthquake that killed more than 250,000 persons, the group has stopped 74 children it suspected were being trafficked out of the country. “We stop everyone, public cars, private cars, trucks, children on foot,” explained Joanice on a busy Monday morning, as thousands of vendors carrying merchandise crossed the dusty bridge into the Dominican town of Dajabon. Over 100 children cross the border each week, with that number doubling during school vacations. Southern crossings closer to the capital are even more jammed, and controls there are next to non-existent. Before January’s devastating quake, an estimated 2,000 minors were trafficked into the Dominican Republic annually, according to official figures. Since then, the Haitian police’s Minor Protection Brigades (CPM) has stopped 3,000 minors on the border, 750 of whom carried no documents.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100819com3.html

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