- Title: HAITI: Orphans leave for France with adoptive parents
- Date: 25th December 2010
- Summary: VARIOUS OF HAITIAN ORPHANS IN YARD
- Embargoed: 9th January 2011 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Haiti, Haiti
- Country: Haiti
- Topics: Social Services / Welfare
- Reuters ID: LVA1RM29GD7OXQGIYY0Q23TUSCTB
- Story Text: Some eighty Haitian orphans set off for France on Thursday (December 23), where they will be able to spend Christmas with their new adoptive families.
They are part of a program that will relocate more than 300 children from the Caribbean country that suffered a devastating earthquake in January and is currently gripped by a cholera epidemic.
The children gathered in the yard of the French embassy in Port-au-Prince, waiting for their adoptive parents to collect them.
France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret, said France had now decided to freeze the adoption of Haitian children to French families until the adoption process can be better regulated in Haiti.
"We have decided not to allow more adoption in this country. It might start up again in a couple of months but we just have now to see and wait how things evolve," he said.
The adoption of the children - all aged from 18 months to two years - is being seen as a victory over red tape.
All were in the process of being adopted when the quake struck, but many lost their documents when government buildings were destroyed. This complicated the process and caused lengthy delays.
Last week Haiti and France signed an agreement to speed up the final hurdles, but many are wondering why the procedure took so much longer than the similar adoption programs arranged by the US and Canada, among others.
France's new Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie is thought to have helped move the project forward.
Her predecessor, Bernard Kouchner - one of the founders of the Médécins sans Frontières charity - has been criticised for not doing enough. It is alleged that he feared that France could find itself in a child-napping scandal, similar to a January incident when US missionaries tried to take 33 children out of Haiti without proper approval.
Another plane, also charted by the French ministry, arrived in Paris on Wednesday, carrying over 100 orphans who were met by their new parents at Charle De Gaulle airport. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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