The US State Department announced it will work with the Haitian government and international aid groups to protect Haitian children from child trafficking. Haiti already has a large child trafficking problem, which officials fear will only worsen with so many children separated from their parents or orphaned.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN on Wednesday that there has already been trafficking of children and human organs in the aftermath of the earthquake, which killed 150,000 people. Read the CNN article.
Police and child safety organizations have implemented child protection brigades, checks at airports and border crossings, and set up hotlines and radio broadcasts. UNICEF (the United Nations' Children's Fund) has been responsible for much of the child safety efforts since the earthquake, and has set up three secret locations to care for unaccompanied children at risk of being trafficked.
Aid organizations will be registering unaccompanied children. They will also work to protect Haiti's abandoned “restaveks” - poor children who are sent to work as domestic servants in return for room and board, who they feel are at an increased risk of being trafficked for sex or labor.
