Mia Pean, a Haitian-American emergency consultant for the Andrew Young Foundation, saw a Toyota pickup truck cruising the debris-cluttered streets of Léogâne, ground zero for the earthquake that has devastated Haiti.
Each time the driver saw a child — especially a young teen — he would stick his head out of the window and shout, "Manje, manje," Creole for "eat." Pean says she watched the hungry kids, four or five at a time, hop into the back of the pickup, which then disappeared.
"I saw the same man again a few days later in Carrefour," a poor suburb of Port-au-Prince, says Pean. "I asked him, 'What are you doing with all those children?' He said, 'Don't worry, we're going to put them in safe homes.' Then he drove off."
But Pean doubts that altruism is the motive of the pickup driver and others like him who are now prowling Haiti's streets.
The quake that has killed 150, 000 people has left thousands of children orphaned and consequently vulnerable to being preyed upon by child traffickers and Haiti's shameful tradition of keeping child slaves, known as restaveks.
"I really fear," says Pean, "that most of the kids you see being picked up on the streets in Haiti right now are going to become restaveks or victims of sexual trafficking."
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive expressed the fear that amid the clamor to airlift Haitian orphans out of the devastated country to waiting adoptive parents in the U.S. and Europe, others are being trafficked.
The U.N. says it's on alert to prevent the exploitation of the thousands of Haitian kids who have lost or been separated from their parents and who wander aimlessly in search of food, water and shelter.
UNICEF, the U.N.'s child-advocacy arm, as well as groups like Save the Children and the Red Cross, say they're registering at-risk kids and setting up shelters exclusively for them. Says a UNICEF official who is monitoring reports of scenes like the one witnessed by Pean: "Traffickers fish in pools of vulnerability, and we've rarely if ever seen one like this."
Before the earthquake, the Haitian government estimated that more than 300, 000 Haitian children were living as restaveks in the country, and more of them abroad.
Those numbers are likely to grow, says Danielle Romer, a Haitian-American social worker and head of Haitian Support Inc. in Miami, who has long fought the restavek practice — her efforts still often met with denial and even anger by many Haitians.
"We were starting to see some improvement before the earthquake, both in terms of getting more of these children into orphanages and missions and in terms of getting some teaching about it out to Haitians," says Romer.
"But I'm afraid the earthquake just opens the box to a scarier situation."
Haitian officials fear human trafficking and the selling of organs after earthquake.
Haitian officials fear child trafficking could be underway following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
Speaking on CNN, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he has received reports of kids being sold, and he believed human organs were also being taken from victims of the quake for profit.
Bellerive told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that he had heard about the possibility of child and organ trafficking from several different groups.
"A lot of organizations - they come and they say there were children on the streets," he said.
"They are going to bring them to the States.
We have already reports of trafficking, even of organ trafficking."
When asked if he believed children had already been sold he replied: "The reports I receive, yes."
U.S. Department of State
Since the earthquake, 500 Haitian children whose cases had long been under consideration have been approved for U.S. adoption and brought to the United States.
In a news release issued later, Crowley said the State Department's "Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has been engaged on this issue prior to the earthquake and in its aftermath."
