If the latest reports from Haiti are correct, the 10 American missionaries held in a Port-au-Prince jail may soon be released, and charges against them of kidnapping 33 children and trying to take them out of the country illegally will be dropped. That would be humane conclusion to a case that appears to hinge on a mission of mercy gone awry rather than an act based on criminal intent. Regardless, there’s a lesson in this incident that should not be obscured.
Haiti is one of many nations that have signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The actions of its border guards in stopping the Idaho Baptist missionaries properly reflected the country’s welcome adherence that convention.
Most of the children, it turned out, were from poor families but were not orphans, and the parents reportedly were not informed of their destination outside of Haiti. When they were stopped at the border, the missionaries were also less than candid about the children’s status and how they were collected. They also had failed to obtain the necessary approvals and documentation to take the children out the country. The border guards were obliged to detain the Americans until the status of the children could be confirmed.
Given the vast and growing problem of global trafficking in people — mainly women and children — who are sold into labor or sexual bondage, the arrests were proper. Though most of the missionaries have since claimed they were led to believe by their leader that what they were doing was legal and authorized, that apparently was not the case.
Without documentation showing they were authorized to remove the Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic, it would have been a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to allow them to be taken out of their country.
It is probable that the missionaries were not aware of the Convention. The United States, and the failed state of Somalia on the horn of Africa, are, in fact, the only two internationally recognized countries that have failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Over the last 20 years since it was adopted, every other recognized country in the world has signed and ratified it, and most watch carefully at their borders to prevent the illegal movement of children out of their land.
Warren Binford, an assistant professor of law who teaches international children’s rights at Oregon’s Williamette University College of Law, explained the precepts of the law in a recent op-ed column in Salem’s Statesman Journal.
At its core, she wrote, the Convention “recognizes the child’s rights to live with and be cared for by one’s parents and to grow up in one’s own culture, traditions and community.
“It also calls up on the international community to assist in reunifying children with their relatives when natural disasters strike, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti.”
Even when it is not possible to reunify children with their extended families, Ms. Binford notes, the Convention provides that children should be raised in a family environment within the child’s culture. Placement in an orphanage is a considered a last resort, and international placement in an orphanage is considered only when all other options have been exhausted.
Haiti, Ms. Binford explains, has been exemplary in adhering to the Convention, and has promulgated national laws that require proper legal documentation before children may be moved across its borders.
It is regrettable that the Idaho missionaries, however well meaning, were not schooled in the Convention and presumed the right to remove children from their parents rather than provide aid to them within the country. It’s an irony, as well, that the United States helped draft the Convention and signed it in 1995, but has failed to ratify it, due to objections from political and religious conservatives over theoretical sovereignty issues.