100,000 children wait

At least 100,000 children have been separated from their parents by the Asian tsunami disaster, raising fears that tens of thousands had been orphaned in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. Save the Children director-general Mike Aaronson said the estimate was provisional rather than scientific. “But it's important to have a sense of the scale of the problem we might have to deal with, the issues we might have to confront and the response we have to make.” At a refugee camp in Aceh, an official of the United Nations Children's Fund admitted that hopes of reuniting children with close relatives were fading almost two weeks after the tsunami struck, killing more than 150,000 people.
“Putting any more children together with parents at this stage would be a jackpot,” David Agnew said. “It is unlikely we will see many more parents emerging to claim their children.” The vulnerability of more than 1 million children in need of aid was emphasised on Saturday when the first cases of measles were confirmed in two camps in Aceh, prompting anxiety about an epidemic. Aid organisations now aim to vaccinate 500,000 children against the disease by the end of this week. Measles killed 614,000 children worldwide in 2002 and is particularly lethal in emergencies. “We have to move quickly,” UNICEF doctor Claudia Hudspeth said. “It spreads like wildfire.” UNICEF also called for urgent measures to protect children from sexual predators and traffickers intent on selling them for adoption. “Those who prey upon children in this chaotic environment are already at work,” said UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy. The governments of Indonesia and Sri Lanka have taken action to prevent children being removed without authority and the Indian Government is under pressure to follow. There have been sporadic reports of attempted child trafficking in Indonesia, but police say there have been no confirmed cases. Medan, the main city on Sumatra, has a reputation as a base for criminal gangs that sell children into servitude or for sexual exploitation. Indonesia is monitoring its borders to prevent young victims being smuggled out of the country by child traffickers, and will set up centres within refugee camps to care for children and reunite them with their families if possible.

The huge number of children caught up in the disaster has provoked acrimonious disputes over how best to help them. Franco Frattini, Italy's European commissioner, was criticised for suggesting that the European Union could offer temporary refuge to thousands of them. “It's unbelievable,” Mr Agnew said. “No wonder people have trouble taking the EU seriously. Putting Indonesian victims in a camp in Germany or somewhere, how's that supposed to help anyone?” Some US adoption agencies believe Western countries should be able to offer the children permanent homes. But Felicity Collier, chief executive of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, said it would be wrong to remove them when relatives and friends might be trying to trace them.

Matthew Campbell and Jim Swain
10 January 2005

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11897461%255E2703,00.html

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