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Orphans face peril of traffickers

RAWALPINDI: Before Mohamed Sajid was bundled alone onto a helicopter in Muzaffarabad in the centre of the area stricken by South Asia’s massive earthquake, his father scrawled his son’s name - and his own - on a piece of paper and stuffed it into the 13-year-old boy’s shirt pocket.

Five days later, Mohamed hung tightly onto that piece of paper at the Rawalpindi General Hospital; a small sense of security in his unsettled life. “Only my father can take me,” said Mohamed, showing the piece of paper. “I will wait for him.”

Since the October 8 magnitude-7.6 quake hit, some 1,000 children have been evacuated from the stricken region of Kashmir for medical care. Amid the chaos, child welfare groups and Pakistani authorities worry that the separated or orphaned children might make good targets for child traffickers or even childless couples.

The issue also surfaced in the aftermath of the December 26 tsunami disaster that hit 11 nations around the Indian Ocean. In the best-known case, an infant tsunami survivor nicknamed “Baby 81” was claimed by nine different couples until DNA tests proved his identity, and the four-month-old was given back to his true parents.

The US State Department has labelled Pakistan “a source, transit, and destination country for trafficked persons” while the International Labour Organisation estimates that close to 100,000 people are trafficked internally each year.

Children have been a particular target, smuggled out of the country for use in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries to ride camels in races, preferred for the dangerous job because they are light. They are generally smuggled from poor countries by people posing as their parents or close relatives, and over the past several months, about 400 children have been repatriated to Pakistan from the United Arab Emirates as the countries work to combat the problem. Trafficked children are also used as labourers and forced into the sex industry.

In order to stave off fears, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday announced that all children orphaned by the earthquake will be taken care of by the government and nobody will be allowed to adopt any of them. “The government is concerned,” said Dr Anjum Javed, director of the children’s ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad. “There was chaos first, with many people running about but now we are checking everyone.” Dr Javed said that the seven orphans in his ward were all placed in a separate wing of the building that is filled with wounded children. The hospital has 925 children patients, but most are accompanied by parents or other relatives. Guards have been placed outside the wing. All children arriving alone have been photographed, and are quickly whisked away to the section, Dr Javed said. “If you don’t have the proper identification, you cannot have your child,” said Dr Javed. “We will do our utmost to keep them off the hands of kidnappers.”

At the Rawalpindi General Hospital, children who are brought in alone like Mohamed are kept separate, with volunteers on hand to play with them - and keep a watchful eye.

“It always has been an issue. There has been a fear of children being kidnapped,” said Save the Children Child Protection Officer Deb Barry, who came in from her regular base in Afghanistan to assess the situation of those orphaned by the quake. “Getting actual information on the numbers is very hard, and it’s the same for all of South Asia,” she added. ap

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