Adoption News

11 July 2010

I received word this week from my staff that the new adoption judge, Mrs. Joceline Cazimir, declared that she will not sign any adoption papers until the adoptive parents with their adopted child appears in front of her in Haiti.  This is very upsetting to me.  My staff came home with this news and feels like it came from pressure from some other organization either IBESR or UNICEF.  Recently while she was in Europe at a meeting about adoptions, she said that she did not think parents and children who had left Haiti would need to return and now all of sudden she has changed her mind.

Adoptive parents would be foolish to come back to Haiti with their adopted children.  They do not have passports nor visas.  If they are brought back to Haiti, they will have to stay until their adoptions are finished and passports issued!  We have a power struggle going on between IBESR, Parquet, Civil Court, and the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister signed for all of the evacuated children to leave Haiti and no one said a thing until it was all done and over with.  Most countries are finishing up the children's adoptions in the adoptive country.  I wanted to finish a Haitian adoption too but if the Haitian government is throwing roadblocks into our path that makes this impossible, then we wait months to finish the adoptions if needed. 

Now parents will be required to come to Haiti 3 times.  They will come at the beginnig of the process to appear in front of the local Judge, they will have to appear at the Civil Court, and then come at the end of the adoption to take their child home.  The law does not require this civil court visit, so now Mrs. Cazimir is making up new rules.  The Canadian government is considering stopping adoptions from Haiti for 3 to 6 months because of the adoption process being so disorganized right now.

There is a meeting this week between IBESR, Parquet, Civil Court, and MOI and this will all be discussed.  We need to get in touch with as many of the adoption lawyers in Haiti as we can before this meeting so they can contact officials and petition them to look at this situation in a way that is best for the children.  We also need foreign governments to help straighten out this situation.

16 June 2010

I am home and working on the adoption files.  The French files have moved through the system well while I was out of Haiti.  All other files have been slow because many families are needed at Parquet before the files can be released.  Tomorrow (17 June) we will start broadcasting over several radio stations requests for missing parents to call us or come to GLA.  We will also ask family members of these parents to call us if they have information about the parents.  Hopefully, we will find more biological parents who can then go to Parquet for their interview.  We will also be able to show Parquet officials that we have tried to find the parents and maybe they will give a waiver for those that we cannot find.

Because there is a new judge at the civil court, the greffier that we work with says we must repay the fee for the civil courts.  This comes out to $90 USD per dossier.  We have 29 dossiers in the civil court waiting for judgment.  None of these are French dossiers.  They are all for children who have already gone to their adoptive families.  I just found this out when I returned to Haiti.  I sent the money down to the Greffier on Tuesday and hopefully, the dossiers will be signed quickly and we can get them legalized and sent to the adoptive parents.

I am being told that for our European families they still must come to Haiti to appear in front of the local judge before Parquet will sign the dossiers.  This is for children already with their adoptive families, but the families had not come to Haiti before the children were evacuated.  I do not think this applies to American or Canadian families since both governments are having the parents finish the adoptions in the USA and Canada.

The new Adoption Law has been voted on by the Deputies and has now gone to chambers in the Senate.  Several orphanage directors are petitioning different Senators and the Chief of the Senate to get some of the articles changed in the law.  One of the articles says that single woman can adopt only if they are divorced or widowed.  We would like to see that changed and the divorced and widowed taken out of that article.  I will keep you updated on what I hear.

If anyone is inquiring about the biological parents of your adopted child and if they have passed by GLA, please write to erick@glahaiti.org.  You can write him in English or French. 

I am restarting the current adoption status page.  If you are an adoptive family, use your password to get into the page and see if your adoption status has changed.

3 May 2010

Many of the orphanage directors are hesitant to turn in new dossiers for children that came to live in orphanages after the earthquake to IBESR because we have not had clear directions from the IBESR director.  We are just a little uncertain and do no want to submit files and then have them rejected by the director. The different Haitian ministers during interviews in the media are saying that adoptions are closed in Haiti.  Mme Bernard Pierre said they are not closed.  So I have decided that I will start proposing children and turning in files in June instead of right now.  Hopefully, by then we will know what IBESR is accepting or not accepting.

Many government offices are open but not necessarily doing all aspects of their jobs or are very slow at doing their work.  We are legalizing papers now, getting signatures authorized, and people tell me MOI and Immigration is functioning and we can get passports.  So Terriot, our adoption worker, is taking papers to all of the different government departments to get them legalized, stamped, and then on to get the passports. 

I will keep you posted as we find out more information.

25 March 2010

IBESR refuses to give authorization papers to any children who have already left Haiti.  The Prime Minister asked the orphananges to finish the adoption for all children leaving, but IBESR is afraid that the orphanages will use the  IBESR authorization papers to take other children out of Haiti illegally.  So at this time, we cannot finish any adoptions where the dossier is still in IBESR except for those cases where the children has not left Haiti.  IBESR has forgotten what January was like in Haiti.  Half of the key people in IBESR took their own children out of Haiti after the earthquake to a safe place!

Magaly, my Haitian administrator, is the one that talked to them today.  GLA has always been given high praise by IBESR staff who have visited the orphanage.  Magaly reminded them of this.  She invited them to come and see the orphanage and the children we have here.  They did not want us to take in children who needed help.  They were upset with Magaly when she told them that we had taken in children living outside to help save them and especially the premature babies.  IBESR is supposed to be the protector of children!

After much talking, they did agree that we can do adoptions for NEW children who have come into the orphanage since 12 January 2010 if their parents have given them for adoption and signed before the judge.  They also said if parents were deceased, then if we have a family consent for adoption we can proceed.  I do not think we can do adoptions yet for abandoned children, but we do not have any abandoned children at this time so this is not an issue.

So we will start giving proposals to families whose dossiers are already finished and in Haiti starting tomorrow.

We can do adoptions for any children still in Haiti. We must take those children down to IBESR for them to see the child.  We will also be doing DNA on all children that are new to GLA so there can be no question that the parents are the parents.  This is if we can find some place that is still doing the DNA exam!!

5 March 2010

Good News!  Monday, 8 March 2010, the new Civil Court Judge (Doyen), Jocelyne Cazimir, will be in her office and signing civil court adoption judgments according to the greffier that we work with!  This is very good news for all of the families waiting for the judgment before they can take their child home.    The judgment is the finalization of the adoption.

22 February 2010

We have been told that we must finish all adoptions here in Haiti.  IBESR wants us to continue the process through the Civil Court's judgment.  This means that all children will have a legal Haitian adoption when we are done.

2 February 2010

The Haitian government has closed all new adoptions until further notice.

GLA is NOT accepting adoption applications at this time nor will we be doing new adoptions from Haiti until adoptions are open again. 

24 January 2010

All orphans from the earthquake will not be available for adoption  at ths time.  First, they must be determined to be true orphans and not just seperated from their families.  Then the Haitian government must declare them as abandoned.  After this all happens, they will be available for adoption.  But at this time, Haitian adoptions are not being processed.  The government is not functioning in all areas.  It may be months before they are up and running completely.  It will take Haiti  a long time to bounce back after the disaster.  At this time, GLA will not be taking any new dossiers.  We will wait and see what the Haitian government decides to do about the orphans and adoptions.  I am praying that they wil allow adoptions of orphans to happen in a quicker time frame and get these children into families but until we know for sure, we will not take applications.

23 January 2010

The French government has asked for documentation on every adoption that is approved by IBESR.  As soon as I return to Haiti, I will get the information together and sent to the French Embassy.  We sent 2 children home today to their parents but these children already had their dossiers in the French Embassy and were had their visas. The children and staff knew that they were going home soon.

The Canadian Embassy decided on Thursday evening to allow the children to go to Canada to their adoptive families.  They wanted us to send the children out on Saturday in the middle of the night, but we did not want the children to be traumatized an more than they have to be.  We asked the Canadian Embassy to wait until Molly, Joyce, and I returned to Haiti on Sunday.  They were okay with this and told us today that we can leave with the children on Monday orTuesday and 4 staff from GLA can travel with the chilren.  We thought this was a much better scenario  instead of putting the children on a plane with people they have never seen before!   It only meant a delay of a couple of days.

I am the children's voice.  They cannot speak up for themselves.  We all love them them very much and have been with them since they came to GLA .  I just want what is best for them and I do not feel turning them over to strangers for a 5 hour plane ride is what is best for them.  I ask GLA families to please accept and understand my decision.

20 January 2010

Today, the US government issued 77 humanitarian paroles for GLA children and 6 visas.  Our children will be going to the US soon to join their families.

GLA sent 23 children to the Netherlands and 14 children to Luxembourg tonight on a chartered plane.  We are so thankful that the Dutch adoption agency NAS in cooperation with The Dutch Consular General in Haiti and the Dutch Ministry made this happen!

15 January 2010

U.S. citizens with pending adoption cases in Haiti are requested to contact the Department of State at AskCI@state.gov for information about their adoption case.  In your inquiry, please include: full name and contact information of parents, full name(s) of child(ren), date(s) of birth of child(ren) [if known], and the name and contact information of orphanage.  

14 January 2010

Our lawyer was able to get through to us today.  She says all of the government buildings downtown were damaged or destroyed!  She reported that Judge Rock CADET was killed in a building collapse. 

I have asked our lawyer to petition IBESR and the government of Hait to allow all children in the adoption process to be allowed to join their adoptive families.  We are all going to need beds for orphans who have lost their family in this disaster!  I need all of my families to contact their adoption agencies and government officials to allow these children to leave Haiti without a Haitian passport on Humanitarian or Refuge visas!  I KNOW the USA government can issue emergency passports for situtations like this because they did it for me during a crisis in Haiti from a poison in a children's fever medicine and children were dying.  We sent 11 children out of Haiti during that time and most did not have a Haitian issued passport.  Please find out if your government has such a system in place!  (All DUTCH Families: Please work through NAS to get these children home.  They are trying to get ALL children in process and not just those finished in Parquet.  So join forces with NAS and not to confuse the issue with the Dutch Government.)

Some of your dossiers are thankfully with us in our office.  Others are wtih other government sections and we do not know if they are intact or not.  I do know that the National Palace, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance, DJI building which is part of the legalization department, National Cathedral is gone.  I do not know about Immigration or IBESR! 

I do not know if this is possible but let us explore the possibility of getting the children out so that we can take in more orphans.

9 January 2010

We were told that on Friday, we would receive 7 more dossiers out of the courts.   Now, when the court clerk says that dossiers will come out of the courts, he means that they will have been signed by the judge and sent back to Parquet for legalization, signed and sent back to us.  Our adoption agent, Terriot, did not receive the dossiers.  Terriot's motorcycle broke down yesterday afternoon on is way  back to the orphanage.  The clutch went out.  So finally at six o'clock, he called to tell us that he would not be back and that the dossiers were not done yet!  Hopefully, Monday, the dossiers will be in our hands.

7 January 2010

Some of my French families were confused by the last paragraph of the posting below.  I changed it a little to make it more clear to them hopefully.  For those dossiers that are now in Parquet, we have started contacting birth families to have them go to Parquet for their interviews.  This has NOTHING to do with dossiers in courts who have already passed through Parquet adoption section once.  Court papers must pass through Parquet again after signed by the judge in the civil courts, but they go to Parquet's legal section for legalization.  They do not pass back through the adoption section. 

I know that many of our families think that the paper trail for the adoption process is a simple one that once you get one signature, you are done in that section.  I wish that was true, but it is not.  In IBESR we need 4 signatures before the dossier is finished.  In Parquet, we need signatures from different people BEFORE the dossier enters Parquet , a signature from the lawyer in charge of adoptions, and then a stamp after Parquet.  In the civil courts, the head judge for adoptions must sign, the greffier must sign, the judge must sign again to legalize the signature of the greffier, and then the Parquet legalization department must sign.  Now if the legalization department finds errors in wording, such as MANDATAIRE (Power of Attorney), on the document which was supposed to be removed, they send it back to the court clerk for correction.  In Attestation, a clerk must type the form, another clerk must check the signature against the one on file, and then only the director of Archives can sign that the signature is a good one.  For MOI, the dossiers must travel through 2 different offices and all of the documents are studied before it is signed.  In Immigration, we turn the dossier into the receiving office, from their it goes to many different sections before it is returned to us as a passport!  i believe there is 5 different offices that touch the dossier before it is given to us as a passport! 

This does not take into consideration the Justice and Foreign Affaires offices that legalize all of the paperwork!  We lose more paperwork in the Justice Legalization department than any where else in the system!  We then have to ask the judge to remake paperwork that they have lost!  When we turn paperwork into Legalization, it is no longer attached to the dossier but has to be taken out and individual papers given to Legalization.

Ordinarily, I find the system confusing so I do not share this with all of our families.  But I have some families who cannot understand why different sections take so long and I want everyone to be aware of the complexity of the adoption process in Haiti.   Even what I listed above is probably not all of the steps!  Every once in awhile even I find out about a step in the process that I did not know about!

Nothing in Haiti is easy...

6 January 2010 

Magaly, Terriot and I  met this morning with our lawyer and the greffier (court clerk) to discuss the length of time it was taking for files to finish in Parquet and the Civil Court.  After I returned from the US in December, I found that dossiers that we thought were in Parquet, had been returned to the greffier (court clerk) to have the new process verbal added and also the letter of requete (asking for consideration of the file) had to be retyped.  Instead of sending that back to us to type, the court clerk kept all of the dossiers in his office.  He was going to retype them all himself.  I can do this in 1 minute on my computer.  He takes a long time to do it because of electricity problems in his office plus he is running all over Port-au-Prince working!  The Parquet also changed their system and said that the new process verbal that the judge in Kenscoff does after the adoptive parens visit  had to be added before it entered Parquet.  Everyone had been told to add them after Parquet and Parquet decided they must be added BEFORE Parquet!  This is okay for the court to do this, but the greffier (court clerk) did not notify us!  Thankfully, we had the process verbals to give him and he put them into Parquet after I returned to Haiti.

The dossiers in the Civil Court that came out last week are still listed as being in courts because after the civil court, we have to get the act of adoption.  The adoption process will not change until the act of adoption is done and the dossier has moved into attestation. 

Some families have written and wndered why dossiers in the  civil courts have taken so long.  We had about 20 dossiers in the civil court waiting to be signed. (We received 7 recently)   I too wondered why things were taking so long.  What has happened is that the court is requiring added wording in the civil court document.  So all 20 of the dossiers had to be redone with the new wording added.  Instead of the court clerk sending them back  the orphanage, he kept them to change himself.  He will NOT do that anymore. 

I spent today retyping some papers for Parquet and hopefully, things are now done and  everything is in the proper place.  We should get dossiers from the civil court on Friday.  I will keep everyone informed about what is going on as I know things! 

We have already started contacting biological families to have them go to Parquet for their interviews for those dossiers that just got turned into Parquet.  Hopefully, Parquet will sign the dossirs quickly after the birth famiies appear before them.

5 January 2010

Tomorrow morning, I have a meeting with the lawyer and one of the court clerks.  I am trying to find out why it is taking so long to get the court papers signed.  I asked for a meeting so we can plan how to make this whole process to go faster!  Hopefully, I will have some answers and plans when I come home tomorrow!

Haiti is getting closer to passing a new adoption law.  There was a notice in the Monitor newspaper talking about the new law and how the Parliment would handle debating and voting on the law!  Many people here have told me that we will be lucky to get a new law this year since it is an election year.  I am hoping they are wrong and the lawmakers will vote and pass a new law that will benefit the children!

1 January 2010

This past week, we received 7 dossiers out of the courts.  It took several calls to our lawyer who is spending the holidays in New York with hr family to get the dossiers, but thankfully, we finally received them!  There are several more that we are waiting on and they should be out next week.  I found out that the court papers that were originaly typed here had to be changed because the Judge added some wording he wanted on the documents.  This seems to be why it has taken so long.  Hopefully, we have come to an agreement over how this will be done from now on to cut down on the time needed to do it!

Adoptive families start coming to GLA again on Tuesday to go in front of the judge.  This has seemed to work very well when parents come.  We have found that the children have done alright with the visits and their routine does not change while the adoptive parents visit. For some of the older children, we think it has been a great experience!   It has helped for them to see their parents and know that they are coming back later to take them home!

The government will be working again next week.  I do not know if every office will be working on Monday but next week sometime, they will all be working again!!

Please pray with us that 2010 will see adoption time to be less.  I really want to see children going home quicker in 2010!