Thank you.
For some context, I lived in Haiti for over a decade and I came back to Canada at the end of September. Due to the situation in Haiti, I was forced to leave.
Even before the current crisis, as I mentioned—actually, since 2018—the Haitian government requested that no new orphanages be opened in the country, because they recognized, thanks to extensive international research, the damage that such institutions do to children. Unfortunately, due to foreign donations and volunteers, there's this false demand created for the development of institutions. We as Canadians have a responsibility to play a role in curbing that.
Due to the current crisis, children who are already being neglected and abused in orphanages are experiencing extremely dire conditions. We're receiving reports of children running away and leaving orphanages because they're not being fed. It's unclear whether these children are returning to their families or simply showing up in the streets, although social services are receiving numerous children of all ages simply unaccompanied in the streets.
There are also orphanages that are actually trafficking children in the form of displacing the children in the orphanages to safer locations because of the insecurity. However, they're doing this without informing Haitian authorities and without informing the children's parents. The majority of children in orphanages have living parents.
In addition to that, there's always a risk in times of disaster and unrest of many children being taken away from their families and going into orphanages or being abandoned into orphanages because the situation is so desperate and families are struggling.