GAC opposes bill that threatens programs in Haiti and worldwide that support kids
Global Action for Chidlren opposes the Families for Orphans Act, S. 1458 and is dismayed that its supporters are using the tragedy in Haiti as cause for moving forward this legislation.
We object to the bill for the specific following reasons:
1. Instead of building on the success of offices that are already working for children worldwide, the bill needlessly duplicates the Orphans Assistance Act (PL 109-95) in some areas and conflicts with the mandate in others to the detriment of children and their families. The Families for Orphans Act calls for the establishment of a separate Office of Orphan Policy, Diplomacy and Development within the State Department. Establishing such an office would be entirely duplicative, not to mention harmful to the successful on-going coordination between U.S. government agencies supporting orphans and vulnerable children and adoption in Haiti.
The Department of State (DOS), Bureau of Consular Affairs, already has statutory authority to handle all child welfare matters that involve intercountry adoption of orphans from Haiti or elsewhere. This existing authority has taken efforts to fast-track adoptions from Haiti that were already in the pipeline and in the past few weeks has issued 900 visas to pre-identified orphans eligible for adoption-three times the typical number of visas issued annually to children for adoption from Haiti.
Adding an additional office in the State Department would harm rather than help children in Haiti and elsewhere. The redundancy would confuse and duplicate efforts as well as drain precious funding and resources. A more effective route would be to fund the existing P.L. 109-95 Secretariat (Orphans and Vulnerable Children office) which is currently, despite being unfunded, doing a heroic job of coordinating all U.S. agency efforts in Haiti on behalf of Orphans and Vulnerable Children.
2. The bill would impose expensive and impossible-to-achieve requirements on poor countries. This not only burdens already over-burdened countries with red tape, it puts the future of working programs already in place like child survival, maternal health and PEPFAR in jeopardy. The Families for Orphans Act mandates a biennial census of children without permanent parental care for all member countries of the United Nations including the United States. Not only would such a census be literally impossible for countries to comply with, it would cost billions of dollars to even attempt-billions that could be used to actually assist families to care for their children.
Further, according to this legislation, if countries failed to comply with these untenable requirements, the development assistance they receive from the United States, which supports the very children this bill purports to assist, might be cut off.
We are all motivated to assist orphans and vulnerable children in crisis in Haiti and around the world. Yet this bill is not the solution they need. We are worried that it is being rushed through Congress without enough public discussion regarding how it will impact longstanding U.S. global programs that are already in place to help these children and their communities grow.
