Ms Asha, Some of the children & Abdilahi of SRCSBy: Yusuf M HasanHARGEISA (Somalilandsun) – 9 children suspected of being stolen from Yemen have been transferred to the Hargeisa Orphanage.
The nine children of whom the oldest is three years old and a number of others are toddlers learning how to crawl have been under the charge of Sahil Regional Authorities in Berbera where police had arrested a couple after they tried to pass the children as their own on disembarkation from a ship at the port of Berbera on 27th April 2012.
The children who were ferried from Berbera by the International Office for Migration-IOM and the Somaliland Human Rights commission are yet to be reunited with their parents as police investigation in coordination with those in Yemen are ongoing.
According to the director of Hargeisa Orphanage M/s Asha Muhumed Qalib, the nine children were not anticipated at the institution thus their current residence in a room formally used as store. She said the children's feeding is not a problem as the orphanage is well provided, Said she, "Though the children brought a number of mattresses sleeping arrangements are a difficult due to space constraints"
The orphanage Director also said that she is worried about the day to day care of the children who are very young and below the normal orphanage acceptance age thus require extra staff to take care of them. She feared the availability of extra staff due to the scarcity of financial resources at the institution which she says operates on meager funds provided by the government.
M/s Asha Muhumed Qalib decried the lack of support from various international organizations operating in the country with the mandate of children development. She most wondered why UNICEF which is one of the big players in the country has never shown an interest in the institution. She appealed to well-wishers to help support orphan care with both material and financial donations.
The children who arrived at the orphanage with $20 donated by an employee of IOM and a number of mattresses were also visited by the Somaliland Red Crescent Society-SRCS thus explore avenues to help trace their parents.
According to the SRCS national tracing Coordinator Mr. Abdilahi Saeed Muhumed, the children who fall under the ICRCS tracing criteria of unaccompanied children-UAN, his office will liaise with police to establish what has been unearthed on the children's parentage.
Mr. Abdilahi Saeed informed that the SRCS will then embark on tracing the children's parents and or guardians once police give the nod. He said that the mechanisms used include provision of relevant electronic and print information on the children and how they happened to be in Somaliland.
The purported children's trafficker couple arrested by Berbera police is currently in CID custody while investigations continue
The couple was arrested on suspicion of trading in humans when the nine children were discovered in the ship they were travelling in from Yemen docked at the port. Police say their suspicion was raised when the coupled tried to pass all the nine children as their own.
Police add that the couple who tried to pass all the nine children had only documents for seven of them not to mention that they had a difficult task trying to handle a number of crawling children all at once.
According to the Sahil Regional Governor Mr. Mahmoud Ali Suleiman "Ramah" the children were immediately placed under the charge of the government in a house at Berbera where a doctor has examining them regularly prior to their transfer to Hargeisa.
The governor said the children could not be those of the couple who brought them into the country as the oldest of the nine is three years old and a number of others are toddlers learning how to crawl. He revealed that police have already established that the children are from Somali and Oromo ethnic origins, thus a fact that they were stolen.
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