Families are not only been ripped apart by death and destruction in war-torn Iraq, but have resorted to selling their children, according to this disturbing Aljazeera report. It is feared that children are being trafficked for the sex trade and the organ transplant black market.
Who cannot feel the pain of Abu Muhammad, a Baghdad resident, who convinced himself that selling his young daughter to a Swedish family would provide her with a better future. He says:
“The war disgraced my family. I lost relatives including my wife among thousands of victims of sectarian violence and was forced to sell my daughter to give my other children something to eat.”
Muhammad said the Swedish couple, part of an international NGO, met him at a refugee camp and heard about his desperate situation. The woman, who said she could not have babies, offered some money for his youngest daughter of two years old. He sold her for $10,000 dollars – and now believes he is damned by God. He believed he had little choice, that conditions for his family had become desperate and his children, once healthy and bubbling with life, had become gaunt and lethargic.
“I refused in the beginning but the Iraqi translator was constantly coming at the camp and insisting with the same question. One day I found that my children would die without food and a clean environment and the next time he came to my tent, I told him that I agreed.”
This is sadly not an isolated case. Local officials and aid workers have expressed concern over the alarming rate at which children are disappearing countrywide in Iraq’s current unstable environment.
Omar Khalif, vice-president of the Iraqi Families Association (IFA), an NGO established in 2004 to register cases of those missing and trafficked, said that at least two children are sold by their parents every week. Another four are reported missing every week.
Police investigations have revealed that many have been sold by their parents to foreign couples or specialised gangs. Khalif said:
“Taking advantage of the desperate situation of many families living under poverty conditions in Iraq, foreigners offer a good amount of money in exchange of children as young as one-month old and up to five years of age.”
He said there were fears children were being trafficked for the sex trade and the organ transplant black market.
It is hard to imagine a more horrific and desperate plight. Why are aid workers not providing the basic necessitates and support to keep families together, the innocent victims of this terrible war? And what about border controls and immigration throughout the world, surely they should be wise to this?
Hat tip: Cliff Schecter.
Wow. Thats horrific. I am disappointed that Westerners would be willing to take advantage of people like that. Admittedly they may want a child but can they not adopt? No parent should be forced into this situation. It just goes to show the seriousness of the situation in Iraq. Its not just the violence but the humanitarian circumstances that force such things to happen.
Evil is most certainly abroad and it came from the western profiteers in Iraq and then a group quite hidden indeed. I know them but mustn’t speak above a whisper.
$10,000!!! OMG! I would have sold them my american children for half that, and thrown in two baby seats.
Lack of border controls are masking this sort of thing easier.
Wow Elle, got some catching up to do
From The Magic of Swans to a Generation of sickies and beyond.
But this one of selling children for the sex trade and the transplant organ black market, is perhaps the darkest side of human nature.
To think we should be bearing gifts – gold, myrrh and frankincense – and bringing a little joy to the countries the US military occupy or destroy.
How heartbreaking. Imagine being that parent who sees no other option than this.
This is quite horrific. And yes, as jmb says, how terrible to be that parent,.
Do you think it would be sensible to bring these things out into the open? We’re always reading about strict adoption laws in the west and the difficulties of Madonna buying African children. Could there be a free market in children?
This is ––er, horrible. Another dreadful consequence of this dreadful war.
I can only imagine the rupture within a mother who sells her child.
WW, I think it is tragic that war has reduced these poverty stricken families to taking such drastic action. I’m sure it happens in other countries too, like Africa, but knowing they are used for sex trafficking and organ sales is what makes this so unpaletable.
Appalling…