UNICEF: Child harvesters is a known phenomenon

UNICEF: Child harvesters is a known phenomenon

Adoption agency DanAdopt refused Sunday to know about the word 'children harvest', although it is a common phenomenon.

AT. 20:04

Gimma Kebele worked for DanAdopt's now closed orphanage in Ethiopia, ENAT Alem. Beside the job as a night watchman, he earned money to find suitable families and convince them that they should be adopting their children.

Written by: Nikoline Vestergaard

It is a well known phenomenon when Ethiopian orphanage pays for men to go door to door to collect children for adoption. Those between men are known as the so-called child harvesters.

So says children's organization UNICEF.

Sunday evening refused adoption agency DanAdopt other knowledge of children harvests, and in spite of that organization back in November last year after an inspection trip to Ethiopia wrote in a statement that they are aware of the phenomenon.

Wrote even though it

- Orphanages leader rejects very specific that ENAT Alem (red, orphanage) purely professional goes from door to door to get parents to give their children is stated in the statement of November 2013.

Special consultant Mette Garnæs from DanAdopt said otherwise Sunday to ABC News that she first heard about the phenomenon of child reaps the same day, and it amazes children organization UNICEF, who calls child harvesters a known concern.

Several major reports

Already back in 2009, it was described in this major international report 'Fruits of Ethiopia' the so-called 'Harvesting Children'.

Therefore wonders the UNICEF-General that DanAdopt claims not to know about child harvesters:

- It is a well known concept in the world, where DanAdopt works in. It is a well known concept in Ethiopia, says Secretary-General Steen M. Andersen to ABC News.

DanAdopt dissociate

Monday evening it sounds so from DanAdopt that you know the general concept, but that you've never heard the word children harvest:

- It is not something that we in any way taken advantage of in DanAdopt. We know the outcome of what child harvesters can do, and it's obviously something we reject, says Lars Ellegaard, Vice President of DanAdopt Board, to DR News.

- It is a word that we have not used internally in the organization, and therefore it is also a completely foreign word to me. But the word is the least of it - it is the result that is essential, says Lars Ellegaard, stressing that it was not known that it was done at the orphanage, from which they brokered children.