The 10 misguided US missionaries have now been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy.

Reports today say that Haiti officials have decided to charge the 10 US missionaries arrested last week with child abduction and criminal conspiracy, but the Haitian Prime Minister says the media attention is taking the focus away from recovery effort.

The 10 US missionaries – five men and five women – were caught allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children aged between two and 12 across the Haiti border to the Dominican Republic on Friday 29 January 2010 claiming to be taking them to an orphanage in the country.

However, it later emerged that some of the children had parents who were still alive. They are now being looked after at the Austrian-run SOS Children’s Village in Port-au-Prince.

Before the earthquake struck on 12 January 2010, there were estimated to be around 380,000 orphans in the country, and this figure will have no doubt rocketed since the disaster.

Child trafficking is a massive problem and last week Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN that “because of the growing number of orphans, illegal child trafficking is one of the biggest problems that we have.”

This criminal offence is widespread and not just confined to seemingly undeveloped countries – records show that over just eight months in 2008 more than 950 children were smuggled into Britain – mainly coming in from Africa and Afghanistan. So it is understandable that the Haitian government do not want to let this case be swept under the carpet.

They need to show that no-one can get away with trying to take children from their country illegally even if the missionaries do protest it is for the good of the child.

However, this case is now becoming the central focus for the media while Haiti continues to try and win its endless fight against death, poverty and disease.

Despite the Prime Minister labelling the US missionaries as “kidnappers” following their arrest, he has since warned that the case is becoming a “distraction” from earthquake recovery.

“I believe it’s a distraction for the Haitian people because they are talking more now about 10 people than they are about one million people suffering in the streets,” commented Mr Bellerive.

Another problem with the headline grabbing missionaries is the issue of some 4,000 Haitian prisoners who escaped when their building collapsed after the earthquake struck. Police have reportedly so far arrested 100 inmates, but continue to search for the remaining escapees.

Some of these men are violent criminals with counts of rape and murder under their belts. Should police manpower not be focused more on capturing these felons before they commit more crimes than on some US missionaries who may have been trying to do some good – albeit very misguidedly?