EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 38

Jul 2004

   
Thousands of children are living in slavery in Haiti - taken from their families in the rural villages or given up by desperately poor parents for the promise of a better life in cities like Port-au-Prince, Jacmel or Les Cayes ... Instead, the children, some as young as 3 years old, are whipped and abused, forced to mop floors, wash dishes, care for babies not much younger than they are. They often work 12 to 14 hour days.

They are forbidden to eat at the table and are made to sleep on concrete floors. They rarely get any schooling. A United Nations study in 1998 estimates that there are 300,000 such children in Haiti.

The restavèk phenomena, like slavery, is a system that stresses ownership of the person versus the use of cheap or underpaid labour. The reason that so many of these children can be mistreated and often times beaten to death without any intervention from authorities or other adults is found in the reality that they are seen more as property than child labourers.

The National Coalition of Haitian Rights provides that a restavèk is a Haitian child who becomes a house slave when she is turned over by her parents to a family which agrees, in principle, to care for the child, provide schooling, food, shelter, and clothing in exchange for domestic labour. The restavèk instead spends her formative years isolated from parental love and care, and nurturing contact with siblings, deprived of schooling and subject to long days of work with no pay and living conditions inferior to those of the overseer’s family. She performs whatever services the overseer requires under a constant menace of physical and verbal abuse, often meted out as a matter of routine by members of the household

Haitian Street Kids Inc. adds, In Haiti today, the term restavèk is also used as a slur to add insult to the injury of these children whose labour is already exploited in countless households and who are most often treated like outcasts. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Carol J. Williams reports that foreign relief workers and Roman Catholic charities have been encouraging Haiti's child slaves to seek help and to expose a century-old practice that has subjected them to shocking abuse.

Their growing numbers have prompted questions about whether the world's only successful national slave rebellion 200 years ago was really a victory.

Ms Williams adds that plight of child slaves in Haiti is threatening to overshadow the Haiti’s bicentennial celebrations of its independence from French colonial rule.

Haitian Street Kids Inc. states, the restavèk system is a form of trafficking and of slavery. It is ironic that it still exists in the country where the world’s first successful slave revolt created the first black republic in 1804. The complicit silence about the practice does not change the fact that by trading these children like merchandise and exploiting their innocence and labor, both families of origin and those at the receiving end are taking part in the trafficking and enslavement. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times Reverend Pierre St. Vistal "How can we be celebrating the bicentennial when this is still going on? How can we as Haitians celebrate anything when our kids are on the streets, dying of hunger? This isn't a time for celebration but for being ashamed."

According to the Los Angeles Times a report in June 2003 by the U.S. State Department about human trafficking accused Haiti's government of tolerating the abuse of child servants.

Haiti Education Minister Ms. Marie Carmel Paul-Austin responded with assurances that legislative action had been taken to outlaw domestic servitude for children younger than twelve (12) and that education reforms were under way to help more children get schooling.

The National Coalition of Haitian Rights Haiti states that Haitian government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on 29 December 1994, and, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention, filed a report describing progress made in implementing the Convention.

This means that although the Haitian government has recognized its legal obligations under the Convention, it continues to claim that slim resources have hindered efforts to protect children from abuse and to provide them with the care and support mandated by the Constitution and the Convention

Ms. Carol Bellamy the Executive Director of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) said: " The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history ...By ratifying this instrument, national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children's rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community ..."
 
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