Human Trafficking in [Haiti Street Children in [Haiti] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Haiti] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
early years of the 21st Century - 2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Haiti.htm
Scope and Magnitude: Several NGOs noted a sharp
increase in the number of Haitian children trafficked for sex and labor to
the Dominican Republic and The Bahamas during 2008. The majority of
trafficking cases are found among the estimated 90,000 to 300,000 restaveks in |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Haiti: Socio-Political Crisis OCHA Situation Report No. 14 United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs OCHA, 19 Jul 2004 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 5 September 2011] CHILDREN AT RISK 9. Child domestic workers are
perhaps amongst the most exploited sectors in Haiti. A child who stays with
and works for another family is called a "restavec"
(rester avec), in Creole. According to the Restavec Children Foundation, these children are often
given away or sold by poor families in order to survive. Frequently the
children's most basic rights to health and education are denied. They are not
paid for their work and often abused. For instance, the restavecs
have to return to their duties in the house, after having escorted the house
owner's children to school. The restavec boys and
the girls often flee at the age of 12-13, joining one of the many street
gangs or ending up as prostitutes. Slavery: Worldwide Evil Charles Jacobs, President, American Anti-Slavery Group At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 5 September 2011] Though many Haitians work
willingly in the Dominican sugar plantations (Haiti is one of the poorest
countries in the Western Hemisphere), there is a perennial shortfall at
harvest time. The State Sugar Council, known as the CEA, fills the gap with a
system that violates nearly every internationally recognized labor code against
forced labor. Although political turmoil in Haiti has put an end to
cross-border recruiting, the enslavement of blacks continues. ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the Worst Forms
of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/haiti.htm [accessed 8 February 2011] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - A common form of exploitive child labor in Human Rights Reports » 2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61731.htm [accessed 8 February 2011] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – Rural
families continued to send young children, particularly girls, to more
affluent city dwellers to serve as restaveks in
exchange for that child's room and board. While some restaveks
received adequate care, including an education, the Ministry of Social
Affairs believed that many employers compelled the children to work long
hours, provided them little nourishment, and frequently abused them. The
majority of restaveks worked in low-income homes
where conditions, food, and education for non-biological children were not
priorities. The results of the most recent
study of trafficking across the border conducted by UNICEF in 2002 reported
that between two thousand and three thousand children were trafficked to the Concluding Observations of the
Committee on the Rights of the Child UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 31 January 2003 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/haiti2003.html [accessed 8 February 2011] [60] The Committee is deeply
concerned at the high incidence of trafficking of children from Assistance for children victims of human trafficking in
Haiti International Organization for Migration IOM, 04 Dec 2006 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 5 September 2011] After the death of his father,
Daniel was torn from his sobbing mother to work in Daniel says he felt "not
human" when preparing the children's uniforms and lunches while being
denied an education himself. Despite being regularly humiliated, abused and
under-fed, Daniel did not attempt to return home alone lest he be forced to
join the street children. Survival is Greatest Challenge for Haiti's Children UNICEF Press Centre, www.unicef.org/media/media_31793.html [accessed 8 February 2011] Violence and Abuse. There are
thousands of street children throughout Haiti. Many children are forced to fight
in gangs or become part of the restavek subculture
of bonded servitude, where 300,000 children work as unpaid domestic
servants. Girls account for three-quarters of these workers. - htsc 30,000 Haitian children smuggled
annually english.peopledaily.com.cn/200511/08/eng20051108_219788.html [accessed 8 February 2011] Around 30,000 Haitian children are
illegally smuggled into the Psst! Buy Yourself A Haitian
Slave-Child For A Hundred Bucks Gary Younge, the Guardian,
reporting from the Dominican Republic, 2005-09-28 www.haitipolicy.org/content/3249.htm?PHPSESSID= [accessed 8 February 2011] On market day in Dajabón, a bustling Dominican town on the Haitian border,
you can pick up many bargains if you know where to look. You can haggle the
price of a live chicken down to 40 pesos (72p); wrestle 10lb of macaroni from
60 to 50 pesos; and, with some discreet inquiries, buy a Haitian child for
the equivalent of £54.22. There is a
thriving trade in Haitian children in the Servitude's chains steal childhoods Gary Marx, www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=662 [accessed 8 February 2011] Each day, 13-year-old Claudia Lundi wakes at 4 a.m. and begins cooking, sweeping,
fetching water and doing other household chores that last until well after
sunset. She sleeps on the concrete
floor cushioned by a pile of clothing and eats sparingly, alone, in the
kitchen. "If I don't finish my work they will beat me up," said
Claudia, picking nervously at her fingernails. "They beat me with a whip
all over my body."
- htsc Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 4 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2009&country=7621 [accessed 8 February 2011] Human Rights Overview Human Rights Watch [accessed 8 February 2011] Library of Congress Call Number F1934 .D64 2001 lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/httoc.html [accessed 8 February 2011] Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to
Middle-Class American Recollections by a former restavek,
Jean-Robert Cadet 1998 in his autobiography, "Restavec:
From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American" www.carfweb.net/haiti_appeal.html
[accessed 5 September 2011] On average, restaveks
work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, have extremely poor health,
nutrition, low educational attainment and their living conditions are
appalling. They sleep on the bare floor or on a mat on the floor next to
their master's bed or under the kitchen table. They use an old rolled up
dress as a billow or a blanket. Restaveks wear
dirty, old clothing and shoes with holes in them, sometimes too big for their
small bodies. Also, they are permitted to bathe only once a week. While these
children prepare meals for their masters, they are not allowed to eat with
the family and must wait until everyone finishes and leaves the table in
order to eat the leftovers from the meal that he or she cooked. The master
requires that the child domestic use a specific plate, cup, and fork, made
out of tin and bent out of shape. The restavek must
wash and store these utensils separately, perhaps for a fear that he or she
will contaminate the rest of the family's "good" dining equipment.
The child is further separated from social life as the restavek
spends virtually the entire day indoors unless he or she is fetching water,
cleaning chamber pots, or visiting the market. And while indoors, he or she
sits in isolation when not doing chores. These children are not allowed to
speak unless their owners speak to them or permit them to speak. In addition
to the daily schedule and tasks and the living conditions, these children
suffer great physical and emotional danger, are beaten, tortured, raped,
falsely accused and verbally assaulted. — Recollections by a former restavek,
Jean-Robert Cadet 1998 in his autobiography, "Restavec:
From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American" United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs OCHA, 19 Jul 2004 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 5 September 2011] CHILDREN AT RISK 9. Child domestic workers are
perhaps amongst the most exploited sectors in Haiti. A child who stays with
and works for another family is called a "restavec"
(rester avec), in Creole. According to the Restavec Children Foundation, these children are often
given away or sold by poor families in order to survive. Frequently the
children's most basic rights to health and education are denied. They are not
paid for their work and often abused. For instance, the restavecs
have to return to their duties in the house, after having escorted the house
owner's children to school. The restavec boys and
the girls often flee at the age of 12-13, joining one of the many street
gangs or ending up as prostitutes. Prosecutors to seek reduction of sentence for Pines woman
in slavery case Ann W. O'Neill, Sun-Sentinel, 8 June 2004 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 5 September 2011] A 12-year-old girl, referred to in
the indictment as "W.K.," was nicknamed "Little Hope" in According to the indictment, the
girl was smuggled from Haiti after her mother, who once worked there for the Pompees, died in 1996. Jacky Delorme, International Confederation Of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU), January 2004 www.icftu.org/www/pdf/RapportHaitiE.pdf [accessed 30 August 2011] [page 7] LESLIE - I am eleven years old. I don’t
remember how long ago my mum placed me in the care of my aunt. I’m the only
one to sleep on the floor in her house. Every day, I get up at 4 o’clock. I
do everything. I prepare breakfast for the children, I sweep the floor, I go
to collect water. And when my aunt goes to work in the market, I carry on: I
go for more water, I do the washing, and I wash the dishes… One day I had a
quarrel with one of my aunt’s daughters, and she whipped me for that. On
another occasion I was watching television and the food that was on the
cooker got burnt. I also got whipped
for that. My mum lives in the province. She came to see me last Sunday, but
it’s very rare. I have given up asking her to take me back with her. I know
she doesn’t have enough money to feed me. National Public Radio NPR, March 27, 2004 www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1779562 [accessed 8 February 2011] Among her other duties, Josiméne cares for two younger children, cleans the
house, washes dishes, scrubs laundry by hand, runs errands and sells small
items from the family's informal store. She has lived this way for over two
years, since she was seven. It has been over six months since she has seen
her family. Aristide leaves Haiti This Week in bonner.house.gov/HoR/AL01/News/Columns/2004/03-04-04+Aristide+leaves+Haiti.htm [Last access date unavailable] Slavery: Worldwide Evil Charles Jacobs, President, American Anti-Slavery Group At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 5 September 2011] Though many Haitians work
willingly in the Dominican sugar plantations (Haiti is one of the poorest
countries in the Western Hemisphere), there is a perennial shortfall at
harvest time. The State Sugar Council, known as the CEA, fills the gap with a
system that violates nearly every internationally recognized labor code
against forced labor. Although political turmoil in Haiti has put an end to
cross-border recruiting, the enslavement of blacks continues. Haitian Coalition Unveils Report on Slavery and
Trafficking of Haitian Children Merrie Archer, The National Coalition for
Haitian Rights NCHR, www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg11671.html [accessed 8 February 2011] "Estimates reveal that as
many as one out of every ten children in Haiti is a child domestic servant,
known in Creole as a restavèk," said Merrie Archer, co-author of the report and Senior Policy
Associate at NCHR, "and there is evidence that this practice has been
carried over to the US and other places where Haitians have migrated." Child Labour Persists Around The World: More Than 13
Percent Of Children 10-14 Are Employed International Labour Organisation (ILO) News, www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/news/WCMS_008058/lang--en/index.htm [accessed 6 September 2011] "Today's child worker will be
tomorrow's uneducated and untrained adult, forever trapped in grinding poverty.
No effort should be spared to break that vicious circle", says ILO
Director-General Michel Hansenne. Among the countries with a high
percentage of their children from 10-14 years in the work force are: Mali,
54.5 percent; Burkina Faso, 51; Niger and Uganda, both 45; Kenya, 41.3;
Senegal, 31.4; Bangladesh, 30.1; Nigeria, 25.8; Haiti, 25; Turkey, 24; Côte d'Ivoire, 20.5; Pakistan, 17.7;
Brazil, 16.1; India, 14.4; China, 11.6; and Egypt, 11.2. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery - |
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Human Trafficking in [Haiti Street Children in [Haiti] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Haiti] [other countries]