Human Trafficking in [Haiti Street Children in [Haiti] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Haiti] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Republic of Haiti [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Scope and
Magnitude. Haiti is a source, transit, and destination country for men,
women, and children trafficked for purposes of forced labor and commercial
sexual exploitation. The majority of trafficking in Haiti stems from poor
rural families giving custody of their children to more affluent
opportunities. The practice of trafficking such children, who are called
restaveks, is widespread and often involves sexual exploitation, physical
abuse, and domestic servitude, a severe form of trafficking in persons. While
difficult to gauge, the Government of Haiti and UNICEF estimate the number of
restaveks to range between 90,000 and 300,000. Haitian girls between the ages
of six and 14 tend to be placed in urban households, and boys are trafficked
into agricultural servitude. Some children are recruited or coerced into
joining violent criminal gangs as fighters or thieves. Other Haitian children
are sent to the Dominican Republic, where they live in miserable conditions.
Dominican women and girls reportedly are trafficked into Haiti for commercial
sexual exploitation, some to Haitian brothels serving UN peacekeepers.
Haitians also commonly migrate to the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, the
United States, and other Caribbean nations, where after arrival, they
reportedly may be subjected to conditions of forced labor on sugar-cane
plantations, and in agriculture and construction. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008 [full country report] |
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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 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. HAITI: SUGAR SLAVES - Next time you add sugar to your
coffee, think of Andre Prevot. A Haitian, Prevot met a man who promised him a
good job nearby in the Dominican Republic (DR). But, as we've seen with the
Asian slavers, this is a classic lure. "He took me across the border and
sold me to the Dominican soldiers for $8," explains Prevot. Once in
their custody, he suffered the fate of thousands of his countrymen who are
forced against their will to cut cane for six or seven months — from December
to June — for little or no money. 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 *** U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - A common form of exploitive child labor in Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices 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 - 2003 [60] The Committee is deeply
concerned at the high incidence of trafficking of children from Assistance
for children victims of human trafficking in Haiti After the death of his father,
Daniel was torn from his sobbing mother to work in Port-au-Prince to
alleviate the family's extreme poverty. In one of the capital's many
shantytowns that suffer from neglected infrastructure and income-generation
needs, a poor "host family" recruited Daniel as unremunerated
domestic labor to fetch water from distant distribution points, among other
tasks. 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 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. 30,000
Haitian children smuggled annually Around 30,000 Haitian children are
illegally smuggled into the Haitian
Children Sold as Slave Laborers and Prostitutes 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 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." HAITI - In Haiti, Mr. Apollos Laurore was appointed the
OAS consultant responsible for working in conjunction with the anti-trafficking
in persons unit of the Haitian National Police (PNH), known as the Minors’
Protection Brigade (Brigade de Protection des Mineurs, BPM). The OAS project
aims to support the country in its efforts combating human trafficking and
has the support of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
of the Canadian government. The project will assist the professional training
of the police, oversight of the international resources made available to the
BPM, and the organization of activities in the area. In addition, the
research project into trafficking in persons in Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 4 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Partly Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Children
at Risk Foundation (CARF) - HAITIAN STREET CHILDREN & RESTAVEKS 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" Haiti:
Socio-Political Crisis OCHA Situation Report No. 14 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 A 12-year-old girl, referred to in
the indictment as "W.K.," was nicknamed "Little Hope" in
South Florida's Haitian community when her plight became known five years
ago. She claimed to have been beaten,
raped, and forced to work as a maid and serve, since the age of 9, as a sex
slave for the Pompees' son, then 20. According to the indictment, the
girl was smuggled from Haiti after her mother, who once worked there for the
Pompees, died in 1996. Haiti -
Tarnished Children [PDF] [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. Haiti's
Dark Secret: The Restavecs Haiti, a nation of only eight
million people, is home to some 300,000 restavecs -– young children who are
frequently trafficked from the rural countryside to work as domestic servants
in the poverty-stricken nation's urban areas. 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. Haiti also has a long record of
human rights and security violations. The government of that country has not
fully complied with international regulations regarding the trafficking of
children for both labor and sexual exploitation. As one major example, a 2003
report issued by the Organization of American States stated that between
90,000 and 300,000 children between the ages of four and 14 in Haiti and the
Dominican Republic are used as unpaid domestic labor. Additionally, following
a 2001 announcement of "zero tolerance" policy towards suspected
criminals, the Haitian police and organized mobs committed numerous
executions and lynchings. The national media was forced to self-censor
itself, and many reporters either fled the country as the result of death
threats or were captured and executed. HAITI: SUGAR SLAVES - Next time you add sugar to your
coffee, think of Andre Prevot. A Haitian, Prevot met a man who promised him a
good job nearby in the Dominican Republic (DR). But, as we've seen with the
Asian slavers, this is a classic lure. "He took me across the border and
sold me to the Dominican soldiers for $8," explains Prevot. Once in
their custody, he suffered the fate of thousands of his countrymen who are
forced against their will to cut cane for six or seven months — from December
to June — for little or no money. 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 "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." All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Haiti Street Children in [Haiti] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Haiti] [other countries]