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Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the early years of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Haiti.htm
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Scope and Magnitude: Haitian labor laws
require employers to pay domestic workers over the age of 15,
so many host families dismiss restaveks before they
reach that age. Dismissed and runaway restaveks
make up a significant proportion of the large population of street children,
who frequently are forced to work in prostitution or street crime by violent
criminal gangs. - CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in Haiti. Some of these
links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated
or even false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity
or to verify their content. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Haitian Orphans Call Cemetery Home Tim Collie, Foreign Correspondent, South
Florida Sun-Sentinel, At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 19 September 2011] By night, they
sleep outside the gates of the city's largest cemetery, huddled only a few
feet from the graves of this troubled country's former dictators, presidents
and wealthy power brokers. By day, they roam the cemetery's narrow walks and
hidden spaces, doing laundry and hoarding food and water among collapsed
graves, overturned coffins and sites looted by grave robbers. ***
ARCHIVES *** UNICEF
– www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti.html [accessed 22 May 2011] 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 - Estimates on the number of street children 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] CHILDREN
-
Port-au-Prince's large population of street
children included many restaveks who were dismissed
from or fled employers' homes. The Ministry of Social Affairs provided
minimal assistance, such as food and temporary shelter, to street children. 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] [36] The Committee
welcomes the Act prohibiting corporal punishment (August 2001) within the
family and at schools, but remains concerned at the persistent practice of
corporal punishment by parents or teachers and the ill treatment of child
domestics (restaveks). The Committee is further
deeply concerned about instances of ill treatment of street children by law
enforcement officers. [58] The Committee
expresses its concern at the increasing number of street children and at the
lack of a systematic and comprehensive strategy to address this situation and
to provide these children with adequate protection and assistance. In
addition, the Committee is concerned that these children are used for the
perpetration of offences and that some of them have disappeared. Misery breeds violence in Claire Doole,
Journalist, International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC, Cité Soleil, May 15, 2009 edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/05/11/icrc.haiti.red.cross/ [accessed 22 May 2011] The International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been in Even among the
children. In Cité Soleil, a dozen street children
start pummeling a young girl. It's not known why. But within seconds word has
spread that a fight is on. Hordes of children with matted hair and ragged
clothes race to the scene, glad of anything to relieve the monotony of yet another
day with nothing to do. Weary parents pull their children away, leaving the
shaken girl to escape. Timkatec Children's Center Robyn Fieser,
Catholic Relief Services CRS, 20 May 2008 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] The worst day of
Francois Peterson's life was not the day his parents abandoned him at the age
of 12 in the hills outside of UNICEF Director on Haitian Children’s Needs Prensa Latina, Jan 9, 2008 news.caribseek.com/set-up/exec/view.cgi?archive=149&num=60646 [accessed 22 May 2011] UNICEF Executive
Director Ann Veneran noted the many needs of
Haitian people, especially children, at the end of a three-day visit to that Sasha Vasilyuk, This article has been archived by World
Street Children News and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 September 2011] In this small
nation ravaged by poverty and political turmoil, children and teens make up
45 percent of the total population and are often the first ones to suffer.
Thousands of orphans and children from poor families are driven to the
streets to sleep, beg for food, and find petty jobs to survive. Some of them
find temporary refuge in group homes, where foreign volunteers like Pantaleon can meet them and try to help. Papouche is now 19. Pantaleon says that he is generous and kind, a little
shy, and a really good photographer. Recently, he was put up in a rental room
to be a good influence on his roommate, a drug addict. In September, Papouche is supposed to go back to school. Although
Haitians often go to school until their early 20s, most street children older
than 16 are kicked out of group homes to make room for younger charges.
During that critical age, they receive almost no support. As a result, many
of them have children, starting the cycle all over again. Celebrating the life of Emmanuel ‘Drèd’ Wilmé Frantz Jerome, Bay View, 10 July 2007 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] I’ve asked but no
one knows. Or maybe I have not yet met one who knows where Drèd came from. He was one of the Lafanmi
Selavi children, I was told. Thus he may have been
born on a street of Port-au-Prince. His mother may have been a “machann” or a “bòn.” I don’t
know. But, a bit more than 28 years ago Drèd Wilmé entered the world and ended up an orphan on the
streets of Port-au-Prince. How many days without food, shelter, protection
and how many sunups and sundowns
being a defenseless child, prey to his society’s more powerful predators? One older
Haitian-American woman who moved to Cité Soleil one
month ago to practice her ministry gave an interview to a U.S. human rights
delegation and Haitian journalists, stating that the youth of Cité Soleil are not animals or “chimères,”
but intelligent human beings who are struggling to deal with the most harsh
oppression. She described Drèd Wilmé as someone who
worked on behalf of these youth, providing them with education and food when
the larger society was willing to throw them away. Stomp the Worm - Saint Aaron to the rescue
in Haiti As told to Edmund Newton, New Times News,
Apr 19 2007 www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-04-19/news/stomp-the-worm/ [accessed 22 May 2011] For the past four
years, New family, new mission Brenda Blevins McCorkle, The Daily News,
Apr 15, 2007 blendedfamilyliving.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-family-new-mission.html [accessed 22 May 2011] Most of the time,
these rural Haitian youngsters are sent by their families to stay with
relatives --- godparents or aunts and uncles --- who live in the large
cities. The children's parents hope they will find education and employment
there, but instead the children end up working hard for no money or food and
are often physically and sexually abused. Imprisoned in Manuel Roig-Franzia,
The seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003600005_haitikids04.html [accessed 22 May 2011] The boys warehoused
at Their plight
reflects a country overwhelmed by the problems of its young — more than
200,000 Haitian children have lost one or both parents to AIDS and 300,000 work as unpaid domestic servants in a system of bonded servitude,
according to the U.N. Children's Fund. Children in the hands of G-d Nancy San Martin, www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/americas/haiti/index.html [accessed 22 May 2011] In a nation of 8.5
million, where one of eight children dies before age 5, orphanages often are
the last refuge of hope. Some 610,000 Haitian children are orphans, according
to U.N. estimates. Port-au-Prince alone has an estimated 2,000 street
children, many of them orphans. 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 Servitude's chains steal childhoods Gary Marx, www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=662 [accessed 8 February 2011] Many restaveks who flee servitude end up among the hordes of
street children working odd jobs or begging and stealing to survive. One of
them is Junior Delusa, a 17-year-old who lives in
the Champs de Mars area adjacent to Haitian Orphans Call Cemetery Home Tim Collie, Foreign Correspondent, South
Florida Sun-Sentinel, At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 19 September 2011] By night, they
sleep outside the gates of the city's largest cemetery, huddled only a few
feet from the graves of this troubled country's former dictators, presidents
and wealthy power brokers. By day, they roam the cemetery's narrow walks and
hidden spaces, doing laundry and hoarding food and water among collapsed
graves, overturned coffins and sites looted by grave robbers. Street Children,
Girl Servants Severely Affected By Haitian Violence United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF, 19
April 2004 www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10447&Cr=Haiti&Cr1= [accessed 22 May 2011] The violence that
brought about the change of The
Killers Of Lyn Duff, Pacific News Service, www.blackcommentator.com/81/81_reprint_haiti_street_kids.html [accessed 22 May 2011] When Titid became president he told the world that we street
children were people, we had value, that we were human beings. Many adults didn't like this message. They said we were dirty and should be
thrown out like the trash that we are.
Right now it is hard to survive and we don't know what we will do to
find food and water. There are gangs everywhere in army clothes, looting and
burning, attacking people and robbing those that are weaker. A new government has no hope for the
children of CESAR CHELALA, The At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] Adults are not the
only targets of police violence. Child welfare workers say the rate of beatings
and killings of street children has increased five times since the ouster of
Aristide. These murders are carried out by the police, death squads and the
military. Michael Brewer, director of
Haiti Street Kids Inc., has described how groups of men who belong to
military patrols in Children's Radio Station Gives Voice To Lyn Duff, www.pangaea.org/street_children/latin/haiti.htm [accessed 22 May 2011] Started by a group
of street children from the Lafanmi Selavi orphanage, the radio station is funded by private
donations and supported by President Aristide. It gives kids a say in politics
at a time when the Haitian press is enjoying new freedoms. With some 85% of
Haitians illiterate radio is the medium with its finger on the pulse of the
population. Street Children Identify Themselves and
Speak Out Carril Desrosiers,
Free-lance Journalist, Island Beat, At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] They are children,
most of them male, between 6 and 17 years old. They adopt the street as a
natural habitat for survival, maintaining relationships at all hours of the
day and night with other poor like them. They essentially come from rural areas
and poor districts of provincial cities and Street
children and AIDS in Haiti Bernier M, Ascensio
P., www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7780668?dopt=Abstract [accessed 22 May 2011] This study is a
qualitative inquiry KAP about sexuality, and adoption and preservation of
safe sexual behaviors, among the children of the street in Rituals
of Healing Encountered Among Street Children of Amber Elizabeth Lynn Gray, Director of the www.istss.org/publications/TS/Summer02/haiti.htm [accessed 22 May 2011] As our work
together progressed, the children taught me rituals to begin and end each
session, as a way to integrate the meaning of our work together into daily
life (e.g., a simple cleansing ritual using water to retain the coolness of
the dance after clearing the soul of excess energy and burden). At all times,
the children stressed the importance of communal action in making connection
with ancestors, asking for assistance and support, and discovering what must
be done to take the right action. Medical
Basic Care for Street-Children in Help for Street-Children in www.strassenkinderhilfe-haiti.de/hauptteil_english.html [accessed 22 May 2011] About 3,000
street-children in the capital Street Children Under The Influence Of
Drugs Carril Desrosiers,
Free-lance Journalist, Island Beat, At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] Through direct
observation and based on investigations led by certain charitable
institutions, such as "Foyer Lakay," a
picture emerges. Four children out of eight confess their addiction to
narcotics or dope: cocaine, marijuana, sansimilia,
thinner, or the glue used by shoemakers. In the book entitled Lakay, un Foyer pour les Enfants
des Rues (Lakay,
a home for street children), produced by UNICEF, Frantz Lofficial
stated that these poor children, living in misery and daily hopelessness,
easily fall in the trap of drugs and become their unfortunate victims. Too Tired to Cry Lyn Duff, Pacific News Service, January 12,
2005 www.alternet.org/rights/20977/?page=1 [accessed 22 May 2011] "Nothing is
ever reported, investigated or even mentioned if it is a street kid that has
been murdered...When the body becomes too unpleasant for the residents or
vendors in the area, it is usually dumped or set on fire with kerosene. The
names of those who are killed are often never known," says Brewer, who
regularly checks the morgue and other known dumping sites for bodies. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC News,
November 29, 2004 www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2004/11/29/haiti-children-police-041129.html [accessed 22 May 2011] Someone has been
killing street children on the streets of Save the Children Save the Children At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] STREET CHILDREN - In a country
like Man Strives To Ease The Plight Of Homeless
Children Dan Parker and Guy H. Lawrence,
Caller-Times, August 29, 2000 www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg05060.html [accessed 22 May 2011] Michael Brewer, a
civilian nurse at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, has formed a nonprofit
organization, Haitian Street Kids Inc., dedicated to helping children
who live on the streets in Helping
To Pull Things Together In Plan, June 15, 2005 allafricanbazaar.blogspot.com/2005/06/plan-helping-to-pull-things-together.html [accessed 22 May 2011] Plan, originally
named "Foster Parents Plan for Children in Plan Consortium for Street Children At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 22 May 2011] Plan's project in
Haiti will work with 50 children’s clubs to increase children’s awareness of
their rights and enable them to campaign on behalf of themselves and other
children. 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,
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Torture in [Haiti] [other countries]Human Trafficking in [Haiti] [other countries]Street Children in [Haiti Child Prostitution in [Haiti] [other countries]