Subject: About 173,000 Haitian Children are restavèks
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For children in domestic work, rights are just a dream.
The world marked Universal Children?s Day on Nov. 20, but there was little to celebrate in Haiti, where a system of virtual child slavery is not only growing, but also crossing borders. Critics say that conditions are worse than ever for the country?s children and that, apart from publicity campaigns, the government is doing little to reverse the trend.
Almost 10 percent of all Haitian children between ages 5 and 17 ? about 173,000, according to UNICEF ? are restavèks. The word, which means "stay with," refers to children who are virtually enslaved as domestic servants. The practice started during the last century, when peasants began sending their children to work for city families in the hope that they would receive food, schooling and the chance of a better life.
Most, however, receive no education, are regularly abused and are thrown into the streets when they reach a certain age or, in the case of girls, when they become pregnant, often after being raped by an employer.
As conditions in Haiti have worsened (LP, April 8, 2002), the restavèk model has led to the smuggling of children across the border into the Dominican Republic. Every summer, at least 2,000 children are taken to the neighboring country from northern Haiti to work as domestic servants, beggars or farm hands (LP, July 17,2000), according to a recent report by UNICEF and the International Organization for Migration.
Haitians have long worked in the neighboring country as both legal and undocumented immigrants, doing jobs that Dominicans don?t want or working for a fraction of the standard wage. According to the report, however, some parents pay smugglers to bribe Haitian police, Dominican soldiers and other authorities and take their children across the border. The children, ranging in age from 5 to 13, live in inhuman conditions and must turn over their earnings to the smugglers ? who might or might not send some of the money to the children?s families.
The children are often trying to earn money for school, and while many do return to Haiti with new sneakers and some cash, about one-third remain in the Dominican Republic.
"This is a shocking export of the restavèk phenomenon," said Sylvana R. Nzirorera, UNICEF communications officer in Haiti. UNICEF and local non-governmental organizations are working on plans to fight child smuggling, but the government has shown no interest, she said.
"We have built a nation where the child does not exist," said Jean Robert Chéry, director of the Popular Education Center, a Port-au-Prince organization that works with street children. "Where are the laws to protect children? Where are the structures? Nowhere. When a family has a problem, it sells a child, just as a peasant sells an animal when he needs cash."
Besides the government?s claim that it helps about 200 restavèks a year through a telephone hotline and a still-unratified set of laws on children?s issues that do not even mention restavèks, the government does nothing to protect children, he said.
The Haitian Refugees and Repatriated People?s Support Group (GARR) began to suspect that a smuggling ring existed because Dominican authorities were repatriating very young children, director Colette Lespinasse said. GARR estimates that about 10,000 Haitians have been repatriated from the Dominican Republic so far this year. Haitian authorities at the border take people?s names and hand them US$5 for bus fare, she said.
Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard has picked up some 650 people and the Bahamas has repatriated hundreds more.
"We have a government that does not admit it has an immigration problem, so it has no immigration policy," Lespinasse said. "It closes its eyes and doesn?t deal with it. People can take boats, cross the border, export kids ? that doesn?t bother people in the government, who are only concerned about money for their pockets. They?re concerned with holding onto power. ? There is no investment in anything productive that would enable people to live better lives."
Lespinasse, Chéry and Nzirorera agree that while education campaigns about children?s rights in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are important, the only way to end the exploitation of children is to address Haiti?s economic and social ills. Free public education would eliminate the need for children to earn money for school, for example, and free health care would eliminate another financial burden. Jobs for parents would reduce the pressure to turn children into wage earners.
At the UN Special Session on Children in May, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide promised to end the restavèk practice, Nzirorera said, but so far she has heard of no concrete measures. The countries at the session, including Haiti, also committed to design national action plans. While UNICEF officials have met with Haitian officials several times, "nothing has come from these discussions," she said.
Meanwhile, conditions for children ? indeed, for all Haitians ? have become increasingly precarious, with deterioration of health and an increase in poverty and violence. Children have recently been killed or injured in gang shootouts, police violence and ? in what may be the first case of its kind in Haiti ? while playing with a gun at school.
"HIV is on the rise among children, too," Nzirorera said. "This is the picture of the Haitian child?s situation on the 14th anniversary of the Conventio
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