RECONSTRUCTING HAITI
The restaveks
Child slavery in Haiti
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 | 3:43 PM ET
CBC News
The practice of sending children to live with others is a long-held tradition in Haiti. The children are called restaveks — the Creole term for "stay with" — and are often promised food and education in exchange for domestic work.
It's a tradition the United Nations' special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, deemed deeply troubling in June 2009. Shahinian said the restavek tradition puts vulnerable children at risk of exploitation and sexual violence. She noted that families once negotiated placement of children, but the process is now steered by recruiters who stand to benefit financially.
Fears of child trafficking have spurred Haitian authorities to block international adoptions amid reports of children being snatched unlawfully from their parents. Haitian authorities are continuing to hold a group of Americans accused of attempting to take 33 children without proper paperwork across the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic. Members of the New Life Children's Refuge said they did not pay money for the children and had the children's best interests at heart.
But for some Haitians struggling in the aftermath of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, providing adequate care for their children is extremely trying. Silfra Joachin lives in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince with her three children. When asked if she would ever consider giving her children up, she replies yes.
"I would rather they go to a white person overseas than a Haitian family," she told CBC correspondent Connie Watson. "Because Haitians can be so hard-hearted — they say they will treat your child well, but behind your back, they'll treat him terribly."
Jean Robert Cadet, a former restavek himself, runs the Restavek Foundation, which aims to stop child servitude. Officials say there are about 300,000 restaveks in the country — a figure Cadet says is a low estimate.
"It's so ingrained into the fabric of society that it becomes normal for families to have a child, a child slave," he said. "In Haiti when a child does not have a mother and a father, these children become very vulnerable."
