Restavek
A restavek (or restavec) is a child in
The restavek system is tolerated in
History
The restavek tradition dates back centuries.[4]
Following the January 2010 earthquake, thousands of individuals in Haiti were displaced from their homes and families. According to anecdotal evidence, many of these individuals were children who had nowhere to turn but to become part of the Haitian restavèk population. Along with displacement due to natural disasters, children are solicited as restavèks by recruiters looking to find domestic servants for families.[5]
Many street children are former domestic servants who were dismissed by or ran away from the families they worked for. These children have not fully escaped the restavèk life. Instead, they become part of a different level that results in their exploitation in begging rings and prostitution.[6]
Conditions
Many parents send their children to be restaveks, expecting them to have a better life than possible in poor rural areas.[7] Poor rural parents who cannot provide their children with clean water, food, and education send them away, usually to cities, to find these opportunities as restaveks.[8]
Restaveks are unpaid and have no power or recourse within the host family.[8] Unlike slaves in the traditional sense, restaveks can run away or return to their families, and are typically released from servitude when they become adults; however, the restavek system is commonly understood to be a form of slavery.[8] Often host families dismiss their restaveks before they turn 15, since by law that is the age when they are supposed to be paid; many are then turned out to live on the street.[8] Increasingly, paid middlemen act as recruiters to place children with host families, and it is becoming more common to place children with strangers.[8] Children often have no way to get back in touch with their families.[8]
A 2009 study by the Pan American Development Foundation found that "leading indicators of restavèk treatment include work expectations equivalent to adult servants and long hours that surpass the cultural norm for children's work at home."[9] A contradicting 2002 survey found that restaveks were allowed to sleep as long as or longer than the household children, received fewer beatings, 60 percent or more attended school, and many had their own bed or mat.[10]
Some restaveks do receive proper nutrition and education, but they are in the minority.[11] According to the Pan American Development Foundation,
Education is also an important indicator in detecting child domesticity. Children in domesticity may or may not attend school, but when they do attend, it is generally an inferior school compared to other children ... and their rates of non-enrollment are higher than non-restavèk children in the home.[9]
Statistics
The estimates for numbers of restaveks in Haiti range from 100,000 to 500,000.[12] A 2002 door-to-door survey found the number of restaveks under age 17 in Haiti to be 173,000, and 59 percent of them were girls.[10]
As poverty and political turmoil increase, the reported number of restaveks continues to rise dramatically.
It is believed that the widespread damage and displacement caused by the 2010 earthquake has caused many more children to become restaveks. Children who were orphaned by the quake could potentially be turned over to work as restaveks by distant relatives who cannot care for them.[15]
Contributing factors
Two major factors that perpetuate the restavek system are widespread poverty and a societal acceptance of the practice.[8] Parents who cannot provide for their children continue to send them to be restaveks. Haiti, a nation of 10 million people,[13] is the most poverty-stricken in the western hemisphere.[8] Guerda Lexima-Constant, a child rights advocate with the Haitian Limyè Lavi Foundation, says:
I have yet to meet anyone who wanted to send their kid to be a restavek. Parents are forced to because of a lot of national and international givens. The [economic] means they used to have, they don't anymore. The invasion of foreign rice, eggs, and other things on the market by big business, destroying the peasant economy... there's been a whole chain of events that makes some people have to send their child away.[16]
The practice of restavek is widely accepted in Haitian culture, although the upper classes have increasingly begun to look down on it.[8] The connotation of the word restavek is understood to be negative, implying servility.[8][17]
Individual factors that increase a child's likelihood of becoming a restavek include lack of access to clean water, lack of educational opportunities, access to family in a city, and illness or loss of one or both parents.[8] Haiti has too few orphanages for its abundance of orphans, putting the children at high risk of becoming restaveks.[8]
Preventive and restorative efforts
Efforts exist to address the root cause of child servitude. Improving the economy, especially through government support for the rural population, would undermine parents' incentive to give children up, as would an improved health care and education system.[16] Parents would not be as easily pressured by recruiters to hand their children over to become restaveks if they were provided with aid such as food, clothing, and clean water.[8]
In May 2009, over 500 Haitian leaders gathered in
Other organizations in Haiti, such as Restavek Freedom Alliance, BEM Inc. are also actively working in south-western Haiti with restavek children.[20] Organizations such as the Center for Action and Development (CAD) and L'Escale in Port-au-Prince exist to house, feed, and give medical and psychological care to escaped restaveks while working to return them to their families.[8]
In popular culture
- Jean-Robert Cadet vividly recounted his life as a restavek. According to him, a term for children staying with host families who do not abuse them is timoun ki rete kay moun (Kreyolfor "child who stays in a person's house").
- Law & Order: "Chattel" (episode 19.8, original airdate January 7, 2009) depicts the discovery, investigation, and disposition of a ring of white Americans who adopt Haitian children and employ them as restaveks.
- In The Philanthropist episode "Haiti", a girl restavek is a main part of the story.
- Boston Legal: In the episode "Fat Burner" (season 3, episode 15), attorney Clarence Bell represents a girl restavek charged with homicide. After being impregnated by her master, she stabbed the man to death after he had informed her that he intended to sell her baby.[21]
- Nathan Petrellimeets a girl restavek while being held captive by Baron Samedi, Rene's (The Haitian) brother. The restavek and her sister are freed by Peter Petrelli.
See also
References
- ^ "Modern-day child slavery in Haiti must end, say S&Ds".
- S2CID 144412249.
- ^ Sommerfelt, Tone (October 2014). "Child Domestic Workers in Haiti 2014" (PDF). www.haiti-now.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 4, 2019.
- .
- ^ Howell, Holly. "Urban Child Labor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti" (PDF). www.haiti-now.org.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Howell, Holly. "Urban Child Labor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti" (PDF). www.haiti-now.org.[permanent dead link]
- ^ http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/media/reports/iclp/Advancing1/html/haiti.htm Archived August 1, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Abrams, Jennifer S. (2010). ""The Kids Aren't Alright": Using a Comprehensive Anti-Trafficking Program to Combat the Restavek System in Haiti". Temple International & Comparative Law Journal. 24 (443).
- ^ a b "itooamhaiti.org". Archived from the original on 2011-07-26.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7391-2867-1.
- ^ Anastasia Moloney (December 5, 2012). "Haiti child slavery shock". News24.
- S2CID 19576866.
- ^ a b Cohen, Gigi (2004-03-24). "Haiti's Dark secret:The Restaveks". National Public Radio.
- ^ Pan American Development Foundation. "Report". I Too am Haiti. Archived from the original on 2009-12-23.
- ^ Scott Pelley (March 21, 2010). "The Lost Children of Haiti". 60 Minutes of CBS News.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8014-7769-0.
- ^ "The Plight of Restavèk (Child Domestic Servants)" (PDF). 112th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, October 8 & 9, 2014. September 12, 2014.
- ^ a b "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2009-07-13.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Restavek Freedom Foundation". restavekfreedom.org.
- ^ "Restavec Freedom Alliance, BEM Inc". rfahaiti.org.
- ^ See p. 7 in http://www.boston-legal.org/script/BL03x15.pdf