When Ambassador Luis CdeBaca toured Haiti last Wednesday, he had only one goal. President Obama’s appointee on human trafficking hoped to prevent human exploitation from becoming yet one more challenge for the people of Haiti.
Slavery in Haiti a delicate matter, and one that is often muffled by other pressing issues — access to water, shelter, food. But if Haiti wants to stand on its feet, it has to acknowledge the social problems that affect its most abject citizens.
Advocacy groups in Haiti agree with this sentiment. And now, a network of these grassroots organizations is raising an alarm on slavery once more.
In Haiti, the practice of child slavery is widely accepted, with an estimated 300,000 children living in servitude. They perform daily chores, care for other families and accompany children to school. They themselves stay at home -- hence their name “restaveks,” from the phrase in Creole reste avec, or "one who stays." After the quake orphaned so many children, child advocacy groups feared many of the newly vulnerable would end up trapped in the child servitude system -- and unfortunately, it looks like they were right.
Among the strategies laid out to combat child slavery is an aggressive educational campaign. Local and international groups, for example, have placed billboards in the capital that denounce child servitude. The Huffington Post describes the billboards as presenting a cartoon child who dreams about attending school.
KOFAVIV, a group of rape and restavek survivors, is also encouraging neighbors to denounce abuse in their communities. “We say, if you hear someone beating a child in their home, go tell them to stop,” says Helia Lajeunesse, an advocate with KOFAVIV. Fondasyon Limyè Lavi and Beyond Borders are also among the many organizations rallying against the slavery system.
In spite what many fear is a growing trend, Haitian law explicitly prohibits forced labor. Groups have also called for a criminalization of child slavery.
Jean Robert Cadet, a former restavek and child advocate with the Restavek No More Foundation, lauds the efforts, but argues they won’t be sufficient to curb the practice.
“You have to understand one thing about the Haitian government,” says Cadet. “It does not enforce laws.”
After all, prior to the earthquake, restavek children lived in deplorable conditions in spite of Haiti's own laws and international accords. Article 32 of the Haitian constitution made education mandatory and at the state’s expense. In 1995, Haiti also signed the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, yet child slavery flourished.
Cadet calls for the preparation of birth certificate to track restaveks, who mostly come from poor families in the countryside. That way, he reasons, parents listed on such documents can be better held accountable for their children. He also supports laws similar to those in the Bahamas, where school is compulsory, and parents are fined if their children do not attend school.
While these ideas are promising, eliminating the nefarious practice of child slavery requires more. To uproot slavery, Haiti must improve the precarious quality of life on the countryside, which for decades has been devastated by U.S.-imposed trade policies that backed the flood of imported, cheap rice. If that didn't cripple farmers enough, 90% of Haiti's land is deforested, making the soil incapable of adequate production.
In other words, to save children from slavery, their parents first need to be able to live and work. As Cadet says, “Until these problems aren’t addressed there is no hope for Haiti.”
Emissaries and advocates are ringing the alarm bell. Now, it's time for authorities to step up to the plate.
Photo Credit: Huáscar Robles
Huascar Robles is a journalist with the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma.
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