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Restavek

January 01, 1970

A restavek (or restavec) is a child in Haiti who is given away by their parents to work for a host household as a domestic servant because the parents lack the resources required to support the child.[1] The term comes from the French language rester avec, "to stay with". Parents unable to care for children may send them to live with wealthier (or less poor) families, often their own relatives or friends. Often the children are from rural areas, and relatives who host restaveks live in more urban settings. The expectation is that the children will be given food and housing (and sometimes an education) in exchange for doing housework. However, many restaveks live in poverty, may not receive proper education, and are at grave risk for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

The restavek system is tolerated in Haitian culture, but not considered to be preferable[citation needed]. The practice meets formal international definitions of modern day slavery and child trafficking, and is believed to affect an estimated 300,000 Haitian children.[2] The number of CDW (Child Domestic Workers) in Haiti, defined as 1) living away from parents' home; 2) not following normal progression in education; and 3) working more than other children, is more than 400,000. 25% of Haitian children age 5–17 live away from their biological parents.[3]

History edit

 
Houses in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince shortly after the 2010 earthquake

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 edit

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 edit

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.[13] In 2009, the Pan American Development Foundation published the findings of an extensive door-to-door survey conducted in several cities in Haiti, focused on restaveks. The findings documented thousands of restaveks living in Haiti. The report also found that 11% of households who have restaveks working for them send their own children to work as restaveks for someone else.[14]

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 edit

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 edit

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 Port-au-Prince, Haiti to discuss the restavek condition and how to make positive changes to improve this complex problem.[18] Leaders from all facets of society attended the full-day session and conference organizers from The Jean Cadet Restavec Foundation and Fondation Maurice Sixto hope that this dialog is the start of a large grass-roots movement. They hope, at a minimum, to stop the abuse of restavek children.[18] The Restavec Freedom Foundation hosted 13 additional conferences titled "Compassion and Courage" (Haitian Creole: Kompasyon ak Kouraj) across Haiti. These conferences were hosted from the spring 2012 through the spring of 2013, and asked community leaders and pastors to take a stand on the issue of restavek. Over 3,000 leaders participated in these conferences and have agreed to take the lead in their respective communities to bring an end to the restavek practice.[19]

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 edit

  • 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 (Kreyol for "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.
  • 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]
  • Heroes: In the episode "The Eclipse" (Season 3, Episode 11), Nathan Petrelli meets 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 edit

References edit

  1. ^ "Modern-day child slavery in Haiti must end, say S&Ds".
  2. ^ Kennedy, C. L. (2014). "Toward Effective Intervention for Haiti's Former Child Slaves". Human Rights Quarterly. 36 (4): 756–778. doi:10.1353/hrq.2014.0059. S2CID 144412249.
  3. ^ Sommerfelt, Tone (October 2014). "Child Domestic Workers in Haiti 2014" (PDF). www.haiti-now.org. (PDF) from the original on June 4, 2019.
  4. ^ Smith, C. A.; Miller-de la Cuesta, B. (2010). "Human Trafficking in Conflict Zones: The Role of Peacekeepers in the Formation of Networks". Human Rights Review. 12 (3): 287–299. doi:10.1007/s12142-010-0181-8.
  5. ^ Howell, Holly. "Urban Child Labor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti" (PDF). www.haiti-now.org.[permanent dead link]
  6. ^ Howell, Holly. "Urban Child Labor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti" (PDF). www.haiti-now.org.[permanent dead link]
  7. ^ http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/media/reports/iclp/Advancing1/html/haiti.htm August 1, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ 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).
  9. ^ a b . Archived from the original on 2011-07-26.
  10. ^ a b Schwartz, Timothy T. (2009). Fewer Men, More Babies: Sex, Family, and Fertility in Haiti. Lexington Books. pp. 248–. ISBN 978-0-7391-2867-1.
  11. ^ Anastasia Moloney (December 5, 2012). "Haiti child slavery shock". News24.
  12. ^ Balsari, S.; Lemery, J.; Williams, T. P.; Nelson, B. D. (2010). "Protecting the Children of Haiti". New England Journal of Medicine. 362 (9): e25. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1001820. PMID 20164477. S2CID 19576866.
  13. ^ a b Cohen, Gigi (2004-03-24). "Haiti's Dark secret:The Restaveks". National Public Radio.
  14. ^ Pan American Development Foundation. . I Too am Haiti. Archived from the original on 2009-12-23.
  15. ^ Scott Pelley (March 21, 2010). "The Lost Children of Haiti". 60 Minutes of CBS News.
  16. ^ a b Bell, Beverly (2013). Fault Lines: Views Across Haiti's Divide. Cornell University Press. pp. 143–145 ISBN 978-0-8014-7769-0.
  17. ^ "The Plight of Restavèk (Child Domestic Servants)" (PDF). 112th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, October 8 & 9, 2014. September 12, 2014.
  18. ^ a b . Archived from the original on 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2009-07-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  19. ^ "Restavek Freedom Foundation". restavekfreedom.org.
  20. ^ "Restavec Freedom Alliance, BEM Inc". rfahaiti.org.
  21. ^ See p. 7 in http://www.boston-legal.org/script/BL03x15.pdf

January 01, 1970
restavek, restavek, restavec, child, haiti, given, away, their, parents, work, host, household, domestic, servant, because, parents, lack, resources, required, support, child, term, comes, from, french, language, rester, avec, stay, with, parents, unable, care. A restavek or restavec is a child in Haiti who is given away by their parents to work for a host household as a domestic servant because the parents lack the resources required to support the child 1 The term comes from the French language rester avec to stay with Parents unable to care for children may send them to live with wealthier or less poor families often their own relatives or friends Often the children are from rural areas and relatives who host restaveks live in more urban settings The expectation is that the children will be given food and housing and sometimes an education in exchange for doing housework However many restaveks live in poverty may not receive proper education and are at grave risk for physical emotional and sexual abuse The restavek system is tolerated in Haitian culture but not considered to be preferable citation needed The practice meets formal international definitions of modern day slavery and child trafficking and is believed to affect an estimated 300 000 Haitian children 2 The number of CDW Child Domestic Workers in Haiti defined as 1 living away from parents home 2 not following normal progression in education and 3 working more than other children is more than 400 000 25 of Haitian children age 5 17 live away from their biological parents 3 Contents 1 History 2 Conditions 3 Statistics 4 Contributing factors 5 Preventive and restorative efforts 6 In popular culture 7 See also 8 ReferencesHistory edit nbsp Houses in Haiti s capital Port au Prince shortly after the 2010 earthquake 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 restavek population Along with displacement due to natural disasters children are solicited as restaveks 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 restavek life Instead they become part of a different level that results in their exploitation in begging rings and prostitution 6 Conditions editMany 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 restavek 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 restavek children in the home 9 Statistics editThe 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 13 In 2009 the Pan American Development Foundation published the findings of an extensive door to door survey conducted in several cities in Haiti focused on restaveks The findings documented thousands of restaveks living in Haiti The report also found that 11 of households who have restaveks working for them send their own children to work as restaveks for someone else 14 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 editTwo 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 Limye 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 editEfforts 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 Port au Prince Haiti to discuss the restavek condition and how to make positive changes to improve this complex problem 18 Leaders from all facets of society attended the full day session and conference organizers from The Jean Cadet Restavec Foundation and Fondation Maurice Sixto hope that this dialog is the start of a large grass roots movement They hope at a minimum to stop the abuse of restavek children 18 The Restavec Freedom Foundation hosted 13 additional conferences titled Compassion and Courage Haitian Creole Kompasyon ak Kouraj across Haiti These conferences were hosted from the spring 2012 through the spring of 2013 and asked community leaders and pastors to take a stand on the issue of restavek Over 3 000 leaders participated in these conferences and have agreed to take the lead in their respective communities to bring an end to the restavek practice 19 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 editJean 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 Kreyol for child who stays in a person s house Law amp 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 Heroes In the episode The Eclipse Season 3 Episode 11 Nathan Petrelli meets 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 editHuman rights in HaitiReferences edit Modern day child slavery in Haiti must end say S amp Ds Kennedy C L 2014 Toward Effective Intervention for Haiti s Former Child Slaves Human Rights Quarterly 36 4 756 778 doi 10 1353 hrq 2014 0059 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 Smith C A Miller de la Cuesta B 2010 Human Trafficking in Conflict Zones The Role of Peacekeepers in the Formation of Networks Human Rights Review 12 3 287 299 doi 10 1007 s12142 010 0181 8 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 amp Comparative Law Journal 24 443 a b itooamhaiti org Archived from the original on 2011 07 26 a b Schwartz Timothy T 2009 Fewer Men More Babies Sex Family and Fertility in Haiti Lexington Books pp 248 ISBN 978 0 7391 2867 1 Anastasia Moloney December 5 2012 Haiti child slavery shock News24 Balsari S Lemery J Williams T P Nelson B D 2010 Protecting the Children of Haiti New England Journal of Medicine 362 9 e25 doi 10 1056 NEJMp1001820 PMID 20164477 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 a b Bell Beverly 2013 Fault Lines Views Across Haiti s Divide Cornell University Press pp 143 145 ISBN 978 0 8014 7769 0 The Plight of Restavek Child Domestic Servants PDF 112th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee October 8 amp 9 2014 September 12 2014 a b Archived copy Archived from the original on 2011 07 10 Retrieved 2009 07 13 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a 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 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Restavek amp oldid 1213918590, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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