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The Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) recently released its first major survey of Haiti's human rights situation, and the results are gut-wrenching. The foundation documented that nearly a quarter of a million impoverished children -- mostly young girls -- are forced to work as unpaid domestic servants in major Haitian cities.
The children, who are called restaveks, Haitian Creole for "stays with," are poor and sent by their parents to work in homes where they are supposed to receive an education, as well as room and board. According to the PADF study, though, 16 percent of all children in five major Haitian cities "are prone to beatings, sexual assaults and other abuses by host families," says Herve Rakoto Razafimbahiny, a PADF program director. "This major survey is a key tool in our efforts to eliminate this stain on dignity."
The door-to-door field survey concentrated on human rights violations, with an emphasis on child trafficking, abuse and violence. The five major urban cities surveyed were Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haitien, Gonaives, Saint-Marc and Petit-Goave.
In the troubled nation of nearly 9 million people, the practice of child servitude is so common that almost half of the 257 children interviewed in the Port-au-Prince shantytown of Cite Soleil considered themselves household slaves. Despite the fact that this growing problem has attracted media attention, the survey's researchers state that their sources were not aware of any prosecutions in the cases involving the trafficking of these children or the use of them as abused and unpaid servants.
Study authors believe that the number of servant children is climbing proportionally with the population of Port-au-Prince, as more migrants escape rural poverty to live in the capital.
According to Razafimbahiny, "Most people working with restavek children ... think that the numbers are actually underestimating the problem." He called for Haitian officials to conduct a national survey to analyze the full scope of the problem, including in rural areas.
Comments: (33)
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By: Minority Fortune on 12/29/2009 12:09AM
Very depressing. If the UN truly wanted to protect human rights, they'd scale their efforts to countries where they don't stand to gain oil and opium fields but but gain inner peace from helping their fellow men. Child slavery is a growing problem in Haiti and God knows where else. Children are our future. We can't ignore this epidemic.
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By: kenny on 1/14/2010 2:07PM
On point. Opium & oil countries get attention either by war or aid. No one talks about how US greed makes drugs essential to the world economy
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By: NAVEA on 12/29/2009 12:14PM
This is extremely gut wrenching. You have wealthy countries like the U.S. and other European nations and political organizations like the UN and none of them can couteract with each other to end this horiffic crime of child trafficking. That just proves "if it doesn't affect us then turn the head and keep on moving."
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By: Byron Dishman on 12/29/2009 5:28PM
I thalt that the U.S. was the only one that had slaves. These "cry baby" blacks that we have should do something about this!!!! This is going on now!,not hundreds of years ago!!!!!!
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By: Gong on 12/29/2009 7:29PM
But what happened to us hundreds of years ago led to the now we are dealing with. The traditions of the French have stayed. The enslaved high born and low born are tied to their traditions. The heavens seem to be insisting that the grandchildren of former slave runners, masters, traders, etc. will themselves clean up this stench or live right alongside it.
Haitian officials? Conduct a national survey? Now, that's a laugh!
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By: Mike on 12/30/2009 1:01AM
@Bill Schrier - you're the one with the idiotic reasoning. You lack perspective and respect for time. Are you really that stupid? We're all on a time continuum Bill - and what happened in the past does indeed explain current events. That TransAtlantic Slave trade, which the French partook with a slavery corporation of their own, IS the reason for Haiti's current plight. The TransAtlantic Slave trade is the reason for the plight of Africans all over the world. Hell, the VR & CR Acts weren't even enacted in the USA until 1964 and 65. You genetic cannibal neanderthals (whites) showed everyone your true barbarity and depravity. It's all documented Bill.
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By: Mike on 12/30/2009 1:00AM
And Bill Schrier - when something is done one way for 350 of a 400 yr window, a structural tradition is created. The US, for example, is a 400 yo anti-black white supremist capitalist system/machine that has ALWAYS targetted blacks ONLY to be exploited for financial profit and at the same time, blocked from accessing capital. That's the way the system still works and black people are still on the road to redemption.
You're a piece of garbage for attacking that young lady's words. You refute what I say.
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By: Bill Schrier on 12/30/2009 4:29AM
Mike,
What a stream of racist "hate" language you use! According to you, whites are "genetic cannibal neanderthals" and I'm a piece of garbage. Your language shows you are the racist, and very insecure as well.
I agree the transatlantic slave trade was bad, but I know black Africans were as responsible for the slave trade as the whites of hundreds of years ago, and in fact some black Americans owned slaves just as some white Americans did. I also know that millions of whites came to America as indentured servants, and yet their descendants don't use it as an excuse to not achieve hundreds of years laters. And that millions of more recent Asian immigrants come here, in poverty and with a language handicap, and yet within a generation rise up to middle class standards .. somehow achieving what blacks with far more advantages never do.
Blacks need to stop blaming whites for their own shortcomings. Instead of blaming others, restore family values and a work ethic.
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By: Mike on 12/30/2009 12:51PM
@Bill - I called you a genetic cannibal neanderthal cause that's what you are. You the carry the neanderthal gene - so how is that description wrong? I called you a piece of garbage cause you felt comfortable calling that lady an idiot and you, IMO, intentionally mischaracterized what she wrote. That's rude and disingenuous and makes you a piece of garbage in my book.
Your next idiotic point is that blacks were responsible for the TAST. Bill - the Dutch, English, French and other euro-nations created slavery corporations, financed by the so-called jews. That means stocks were sold all over the known world and slave raids HAD to take place in order for the corporations to be viable. These euro-nations, at first, lied to these African Chiefs and told them their war captives were being sent into indentured servitude which all nations, including African, practiced. Indentured servitude was just a prison sentence of appx 7 yrs at the end of which, the indentured would be let go with provisions to start over. TAST was govt-imposed with statutes, birth to death status. How the hell is that the same as indentured servitude?
So your making idiotic comparisons Bill. Those chinese and Irish and whoever else, were never singled out with statutes for them only that stayed on the books over 200 yrs. I won't even begin to discuss the actual 'practices' of TAST slavery systems in the US, Americas and Europe.
Lastly, you keep erroneously putting out that this was something that took place hundreds of yrs ago. You're a transparent liar. The VR & CR acts aren't even 50 yrs old.
So you annoy me with your childish lies and it will not stand on this post with me around.
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By: Bill Schrier on 12/29/2009 6:07PM
Note this is happening in Haiti, a black country. This does not occur in white, civilized countries.
Yet, the blacks on this board will somehow find a way to blame this on whites, even if they have to reach to blame it on the whites of hundreds of years ago. Just so long as blacks are not to blame, afterall blacks are angels, everything is the fault of whites.
Blacks are like animals, they are certainly closer to animals in IQ than whites, see link:
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/iq.htm
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