30474: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti's child slaves suffer in the shadows (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

By Isabelle Ligner

PORT-AU-PRINCE, 28 May (AFP):  When you ask six-year-old Sylvine what she
likes to do for fun, she doesn't talk about playing with dolls. She says
she prefers "sweeping."

Her mother, an impoverished peasant from the north of Haiti, gave her up to
a better off family in the capital Port-au-Prince, where she labors as the
household servant. Sylvine is one of Haiti's 200,000 children who are
reduced to slavery, and a large majority of them are girls.

At 5:00 am, the frail little girl is the first to wake in the house,
setting out to retrieve drinking water from a public fountain five
kilometers (three miles) away.

Less than a quarter of the capital's population have running water and the
children who fetch the water are often "restaveks," the Creole name for the
country's child slaves.

In 1994, Haiti ratified the convention on the rights of children but the
first independent black republic to be founded -- which paid a high price
for its fight against slavery -- has proven unable to halt the enslavement
of its poorest children.

Sylvine said she must look after her distant cousins and clean the house
during her 16-hour work day.

n return, she receives no pay, not much food and has to sleep outside on a
mattress of straw.

"I never have time to play, my favorite activity is sweeping," said
Sylvine, who said she is not allowed to go to school despite earlier
promises her masters made to her mother.

"The 'restaveks' are deprived of the most elementary rights, to play, to
live free of physical violence and sexual abuse," said Njanja Fassu, an
official with UNICEF in Haiti.

Grinding poverty is the main reason why some parents hand over their
children to be servants, according to Wenes Jeanty of the Maurice Sixto
foundation.

"Mainly economic factors force poor families in rural areas to 'give' one
of their children to urban families for an offer of a little food and
shelter, hoping the child will be assured of a decent life, including an
education, even though they know the child will suffer," Jeanty said.

The families that take in the children make many promises but usually break
them. No written document backs up the arrangement, as the majority of
Haitians are illiterate.

In the end, ties between the children -- who often have no birth
certificate -- and their biological families are weakened, especially given
the difficulty in communicating with their families who live far away.

The foundation Maurice Sixto tries to provide education, psychological and
emotional support to the "restaveks" while trying to sensitize the host
families who impose exhausting duties on their child servants and sometimes
abuse them.

"The opinon of the child servants doesn't count and for this reason they
rarely express themselves.

Here, we try to change behavior to ensure that they can build self esteem,"
Jeanty said.

With help from the children's rights organization Terre des Hommes, the
foundation also works to put children back in contact with their biological
families.

Jean-Robert Cadet, a former "restavek," said that poverty alone cannot
explain the cruel practice. He described it as a legacy of the country's
history of slavery.

Amid a lack of national or international action, child slavery persists,
sometimes across several generations.

Slave girls are often violated by the father or sons of their "host"
families. If they become pregnant, they are thrown out to join the ranks of
street children. But sometimes their offspring end up becoming slaves.