=?x-unknown?q?30484=3A__SFClinics=3A__Haiti=E2~=40~Ys_child_s?==?x-unknown?q?laves_suffer_in_the_shadows_=28fwd=29?=

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: SFclinics1@aol.com

Haiti’s child slaves suffer in the shadows
(AFP)

26 May 2007
PORT-AU-PRINCE - 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. In 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.
















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