a1674: Study condemns child labor (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Study condemns child labor

By Madeline Baró Diaz
Miami Bureau
Posted April 13 2002

MIAMI -- The National Coalition for Haitian Rights released a study on
Friday that estimates one in 10 children in Haiti is a domestic servant and
said the Haitian government has not done enough to end the traditional
practice.

The system is known as "restavek," from the French rester avec, meaning to
"stay with." Some poor parents living in rural parts of Haiti turn their
children over to a family, usually one in an urban area, that agrees to care
for the child and provide schooling, food and shelter in exchange for
domestic labor. Most restavek children, however, end up as house slaves who
are treated worse than the family's children, are denied education and are
abused, the study says.

"I believe to a certain extent Haiti's ills, political and otherwise, are
closely linked with the way children in Haiti are being abused," said
Jocelyn McCalla, the study's co-author, who said the acceptance of the
restavek system leads to the acceptance of human rights abuses in Haiti.

The yearlong study, conducted through monitoring and interviewing restaveks,
makes recommendations to the Haitian government, Haitian civil society and
the international community. The study says Haiti should enact tougher child
labor laws, outlaw the practice of restavek and toughen enforcement. It also
asks the international community to step up pressure on the Haitian
government to end the practice and calls on Haitian human rights and other
organizations to increase awareness of and end the restavek practice.

The Haitian government said it is trying to address the problem by combating
the conditions that force parents to give away their children. Minister of
Social Affairs Eude Saint-Preux Craan said Haiti recently passed a law to
combat violence against children. She also said the government is
encouraging peasant cooperatives, providing literacy training and expanding
school access for children in rural areas.

"We welcome the recommendations of the NCHR report, and in fact their
recommendations are along the lines of what the government of Haiti is
already doing," she said.

The study's authors and other community leaders expressed concern that the
restavek practice might have made its way in some form to the United States.

In 1999, Haitian-American leaders expressed outrage over the case of a
12-year-old girl who said she was kept as a maid in the home of a Pembroke
Pines family and sexually abused by the 20-year-old son in the family.

Leonie Hermantin, of Sant La, the Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami, said
she is unaware of other restavek cases in South Florida. Her organization,
however, recently helped the family of a dying woman whose three children
were undocumented immigrants. The organization was concerned that the
children might end up in the hands of non-relatives, but the children's
grandmother was appointed as their guardian instead, Hermantin said.

Merrie Archer, co-author of the report, said the Immigration and
Naturalization Service has tried to be on the lookout for immigrants who
might have restavek children with them.

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.


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