12013: Press Release (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: perard joseph <cqrdthrdinc@sprint.ca>


Quebec Committee for the Recognition of the Rights of Haitian Workers in the
Dominican Republic
5174-RC, rue Drolet, Montréal, (Québec), Canada, H2T 2H3
Téléphone/ Télécopieur: (514) 523-2434
Courriel: cqrdthrdinc@sprint.ca


PRESSE RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION

 Haitian children in the Dominican Republic :
without status and without rights


(Montreal, May 13th, 2002) The Quebec Committee for the Recognition of the
Rights of Haitian Workers in the Dominican Republic
will be an active participant at the Special Session dedicated to children
and adolescents of the world that will take place from the 8th to the 10th
of May, 2002 at the headquarters of the UN in New York.

The Quebec Committee has submitted a report on the violation of the rights
of Haitian children in the Dominican Republic. A crushing situation if ever
there was one: they are refused citizenship and are therefore excluded from
any right to health, education, decent and clean living conditions, and are
exploited in the workplace, victims of various forms of trafficking
approaching slavery, etc.

The difficulty experienced by the Dominican authorities in taking the
necessary measures to normalise the status of Haitian children and the
improvement of their living conditions impels the Comité québécois to make
the following recommendations :

To the Dominican government :

Recognise all children born in the Dominican Republic as full citizens;
Offer all school-age children on sugar cane plantations the right and the
means to register in school and to pursue their studies.

To the Haitian government :
Improve and inaugurate agricultural programmes designed to retain their
citizenry ;
Provide a birth certificate to each Haitian citizen.

To the Haitian and Dominican governments :
Ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of
Migrant Workers.

 To the United Nations :
Request that the Dominican Republic respect the various international
conventions
Encourage developed nations to provide resources to assist the Dominican
Republic to put into place the necessary reforms with a view to giving
status to Haitian children on Dominican territory.
Intercede with the Dominican Republic in order to forbid family separations


Above all, the Dominican government must assume its responsibilities by
virtue of its own Constitution and the international conventions of which it
is a signatory, and the UN must encourage developed nations to assist the
Dominican Republic in the interest of sustainable development.

The Quebec Committee invites the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Canada to do
all they can to ensure that the lives of Haitian children in the Dominican
Republic might be transformed in the sense of the objectives of the
Convention Relative to the Rights of the Child adopted by the General
Assembly of the United Nations in 1990, which will be updated at the Special
Session of the UN in May 2002.

Furthermore, the Quebec Committee invites Canada to establish as a priority
the rights of the child within the framework of its foreign policy and its
community development assistance. The Comité québécois encourages Canada to
take a leading role championing the rights of the child at the world level,
in order to ensure their survival and their development, and to shelter them
from exploitation and abuse. Finally, the Quebec Committee strongly
encourages Canada to support international initiatives, notably measures in
favour of children affected by discrimination and for the reduction of
poverty and the indebtedness of developing nations such as the Republic of
Haiti and the Dominican Republic.



For more information or to receive a copy of the report :

contact Pérard Joseph at Phone/fax. : (514) 523-2434