Study: Thousands of Haitan Children Work As Slaves
As many as 225,000 children in Haiti live and work as unpaid domestic servants, the first study to closely examine the issue concluded.
The existence of these arrangements are not new, but the scope is larger than previously thought, a new study by the Pan American Development Foundation found. The foundation conducted the largest field survey of human rights violations in Haiti.
Known as restaveks, these extremely poor children are sent by their families to other homes.
“In principle, parental placement of a restavek child involves turning over child-rearing responsibility to another household in exchange for the child‘s unpaid domestic service,” the study says.
The majority, two-thirds, of restaveks are female, and all are prone to abuse and rape by their host families, the study says.
The movement of the children is from poor homes to less poor homes, sometimes within the same famil (more…)
