225,000 Forced into Child Slave Labor in Haiti

Haiti, slave, child, labor, human rights, slavery, sweatshop

Haiti allegedly has almost a quarter-million children subjugated to working slave labor, says a recent report. AP says:

 

The Pan American Development Foundation‘s report also said some of those children — mostly young girls — suffer sexual, psychological and physical abuse while toiling in extreme hardship.

The report recommends Haiti’s government and international donors focus efforts on educating the poor and expanding social services such as shelters for girls, who make up an estimated two-thirds of the child servant population.

Young servants are known as “restavek” — Haitian Creole for “stays with” — and their plight is both widely known and a source of great shame in the Caribbean nation that was founded by a slave revolt more than 200 years ago.

Researchers said the practice is so common that almost half of 257 children interviewed in the sprawling Port-au-Prince shantytown of Cite Soleil were household slaves.

BBC says:

At the age of four he was given to another family soon after his mother died. For the next 16 years he slept under a kitchen table, was forbidden to smile, laugh or speak unless spoken to, and endured sexual abuse and savage beatings.

Thirty years later, he says, the abuse of restavek children in Haiti continues.

“They use a cow hide whip. One hit will split your skin open,” he says.

“Some families who own these children, they still use cheese graters – you will find they have two of them.

“One for the normal cooking in the kitchen, and if they have an old rusty one, they use it to punish the child. The child has to kneel on a cheese grater after the beating.”

Cincinnatti.com:

Jean-Robert Cadet, a former “restavec” or child slave in Haiti, recently paid a visit to the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students at St. Aloysius Gonzaga School in Bridgetown.

During his visit, Cadet gave students at the Green Township school a firsthand account of his childhood in Haiti and his subsequent efforts to end child slavery there. A Cincinnati resident and the author of “Restavec: From Haitian Slave to Middle-Class American,” Cadet has been featured on CNN, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and elsewhere, and he has spoken throughout the country and at the United Nations to raise awareness about restavecs in Haiti. 

In addition, he founded the Jean R. Cadet Restavec Foundation to raise awareness about and bring an end to child slavery in Haiti.

Kathy Kremer, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade religion and social studies at St. Al’s, organized the visit after hearing Cadet speak at Crossroads church in Oakley. Touched by his message, she wanted to share it with her students.

“Hearing it from me is secondhand,” she said. “To hear it from him and to hear his experiences, I think really made an impression on them.” 

After Cadet’s talk, the students presented him with a check for $169 to support his foundation’s work, which includes paying for schooling for restavecs. Students raised the funds by paying 50 cents to $1 to be out of uniform during a school day in November.

Kremer hopes Cadet’s visit will have a long-lasting impact on her students. Already, she said, students have been talking about how else they can help his foundation, and they’re considering future fundraising activities.

“I think it opened their eyes to the fact that even in 2009, the rest of the world isn’t as neat and clean as their world,” she said of Cadet’s visit.