Country Report: Haiti

Young girls from poor rural families are sent to Haiti's cities for lives of domestic servitude.

A Victim's Story

Map of Haiti When Judith Marcena was 10, her father began to pack a bag and told her she was going to school in the city. Father and daughter traveled by bus to Port-au-Prince, where they slept at the house of one of her father's ex-girlfriends. After her father left early in the morning, Judith's new 'stepmother' turned to her and said, "He doesn't want you. He gave you to me, and you'll do as I say."

Instead of going to school, Judith has to walk the other children to class each morning - only after dumping the chamber pot. She fetches water, cleans the house, cooks meals, and washes dishes from 5 am to 11 pm. She sleeps on the floor and is given very little food. When other children pass by, they hold their noses and call her names. When a neighbor, taking pity on her, gave her 50 centimes (12 cents), her stepmother accused her of stealing and threw a rock at her head.

Called restavecs ("lives with"), timoun qui rete ak moun ("little people who live with big people"), or simply "domestics," Haiti's child slaves now number from 250,000 to 300,000 - one child in every twenty. Most restavecs - an estimated 85% - are girls.

Country Background

Since African slaves rebelled against the control of their European masters and founded the Republic of Haiti in 1804, Haitians have endured violent political uprisings, forced labor by the US marines, and a 29-year brutally repressive dictatorship. Today, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with 80% of its nearly 7 million people living below the poverty line. The land and the forests have been stripped of their resources, and the economy is now mainly composed of sustenance farming.

Causes of Slavery

Partly based in a tradition of society helping those in need and partly based in attitudes of colonialism, the restavec system is deeply ingrained in Haitian culture. At the source is the country's severe poverty, which drives rural families to cast off their children - either because they believe the child's future would improve in the city or because they simply cannot afford enough food.

Due to a growing discomfort with the restavec system, the more affluent now employ adult domestic workers and pay them a wage. Most restavecs are taken in by poor and lower middle-class city dwellers who desire domestic help but are unable to pay a salary.

The Process of Enslavement

Life as a restavec generally begins with a mutually understood lie. An agent approaches a poor rural family proposing that their child, aged from four to fifteen, come to the city to work as a domestic servant and attend school. While the parents often know that their child will not receive an education, they still send their child away with the agent, occasionally in exchange for money.

The child, usually a girl, is taken to the home of the agent or another family. She is the first to rise in the morning, having been assigned general domestic tasks: emptying chamber pots, retrieving buckets of water from remote wells, preparing food, and cleaning the house. And she is usually the last to go to sleep, her "bed" often being a few square feet underneath a table or in the basement.

Most restavecs are fed only one meal a day; in one study, 15-year-old restavecs were found to be 1.5 inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter than other 15-year-olds. These children are beaten regularly for violations such as unfinished or slow work, and girls are often used for the sexual initiation of the boys in the households.

At age 15, the law requires that a child be paid for his or her work. Although this law is not enforced, families commonly release restavecs at this age to avoid paying a salary, adding to Haiti's large population of street children. Without an education or family, and with the stigma of their past, abandoned restavecs have little means of survival.

Groups on the Ground

Most local human rights groups ignore the problem of restavecs in favor of other social and human rights issues, but shelters for restavecs are beginning to appear. Foyers Maurice Sixto (Maurice Sixto Shelters) opened two shelters (one in 1989, the other in 1993) which provide medical attention, food, education, and rescue for restavec children. Haitian Street Kids, Inc. runs Family Circle Boys Home, taking in abandoned and abused restavecs for whom they provide safety and education.

More Information

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