Haiti's "Restavec" Slave Children: Difficult Choices, Difficult Lives . . . Yet . . . Lespwa fe Viv
- The author states that Haiti has no official statistics on restavec children and cites 250,000 victims of the practice.
- He states that the restavec child is typically a girl of about nine years or younger, born into extreme poverty, and that over three-quarters of the servants are girls.
- He describes how children become restavec through the death of parents, labor for relatives or the sale of the child's services in the hope of better food.
- He argues that the best-interest-of-the-child clause of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is clearly violated by a childhood of domestic service.
- He concludes that public and private efforts can only create pockets of change and calls for international support, enforcement of international law and awareness raising.
Timothy C. Janak of the RAICE Institute for Societal Empowerment (RISE) wrote this article for volume 8 of the International Journal of Children's Rights. He states that the Haitian government has no official statistics and that the child he describes is one of 250,000 victims of the restavec practice. The article sets the practice in Haiti's history of poverty and oppression, the role of skin color and class, and the paths by which children become restavec, including the death of parents, kinship labor and sale of a child's services.
It reviews international statistics on child domestic service and the legal instruments on child labor, including articles 2, 3, 6 and 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The author concludes that public and private efforts can create pockets of change but cannot eliminate the practice, and calls on the international community to support current projects and enforce international law.
How to cite
International Journal of Children's Rights, 2000, Haiti's "Restavec" Slave Children: Difficult Choices, Difficult Lives . . . Yet . . . Lespwa fe Viv, accessed via HaitiDocs, https://www.haitidocs.org/doc/ijcr-2000-restavec-slave-children-haiti
- Rights holder
- International Journal of Children's Rights