{{Short description|Name for a working child in Haiti}} A '''restavek''' (or '''restavec''') is a child in Haiti who is sent away by their parents to live with a host household as a form of informal adoption because the parents lack the resources required to support the child.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.dadychery.org/2014/06/14/homage-to-my-mothers-restavek-vodou-and-haitis-stolen-children/ |title=Homage to My Mothers: Restavek, Vodou, and Haiti's Stolen Children |first=Dadi |last=Chery |date=14 June 2014 |access-date=May 24, 2024}}</ref> The term comes from the French language {{Lang|fr|rester avec}}, "to stay with". Parents unable to care for children may send them to live with wealthier (or less poor) families, often their own relatives or friends. Often the children are from rural areas, and relatives who host restaveks live in more urban settings. The expectation is that the children will be given food and housing (and sometimes an education) free of charge in exchange for helping with chores. Although most honor their commitments, some host households do not fulfill their promises to the restaveks' parents; these children live a standard below others in the household, may not receive proper education, and are at grave risk for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.<ref>{{Cite journal |title = Island Possessed| pages = 43–44| year = 1994| last1 = Dunham | first1 = Katherine }}</ref>
The restavek system is tolerated in Haitian culture, but not considered to be preferable{{Citation needed|date=November 2022}}. The practice meets formal international definitions of modern day slavery and child trafficking, and is believed to affect an estimated 300,000 Haitian children.<ref name="kennedy14">{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1353/hrq.2014.0059| title = Toward Effective Intervention for Haiti's Former Child Slaves| journal = Human Rights Quarterly| volume = 36| issue = 4| pages = 756–778| year = 2014| last1 = Kennedy | first1 = C. L. | s2cid = 144412249}}</ref> The number of child domestic workers in Haiti, defined as 1) living away from parents' home; 2) not following normal progression in education; and 3) working more than other children, is more than 400,000. 25% of Haitian children age 5–17 live away from their biological parents.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sommerfelt|first=Tone|date=October 2014|title=Child Domestic Workers in Haiti 2014|url=https://www.haiti-now.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Report-Haiti-Child-Domestic-Workers-31072015.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190604042524/https://www.haiti-now.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Report-Haiti-Child-Domestic-Workers-31072015.pdf|archive-date=June 4, 2019|url-status=live|website=www.haiti-now.org}}</ref>
== History == [[File:100115-F-4177H-177 (4279940154).jpg|thumb|300px|Houses in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince shortly after the 2010 earthquake]] The restavek tradition dates back centuries.<ref name=Smith11>{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1007/s12142-010-0181-8| title = Human Trafficking in Conflict Zones: The Role of Peacekeepers in the Formation of Networks| journal = Human Rights Review| volume = 12| issue = 3| pages = 287–299| year = 2010| last1 = Smith | first1 = C. A. | last2 = Miller-de la Cuesta | first2 = B. | doi-access = free}}</ref>
Following the January 2010 earthquake, thousands of individuals in Haiti were displaced from their homes and families. According to anecdotal evidence, many of these individuals were children who had nowhere to turn but to become part of the Haitian restavek population. Along with displacement due to natural disasters, children are solicited as restaveks by recruiters looking to find domestic servants for families.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://www.haiti-now.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Urban-Child-Labor-PAP-Haiti-2012.pdf|title=Urban Child Labor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti|last=Howell|first=Holly|website=www.haiti-now.org}}{{dead link|date=April 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
Many street children are former domestic servants who were dismissed by or ran away from the families they worked for. These children have not fully escaped the restavek life. Instead, they become part of a different level that results in their exploitation in begging rings and prostitution.<ref name=":0" />
== Conditions == Many parents send their children to be restaveks, expecting them to have a better life than possible in poor rural areas.<ref name="ILAB">[http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/media/reports/iclp/Advancing1/html/haiti.htm http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/media/reports/iclp/Advancing1/html/haiti.htm] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090801153301/http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/media/reports/iclp/Advancing1/html/haiti.htm |date=August 1, 2009 }}</ref> Poor rural parents who cannot provide their children with clean water, food, and education send them away, usually to cities, to find these opportunities as restaveks.<ref name="Abrams10"/>
Restaveks are unpaid and have no power or recourse within the host family.<ref name="Abrams10">{{ cite journal |last= Abrams |first=Jennifer S. |title= <nowiki>"</nowiki>The Kids Aren't Alright<nowiki>"</nowiki>: Using a Comprehensive Anti-Trafficking Program to Combat the Restavek System in Haiti |journal=Temple International & Comparative Law Journal|volume=24 |issue= 443|year=2010 }}</ref> Unlike slaves in the traditional sense, restaveks can run away or return to their families, and are typically released from servitude when they become adults; however, the restavek system is commonly understood to be a form of slavery.<ref name="Abrams10"/> Often host families dismiss their restaveks before they turn 15, since by law that is the age when they are supposed to be paid; many are then turned out to live on the street.<ref name="Abrams10"/> Increasingly, paid middlemen act as recruiters to place children with host families, and it is becoming more common to place children with strangers.<ref name="Abrams10"/> Children often have no way to get back in touch with their families.<ref name="Abrams10"/>
<!-- LABOR CONDITIONS --> A 2009 study by the Pan American Development Foundation found that "leading indicators of restavek treatment include work expectations equivalent to adult servants and long hours that surpass the cultural norm for children's work at home."<ref name=PADF/> A contradicting 2002 survey found that restaveks were allowed to sleep as long as or longer than the household children, received fewer beatings, 60 percent or more attended school, and many had their own bed or mat.<ref name="Schwartz2009">{{cite book|last=Schwartz|first=Timothy T.|title=Fewer Men, More Babies: Sex, Family, and Fertility in Haiti|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lJNrUCWL8vUC&pg=PA248|year=2009|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=978-0-7391-2867-1|pages=248–}}</ref>
<!-- EDUCATION --> Some restaveks do receive proper nutrition and education, but they are in the minority.<ref name="news24">{{cite web|url=http://www.news24.com/World/News/Haiti-child-slavery-shock-20121205|title=Haiti child slavery shock|work=News24|author= Anastasia Moloney|date=December 5, 2012}}</ref> According to the Pan American Development Foundation,
<blockquote>Education is also an important indicator in detecting child domesticity. Children in domesticity may or may not attend school, but when they do attend, it is generally an inferior school compared to other children ... and their rates of non-enrollment are higher than non-restavèk children in the home.<ref name=PADF>{{cite web|url=http://www.itooamhaiti.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/13583 |title=itooamhaiti.org |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726195930/http://www.itooamhaiti.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/13583 |archive-date=2011-07-26 }}</ref></blockquote>
== Statistics == The estimates for numbers of restaveks in Haiti range from 100,000 to 500,000.<ref name=Balsari10>{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1056/NEJMp1001820| title = Protecting the Children of Haiti| journal = New England Journal of Medicine| volume = 362| issue = 9| pages = e25| year = 2010| last1 = Balsari | first1 = S. | last2 = Lemery | first2 = J. | last3 = Williams | first3 = T. P. | last4 = Nelson | first4 = B. D. | pmid=20164477| s2cid = 19576866| url = http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:30207998| doi-access = free}}</ref> A 2002 door-to-door survey found the number of restaveks under age 17 in Haiti to be 173,000, and 59 percent of them were girls.<ref name="Schwartz2009"/>
As poverty and political turmoil increase, the reported number of restaveks continues to rise dramatically.<ref name = Cohen/> In 2009, the Pan American Development Foundation published the findings of an extensive door-to-door survey conducted in several cities in Haiti, focused on restaveks. The findings documented thousands of restaveks living in Haiti. The report also found that 11% of households who have restaveks working for them send their own children to work as restaveks for someone else.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.itooamhaiti.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/13464 |title=Report |author=Pan American Development Foundation |work=I Too am Haiti |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091223000815/http://itooamhaiti.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/13464 |archive-date=2009-12-23 }}</ref>
It is believed that the widespread damage and displacement caused by the 2010 earthquake has caused many more children to become restaveks. Children who were orphaned by the quake could potentially be turned over to work as restaveks by distant relatives who cannot care for them.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-lost-children-of-haiti-19-03-2010/|title=The Lost Children of Haiti|publisher=60 Minutes of CBS News|author=Scott Pelley|date=March 21, 2010|author-link=Scott Pelley}}</ref>
== Contributing factors == <!-- SOCIETAL --> Two major factors that perpetuate the restavek system are widespread poverty and a societal acceptance of the practice.<ref name="Abrams10"/> Parents who cannot provide for their children continue to send them to be restaveks. Haiti, a nation of 10 million people,<ref name = Cohen>{{cite web | last = Cohen | first = Gigi | date = 2004-03-24 | title = Haiti's Dark secret:The Restaveks | publisher = National Public Radio | url = https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1779562 }}</ref> is the most poverty-stricken in the western hemisphere.<ref name="Abrams10"/> Guerda Lexima-Constant, a child rights advocate with the Haitian Limyè Lavi Foundation, says: <blockquote>I have yet to meet anyone who wanted to send their kid to be a restavek. Parents are forced to because of a lot of national and international givens. The [economic] means they used to have, they don't anymore. The invasion of foreign rice, eggs, and other things on the market by big business, destroying the peasant economy... there's been a whole chain of events that makes some people have to send their child away.<ref name = Bell>Bell, Beverly (2013). ''Fault Lines: Views Across Haiti's Divide.'' Cornell University Press. pp. 143–145 {{ISBN|978-0-8014-7769-0}}.</ref></blockquote>
<!-- SOCIETAL ATTITUDES --> The practice of restavek is widely accepted in Haitian culture, although the upper classes have increasingly begun to look down on it.<ref name="Abrams10"/> The connotation of the word restavek is understood to be negative, implying servility.<ref name="Abrams10"/><ref name="ijdh14">{{cite web|title=The Plight of Restavèk (Child Domestic Servants)|url=http://www.ijdh.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/HRC_Restavek-Sept-12.pdf|work=112th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, October 8 & 9, 2014|date=September 12, 2014}}</ref>
<!-- INDIVIDUAL --> Individual factors that increase a child's likelihood of becoming a restavek include lack of access to clean water, lack of educational opportunities, access to family in a city, and illness or loss of one or both parents.<ref name="Abrams10"/> Haiti has too few orphanages for its abundance of orphans, putting the children at high risk of becoming restaveks.<ref name="Abrams10"/>
== Preventive and restorative efforts == Efforts exist to address the root cause of child servitude. Improving the economy, especially through government support for the rural population, would undermine parents' incentive to give children up, as would an improved health care and education system.<ref name = Bell/> Parents would not be as easily pressured by recruiters to hand their children over to become restaveks if they were provided with aid such as food, clothing, and clean water.<ref name="Abrams10"/>
In May 2009, over 500 Haitian leaders gathered in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to discuss the restavek condition and how to make positive changes to improve this complex problem.<ref name=cadet/> Leaders from all facets of society attended the full-day session and conference organizers from The Jean Cadet Restavec Foundation and Fondation Maurice Sixto hope that this dialog is the start of a large grass-roots movement. They hope, at a minimum, to stop the abuse of restavek children.<ref name=cadet>{{Cite web |url=http://restavek.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1037 |title=Archived copy |access-date=2009-07-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110710144106/http://restavek.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1037 |archive-date=2011-07-10 }}</ref> The Restavec Freedom Foundation hosted 13 additional conferences titled "Compassion and Courage" ({{langx|ht|Kompasyon ak Kouraj}}) across Haiti. These conferences were hosted from the spring 2012 through the spring of 2013, and asked community leaders and pastors to take a stand on the issue of restavek. Over 3,000 leaders participated in these conferences and have agreed to take the lead in their respective communities to bring an end to the restavek practice.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.restavekfreedom.org|title=Restavek Freedom Foundation|work=restavekfreedom.org}}</ref>
Other organizations in Haiti, such as Restavek Freedom Alliance, BEM Inc. are also actively working in south-western Haiti with restavek children.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rfahaiti.org|title=Restavec Freedom Alliance, BEM Inc.|work=rfahaiti.org}}</ref> Organizations such as the Center for Action and Development (CAD) and L'Escale in Port-au-Prince exist to house, feed, and give medical and psychological care to escaped restaveks while working to return them to their families.<ref name="Abrams10"/>
== In popular culture == * Jean-Robert Cadet vividly recounted his life as a restavek. According to him, a term for children staying with host families who do not abuse them is ''timoun ki rete kay moun'' (Kreyol for "child who stays in a person's house").
* ''Law & Order'': "Chattel" (episode 19.8, original airdate January 7, 2009) depicts the discovery, investigation, and disposition of a ring of white Americans who adopt Haitian children and employ them as restaveks.
* In ''The Philanthropist'' episode "Haiti", a girl restavek is a main part of the story.
* ''Boston Legal'': In the episode "Fat Burner" (season 3, episode 15), attorney Clarence Bell represents a girl restavek charged with homicide. After being impregnated by her master, she stabbed the man to death after he had informed her that he intended to sell her baby.<ref>See p. 7 in http://www.boston-legal.org/script/BL03x15.pdf</ref>
== See also == * Human rights in Haiti
== References == {{reflist|2|refs=}}
Category:Society of Haiti Category:Child labour Category:Human rights abuses in Haiti Category:Violence against women in Haiti Category:Child welfare in Haiti Category:Child abuse in Haiti