Haiti: Restavèk

Thursday, August 14th, 2008 @ 14:24 UTC

by Janine Mendes-Franco

Countries:
Haiti
Topics:
Children, Cyber-Activism, Development, Economics, Education, History, Human Rights, Labor, Law, Youth
Languages:
English

“The restavèk practice essentially throws away the lives of children and along with them Haiti’s future”: jmc strategies maintains that no matter how you slice it, “the practice of ‘lending’ a child away to go and live with well-off families” is still a form of slavery.

2 comments

  • Chantal

    I guess by the definition that is cited in the article;

    “They are the same attributes that described a slave in the past: the state of control exercised over the slave based on violence or its threat, a lack of any payment beyond subsistence, and the theft of the labor or other qualities of the slave for economic gain.”

    The US criminal injustice system that locks up over 10% of the population, where the majority of the incarcerated are low level drug offenders, who are disproportionally Black and Latino, and who are put to work building up the revenues of big corporations in the US, is employing slavery.

    Eradicating and raising awareness of this injustice should be part of the mission of this charity.

    # 2008-08-14 at 22:01 pm
    Reply to this
  • Chantal

    One percent of the US population in jail.

    # 2008-08-14 at 22:10 pm
    Reply to this

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