ICC Supports Efforts to End Modern-Day Slavery

You might be shocked to know that there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history, even though it is illegal in every country throughout the world. You might be even more shocked to know that the domestic enslavement of children has been illegal in Haiti longer than in any other country. And yet, nearly 1 in 10 Haitian children are domestic slaves. These facts shocked Benjamin Skinner, a journalist writing a book called A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery. While researching for his book, Skinner traveled to Haiti to observe modern-day slavery.

"I pulled up in a car and someone rolled down the window," Skinner recalls. "Someone said, do you want to get a person?" Skinner said that he was offered a 9-year-old girl to use as sexual and domestic slave for $50. According to Skinner, after adjusting for inflation rates, a slave in the 1850s would have cost around $30,000 to $40,000. "The thing that struck me more than anything else afterwards was how incredibly banal the transaction was. It was as if I was negotiating on the street for a used stereo," Skinner said.

The prevalence of street children and "restaveks" (the Creole term for domestic servant) in Haiti began in the 1980s, when large numbers of subsistence farmers began migrating from the rural areas to Port-au-Prince hoping to find better lives and futures for their families. However, when families' dreams of finding employment were dashed, many of the children were sent out onto the streets to fend for themselves or were completely abandoned. Today, the number of street children in Port-au-Prince ranges from 5,000 to 8,000, according to UNICEF and other international charities. Save the Children - Canada reports the number in all of Haiti could be as high as 10,000.

Although the Ministry of Social Affairs, a Haitian governmental organization, exists to help street children and domestic child slaves, it is not effective in reaching large numbers, due to the unstable political and socio-economic conditions that have plagued Haiti for years. The only real way to combat the growing problem of street children and the domestic enslavement of children in Haiti is through NGOs like International Child Care.

Programs like Grace Children's Hospital work to not only heal sick children, but also to promote community health programs in Haiti and emphasize health education, disease prevention, and battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is not uncommon for parents in desperate circumstances to drop their child off at Grace Children's Hospital and never return for them, because they know that ICC will find a safe place for the child to live.

International Child Care also works to provide literacy training to adults, improving their chances of getting a job and decreasing the chance that families will not be able to afford proper care for their children. These are just a few of the ways International Child Care is working to assist the people of Haiti in improving their communities, supporting their families, and getting themselves out of poverty.

To learn more about how you can help International Child Care combat the prevalence of street children and domestic child slavery in Haiti, please contact us. Your donation strengthens International Child Care's efforts to help Haiti's children.

Quotes by Ben Skinner were taken from his interview with National Public Radio on March 11, 2008.