Voodooists honor victims of Haiti’s earthquake

By MIKE MELIA
The Associated Press

Published: Monday, March 29, 2010 at 8:18 a.m.

Jorge Saenz / The Associated Press

A woman kisses the feet of Voodoo leader Max Beauvoir during ceremony in honor of the victims of the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, March 28, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12, killing and injuring thousands and leaving more than a million people living in makeshift camps.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Hundreds of Voodoo practitioners chanted, prayed and pounded drums Sunday to honor earthquake victims in an unusually public ceremony for a religion most often celebrated in private homes. 

The white-clad Voodooists, many with black sashes around their arms, walked under the scorching Caribbean sun from a downtown plaza to the shoreline, where they asked for the spirits of the dead to be cleansed in the ocean and sent on their way to reincarnation.

“Without us, there is no Haiti,” said Voodoo priest Jean Claude Bazil, claiming his religion as the country’s true path. “We have to pull ourselves together to save Haiti.” 

The Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed a government-estimated 230,000 people, roused tensions among Haiti’s religions as some of the outpouring of aid has been funneled through Christian groups. A ceremony in a seaside slum last month was disrupted by angry crowds that threw rocks at Voodoo practitioners. 

Organizers of Sunday’s memorial chose a location amid the rubble of the shattered city center and promoted the event with radio advertisements in an effort to increase acceptance of Voodoo, which was sanctioned as an official religion in 2003 by the Haitian government. Haitian National Police kept a close watch from pickup trucks, but there was no violence – only prayers. 

“Voodoo is not a secret society,” said Max Beauvoir, a Voodoo priest who wore a feathered cap and a string of brightly colored beads as he presided over the ceremony at the United Nations park. 

The rest of the article can be found below:

http://www.newschief.com/article/20100329/NEWS/3295023/1022

Open Letter to Valerie G: A Cry For Help

 

March 31, 2010

Dear Valerie,

It’s been a while. I haven’t seen you since since June 1974 in front of Hibbard Hall. Z. Chin, T. Cook, you and I were saying goodbye. I saw you in a recent alumni magazine and thought, I know that woman..

I’m living in Haiti. I’ve been here since 1985. Things are bad down here. If they weren’t this bad I would never be disrupting you from your busy schedule. The UN Donor Conference today is a sham. Please find a way to get the imput of everyday Haitians in the decision making process. I understand that Bill Clinton has been given this piece of the Foreign Policy Pie but unfortunately folks “trying to help” Haiti are being played by folks who have brought Haiti to the status of “Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere”. There has to be some fundamental change here.

I originally came to Haiti to play music and to research Rhythms. My mother, if you may recall is Haitian. As I said, I have been living here since 1985 and I’ve been through countless COUP’s, massacres, two US invasions, Two UN occupying forces, countless devastating hurricanes and now one indescribable killer EarthQuake. The two elections held here last year were fraudulent and yet no International Organization, including the UN, spoke out. I expressed those views to the UN Secretary General’s Spokesperson and at a meeting at the Supreme Court in Washington DC last year. I’ve visited Washington DC on numerous occasions in reference to Haiti. I’ld rather just play music and chill at my small but comfortable hotel but sometimes INJUSTICE rears it’s ugly head and I feel i have to make a stand and take some time from the pleasures I find in life.

My musicians are sleeping in tent cities. My hotel staff are mostly living in tents. I talk to the journalists, I talk to the Haitian People, I talk FOR the Haitian People, I talk to embassy folks, I talk to local grassroots organizers and I talk to diplomats. SOMETHING IS DEFINITELY WRONG DOWN HERE and I want things to get aired out before major decisions are made after this Donors Conference. I’m calling out to you. I hope you understand. Forgive me for anything I may have said or done..

This is a desperate Cry For Help..
Yours truly,
Richard

Richard Morse
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-morse/open-letter-to-valerie-g_b_519843.html

Picture of the day

De quoi Haïti est le nom

De quoi Haïti est le nom, Benjamin Fernandez

Source: Africultures

      La tragédie que vit en ce moment le peuple haïtien après le séisme qui dévasta le Sud d’Haïti le 12 janvier aura aussi été marquée par le passage d’un nouveau palier dans l’échelle de l’instrumentalisation des images. Exciter l’émotion plutôt que de susciter la réflexion et accompagner la compréhension n’est pas un procédé nouveau dans le jeu des grands médias audiovisuels internationaux. Mais jamais les chaînes télévisées n’avaient montré autant d’avidité à abreuver d’images de douleur vive, de violences et de désespoir. Cadavres qui jonchent les rues, hommes en armes, individus qui se ruent sur des vivres largués par hélicoptères, secouristes attaqués par des bandits. Il aura fallu une semaine pour qu’apparaissent les premières images montrant les actes de solidarité et la mobilisation de la population haïtienne. Pour que les Haïtiens cessent d’apparaître sur les écrans uniquement comme des victimes passives ou réduits à la violence pour survivre. Les gens avaient tout perdu, on les privait encore de la pudeur et de la dignité dans la souffrance et la peur du lendemain.
      Intolérable est la misère d’Haïti qui a rendu possible un tel désastre. Inacceptables aussi sont les images dégradantes et les discours médiatiques qui répandent la rhétorique de la fatalité et de la faute. Haïti, ” pays maudit “, sur lequel ” le sort s’acharne “, ” condamné au malheur “, victime d’une ” malédiction “, pouvait-on lire dans les titres. Les professionnels de l’information ont répété en toute bonne conscience les sermons apocalyptiques des évangélistes qui imputent les malheurs du peuple haïtien à un pacte passé avec le malin, et ce depuis les ” campagnes antisataniques ” de l’époque de l’occupation américaine du début du XXe siècle qui rasaient les péristyles vaudous et persécutaient les vaudouisants, c’est-à-dire la quasi-totalité de la population haïtienne.
      L’atrocité des images et l’indécence des commentaires ne sauraient occulter les raisons d’un tel désastre. L’extrême fragilité de ce pays ne doit rien au hasard ou à la fatalité. Haïti est l’histoire du peuple qui le premier s’est libéré de l’esclavage, en mettant en déroute l’armée napoléonienne, qui a été en retour isolée par l’Occident pour que sa révolution ne s’étende pas au-delà de ses frontières. Qui a dû rembourser à la France une dette impayable (150 millions francs or réclamés en 1825) pour prix de la reconnaissance de son indépendance. Qui a subi les dictatures les plus féroces, soutenues par la France et les États-Unis, quand les nations du Nord avaient décidé de briser les velléités de révolution socialiste, qui a été assujetti par les institutions financières internationales à des plans d’ajustement structurels qui ont miné les fondements de l’économie agricole et des services publics, poussant des millions d’Haïtiens vers les bidonvilles de la capitale et les usines de manufacture multinationales. Un peuple qui a finalement été mis sous perfusion d’aides financières dans le but d’endiguer les flux de migrants vers les côtes de la Floride et des Antilles françaises ; pays ignoré et méprisé, donc, qui n’a jamais compté que sur lui-même et la torrentielle énergie qui irrigue sa culture pour garder la tête haute dans cette lente descente aux enfers.
      Car si, pendant que les yeux sont fugitivement fixés sur la première république noire de l’histoire, chacun aujourd’hui se demande par quelle malédiction Haïti s’est retrouvée dans cet état de délabrement, personne ne s’est demandé comment elle y a dignement survécu jusqu’à maintenant. Ainsi, plutôt que de la malédiction, l’esprit superstitieux pourrait y voir un miracle : celui d’un pays qui fait face depuis deux cents ans à l’oppression et la misère, qui résiste dans les conditions les plus difficiles du monde contemporain.
     

D’autres images, d’autres regards, une autre réalité

      C’est justement ce que les caméras n’ont pas su capter : malgré la violence, la misère et la destruction, les habitants résistent au chaos par des gestes de solidarité et d’inventivité auxquels ils ont toujours eu recours. Au cœur de la tourmente et de l’incertitude, un nombre important de gens s’est immédiatement mis à porter secours aux autres, à essayer de s’en sortir collectivement. Les gens s’entraidaient, pour déblayer les corps, sortir les survivants, pour permettre aux gens de communiquer avec leurs proches, de recharger les téléphones portables sur des batteries de voiture. Des comités de quartier se sont organisés pour gérer les ressources collectives, essence, eau, nourriture et génératrices. Infirmiers et guérisseurs traditionnels se sont retrouvés au chevet des blessés. Beaucoup des étrangers travaillant en Haïti, attachés à la population haïtienne, ont refusé d’être rapatriés, et sont restés pour participer à l’aide d’urgence.
      Dans plusieurs villes du sud de l’île, qui ont subi autant de dommage que la capitale et sont restées plusieurs jours coupés de l’extérieur, les habitants se sont organisés pour porter secours aux blessés, enterrer les morts, distribuer équitablement les vivres et les soins malgré l’urgence. Comme à Jacmel, située à quarante kilomètres de Port au Prince, où la population a réagi collectivement à la catastrophe, alors que les premiers secours ont mis plus de six jours à arriver. Une école de cinéma, qui a vu le jour en 2008 dans la municipalité, s’est improvisée comme centre de communication. En dépit des dommages matériels et humains subis, les étudiants depuis le jour du drame ont récupéré le matériel audiovisuel en état de marche et sont à pied d’œuvre pour filmer les images et transmettre les informations qui permettent de garder contact avec l’extérieur (1). Les reportages qu’ils diffusent montrent une toute autre réalité que celle dépeinte par les chaînes de télévision internationales. Ils témoignent d’un tissu de solidarité sociale, et de l’engagement sans faille des jeunes haïtiens pour faire face au drame, pour peu qu’ils disposent de quelques moyens et de formation.
      Tout visiteur qui s’aventure en Haïti est frappé par cela : l’énergie qui anime si puissamment ses habitants et donne à toute chose dans ce pays une mystérieuse intensité. Haïti a des millions de gens qui l’expriment dans des gestes du quotidien, il a des poètes, des peintres, des écrivains pour le raconter. Sait-on que ce petit croissant d’île plissé dans l’échancrure de la Caraïbe, en dépit de l’analphabétisme écrasant, est le foyer de production de littérature francophone le plus dynamique en dehors de la France ? Que la poésie y a une place de choix dans les programmes scolaires ? Que dans les bidonvilles, la peinture est aussi populaire que le football ? L’on y peint ses rêves, comme on rêve d’un autre avenir.
      ” Quand tout tombe, il reste la culture, témoignait l’écrivain Danny Laferrière après la catastrophe. Et la culture, c’est la seule chose que Haïti a produite. Ça va rester. Ce n’est pas une catastrophe qui va empêcher Haïti d’avancer sur le chemin de la culture. Et ce qui sauve cette ville, c’est le peuple. C’est lui qui fait la vie dans la rue, qui crée cette vie”  (2).
      Il y a tout à refaire, mais les Haïtiens savent le faire, recommencer. Ils y ont été contraints tout au long de leur histoire. Ils ont montré ces jours-ci encore qu’ils ont en eux ce qu’il faut, le courage et l’obstination. C’est dans cette culture, de solidarité et de créativité, que se trouveront aussi sans aucun doute les ferments de la reconstruction, et peut-être d’un avenir plus radieux que le passé pour le peuple haïtien.

Benjamin Fernandez

1.Site de l’école du film de Jacmel Cinélekol : http://www.cineinstitute.com

2. http://www.cyberpresse.ca/international/amerique-latine/seisme-en-haiti/201001/13/01-938869-le-message-de-dany-laferriere.php. Dany Laferrière a été récompensé du prix Médicis en 2009 pour son livre “L’énigme du retour”, publié aux éditions Grasset.

1.Site de l’école du film de Jacmel Cinélekol : http://www.cineinstitute.com

2. http://www.cyberpresse.ca/international/amerique-latine/seisme-en-haiti/201001/13/01-938869-le-message-de-dany-laferriere.php. Dany Laferrière a été récompensé du prix Médicis en 2009 pour son livre “L’énigme du retour”, publié aux éditions Grasset.

Cruise controversy in Haiti

Haiti, Religion, and Culture

 

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor in African American Studies and  American Studiesf at  Wesleyan University has recently written a number of articles and given several public  interviews on the subjects of Haitian culture, politics, and religion . These will hopefully help interested American public and the world at large  to be educated about the Haitian culture and experience.

“Interview on Vodou in Haiti,”  New York Times Interactive
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/haitivoices.html

“Understanding the Haiti Earthquake” Interfaith Voices Public Radio Int’l
http://interfaithradio.org/node/1218

“Devil’s Logic:  Behind Pat Roberton’s Haitian Blame Game” on Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/haiti-earthquake-pat-robertson-opinions-contributors-elizabeth-mcalister.html

“Voodoo View of the Quake” on Newsweek/Washington Post On Faith
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/voodoos_view_of_the_quake_in_haiti.html

“Voodoo Brings Solace to Grieving Haitians,” NPR All Things Considered
http://ww.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122770590

“Why Does Haiti Suffer So Much?”  on CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/18/mcalister.haiti.faith/

“Haiti’s Musical Traditions, Past and Present” on The Takeaway/WNYC Radio
http://mediasearch.wnyc.org/m/28423534/haiti-s-musical-traditions-past-and-present.htm

“Keith and Gail talk with Elizabeth McAlister about Haiti” on Fox Radio
http://www.600kcol.com/podcast/keith_and_gail.xml

“Cover Story:  Resurrection of the Dead” New Yorker online
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/01/cover-story-frantz-zephirin.html

Love and Haiti

Conde Nast Traveler (September 2009)

URL:  http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/501372

Love and Haiti

By Amy Wilenz

You can call Haiti the Cleopatra of countries—its ravishing natural assets, thrilling history, and magnetic culture have long made select visitors swoon. Its tortured past, however, has made it the Caribbean nation that tourism largely forgot. But this, reports Amy Wilentz, may have to change.

This is a love song. It’s a Haitian love song, played on three drums and an electric slide guitar that never sounds quite on key. No question, you can dance to it.

I’m writing this song not just for me but on behalf of the thousands who have come to Haiti over the centuries and been touched by it, moved by it, even changed forever: the writer Zora Neale Hurston and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was the first U.S. ambassador to Haiti. The actors John Gielgud, John Barrymore, Richard Burton, and, more recently, Danny Glover, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie. I’m writing for rock stars Mick Jagger and David Byrne and for rapper Wyclef Jean (who’s actually Haitian-American, and who introduced some of the aforementioned to his homeland), and for the great anthropologist, physician, and author Paul Farmer.

I’m also writing this love song for Maya Deren and Katherine Dunham, both of whom documented traditional Haitian dance and were bitten by the Haiti bug. This song goes out, too, to director Jonathan Demme, whose son was named after a Haitian shantytown, whose walls are covered with Haitian art, and whose films always have a Haitian touch. In this eclectic group are other writers, also: William Styron, Lillian Hellman, and Haiti’s greatest foreign fictionalizer, Graham Greene.

Let’s not forget eternally optimistic Congressman Dick Durbin, longtime lover of Haiti, or Bill Clinton (the third U.S. president ever to visit—and now the UN’s special envoy to the country), or Jimmy Carter, who came to monitor elections, or possibly the grandest of foreign dignitaries who fell for Haiti, Franklin Roosevelt, who drafted one of the country’s many constitutions (that’s how we conducted foreign policy back then) and was the first U.S. president to visit—in 1934. Hats off, too, to the late pontiff Jen-Pol Dè, as we write his name in Creole; he came to Haiti during the time of the dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and said that things had to change.

Not to be too arrogant, but I am also writing this song on behalf of Christopher Columbus.

Haiti is not a place you just visit, as Columbus would surely have told you (he shipwrecked there in 1492). It’s not a stream into which you just dip a toe. Here, you dive in headlong. It drives you crazy—with love, with anxiety, with desire. You fall into its arms as if it’s been waiting forever to receive you.

It hasn’t. And as with any great unrequited love, Haiti’s indifference only makes you crazier for the place.

Haiti is the Cleopatra of countries, a destination unparalleled on so many levels. It has eccentric history and a tri-continental culture. Its syncretic art is singular and explosive, tender and transcendent. In Haiti, even a pile of garlic for sale, a row of plastic bowls from Taiwan, a display of brassieres (locally manufactured), black bags of charcoal standing at drunken angles cheek by jowl, can be a delicate, devilish masterpiece. There is an ethos of making do with what you have that leads to an ability to make much out of little, to make magisterial statements out of the least materials: With two or three beans, a chicken feather, an old rag of worn-out satin, and a hollowed-out gourd, a voodoo priest can make a whimsical charm that wards off evil.

 Read the rest of the article at http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/501372

*  “Amy Wilenz could have added to the list of well known Haitianophiles Simon Bolivar, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Aime Cesaire, Alejo Carpentier, Andre Breton, et j’en passe,  open-minded and cosmopolitan men and women  who could recognize, beyond the usual cliches associated with Haiti, an intellectually keen, culturally rich, socially gracious, historically conscious, politically sophisticated,  and spritually aware people” (Dr. Asselin Charles)

Haitian Heritage Museum

Check out this website below:

Haitian Heritage Museum

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE HAITIAN DIASPORA

2nd ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE HAITIAN DIASPORA TRUMP INTERNATIONAL BEACH RESORTS, MIAMI,FLORIDA THURSDAY, AUGUST 6th – SUNDAY, AUGUST 9th, 2009 Schedule
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6th, 2009
8:00 AM – 12:00 PM	Exhibits/Vendor/Sponsor Check in – Bay Room
9:00 AM – 1:00 PM	Sponsor/Vendor/Sponsor Check in – Bay Room
3:00 PM – 10:00 PM	Registration – Bay Room
3:00 PM – 10:00 PM	Lost and Found – Bay Room
3:00 PM – 7:00 PM	VIP Room – Ocean Room
3:00 PM – 7:00 PM	Sponsor Open – Bay Room
3:00 PM – 7:00 PM	Registration/Technology Café
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM	REGISTRATION – Experts and Community leaders will address the Challenges of the Haitian Diaspora and the Daunting Sustainable Economic Development of Haiti
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM	WELCOME, celebrations, get-to-know-you reception.
FRIDAY AUGUST 7 th, 2009
MORNING SESSION – HAITI ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ARMS I
7:00 AM – 7:50	Registration, Breakfast, Get to Know You.
7:50 AM – 8:00 AM	Invocation
8:00 AM – 8:40 AM	The State of the Country
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM	Panel A1: Boosting Agriculture Panel B1: Improving Water Management
10:40 AM – 12:00 PM	Panel A2: Restoring Forests and Ecology Panel B2: Education & Health
12:00 PM – 12:50 PM	Lunch & Entertainment
AFTERNOON SESSION – HAITI ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ARMS II
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM	Panel A3: Repairing and Extending Infrastructure Panel B3: Stimulating and Preparing Tourism
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM	Panel A4: Promoting Artisanal and Ecotourism Industries Panel B4: Literacy and vocational Training as arms to Sustained Job Creation
4:00 PM – 4:50 PM	Diaspora Remittances & sustained development, Solidarity Fund.
EVENING SESSION – BUSINESS IN HAITI
7PM- 10:00 PM	” HAITI IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS” “Haiti Center for Facilitation of Investments” Reception
SATURDAY AUGUST 8th, 2009
MORNING SESSION – DIASPORA COMMUNITY BUILDING AND EMPOWERMENT I
7:00 AM – 7:50 AM	Faith based Breakfast – The Role of The church
8:00 AM – 08:40 AM	Roll Call by States or countries and Reports on the 2008 Congress Resolutions
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM	Panel A5: Diaspora Immersion / Integration / Education / Health Panel B5: Economic Development & Business
10:40 AM – 12:00 PM	Panel A6: Overcoming Immigration & Justice inequalities Panel B6: Civic Involvement
12:00 PM – 12:50 PM	Lunch and Entertainment
AFTERNOON SESSION – ASSISTING DEVELOPMENT IN HAITI
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM	Panel A7 : Future Leaders Round table (Diaspora & Haiti’s Youth) Panel B7: Dual National, Diaspora Vote in Haiti’s Elections, Safe Return.
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM	Diaspora Youth Challenges: Drop outs, violence, gangs, Deportees.
4:00 PM – 4:40 PM	Deliberations and closing remarks.
EVENING SESSION
8:00 PM – 1:00 AM	Diner Award Gal Celebrations.
SUNDAY AUGUST 9th, 2009
8:00 AM – 11:00 AM	Government Officials, Donors and Investors’ roundtable
2:00- XX	OPTIONAL CRUISES / FESTIVAL

UN report puts pressure on Canada to end Haitian slavery

34557: Durban (pub): UN report puts pressure on Canada to end Haitian slavery (fwd)

Friday, June 12, 2009 7:28 AM

From:

“Bob Corbett” <corbetre@webster.edu>

Add sender to Contacts

To:

“Bob Corbett’s Haiti list” <haiti@lists.webster.edu>

Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com> posts this item found online…

UN report puts pressure on Canada to end Haitian slavery

By Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
June 10, 2009

UNITED NATIONS — The chief United Nations investigator on slavery signalled Wednesday that Haiti — the only nation born of a slave revolt — has entrenched child enslavement through its long-denounced “restavek” system.

The finding by Gulnara Shahinian after she toured the Caribbean nation raises pressure on Canada and other major aid donors to the country to focus more on eliminating the blight.

Named for the Haitian francophone Creole term meaning “stay with,” the system is supposed give parents unable to care for their children an opportunity to send them to more affluent relatives or strangers in urban areas. There, the children would receive food, shelter and education in exchange for “light” housework.

But Shahinian said the practice subjects children to multiple forms of abuse, including economic exploitation, sexual violence and corporal punishment. Hours of work typically run from early in the morning until the last adult in the home goes to bed at night, witnesses have said.

While family-to-family placements have long occurred, paid recruiters now scour the country looking for children to traffic both within and outside Haiti, Shahinian found.

The majority of the demand has also shifted in recent years from wealthy families to poor ones, she reports.

“This practice is a severe violation of the most fundamental rights of the child,” said Shahinian, an Armenian national.

“(It) reinforces a vicious cycle of violence. It should be stopped immediately.”

The International Labour Organization estimates that 300,000 children work as restaveks in Haiti, population eight million.

Shahinian reports children are delivered to work for urban families “as child slaves in domestic work and outside the home in markets.”

A UN summary of her visit says witnesses gave her “various accounts” of the practice as she visited the capital, Port-au-Prince, Les Cayes in the southwest, and Ouanaminthe on the northern part of the border with the Dominican Republic.

She “expressed deep concern,” says the summary. “She considers it to be a modern form of slavery.”

As part of the $555 million in Canadian aid to Haiti over five years, the Canadian International Development Agency has provided millions of dollars to cover school fees and lunches for thousands of Haitian youngsters from impoverished backgrounds.

But Shahinian said more needs to be done to give poor families the means to keep their children and send them to school.

“The issue should be put urgently on the highest priority agenda of the (Haitian) government and the international community,” said the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

Haiti is Canada’s biggest overseas aid focus after Afghanistan.

“The agency is aware of the restavek problem, and we’re investing in a wide range of programs that we believe will attack it and other ills in Haiti,” said Jean-Luc Benoit, spokesman for International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda.

Shahinian acknowledged that decades of political instability and a series of recent natural disasters “have further deepened poverty and enhanced human insecurity” in Haiti, the western hemisphere’s poorest country.

She also noted the Haitian government had taken some steps to try to protect the rights of restavek children, despite being cash-strapped.

But a law stating employers must pay people from age 15 for work has often resulted in restaveks being thrown onto the streets at that age.

Among a series of recommendations, Shahinian called on the Haitian government to place greater administrative focus on “vulnerable children.”

She also called on the government to ensure “compulsory and free primary education,” and to help children in rural areas gain better access to schools.