Quarter of a million children in Haiti are slaves

[ck4829]

Poverty has forced at least 225,000 children in Haiti's cities into slavery as unpaid household servants, far more than previously thought, a report said Tuesday.

The Pan American Development Foundation's report also said some of those children — mostly young girls — suffer sexual, psychological and physical abuse while toiling in extreme hardship.

The report recommends Haiti's government and international donors focus efforts on educating the poor and expanding social services such as shelters for girls, who make up an estimated two-thirds of the child servant population.

Young servants are known as "restavek" — Haitian Creole for "stays with" — and their plight is both widely known and a source of great shame in the Caribbean nation that was founded by a slave revolt more than 200 years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091222/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_haiti_child_slaves

[Barack_America]

1. Looks like they're due for another one.

Revolt, that is.

How sad. If I were a rich woman, I would send some of those girls to school in exchange for helping me to reforest the island.

[Bobbieo]

2. George Bush's Global Gag Order signed in 2000 contributed to this.

It cut off funding to International Planned Parenthood. I say it was his pledge to world corporations to create a never ending supply of slave labor.