Gonaives, Haiti.- Haiti is not a pleasant place to be a child. While over two thirds of the country’s inhabitants are estimated to be living below the poverty line it is the young who suffer most. The figures make for grim reading. With an under-five mortality rate of 120 in every 1,000 live births over 10% of Haitians never see their 5th birthday. A shocking 40% of children under ten have no access to basic health services and over half of those under five suffer from anemia or malnutrition. On top of this the UN estimates that 17,000 Haitian children are living with HIV/AIDS, and hundreds of thousands in conditions of slavery.

The state is incapable of providing these children with the protection and support they so desperately require. State institutions from the National Police to the Judicial and corrections systems are unable to effectively face up to the enormous challenges the country now faces. With little effective policing children have become attractive targets for a wide array of criminal acts. The UN reports that in the last six months 84 were the victims of rape cases while human trafficking and abuse of all sorts remain prevalent.

Inevitably in such conditions many children, with so little to lose, have turned to crime themselves. Those that get caught end up in horrendously overcrowded prisons where they languish, in some cases for years, before standing trial. Of 332 minors in detention at the time of the UN’s last report to the Security Council a staggering 284 had yet to face trial. The United Nations has worked hard in conjunction with Haitian security forces to resolve the problem and charities like UNICEF, who offer free legal advice to children also play their part but alone there is little they can do.

To compound these problems is the issue of children involved in armed conflict, a legacy of Haiti’s recent upheavals. Minors are exploited by myriad criminal groups who use them in kidnappings, lootings and gun-running operations as well as at roadblocks and protests and even the attempt to breach the presidential palace last spring. During the conflict children were recruited by multiple armed groups and put to a variety of uses. In one particularly macabre case children were equipped with replica weapons and sent to approach UN checkpoints brandishing them in an attempt to spark violence and civil unrest.

However since the cessation of open hostilities in the country focus has returned to a problem that has plagued Haiti for years: the phenomenon of ‘Restaveks’. In what can only be described as a form of slavery children from impoverished families are given away by their parents to work in another household. The hope for parents is that the child will receive an education and have a better life than they could have had at home but in reality the restaveks usually spend their days in hard labour for which they are not paid, they are denied an education and suffer frequent abuse. UNICEF estimates that there are up to 300,000 restavek children currently living in domestic servitude despite Haiti’s adoption of two UN resolutions banning child labour. Of these, figures suggest that over half have been physically or sexually abused.

Part of the problem is the country’s dysfunctional education system which lies in tatters after decades of poverty and conflict. Only about half of primary-school-age children attend school and according to a devastating report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, less than 2% finish secondary school. For many families the problem is an economic one. While state schools are supposed to be free many parents simply struggle to pay for books and uniforms for their children. Others are kept at home to work for their parents, exacerbating the vicious cycle of poverty gripping rural Haiti.

Efforts are being made to address the problem both by the Haitian government and the international community. Ironically the state already has several institutions in place that should prevent such abuse of children’s rights. There has for example, been a special Children’s Tribunal in Port au Prince ever since 1961 yet minors continue to waste away behind bars waiting to face trial. The Haitian National Police (PNH) has also been working to rectify the problem by building up its Child Protection Brigade with the help of UNICEF and the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) who recently trained 70 more officers. The UN in particular has taken significant steps towards improving the situation including the creation of a special Child Protection Unit within their own structure, whose job it is to monitor the current situation and offer advice and support to the Haitian authorities. They have also been working to provide extra support for children who have been victims of sexual abuse.

But despite these efforts the systematic neglect of children’s rights in Haiti remains chronic and is a direct contravention of the UN Convention on Children’s Rights which the country ratified in 1994.  How long must the children of Haiti wait before their government steps up to the challenges it set itself by adopting the convention and puts an end to the suffering?

If you want to help Unicef in their fight against injustice in Haiti please follow the link below:

http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561

Ed. Note: Tommy Trenchard toured several areas of Haiti with units of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force MINUSTAH.