By Prensa Latina
United Nations : A video prepared by the International Organization for Migration, disclosing the situation of child smuggling and abuse in Haiti was published Tuesday, a week before an international forum on the topic.
The video reveals the Restavek system, through which 173,000 Haitian minors, children of poor rural families, are sent to relatives or foreign residents in urban areas, ostensibly to receive education in exchange for domestic work.
The reality is that those children have a life of privation and abuse, and few of them go to school.
Minors who try to escape are picked up by the Haitian Social Welfare Institute and taken to centers until their relatives can locate them.
The IOM provides financial and technical assistance to the Haitian Action and Development Center, offering shelter, food, medical care and psychological support for those children until they can return home.
Although many Haitians who have these children as servants think they are helping them, the Restavek system is considered a modern form of slavery and a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights.