Child Trafficking - Haiti Observer Blog

The Justice Ministry of Santo Domingo released information police, child humanitarian authorities, and representatives from Justice Ministry removed hundreds of trafficked Haitian and Dominican children off the streets where they had been forced to beg. Many of the children were too confused to give rescuers their families' whereabouts. In all 302 underage children were collected, some of them from tourist spots.

Of the total figure of abducted children, 58 of them were Haitian. National Childhood Council spokesman, Alberto Padilla, said Santo Domingo officials have been talking to Haitian officials to try and get the children reunified with their families. In the meantime, the children have been housed in shelters in Santo Domingo, Jarabacoa, and Santiago.

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Evangelicals have been urging foreign adoption of Haitian children, following 2010's earthquake, which left hundreds of children voluntarily surrendered by their parents.

Christian-affiliated Orphan Sunday, held for the fifth year, has been created to raise awareness of children, who need loving, stable homes. The event is also a learning opportunity to let foreign adopters know they must adhere to adoption laws, to reduce international child trafficking.

Countries, such as Russia, have tightened their adoption laws, to make it more difficult for foreigners to adopt children. The change in adoption laws is a response to obsessive Christian do-gooders, who have been getting children adopted in defiance of adoption laws.

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Training will be provided to CESFRONT - The Dominican Special Corps for Border Security to identify human trafficking and offer protection to such victims. At the Dajabon border on October 5, 2012, a Haitian was prevented by the border guard of the Dominican from entering the Dominican Republic.

Signing Of The Pact

A pact was signed by the authorities in the Dominican Republic to train agents of a special group to focus on human trafficking. Agencies of the United Nations and military officials of the Dominican are teaming up to ensure security at the porous border of Haiti and the Dominican where human trafficking has proliferated.

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With the weak economy and poor living conditions in Haiti, many women, including teenagers, have settled to becoming prostitutes just to earn. Prostitution is illegal in the country but this does not stop women from getting paid for sex. Since the 1940s, prostitution rings have been active in the country and it only got worse as time went by and catastrophes hit the Caribbean nation.

According to a report in 2005, Haitian children were being trafficked in the Dominican Republic, where they were forced to work as slaves or prostitutes. Many of these children were orphaned, while others can no longer be supported and fed by their parents. As a result, they are brought to the Dominican Republic and sold to families and individuals looking for a child laborer. There were reports that the trafficked children have been physically abused too and some were so traumatized they can not recall how they got to that situation.

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A United Nations report on human trafficking reveals the shocking scope and severity of the problem.

Figures state approximately 2.5 million of the world's population is recruited into forced labor in any given time frame. Of this number, 1.4 million are in South Asia. Overall, 80% of them are used in sexual slavery and 17% in forced labor. The industry of human trafficking yields $32 billion yearly.

Human traffickers claim jobs are available in a given field, often placing classifieds tempting young and desperate women. Once there, they will be forced into prostitution, or sold as sexual slaves to third parties. The age of most human trafficking victims ranges from late teens into mid-twenties.

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The term used for children with this arrangement is restavek (one who stays).

Haiti suffers the reputation as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Many Haitian families cannot afford the care of their own children, so they send them to live with rich families as unpaid domestics or Restaveks.

Sometimes a restavek will live with a family, who can afford to educate them and give them adequate living conditions. If not, will use the floor as their bed and be subjected to sexual abuse.

Restaveks are domestic slaves, and the majority of them are girls, 80% of them. They perform household chores, not for pay, but in return for shelter, food, clothing, and education, usually of inferior quality. Even under optimal conditions, restaveks have inferior status in the household, even with peers and younger.

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The child slave trade has been growing exponentially during the last decade.

After landing in the streets, 2.8 million juveniles are snatched by pornographers. Nearly 1 million children are forced to prostitute themselves. What is even more horrific is their extreme youth, averaged at age 12.

Within U.S. borders, 200,000 juveniles are at peril for being exploited within the sex trade each year. It is estimated child trafficking in the world market is pulling in $12 billion plus every year, affecting 1.2 million plus children. Women and girls make up 80% of victims, half of them minors. Numbering 300,000-400,000, they are kidnapped, bought, and sold between countries for use in the sex trade business.

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Paul Waggoner who is an American construction worker was arrested in Haiti and charged with kidnapping a Haitian child back in February while doing volunteering work. The child's father alleged that Paul Waggoner abducted his child after his death was announced.

According to the report, Paul Waggoner who is 32 years old, has been in Haiti to help victims of the earthquake. He allegedly kidnapped the child back in February from a Haitian Community Hospital in Petion-Ville

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Ten Americans detained in Port-au-Prince on child trafficking charges. Will these people be treated like Haitian prisoners or will they have special preferences. So far, according to these pictures, the detainees affiliated with Baptist churches in Meridian and Twin Falls, Idaho have not been in a four star hotel in Haiti.

Carla Thompson lay on a bed in a scorching jail cell about 8 feet by 5 feet, her ankles bandaged from infected mosquito bites. Sitting on a dirty concrete floor in the cell, another detainee, Corinna Lankford, has a frustrated look on her face.

The detainees, most of whom are arrived in the chaotic days after the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake. They were detained as they tried to take 33 Haitian children whom the Baptists had said were orphaned into the neighboring Dominican Republic.

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