Susu Thatun
Paper submitted as a requirement for the completion of the
COURSE ON ADVANCES IN SOCIAL NORMS
University of Pennsylvania - UNICEF
21 July 2010
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Executive Summary
The paper discusses the situation of children called “restaveks” who have been trafficked into and exploited in domestic servitude in Haiti. The word “restavek” in Creole derives from the French word “rester avec” meaning “to stay with [other people]”. The paper comprises three sections, with the first looking briefly into the background to the issue including challenges surrounding the issue. The second analyses existing interventions through a social norms –social change approach by applying some of the concepts learnt in the Summer Programme on Social Norms – Social Change to strengthen the existing interventions. The third provides a series of recommendations for consideration in developing anti-trafficking interventions within the context of children being trafficked into domestic servitude in the context of restavek system.
The practice of placing one’s own children with other better off families often referred to as restavek system has been practiced in Haiti for over two centuries. In some ways this system predates Haiti’s independence from France in 1804 and is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the country. In general, the system of restavek arose out of the need of Haitians to respond to poverty in the absence of any formal social support structure from its government whereby the better off families provide support to less well off families by receiving the children in their homes. The expectation is that in exchange for providing food, clothing and shelter and sending them to school, the children will help with the housework. This exchange has been interpreted by some as a benevolent practice indicative of Haitian society’s effort to deal with excessive pressures of poverty while others have interpreted it simply as a practice based on market norms fueled by economic incentives. Whatever the original intention of the issue, the reality as documented by numerous studies indicate that restavek children live in a situation of extreme vulnerability, of verbal, physical and sexual abuse. Their rights are infringed and they have no access to redress.
The paper then takes a broad analysis of existing interventions clustering them under three categories, namely legislation, awareness raising and capacity building. Most, if not all of these interventions are implemented under the overall framework to build systems and institutions. The paper analyses these interventions through new lens of social norms social change and proposes where appropriate a social norms approach in line with
UNICEF Child Protection Strategy to further lend support to and create greater efficacy in addressing this issue. The paper then concludes with a set of ten recommendations which while bringing in both the systems approach and social change social norms approach, in summary encapsulates a human rights based response to address the issue of restavek.
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Definition of terms and concepts used
Citizenship building model: As promoted and practiced in Bogota and as used in this paper, the model refers to building up of a culture of citizenship whereby cultural regulation of interactions between strangers and between strangers and the state officials take place around a basic set of shared rules and take advantage of the cultural and moral diversity (of the city).
It involves voluntary compliance with norms with citizens peacefully making others to comply with norms, peaceful solution of conflicts with help of a shared vision and communicating through different medium such as arts, culture, recreation and sports.
Community policing: A situation where security for the self and community is not left only in the hands of the police but “that people take responsibility for their individual and collective protection by cooperating with other citizens and with the State”.
Conditional preference (and unconditional preference): Preference to conform to a behaviour rule in a certain situation on the belief that a sufficiently large subset of the population conforms to the rule in a given situation or if one believes that a sufficiently large subset of people expect one to perform or adhere to the rule in the same situation.
Critical mass: A small core group of first movers or initiators around a particular issue, such as female genital mutilation or corruption, who are able to bring about attention to resolve or address the problem. This group of people is called “a critical mass”.
Empirical expectations : A belief that one has that others will in fact comply with a particular norm
Mockus model : Antanas Mockus, former Mayor of Botota (1995 – 97 and 2001 – 2003) introduced a number of ideas and practices in the governance and citizenship of Bogota by bringing about a more accountable government and responsible citizenship. His model to bring about positive change in both the citizens and government centred around the premise that law, morality and culture needs to co-exist. That regulatory mechanisms comprising legal norms, moral norms and social norms need to be harmonized.
Normative expectations : Refers to one’s beliefs about what others think one should do.
Organised diffusion : The action and the process taken by a “critical mass” to systematically bring in larger members of a community on an issue to a large enough proportion that translates into actual commitment and to act upon it.
Social norms: Norms that arises when there is a social dilemma – a situation where there is a conflict between individual interest and the interest of the group.
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I. The challenge : defining the problem
Placement of one’s child in another’s household is not an anomaly in the Haitian society. A
2004 study of trafficking in Haitian children
1
indicates that some 650,000 children, constituting an estimated 30% of children under 15, live away from home. “Giving and taking of children” is seen by Haitian society as an accepted practice, just as the placement of children from poor families to live with better off relatives or acquaintances remains unquestioned. In Creole, an official language in Haiti in addition to French, these children are called “restavaks,” which is derived from the French phrase “rester avec,” meaning to
“stay with”. Some observers have referred to this as a long held tradition arising out of a sense of community and social support, to help deal with excessive pressures of poverty.
However, child rights advocates including academics refer to the restavek system as a practice of child slavery, of children held in domestic servitude. Documentation in recent years indicates the situation of severe abuse and exploitation suffered by the children found within the institution of restavek
2
.
One of the recent studies on restaveks indicate that there are a total of 225,00 restaveks in
Haiti
3
, and that most of them have been victims of trafficking
4
. The result of this study, which corresponds extensively with studies undertaken by other international organizations, also provides additional information of value to practitioners such as the age of the restaveks
(ranging from 5 – 17) and that some 70% of restavek children are girls. The severity of the situation of children in domestic servitude has also been pointed out by earlier studies. As documented in the 2004 study (fn 1) a child who has previously been a restavek says, “when kids go and stay with someone, they are mistreated. They beat them, make them carry heavy loads, force them to work”. Another person (not himself a restavek) describes a restavek child as being exposed to all forms of exploitation with no means of protection: “They (the host family) do whatever they like with her. She is under absolute command, not a family member, no salary. Children do not have a choice. A restavek child is not purchased but it almost gives you the right of life and death”.
Conceptualizing the issue through a social norms perspective
There are two major positions surrounding the discourse around restaveks. One posits that the system of restavek, as it exists today, in its exploitative form, is an example of what happens when a well-meaning social norm becomes corrupt . This, of course, is if we take the view of the origins of the practice as being benevolent. Another view is that the tradition of a well-meaning social support system attempting to cope with the stress of poverty never really existed: that right from the start, restavak system rested solely on market norms
5
where decisions around sending and receiving a child was exploitative and based solely on
1 Smucker Gleen and G.F.Murray, “The Uses of Children: the Study of Trafficking in Haitian Children”, 2004,
Haiti
2 Jean-Robert Cadet, “Restavec: From Haitian Slave to Middle Class American, 1998
3 Pan American Development Foundation, USAID, “Lost Childhoods in Haiti: Quantifying child trafficking, restaveks and victims of violence”, 2009, Haiti
4 How the situation of restaveks can be considered as instances of trafficking calls for greater technical discussion and is not a part of this paper.
5 Definitions of terms and concepts used in the paper can be found in the Annex attached to the paper.
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economic incentives. In the following paragraphs, I’ll analyze the restavek system from the perspective of three key stakeholders: the sending family; the receiving family and that child.
For the “sending” family, the restavek system appeared to be the only way to ensure that the child would be fed, clothed, and have access to education, while at the same time, it meant there was one fewer mouth to feed at home. It would also mean that potential for child to be socially mobile was greater. Whether the latter was based on empirical expectation alone or by both empirical and normative expectations remains uncertain. Nevertheless, it was a practice which was socially sanctioned .
For the receiving family -- especially from the better off strata -- it meant free domestic help, and given that it was a child, there was an added attraction that she or he would be easily controlled and fully “domesticated”. Additionally the act of taking in a child has the potential to enhance their social status as it could be considered an act of benevolence. If the family has taken in a child and sent her to school, fed and clothed her, the recognition given by its neighbours and society could easily generate a high social reward . It could well be that they think that others think that they should take in children from poor(er) family members given their social status as a better off family. In this practice, children themselves are seen as benefiting from the above interaction.
As for the children, it is supposed that they benefit from the above transaction, as they are able to, in theory, live with better off families, access education, be better fed, better clothed and in general live a better life than they otherwise might have, had their parents kept them at home. The perception regarding gains made by restavek children of course do not reflect the view of the children but rather that of adults who are responsible for sending and/or receiving the children. Even if gains are made as claimed, this view does not take into consideration the age of the child, his or her emotional needs and the possible psychological impact on him or her resulting from forced separation.
That the topic of restavek is discussed here arises from the observation that the seemingly win-win game as expressed above, does not hold true. The reality, as documented by numerous international organizations (UNICEF, ILO, IOM) indicates severe exploitation faced by restavek children who are neither fed properly, nor clothed, nor sent to school.
These children are often fed with the leftovers, clothed in rags, and left to sleep on the floors in the kitchen with no bedding. With no explicit work hours, they toil from dawn to dusk with little rest in between. They often lead a life of extreme seclusion as they are not allowed to talk to anybody and only respond to when asked. They face verbal, physical and sexual abuse on a daily basis, with every member of the family talking down to them while they are expected to cater to everyone’s whims. As one Haitian development worker puts it, “ While the system was never meant to be abusive, a number of factors, in particular lack of monitoring by the sending families as well as weak formal structure to oversee the practice have made this an exploitative practice”
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. According to her estimate, some 95% of those children living and working at other people’s families as restaveks are under varying degrees of exploitation. Only 5% may actually have a “normal life” with the actual expectations of going to school, and having a proper board, fulfilled.
6 Personal interview with a Haitian development worker.
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The above clearly indicates that overwhelming majority of restavek children are deprived of a range of protection and development rights that is due to each individual child – to be free from all forms of discrimination, violence, abuse and exploitation, to live with their family, to have access to education – as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The severity of the situation demands that whatever the basis of the practice - whether it began as benevolent or otherwise, this needs to be urgently addressed.
This paper examines a number of ways to address the infringement of child rights within the restavek system by identifying the root cause of the practice. It looks at whether the problem can be attributed or linked to social norms, moral norms, traditional practices or to dire economic conditions or whether the problem is a complex combination of all the above.
Depending on what the source of the problem is and the nature of complexity, recommendations are put forth in the conclusion.
II. Review of existing interventions and recommendation for changed practice
Most of the strategies-cum-interventions to address the system of restavek centre around legislative reforms, awareness raising (through community based as well as national level campaigns), creating enabling (child) protection systems and building national capacity to address the issues. Existing strategies and interventions on the issue of restavek as well as child trafficking are, to a large extent, focused on building and strengthening formal mechanisms of protection which are necessary building blocks to ensure a holistic protective environment for the child. However, these approaches can be complemented and supplemented by the social norms-social change approach.
The interventions stated above are based on the assumptions that legislative framework in
Haiti is weak; that children being sent as restaveks end up in exploitative situations as the result of lack of information by the sending families about the end outcome of their decision; that there is no viable alternative to deal with dire economic situation; that systems and structures to prevent children being placed in exploitative situation are weak; and the capacity and mechanisms to protect children after they are rescued from such situations are nonexistent. These interventions broadly categorized as Legislation; Awareness raising and
Capacity building are critically reviewed in the following paragraphs.
Legislation:
Strategies around strengthening legislative framework are linked to international human rights instruments as they relate to the rights of the child; trafficking of persons and to child labour. Many of the existing interventions to address the restavek issue in Haiti focus around strengthening legal norms . In practice, it involves assisting the Haitian government to ratify relevant international instruments that they have not yet ratified and to assist them to implement them once they do.
One concrete result we have seen from the above effort is the government’s ratification of the
Trafficking in Persons Protocol in 2009. Together with other stakeholders, UNICEF has continued to advocate for and assist the Haitian government to develop national legislation to address the problem of trafficking of children for domestic servitude. While the international community has provided input to several drafts of the trafficking legislation the parliament is
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yet to pass the legislation and the crime of trafficking including that of trafficking of children for domestic servitude is yet to be criminalized.
On the other hand, there are a number of other international instruments with varying degrees of relevance in addressing the issue of trafficking especially as they relate to the issue of restavek. They include among others Convention of the Rights of the Child, various ILO
Conventions related to child labour and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
In the effort to fulfil its international obligations and as State Parties to the above instruments, government of Haiti has put in place domestic legislative norms which are of relevance to addressing exploitative practices in the restavek system. They include among others, the
Labour Code which sets the minimum age of employment for domestic work at 12. This, however, is found wanting given that the minimum employment age in all other sectors is at
15 (Articles 335 and 341 of Labour Code). The legislation offers significant protective framework such as requiring all working children between the ages of 15 – 18 to be registered with the Ministry of Social Affairs’ Institute of Welfare and Research (IBESR), which is furthermore entrusted with the responsibility to protect children from abusive households. At this point in time, it is becoming increasingly evident that the training of social workers to identify and assist victims of various forms of abuse and exploitation, the capacity remains low. This is discussed further under Capacity Building section below.
Another challenge lies with the gap between the enactment of the law and its dissemination to the duty bearers and to the public at large. The links between international human rights law, national legislation and what that mean to the duty bearers and the average citizens are rarely, if at all, recognized with part of the reason being that they are not well communicated.
Awareness raising campaigns plus economic related educational incentives
Awareness raising campaigns have focused on the emphasising the importance of ensuring children have access to and are actually sent to school and that the exploitative outcome of restaveks are exposed in the sending communities. While the number of children out of school remains high and accessibility to school low, whether or not parents will send children to school and retain them if and when these conditions are met remain uncertain. Whether or not sending children to school is an unconditional preference or conditional preference also needs to be determined as it will also impact the nature of interventions. At this point in time, one can speculate that it would be a conditional preference and that the condition under which the child would be sent to school would very much be linked to economic incentives.
Having said that, it is important to also note the importance placed by Haitian society on education. As explained by a Haitian colleague, one major reason for the restavek system lies in it is the drive by families who are unable to send their children to school, to ensure that they be sent to school.
Despite high value placed on education, the 2004 study of child trafficking in Haiti found an interesting finding that the age of children who are sent away for placement outside the home being 6- 10 coincides with “the normal age for attending school”. That the normative expectations regarding accessing education is not borne by empirical reality should guide us to uncover what it is that is stopping Haitian families from sending their children to school and design advocacy campaigns effectively. That children are often sent away as restaveks
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out of economic necessity needs to be recognized, together with the understanding that when parents are unable to care for their offspring, rather than have them face a life of misery at home, it is also expected (from the community) and accepted practice (again within the community) to place them with other families as restaveks. Given the normative expectations which are further strengthened by empirical reality, the restavek system can be understood from a social norms perspective.
Campaigns with national and local governments to lower, subsidize or eliminate school fees in this sense would be of great value. Similarly, campaigns that adopt an appreciative approach that seeks to draw attention to why it is better for children to live with their biological family and how sending them to school (given the positive measures of subsidy etc.,) will have a positive impact can help address the issue at several levels. The target groups for the above two campaigns are of course different with one being the authorities and the other being the community of sending and receiving families. However a carefully coordinated approach could lead to organized diffusion of important and strategic information. This in turn will help build a much needed critical mass towards a threshold of change.
Capacity Building
Another ongoing intervention to combat trafficking of children into domestic servitude in
Haiti is building the capacities of institutions and personnel tasked with the responsibility to prevent, protect and effectively criminalise the offence. While systems and structures to ensure an effective delivery of human rights based approach to the issue are essential, unless they have staff who have the capacity to deliver the programmes the human rights abuse of these children will not be fully addressed. As such training of police responsible for the protection of children or the BPM on child sensitive procedures in investigation, on victim identification amongst others have been undertaken. Social workers have also been trained in psycho-social support, repatriation and reinsertion of children within their communities. One element that comes though all this intervention is the low or limited capacity of the national partners within the formal structure. This practical challenge should be addressed through the adoption of community policing and citizenship building model as implemented in Bogota through reaching out to the community. While changes will not take place over night, multiple channels of communication and interventions are likely to socially motivate and mobilise the citizens to become engaged and move towards positive measures in dealing with the negative practice of restavek while strengthening the culture of citizenship . This would involve, at a minimum, ownership of the issue. Social incentives, such as public recognition of positive decisions such as not sending a child away as a restavek in face of family crisis could be systematically developed and put in place. As pointed out in Mockus model, these citizens should be rewarded and acknowledged for holding the culture of citizenship and held up as model citizens while ensuring that law is fully enforced in sanctioning the perpetrators of abusive and exploitative acts. This signifies the importance of harmonizing the legal and social norms in bringing about positive changes in societies.
III. Conclusion and recommendation:
In light of the fact that UNICEF has yet to undertake specific interventions to address the issue of restavek in Haiti, especially as it relates to the issue of trafficking of children into
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domestic servitude, the above case study builds on a quick overview of existing literature, assessments, and broader interventions surrounding the issue of child protection. In this sense, the paper presented here is speculative, building more on information that is available at the time of writing and less on programmatic experience arising out of specific restavek intervention or proposed intervention on the ground.
There are a couple points that came to light from the above case study. First, the practice of placing of children with other families (no reference is made to foster care), cannot be immediately considered as abusive and the children as abused, trafficked or treated as a child servant. While positive outcomes arising from the situation of restavek appears negligible there does appear to be some anecdotal information on these few and far in between incidences (see fn 6). Also, information indicates that restavek children are a subset of larger group of children living outside the home, who are nevertheless vulnerable to different forms of abuse, violations and exploitation.
Secondly, in analysing the situation of children trafficked into domestic servitude including the interventions, the paper puts forth some concrete suggestions. They are:

Undertake further research on the beliefs, behaviour, attitudes and practices of the three key stakeholders, namely the sending families, receiving families and the restavek children to better understand the situation

Current interventions focus on the sending families and their vulnerabilities. There is a need to broaden the focus to bring in the receiving families to allow interventions to address both the supply and the demand sides, i.e. the sending and receiving families behind the restavek phenomenon

While vulnerabilities and negative social practices need to be addressed, find ways to identify the strengths and resiliency within the communities and rewrite the script highlighting positive deviants within the society

Improve services and foster economic development that provide alternatives to placement of children elsewhere

Put into place monitoring mechanism both formal and informal where peers within the either the sending or receiving communities can be engaged in rewarding good practices and sanctioning bad ones
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Ensure linkages between international human rights law, national legislation and local practices and norms
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Identify mechanisms to bring communities on board with changes introduced by the law to avoid a backlash that may lead the practice to go underground..
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Harmonize the legal norm with the social norm to avoid demotivating the law enforcement to enforce newly introduced legal norms.

Avoid punitive measures based solely on criminalising the restavek system which has the potential to revictimize the poor and the marginalised

Recognise that the restavek system is supported not only by social norms and (weakness of legal norms) but also by the market norms. Interventions need to take account of the multi-layer complexity of the problem and developed accordingly.
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