"restavèk"

From the National Coalition for Haitian Rights:

A restavèk is a Haitian child who becomes a house slave when she is turned over by her parents to a family which agrees, in principle, to care for the child, provide schooling, food, shelter, and clothing in exchange for domestic labor. Neither the child’s nor the parents’ hopes are usually fulfilled. The restavèk instead spends her formative years isolated from parental love and care, and nurturing contact with siblings, deprived of schooling and subject to long days of work with no pay and living conditions inferior to those of the overseer’s family. She performs whatever services the overseer requires under a constant menace of physical and verbal abuse, often meted out as a matter of routine by members of the household.

Today in Haiti, an estimated one out of every ten children is a restavèk. These children are such a common part of the social fabric that rare is the Haitian who has not had some association with a restavèk. Some have given away a child or taken one in as a restavèk, or they know a family that has; others have been a restavèk themselves. This familiarity has affected the way most Haitians take these children for granted.

Why Haiti? This is yet one more reason ...