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Slavery In Haiti

Decent Essays

Slavery has dated to begin in America in the 1600s, but the official idea of ownership of other people, throughout the whole world, dates back to the 1400s. Child labor on its own began to rise in the late 1700s and has yet to properly diminish despite efforts being made to do so. Ironically, Haiti was one of the first to have a law against child slavery and labor, but thanks to a system created within the society of Haiti, Child labor and slavery still exists in modern times. Child slavery in Haiti injures and ruins many innocent lives; therefore, the government needs to step in and enforce better laws.
The system these children are kept in is called the Restavek system and it destroys any child’s humanity. “Approximately 225,000 (5- to 17-year-old) children, mostly female, are restaveks today” (1-Adwar) and they end up “sleeping on the floor..eating leftovers” (3-Chumbow) after working 10-14 hour shifts on a daily and receiving no pay. These children live day in and day out in these harsh conditions, often being abused mentally, physically, and sexually. It is stated that the …show more content…

Sadly, that is not the case with most children in the system. “They [are] deprived of love and maternal affection..but the source of their [overall] trauma is the mistreatment [they undergo in these homes], [which includes] rape and [the beatings] from the families they live with,” (5-Moloney) and due to the increase in trafficking in Haiti, “the government sustained minimal efforts to identify and assist trafficking victims, ”(4-Kerry) and due to the “lack of a comprehensive law criminalizing human trafficking…[any efforts] the government [makes] to prevent [these acts] are hindered” (2-Clinton, 2), leaving them all with little hope to get those better lives they were supposed to

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