Cite Soleil Haiti Map

has written 51 comments

Andy,

A trip to Cite Soleil, excellent.

"What do you want me to investigate in Cite Soleil?"

1. Drinking water delivery and quality.
2. Sanitation.
3. How (if) they pirate electricity.
4. What's going on at the dock/port at the end of the main drag.

Eric

Pato from has written 56 comments

The first rule of journalism is that you must confirm what your audience already "knows." Whether it is correct or not is impertinent, whether you can back yourself up is even less important. If you present the world in the way people already see it, you will not be questioned. "Truth" is just the opinion of the most people in a certain social sector (an audience). Journalism is its audience's way of maintaining the status quo and confirming what they already "know" about the world -- because that is what is expected.

It is a cycle: the audiences' preconceived notions are confirmed through what appears in the media, the media must seek to confirm the perspective of their audience -- or they will risk loosing their audience. It is just entertainment, and they are giving people what they want under the disguise of "news" and objectivity. Two very phony endeavors as far as I am concerned.

But journalism should, ideally, be the exact opposite of this. Audience should be the last thing on a journalist's or an editor's mind when bringing out a story.

Wade

has written 205 comments

Find out of much a "restavek" slave costs these days and what determines the price and when do they get to go free ?

Gadget from has written 916 comments

Simpatico
Great comments, I did some research on the Restavek. I refuse to call these children slaves.

90 percent of the children in the orphanage in Leogane had living parents who did more or less the same and gave their children to Jasmine and Greg Martinson. This is why the word orphanage offends me, foster family is closer to correct and the word slave is mostly a lie.

Does a father force his son to work for free?
Yes, since the beginning of time.

has written 11 comments

Andy:
I'd like you to try to determine how the citizens of Cite Soleil treat "the poor," "the crazy," and "the retarded" that is, how do they treat those amongst them who have the most problems with which to contend.

travis from has written 22 comments

A just-released study says about half the chilrdren in Cite Soleil are household slaves.

I think more information on this practice would make a good blog entry.

Travis


See this CNN article just published on Christmas Eve:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/12/24/haiti.child.slaves/index.html

(CNN) -- As many as 225,000 children in Haiti live and work as unpaid domestic servants, the first study to closely examine the issue concluded.

The existence of these arrangements are not new, but the scope is larger than previously thought, a new study by the Pan American Development Foundation found. The foundation conducted the largest field survey of human rights violations in Haiti.

Known as restaveks, these extremely poor children are sent by their families to other homes.

"In principle, parental placement of a restavek child involves turning over child-rearing responsibility to another household in exchange for the child's unpaid domestic service," the study says.

The majority, two-thirds, of restaveks are female, and all are prone to abuse and rape by their host families, the study says.

. . .

The study's aim was to answer the question: "What is the scale of the victimization?"

What researchers found was that 22 percent of children surveyed were living away from home, and that 30 percent of households had restavek children.

FROM http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20091224/carib/carib4.html:

Researchers said the practice of young servants, known as 'restavek', is so common that almost half of 257 children interviewed in the shantytown of Cite Soleil were household slaves. The report found that most of the children are sent by parents, who cannot afford to care for them, to families just slightly better off.