February 8, 2010
"Natural disasters increase individual vulnerability and break down rule of law, key factors exploited by human traffickers," explained Gary Haugen who heads up of International Justice Mission (IJM), a group that helps victims of human trafficking, slavery and other forms of oppression. "Unfortunately," he went on, "in such situations, children are the most vulnerable to abuse and exploitation…. The situation in Haiti is ripe for a tragic acceleration in the trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable children, and the world must stand vigilant against it."
UNICEF and others echoed Haugen's warning. This is, after all, Haiti.
According to IJM, 250,000 Haitian children are reported trafficked inside the country each year. As Tim Padgett reported in Time, domestic slavery is commonplace:
Most fall into these straits because their penniless parents give them up to more affluent Haitian families, who are notorious for keeping them illiterate, heaping grinding labor on them and subjecting them to physical and sexual abuse.
No doubt most poor Haitians believe that they are doing what is best for their children. They have nothing and so they offer them to those who appear to have everything. A verbal agreement is struck and the child is taken. It's all illegal, but then the rich control how the laws get enforced.
Since domestic servants under the age of 15 need not be paid in Haiti, most trafficked children spend their 15th birthday homeless and adapting to life in one of Haiti's gangs of street children.
According to the US State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report:
Haiti is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Haitian women, men, and children are trafficked into the Dominican Republic, The Bahamas, the United States, Europe, Canada, and Jamaica for exploitation in domestic service, agriculture, and construction.
Commenting on the Dominican Republic, the report says, "Haitian nationals, including children, who voluntarily migrate illegally to the Dominican Republic may subsequently be subjected to forced labor in the service, construction, and agriculture sectors." It also mentions that seaside resorts in the Dominican Republic are popular child-sex tourist destinations.
Our government has been putting pressure on both Haiti and the Dominican Republic to provide tangible proofs that they are reining in these reprehensible practices.
Against this backdrop, ten well-meaning but naïve American evangelicals from Idaho drove into Haiti from the Dominican Republic. They were led by the New Life Children's Refuge (NLCR) executive director and founder, Laura Silsby.
Their plan is sketched out in a document posted online: fly to the Dominican Republic, hire a bus, drive to Haiti, "gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages," and drive back to the Dominican Republic where a leased hotel would be converted into a temporary orphanage.
The group, the document explains, "is in the process of buying land and building an orphanage, school and church in Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now vs. waiting until the permanent facility is built."On January 22, the team flew into the Dominican Republic (DR). The next day they rented
In Haiti at the border, they met Jean Sainyil, a Haitian who pastors Gospel Assembly Church in Gwinnett, Georgia and returns to Haiti regularly as a missionary. The Lede Blog reported:
