As part of World Day against Child Labour, June 12, Michaëlle Jean, the UNESCO Special Envoy for Haiti, will add her voice to those calling for the elimination of child exploitation and the respect for the rights of hundreds of thousands of Haitian children in domesticity [restaveks] and exposed to all the physical and psychological abuse.

Ms. Jean will participate from 9:00 am, at the Hotel Karibe in Port-au-Prince, to the launch of the awareness campaign on the the fate of children restaveks, which are day and night, constrained to forced labor in families where they are placed. They would be 225.000 in Haiti, according to UNICEF.

This campaign orchestrated by the International Labour Office (ILO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), brings together several members of the Haitian Government and associations devoted to the defense of Children's Rights and of young restaveks. All assessments that have been established over the years, confirm the extent of the phenomenon and its devastating consequences for children in Haiti.

Michaëlle Jean believes that "it is time to consider measures to eradicate this practice now widespread in all sectors and all social strata in Haiti. We must get out these children of silence, anonymity, of the shadow and the deadlock. We must free them, recognize them in all humanity nad protect them.

It is necessary to act on the mentalities, the poverty and all the circumstances that make their parents abandon them to other families. Each child thus sacrificed is a loss for the country who is deprived of what it has of most precious, of its vital forces and of its future"

The reflection on the actions to take will continue in the evening at the Brazilian Cultural Center. Ms. Jean will join several representatives of the Haitian Civil Society and numerous international partners to discuss on the use of traditional media and social media to raise awareness and think a national campaign on child rights and the respect for childhood.

During her stay in Haiti, June 11 to 15, Michaëlle Jean will also visit the new campus of the State University of Haiti (UEH) to Limonade, accompanied by Mr. Jean Vernet Henry, rector of the UEH, Jean Marie Théodat, Chair of the Interim management of campus, and Jean Claude François, Adviser to the Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe on Higher Education. In addition to touring the facilities, the team wants to meet with local partners, discuss of the vocation and management of the institution, of the works and actions to take until the official opening of the institution to the first students starting in fall 2012.

HL/ HaitiLibre