Plan documentary to raise awareness
of child slavery in Haiti
Dafcar, a former restavec.
Children with freelance film director Craig Goodwill. Craig volunteered his time to do the filming in Haiti for Plan.
September 6, 2007
By Steven Theobald, Media Relations Manager, Plan Canada
It’s hard to imagine that Dafcar can trust adults. They’ve always let her down.
She was given to a strange household when she was five to work as a restavec — an unpaid domestic worker — after her mother and then her aunt died.
She was beaten regularly with electrical cords, did not go to school and was not allowed to play with kids her own age. According to estimates, as many as 170,000 children in Haiti are restavecs.
It’s ironic that Haiti can boast of being the first country in the Americas to abolish slavery 200 years ago, yet this practice still goes on. Dafcar, who figures she is about 11 now, is one of the lucky ones. She was rescued by a local organization and is now safe. She just wants to find out what happened to her father.
Plan Haiti invited Dafcar and another former restavec, Kenley, to participate in an anti-slavery film, part of a youth-media program. I heard about the project during a visit in March and decided to return to shoot a documentary on the children to illustrate the issue of restavecs. The production took seven days. We brought along a young Canadian music celebrity, George Nazuka, who himself was physically abused as a child. He provides a link between Haiti’s children and the developed world just next door.
The group of children wrote a script about a girl who was given away as a young girl to work as a domestic. The character spent most of her waking time cleaning, doing laundry and selling water. Profits went to the household. She was raped one day and became pregnant. Her “auntie” kicked her out of the house when she found out, leaving the girl to fend for herself in the streets of Port-au-Prince. This story is reality in Haiti. As part of the documentary, we interviewed a young woman — with a two-year-old daughter — who lived through pretty much the same script. Her guardian explained to us that he had felt he did not have the means to support another hungry mouth so he gave her away. He now regrets that decision and embraces the girl and her daughter as his own.
The documentary also spends a day with a Canadian UN peacekeeper who flies by helicopter to the north of Haiti to oversee the investigation of a man accused of forcing a 12-year-old girl into prostitution.
We expect to have the final version of the documentary edited for airing in October. In addition to raising awareness of child slavery in Haiti among the general public, the 23-minute film — and the 10-minute children’s film — will also be used to promote children’s rights in classrooms as part of Plan’s youth engagement programming.
Learn more about Plan's work in Haiti.
Back to top
It’s hard to imagine that Dafcar can trust adults. They’ve always let her down.
She was given to a strange household when she was five to work as a restavec — an unpaid domestic worker — after her mother and then her aunt died.
She was beaten regularly with electrical cords, did not go to school and was not allowed to play with kids her own age. According to estimates, as many as 170,000 children in Haiti are restavecs.
It’s ironic that Haiti can boast of being the first country in the Americas to abolish slavery 200 years ago, yet this practice still goes on. Dafcar, who figures she is about 11 now, is one of the lucky ones. She was rescued by a local organization and is now safe. She just wants to find out what happened to her father.
Plan Haiti invited Dafcar and another former restavec, Kenley, to participate in an anti-slavery film, part of a youth-media program. I heard about the project during a visit in March and decided to return to shoot a documentary on the children to illustrate the issue of restavecs. The production took seven days. We brought along a young Canadian music celebrity, George Nazuka, who himself was physically abused as a child. He provides a link between Haiti’s children and the developed world just next door.
The group of children wrote a script about a girl who was given away as a young girl to work as a domestic. The character spent most of her waking time cleaning, doing laundry and selling water. Profits went to the household. She was raped one day and became pregnant. Her “auntie” kicked her out of the house when she found out, leaving the girl to fend for herself in the streets of Port-au-Prince. This story is reality in Haiti. As part of the documentary, we interviewed a young woman — with a two-year-old daughter — who lived through pretty much the same script. Her guardian explained to us that he had felt he did not have the means to support another hungry mouth so he gave her away. He now regrets that decision and embraces the girl and her daughter as his own.
The documentary also spends a day with a Canadian UN peacekeeper who flies by helicopter to the north of Haiti to oversee the investigation of a man accused of forcing a 12-year-old girl into prostitution.
We expect to have the final version of the documentary edited for airing in October. In addition to raising awareness of child slavery in Haiti among the general public, the 23-minute film — and the 10-minute children’s film — will also be used to promote children’s rights in classrooms as part of Plan’s youth engagement programming.
Learn more about Plan's work in Haiti.
Back to top
