MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on child slavery in Haiti
6.2.2018 - (2018/2562(RSP))
pursuant to Rule 135 of the Rules of Procedure
Cristian Dan Preda, Tomáš Zdechovský, Jeroen Lenaers, Jarosław Wałęsa, Bogdan Brunon Wenta, Tunne Kelam, Michaela Šojdrová, Romana Tomc, Elisabetta Gardini, Laima Liucija Andrikienė, Roberta Metsola, Eduard Kukan, Ivan Štefanec, Milan Zver, Patricija Šulin, Bogdan Andrzej Zdrojewski, Krzysztof Hetman, Agnieszka Kozłowska-Rajewicz, Dubravka Šuica, Francis Zammit Dimech, László Tőkés, David McAllister, Adam Szejnfeld, Mairead McGuinness, Csaba Sógor, Manolis Kefalogiannis, Sandra Kalniete, Deirdre Clune, Ivana Maletić, Eva Maydell, Seán Kelly, Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, Pavel Svoboda, Željana Zovko, José Ignacio Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra, Inese Vaidere, Francisco José Millán Mon, Ramón Luis Valcárcel Siso on behalf of the PPE Group
See also joint motion for a resolution RC-B8-0100/2018
The European Parliament,
- having regard to its previous resolutions on Haiti,
- having regard to its report on EU political relations with Latin America of 20 July 2017,
- having regard to the report of 13 March 2017 of the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti,
- having regard to the implementation report of the UN Committee of the rights of the Child on Haiti, considered 15 January 2016,
- having regard to the UNICEF report Children of Haiti of 12 July 2010,
- having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948,
- having regard to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Haiti 8 June 1995,
- having regard to the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930, ratified by Haiti 4 March 1958,
- having regard to Haiti’s Labour Code, whose articles 341 and 355 guarantee the protection on labouring children in domestic service and prohibit children under the age of 12 years to work as domestic servants,
- having regard to the US department of State Trafficking in persons Report 2016,
- having regard to the Cotonou Agreement,
- having regard to the 34th session of the ACP-EU joint parliamentary Assembly in December 2017 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
- having regard to Rule 135 of its Rules of Procedure,
A. whereas “restavek”, (from the French rester avec”stay with”) is a system where children are sent from their families to stay in other families than their own, often badly treated and used as cheap labour;
B. whereas it is estimated by UNICEF that around 225.000 children in Haiti have been placed in another family than their biological one in order to do household work, often under slave like conditions;
C. whereas most of the children placed in other families come from very poor families;
D. whereas many of the children receive insufficient education and schooling; whereas according to UNICEF in Haiti 18 per cent of children 6 to 11 years of age do not attend primary school;
E. whereas children who don’t have birth certificates are at risk of trafficking and abuse; whereas according to UNICEF exposure of children to violence and abuse, including corporal punishment and gender-based violence, is a substantial problem; whereas one in four women and one in five men are victims of sexual abuse before 18 years of age; whereas eighty-five per cent of children 2 to 14 years of age are victims of violent discipline at home, 79 per cent are victims of corporal punishment and 16 per cent suffer from extreme corporal punishment;
F. whereas parents have the primary responsibility to raise their children and it is the State’s obligation to support parents so that they can fulfil this responsibility;
G. whereas Haiti is a source, transit and destination country for forced labour, mainly involving children;
H. whereas Haiti, ranked as number 163 of the world’s countries in the UNDP Human Development Index, is in continuous need of humanitarian and development aid;
1. Deplores that large numbers of children in Haiti are placed away from their biological families in situations where they are used as labour; calls for an end to this practice;
2. Calls on the Haitian government to immediately increase their efforts in helping children placed away from their families so that if at all possible they can be returned; stresses the need for registration where children are staying, enabling government controls and follow up of children’s needs;
3. Stresses the need for the Haitian government to put in place help for poor families enabling them to take their responsibility towards their children;
4. Calls on Haiti to urgently implement measures to address the vulnerabilities that lead to child domestic servitude, including protecting children who are victims of neglect, abuse, violence and child labour;
5. Calls on the European Commission and the Member States to help Haiti implement measures protecting children, including programmes and partnerships aiming at combating violence, abuse and exploitation of children in Haiti; stresses in particular the importance of decentralization of critical child protection services, capacity-building and the adoption of laws to increase child protection;
6. Underlines the importance of addressing social norms that perpetuate violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, by promoting community and parental practices to protect and nurture children;
7. Call on the EU to promote through its humanitarian Aid and Development cooperation access to education for all children, regardless of their socioeconomic characteristics, with special attention to the most disadvantaged, i.e., those in rural areas, the disabled and children with learning difficulties; welcome in this regard, back-to-school campaigns and a door-to-door system to register out-of-school children;
8. Calls for the Haitian government to put in a place an administrative system which guarantees that all new born children are registered at birth, and that measures are taken to register those who were not registered at birth;
9. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the European External Action Service, and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the President of Haiti and the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly.