When the dream turns into a nightmare for Haitian children

(June 2011)

(Story published in Union View n°22, also available at  http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/VS_Haiti_EN.pdf)

Thousands of Haitian children leave every year to try their luck in the Dominican Republic, a substantially more developed country. Extreme poverty, despair and very limited access to education are at the root of most of this emigration. Those crossing the border illegally are prey to robbery, sexual abuse and murder (1).

"I went to school until I was nine. My parents could not afford to pay for me after that, and I had to start working with my father in agriculture and livestock farming," explains 14-year-old David (2) who lives in Margot (a communal section of Pilate, in the Nord department). "A year later my parents insisted that I should join my cousin in Santiago, the second largest city in the Dominican Republic, to work as a building labourer. They were hoping I would have a better life out there and that I would be able to send them some money to help meet the needs of my two brothers and two sisters." Accounts like these can be given by tens of thousands of Haitians. In Pilate, for example, two hours from Cap-Haïtien, the local authorities estimate that all the families in half of the communal sections have at least one child working in the Dominican Republic.

The vast majority of the Haitian children who go the Dominican Republic to find work do not have the travel documents needed to cross the border legally so are placed in the hands of traffickers who smuggle them across the border, using one of the hundreds of illegal crossing points, and take them to the desired location in the Dominican Republic. There are traffickers in many Haitian villages. They take small groups of Haitian migrants to areas along the border where they usually collaborate with local traffickers who know the terrain well. Small human (adults and children) trafficking rings are formed in this way.

Between 75 and 100 dollars for the journey

Depending on the departure and arrival points, and the negotiating skills of the prospective migrant, the price for being taken from a Haitian village to anywhere further than the border in the Dominican Republic is between 3,000 to 4,000 gourdes (75 to 100 US dollars). To raise this amount of money, many migrants sell everything they have or borrow from loan sharks at astronomical rates of interest. "I borrowed 3,000 gourdes from my aunt to pay a trafficker and promised to pay back 6,000 gourdes when I had found a job in the Dominican Republic," says fifteen-year-old Wilson, from Piment (a communal section of Pilate). "I paid her back eight months later."

Depending on the region, the border is crossed on foot, through small backcountry or mountain paths, or by river. During the dry season, the rivers are crossed using truck tire inner tubes (used as rafts), or ropes when the water level is high. Once on the other side of the border, they have to walk, sometimes for several days, then the Haitian traffickers usually hand them over to Dominicans who are paid to take the migrants to their final destination on motorbikes or in cars and pick-up trucks, where they cram in as many of them as possible. "Some of my Dominican contacts use refrigerated trucks to transport the Haitians (avoiding lowering the temperature!), because the Dominican soldiers at checkpoints on the road are unlikely to suspect that people could be in there," explains Sony Francis, a trafficker from Ferrier (Nord-Est department).

Corrupt Dominican soldiers

Haitians are prey to extortion and all kinds of violence during the border crossing, which generally takes place at night. One of their main fears is being detected by the Dominican soldiers who patrol the border areas in large numbers. "The soldiers are very poorly paid and they ask us for money to let us go," says Sony Francis. "They usually ask for 300 pesos (US$8) per person. I always give my clients instructions not to flee if we are discovered by soldiers, and to leave me to negotiate with them. When they are soldiers that have just been posted to the region, it is not always possible to bribe them and there is a risk of being arrested and deported back to Haiti."

Despite the traffickers' recommendations, many Haitians panic when intercepted by Dominican soldiers and try to run away. Such was the case with Wiguine, a twelve-year-old girl from Pilate: "There were four of us. We had been walking through the woods in the Dominican Republic for several hours when we were spotted by about ten soldiers. We were frightened by their guns and dogs. I ran as fast as I could but a dog caught me, biting me on the calf and making me fall. The soldiers hit us, took everything we had (they took my little bag with a few clothes in it) and then let us go when the trafficker had paid them. I tried to treat the bite with a piece of cloth, but I really suffered during the two hours we still had to walk."

Young migrant women sexually abused

Many Haitians who have been trafficked over the border tell of the rapes and sexual abuse perpetrated by Dominican soldiers. "If there are pretty women in the group, the soldiers demand to have sex with them," testifies Sony Francis. "It is our responsibility to negotiate with them as much as possible to talk them out of it, but it is not always possible." In 2010, seventeen-year-old Etienne from Margot indirectly witnessed such abuses. "I was in a group of 15 people and we were caught by four soldiers. They started to strip us of everything. They stole 300 gourdes from me (US$7.50) and took 500 gourdes (US$12) from the traffickers. There were four young women with us. The soldiers took them aside to search them. When they came back they looked very upset. The traffickers had tried to talk with the soldiers before this happened, but they wouldn't listen to them." Girls as young as 14 testify that they have suffered sexual violence at the hands of soldiers when illegally crossing over to the Dominican Republic.

The danger is even greater when the migrants fall prey to gangs of robbers. "With them, it is war" says the trafficker Sony Francis. "I tell the people in my group to take a stick and stones to defend themselves, because these robbers (Dominican and Haitian) will not negotiate and they are armed with iron rods, machetes, knives... People can get killed." On 16 January 2011, Henry Denaud, a member of the communal section assembly (ASEC) of Cachiman, a commune on the border near Belladère (Centre department), received a telephone call from a local authority in the Dominican Republic. "They were calling to tell us that the body of a Haitian woman had been found just five metres across the Dominican side of the border, in a place a called Carizal. I went there with some town notables from Cachiman. She had been stoned to death. We were unable to identify her as she was not carrying any papers. We took her body just over the border to Haiti to bury her. A week later, the Dominican authorities called me again. This time, a Haitian woman and child had been savagely killed; their bodies were only around a hundred metres from the body found seven days earlier. The child's head had been chopped off and placed on the woman's stomach. The bodies had already been partially devoured by dogs so they could not be identified, but as no one corresponding to their description had disappeared in the area we are sure they were Haitians from farther away who were trying to cross the border illegally." The heinous nature of these crimes would suggest that the perpetrators were robbers, as although soldiers do sometimes shoot at Haitian migrants when they try to flee, if they are killed it is with bullet wounds, not the degree of savagery found in these two cases.

All that for...

On reaching their destination in the Dominican Republic, many Haitian children are disappointed by the difficulties in finding work there. They realise that the Haitians who go back to visit their villages wearing their best clothes "forget" to mention how hard life can be on the other side of the border. "My cousin had lied to me when he said that jobs were easy to come by," says Wilson, the 15-year-old who had borrowed money from his aunt to pay his trafficker. "I was able to live at his place in Santiago, but I only found work as a building labourer for one month out of the seven months I spent there. During that month, I worked from Monday to Saturday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., for around 300 pesos (eight dollars) a day, then I lost my job when the works were finished. I would see many Haitian children begging or working as shoe shiners in the streets of Santiago, but I wanted a more dignified job. I was able to count on the solidarity of local people who would give me food on the days when I had no work, but I could not go on like that forever. I decided to go back to Haiti. My dream is to go to school or to learn a trade."

In spite of the failures and the risks associated with crossing the border illegally, the Dominican Republic remains the only ray of hope for millions of Haitians faced with extreme poverty, natural disasters and their leaders' chronic inability to put the country on the road to development. "We are not stupid," concludes a doctor from the Cap-Haïtien region. "If, aside from students, all the girls who come back from the Dominican Republic are widely known as 'bouzens (the Creole word for prostitutes) from Santo Domingo', it means that something is going on there. We also know that most children end up being exploited, working as beggars or domestics, etc. But what can you say to parents who have had nothing other than coffee beans to give their children to eat for five days? Will everything be better under the new government and thanks to international donations? That is what people would like to believe, perhaps, in the long term, but it is now that the children are suffering from malnutrition. For as long as the only 'normal' country they can access is the Dominican Republic, they will always be tempted by it, it's human nature."

                                                                                   Samuel Grumiau

(1) Report drawn up within the framework of a study mission on child trafficking headed by

UNICEF Haiti.

(2) The names of the children quoted have been changed for their safety.