Let Us Get to Know Colette Lespinasse

Colette Lespinasse studied social work and journalism. She has broad research experience at the island scale with a focus on the border, as a trainer in human rights, and as a social communicator. She served as director of the Support Group for Refugees and Repatriates (GARR) for many years and currently works as an independent consultant.

Can you tell us about any project you are currently working on or have worked on recently?

Right now I am collaborating with an organization that promotes and defends the rights of children in domestic servitude in Haiti called Foyer Maurice Sixto (FMS). This institution bears the name of a great Haitian writer who challenged Haitian society regarding the phenomenon of children in domestic servitude, which constitutes a major violation of childrens rights. Domestic servitude is also considered a form of child trafficking.

At FMS, I support the institutions team in integrating the human-rights dimension into its actions. In that sense, I have done substantial work promoting the Convention on the Rights of the Child among all staff, the children attending the FMS school, and the families where they live. I also train neighborhood groups that commit themselves to monitoring and protecting children in domestic servitude or children suffering abuse in the communities where they live.

What was most interesting about that project and how does it apply to your professional practice?

The work of promoting and defending human rights is the responsibility of every human being. When I saw that many people in neighborhoods were indifferent to what was happening to abused children living around them, I thought it was important to have groups in the neighborhoods dedicated to that work. With the Catholic Churchs human-rights organization, Justice and Peace, I started looking for people in different neighborhoods, whether or not they belonged to churches, who would devote themselves to the work of protecting children. There are now vigilance committees in the municipality of Carrefour, south of Port-au-Prince, that raise family awareness of childrens rights and intervene when they are abused in order to protect them.

With those committees, we carried out a small investigation into the worst kinds of work in which boys and girls are involved in the municipality of Carrefour. By learning where children work, we have been able to develop activities with them.

Thanks to the presence of the committees, children have friends in the neighborhoods who defend them and they do not feel alone in the face of the difficult situations they live through. The work of FMS thus has more impact than before. We now have more information about the situation of these children.

Can you tell us about your experience as an associated researcher at OBMICA?

With OBMICA, I have participated in research and reflections related to the rights of migrants, particularly Haitians who migrate to the Dominican Republic. Sometimes I find myself in working teams in which OBMICA researchers participate, as happened in 2017 in a migration committee of a joint project between a dozen universities in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I have also worked directly with OBMICA on its own projects. The latest OBMICA research in which I participated was Children on the Move at the Dominican-Haitian Border. That work allowed me to better understand the lives of children who cross the border in different places in order to survive, how they do it, what their motivations are, what difficulties they face, what their relations with their families are or are not, and the institutions at the border that try to protect them. These are all children without protection who deserve the attention of the Haitian state and of all persons committed to promoting human rights.

I did that work with a co-researcher from OBMICA. It was an interesting experience. Our knowledge of the border and of institutions working in that sector was of great support in being able to find the children and speak with them. However, we found it very difficult to reach girls. This research teaches us the importance of developing specific strategies to better understand the situations of marginalized and invisibilized groups such as girls.