Around 30,000 Haitian children are illegally smuggled into the

( photo credit Reuters)

Dominican Republic every year to work as child prostitutes or be forced into other degrading occupations, UN and OAS officials said.

In Haiti itself, children are recruited as gang members or are tortured, kidnapped, sexually and physically abused, abandoned and traded like chattel, the United Nations children's fund, UNICEF, and the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said.

The UNICEF adviser for the region, Maria Jesus Conde, and The Inter-American Commission's rapporteur for children's rights, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, said after a four-day fact-finding tour to the Caribbean island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic that they were extremely troubled by the fate of Haitian children.

"The delegation expresses its deep concern, following denunciations it has received about the trade of children and adolescents used for house works and sexual exploitation," Conde and Pinheiro said in a joint statement.

The two organizations also denounced what they said was the prolonged detention of children as young as 10-years-old without charge by Haitian authorities.

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Roiled by political instability and lawlessness, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Most of its nearly 9 million people earn less than $2 a day. Up to a million Haitian illegal immigrants are believed to be working in the factories, sugar plantations and cattle ranches of the far more prosperous Dominican Republic.

Despite the presence of more than 7,000 Brazilian-led UN peacekeepers and international police, the country has slipped deeper into chaos and violence since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in an armed revolt in February 2004. Aristide, a former priest increasingly accused of corruption and despotism in recent years, is in exile in South Africa.

UNICEF and the OAS rapporteur noted that poverty and the almost complete absence of state authority in Haiti were to blame and called for the United Nations in particular to increase efforts at guaranteeing that even Haitians living in slums controlled by armed gangs have access to humanitarian assistance.

Other human rights groups estimate that up to 300,000 Haitian children are used as domestic servants in Haiti and many are subject to violence and sexual abuse.

Pinheiro said there were measures that could be taken to make sure the human rights of children were not ignored.

"Making sure every child is given a birth certificate is not a difficult task for the government," he said.