Georgette Mulheir has defended helpless children for decades. Her role in life was to be their advocate, to fight against the injustices they received. Her work has taken her across countries and across continents. She has been instrumental in changing public opinions, child protection laws and has helped volunteers work with families to keep them united. It was this work that took Georgette Mulheir to Haiti several years ago. In this country, she found deceit, corruption, and a government interested in serving its own personal needs. Of course, the children were the most affected by the negligence and fraud of the government.
But the poverty inflicted by the current political regime has gone much deeper. Yes, it has caused fraudulent activity, kidnappings, death, and a type of child slavery used to milk churches and other nonprofit foreign organizations for money to care for orphans who were not orphans. Criminals were setting up orphanages and convincing parents who suffered from extreme poverty to give up their children (Cruncbase).
In exchange, the orphanage administrators promised quality education and a better life for the kids. Instead, they begged money from churches and nonprofit organizations, kept the money, and placed the children into slave labor for the orphanage. Georgette Mulheir went to work quickly. She wrote letters to the nonprofit organizations. She explained what she was seeing. Quickly she began to remedy the situation, taking the power from the hands of these criminals. But still, she cannot help the families with food, clothing, and jobs.
She cannot make a real difference because of Martine Moise, the president, who remained in office despite his term being over. Moise promoted unrest and violence. Although he was assassinated last July by opposing parties, the country is at a difficult crossroads. Haiti is facing grave political unrest, endemic corruption, and political incompetence. Georgette Mulheir hopes that through her foundation, Defend Haiti’s Democracy she can harness the help of the International Human Rights Clinic, Harvard Law School, the NYU School of Law’s Global Justice Clinic and others to bring experts to a forum and help find constitutional reform, address human rights issues and improve the governance of Haiti both locally and internationally. The purpose is for experts to work together and help find solutions for the country.