Human Trafficking in [Benin Street Children in [Benin] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Benin] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery
Benin is a source, transit, and,
to a lesser extent, a destination country for children trafficked for the
purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. A UNICEF study found
that in 2006 more than 40,000 children were trafficked to, from, or through
Benin. Ninety-three percent of victims were Beninese and 92 percent were
trafficked within the country. Forty-three percent of children trafficked
were subjected to domestic servitude. Of those trafficked internally, 86
percent were underage girls. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009
[full
country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Scale of African
slavery revealed COMPLICITY - Much of this trade in children often
has the tacit collaboration of the victims' own families where it is seen not
so much as criminal activity but as a way for a large family to boost its
poor income. The story of Joseph in Benin is
fairly typical. When he was 13 years
old, a stranger arranged with his parents for him to go to neighbouring Togo for a better life. However, he was put to work from 0500 to
2300 each day as a domestic help and was regularly beaten. It took him three years of saving money to
be able to phone home and be rescued by an uncle. Now 16 years old, he is
back in school. "I was so happy
to see my little brother again when I returned home to Benin," he says. African
"slave ship" highlights spread of child slavery Although there may be a
superficial resemblance to the African slave trade of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the driving forces behind this modern form of slavery
are entirely new. The roots of today's slave trade are to be discovered in
the way that capitalism has developed in Africa during the last few decades. The conditions of extreme poverty
in Sub-Saharan Africa have attracted transnational corporations (TNCs), which can profit from Africa's rich mineral
resources and other primary products by exploiting the plentiful cheap labour needed to produce and process them. The TNCs are able to sell these products in Europe and
America for many times more than they cost to produce. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The
traditional practice of vidomegon, in which poor,
often rural, families placed a child in the home of a more wealthy family to
avoid the burden the child represented to the parental family, increasingly
involved abuse. While originally a voluntary arrangement between two
families, the child often faced forced labor, long hours, inadequate food,
and sexual exploitation. Approximately 90 to 95 percent of the children in vidomegon were young girls. Children were sent from
poorer families to Cotonou and then sometimes on to
Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire, and the Central African Republic to help in markets and
around the home. The child received living accommodations, while the child's
parents and the urban family that raised the child split the income generated
from the child's activities. Children were trafficked to According to a 2000 UNICEF study,
four distinct forms of trafficking occurred in the country. "Trafic‑don" was when children were given to a
migrant family member or stranger, who turned them over to another stranger for
vocational training or education. "Trafic‑gage"
was a form of indentured servitude, in which a debt was incurred to transport
the child, who was not allowed to return home until the debt was repaid.
"Trafic‑ouvrier" involved children
of ages 6 years to 12 years, who worked as artisans, construction laborers,
or agricultural or domestic workers. This was the most common variant,
estimated to be 75 percent of the total traffic of the three provinces UNICEF
surveyed in 2000. Finally, "trafic‑vente"
was the outright sale of children. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2006 [DOC] [71] While welcoming the ongoing efforts by the State
party to combat child trafficking, including the new Law on the Suppression
of Trafficking in Children, the National Policy and Strategy on Child
Protection, and the National Study on Child Trafficking, the Committee is
concerned at the information that a high number of children under 18,
especially adolescent girls, are still being trafficked for the purpose of
sexual exploitation and domestic labour in other
countries. [67] The Committee is deeply concerned at the
prevalence of child labour among young children
under the age of 14, at the traditional practice of domestic servants or vidomégons, and at the increased number of children
working in the informal sector. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 1999 [33] While the Committee notes the
efforts of the State party, it remains concerned at the increasing incidence
of sale and trafficking of children, particularly girls, and the lack of
adequate legal and other measures to prevent and combat this phenomenon. In
the light of article 35 and other related articles of the Convention, the
Committee recommends that the State party review its legal framework and strengthen
law enforcement, and intensify its efforts to raise awareness in communities,
in particular in rural areas. Cooperation with neighboring countries through
bilateral agreements to prevent cross-border trafficking is strongly
encouraged Report by Special Rapporteur [DOC] [28] Action to combat trafficking
has been mobilized since the well-publicized case in April 2001 of the Etireno, a Nigerian-registered ship thought to be
carrying some 200 children from Benin being trafficked to be sold as
slaves. Although the ship was found to contain only adults with
accompanying children seeking work in The
Protection Project - Benin [DOC] FORMS OF TRAFFICKING - Benin, along with Togo, has one
of the greatest problems with child trafficking of all the countries in West
and Central Africa. Child labor and
sexual exploitation are the predominant forms of trafficking. For example,
children are trafficked from Benin to Gabon for domestic servitude. Also, many children who are trafficked from
Benin to other neighboring West African countries are forced to work in
agricultural plantations and mines.
Children are trafficked from Benin to Côte d’Ivoire to work on
plantations, as servants, or on the streets in prostitution. In September 2003, a total of 116
Beninese boys between 5 and 17 years old were repatriated from Nigeria, and an additional 74 children were
repatriated in October 2003. These
children had been sold into bonded labor to work in about seven granite
quarries in Ogun, Osun,
and Oyo states in southwestern Nigeria.
They had been exploited for months or in some cases years. According
to the children repatriated in October, at least 13 other victims died in the
3 months before their rescue.
Authorities of Benin and Nigeria also believe that up to 15,000 more
children from Benin could be exploited in similar conditions in southwestern
Nigeria, and they have launched a third rescue mission. A tradition involving the use of
female slaves, known as trokosi or “wives of the
deity,” is a modern-day form of slavery that originated in the Ewe and Dangme peoples in south and east Ghana, and also in Togo
and Benin. Under this tradition, young virgins are brought to a shrine to
compensate for a crime or transgression committed by their families, perhaps
even generations earlier. The girls live as slaves to the priest. If a girl
dies, the family sends a new one to replace her. The trokosi
work in the household, clean the shrine, and are used as sex slaves. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Free Scale of African
slavery revealed COMPLICITY - Much of this trade in children
often has the tacit collaboration of the victims' own families where it is
seen not so much as criminal activity but as a way for a large family to
boost its poor income. The story of Joseph in Benin is
fairly typical. When he was 13 years
old, a stranger arranged with his parents for him to go to neighbouring Togo for a better life. However, he was put to work from 0500 to
2300 each day as a domestic help and was regularly beaten. It took him three years of saving money to
be able to phone home and be rescued by an uncle. Now 16 years old, he is
back in school. "I was so happy
to see my little brother again when I returned home to Benin," he says. Labour standards violated in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali Although Benin, Burkina Faso and
Mali have ratified the core Conventions on Forced Labour,
the practice does exist, Ms Kwateng denounces.
"Many women and children are trafficked for forced prostitution, forced labour on plantations and domestic work," she
adds. Moreover, many Beninese, Burkinabe and Malian children are reported to be sold to neighbouring countries - like Togo and Côte d'Ivoire -
and forced to work on plantations or in domestic work under harsh and
dangerous conditions while receiving very low pay, if any at all. 74
additional trafficked children repatriated from Nigeria to Benin Another group of 74 trafficked
children, between the ages of 4 and 17 years old, was
repatriated to Benin on Wednesday, 15 October. Like the first
group of 116 children who were repatriated on 26 September, these
children worked in Nigerian quarries in Abeokuta. This is the second repatriation in
2 weeks of Beninese trafficked children coming from Nigeria. On 26 September,
116 children were handed over at the border under the same
conditions. According to Nigerian sources,
there might be thousands of Beninese children exploited in Nigeria. In The
Northwest: Bully for those combating worldwide slave trade Nigeria (Tier 2) has just rescued
74 child workers -- as young as age 4 -- who were kidnapped from their native
Benin and forced to work in granite pits. Thirteen children in the group had
reportedly died. Human trafficking remains huge --
about 6,000 children remain at work in Nigeria's granite pits. Traffickers
hold thousands of children, women in bondage Silinu Sogbonsi
was five years old when unknown men seized him as he walked home from school
in Selinu, a little town in the southeast of Benin,
near the Nigerian border. Blindfolded, he was pushed him into a waiting car
which sped away. For several days, Sogbonsi was hustled along by his captors on motorbikes
through bush paths and on buses along highways. Finally he arrived in a little village he
was to identify as Alamutu, near Abeokuta city in southwest Nigeria. Here Sogbonsi joined other children, aged five to 15 on a
daily routine to dig up granite for their masters from the stone quarries
that litter the area. The children,
who earned 50 naira (US $0.38) a week, each worked 12-16 hours, crushing
enough gravel to generate 35,000 naira ($269). Every evening a lorry
delivered the gravel to construction sites in Nigeria's southwest region. LABOUR: Nigeria, Benin Join Forces to Fight Child
Trafficking The children, all males and
malnourished, were part of the inmates of about seven child-slave camps
discovered in the western Nigerian States of Ogun,
Oyo and Osun, in a major breakthrough by security
operatives fighting cross-border crimes, especially child trafficking and
forced child labour. Ship
Discovered With Human Cargo 250 children have been discovered
aboard a ship in the Gabonese port. The children who were allegedly sold to
human traffickers by their parents or guardians were taken to Gabon where
they were to be resold into child labour or slavery
of all kinds. According to Zardzo,
the children aboard the ship are between the ages of 9,10,and 11, who are
able to help government in the relocation of their parents or guardians. These children are said to have hailed from
the two West African countries of Togo and Benin. African
"slave ship" highlights spread of child slavery Although there may be a
superficial resemblance to the African slave trade of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the driving forces behind this modern form of slavery
are entirely new. The roots of today's slave trade are to be discovered in
the way that capitalism has developed in Africa during the last few decades. The conditions of extreme poverty
in Sub-Saharan Africa have attracted transnational corporations (TNCs), which can profit from Africa's rich mineral
resources and other primary products by exploiting the plentiful cheap labour needed to produce and process them. The TNCs are able to sell these products in Europe and
America for many times more than they cost to produce. Rogue Voyage of a
21st Century African Slave Ship On April 17, the Etireno limped back into Cotonou.
Upon examining the ship, local authorities said it was "uncertain" if
slaves had been aboard. Realists wondered if an even
greater evil had occurred, with the human evidence drowned at sea. Modern
Slavery - Human bondage in Africa, Asia, and the Dominican Republic SLAVE TRADING ON AFRICA'S WEST
COAST - The slave
trade in Africa was officially banned in the early 1880s, but forced labor
continues to be practiced in West and Central Africa today. UNICEF estimates
that 200,000 children from this region are sold into slavery each year. Many
of these children are from Benin
and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of
wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon. SLAVE CHILDREN - The New York Times on August
10, 1997 reported that the slave trade in children seems to be increasing in
Central Africa, as well-dressed traders travel to poor rural areas in Benin
and offer parents money, from $20 to $40, in exchange for their children,
promising that the ones they take away will end up rich and successful. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Benin Street Children in [Benin] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Benin] [other countries]