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Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the early
years of the 21st Century gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Togo.htm
Togo is a source, transit and, to a lesser
extent, a destination country for women and children trafficked for the
purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking
within Togo is more prevalent than transnational trafficking and the majority
of victims are children. Togolese girls are trafficked primarily within the
country for domestic servitude, for forced work as market vendors and produce
porters, and for commercial sexual exploitation. To a lesser extent, girls
from Togo are also trafficked to other African countries, primarily Benin,
Nigeria, Ghana, and Niger, for the same purposes listed above. Although some
Togolese boys are trafficked within the country, they are more commonly
trafficked transnationally to work in agricultural labor, including on cocoa
farms, in other African countries, primarily Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon
and Benin. - 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 *** Children rescued from trafficking wait with
their nightmares to go home U.N. Integrated Regional Information
Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=53334 [accessed 30 December 2010] The wisp of a girl sits
silently to one side, staring at the scarred tips of her fingers. Probably no
more than five years old, Enyonam has just arrived
at a center for trafficked children in the Togolese capital, HRW Report: Human Rights Watch, 1 April 2003 www.hrw.org/en/node/76184/section/1 [accessed 30 December 2010] SUMMARY - SUMMARY - Boys worked from as
early as 5:00 a.m. until late at night, sometimes with hazardous equipment
such as saws or machetes. Some described conditions of bonded labor, whereby
their trafficker would pay for their journey to ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/togo.htm [accessed 30 December 2010] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - In rural areas, young children are sometimes placed
in domestic work in exchange for a one-time fee of 15,000 to 20,000 CFA
francs (USD 27.47 to 36.63) paid to their parents. In remote parts of the country, a form of
bonded labor occurs in the traditional practice known as trokosi,
where young girls become slaves to priests for offenses allegedly committed
by a member of their family. Abuse of
the cultural practice of Amegbonovei, through which
extended family relations help to place children (usually from rural areas)
with families who agree to pay for the children’s education or provide them
with a salary in exchange for domestic work, contributes to the incidence of
child trafficking. Often the intermediaries who arrange the placements
abuse the children and rape the girls. These children are also
sometimes mistreated by the families with whom they are placed. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61597.htm [accessed 30 December 2010] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS
– While official statistics for trafficked persons were not available,
trafficking occurred throughout the country. The majority of the country's
trafficking victims were children from the poorest rural areas, particularly
those of Kotocoli, Tchamba,
Ewe, Kabye, and Akposso
ethnicities and mainly from the Maritime, Plateau, and Central regions. Adult
victims usually were lured with phony job offers. Children were often trafficked abroad by parents misled by false information.
Sometimes parents sold their children to traffickers for bicycles, radios, or
clothing, and signed parental authorizations transferring their children into
the custody of the trafficker. Children were
trafficked into indentured and exploitative servitude, which amounted at
times to slavery. Most trafficking occurred internally, with children
trafficked from rural areas to cities, primarily Concluding Observations of the Committee on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
28 January 2005 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/togo2005b.html [accessed 30 December 2010] [72] The Committee
welcomes the adoption of the National Plan of Action on the fight against
child trafficking for commercial exploitation and labor in 2001 as well as
the establishment of the Comités de vigilance .
However, the Committee is concerned that the Plan of Action did not
sufficiently involve the civil society and is not efficiently implemented. It
is further concerned that trafficking of children is not a separate offence
under the law, despite the wide scope prevalence of the phenomenon. The
Committee is further concerned by at the lack of measures taken to combat and
protect children from sale, trafficking and abduction. In Kevin www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/26/ST2008122600004.html [accessed 30 December 2010] Adiza ran scared and
crying into the street. Ten years old and 4-foot-9, she fled the house where
she had worked for more than a year, cleaning and sweeping from before dawn
until late at night. She ran to a
woman selling food in the street and told her that since the day she had
arrived in this capital city from her village in the country, her employer
had beaten her almost daily and kept her in slavelike
conditions. "I couldn't take any
more," recalled Adiza, a slight girl with
close-cropped hair and almond-shaped eyes, who talked in a halting whisper as
she described how her employer beat her with her hands and with cooking pots
before the November day she ran away. Rarely making eye
contact, Adiza spoke in a shelter here surrounded
by other tiny girls who had suffered physical or sexual abuse in the growing
global trade in domestic servants.
The number of girls like Adiza, who leave
their communities or even their countries to clean other people's houses, has
surged in recent years, according to labor and human rights specialists. The
girls in the maid trade, some as young as 5, often go unpaid, and their work
in private homes means the abuses they suffer are out of public view. A FRAYING OF TRUST - Adiza was raised in Kpatchile,
a few mud huts scattered among fields of corn and yams 250 miles north of A closer look at domestic child labour in
Africa Konye Obaji
Ori, AFRIK News, 18 October 2008 www.afrik-news.com/article14712.html [accessed 30 December 2010] When my master
brought me from the village, he said that I will show that I deserved to go
to school by proving my hard work at home. I was bent on going to school so I
put my heart into everything I was commanded to do. I Swept, cleaned, washed,
mopped, ironed, and fetched water from a public tap, two streets away, to
fill the drums and basins in our house.
In-between these chores I had to go out and hawk sachets water in
traffic and in the streets of the ghetto. I slept last and woke up first. I
didn’t eat with my master, his wife and his children at table, I ate a small
portion of foodon the floor at the back yard, after
they had all eaten. Sometimes I could not work because I was always hungry,
but I had to work otherwise knocks and the Koboko
cane will descend on me.’ An 8 year old Togolese househelp
narrated. In most African families,
wealth entails owning a houseboy or a house girl as they are called. This
cultural practice that allows people to take deprived children from the
remote villages, offer them shelter, food and sometimes primary education in
return for their labor which is often child labor or even slave labor, is an
issue that needs to be addressed with regards to human rights, child rights
and international labor rights After 3 years, my
master registered me in a community school down the street. It was more like
a place where street children passed time, the
teachers hardly came to class. My chores and task were still a problem but I
managed to deliver, so as to avoid any problem with my master or his wife. I
liked school, I wanted to learn but I hardy had time to review my school work
or do assignments and when I did poorly, my master or his wife would beat me
like a thief. Sometimes I thought of running away, but to where? I wanted to
go back to my mother, but how do I tell my uncle that, when the last time I
asked about my mother, I was given the beating of my life, called an ingrate
and denied food for two days. I wasn’t doing well at school, I wasn’t happy
at home, I missed my mother, but I couldn’t do anything about it. All my
mother knew was that her son was in the city and was in school, and will be a
big shot.’ In smuggling case, 'victims' defend the
accused Brian Donohue, The Star-Ledger, 10 May 2008 www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/05/in_smuggling_case_victims_defe.html [accessed 30 December 2010] Last September,
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested two men and a woman
from They say they long
to return to the hair salons -- even if they weren't paid for their long
hours performing intricate hair weaves. And worse, they say, their parents in
Africa are blaming them for the downfall of the three jailed suspects, who had
been sending money to the workers' families before the salons were shut. When she calls home, says one 21-year old
woman, her parents blame her for disappointing the village, then they hang up
on her. Trafficking of African women is thriving Francois Tillinac,
International Labour Organisation (ILO)
News, May 10 2007 www.iol.co.za/news/africa/trafficking-of-african-women-is-thriving-1.352453 [accessed 14 November 2010] In January Italian
police smashed several human trafficking rings involving African and eastern
European females and netted some 800 suspects. Outside Children rescued from trafficking wait with
their nightmares to go home U.N. Integrated Regional Information
Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=53334 [accessed 30 December 2010] The wisp of a girl
sits silently to one side, staring at the scarred tips of her fingers.
Probably no more than five years old, Enyonam has
just arrived at a center for trafficked children in the Togolese capital, Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 5 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/togo [accessed 28 June 2012] Combating Child Trafficking in Togo through
Education (COMBAT) Project Number: TGO028 www.care.org/careswork/projects/TGO028.asp? [accessed 30 December 2010] PROJECT DESCRIPTION - CARE's COMBAT
project joins in the elimination of child trafficking in Children mobilization against Child
Trafficking At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 12 September 2011] Child trafficking
takes alarming proportions in WHY DO THESE CHILDREN LEAVE THEIR FAMILY? - Poverty, ignorance,
children not attending school, the lack of a legal framing are the main
factors which make children vulnerable. These children are generally brought
to Aguegue (in Child prostitution goes unchecked in Togo U.N. Integrated Regional Information
Networks IRIN, archive.wn.com/2004/04/24/1400/p/e9/7a09c562f9d480.html [accessed 3 May 2012] Adjo says she never
knew her real parents. But she and Amivi hand over
all the money they earn to a woman whom they call “Mama”. If the girls give this woman too little
cash at the end of a shift, they run the risk of a severe beating. “At the end of every day I have to give the
money to a woman called ‘Mama.’ If I don’t have enough money to give her, I
get beaten,” Adjo said. Besides Adjo and Amivi, there are
several hundred other young girls aged between nine and 15 who can openly be
bought for sex in the downtown area of Scale of African slavery revealed BBC News, 23 April 2004 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3652021.stm [accessed 30 December 2010] 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.
Joseph's back bears the scars of his beatings. The story of Joseph
in Child Trafficking in Livina Nkiruka
Agwunobi, 14
September 2004 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 12 September 2011] In HRW Report: Human Rights Watch, 1 April 2003 www.hrw.org/en/node/76184/section/1 [accessed 30 December 2010] SUMMARY - SUMMARY - Boys worked from as
early as 5:00 a.m. until late at night, sometimes with hazardous equipment
such as saws or machetes. Some described conditions of bonded labor, whereby
their trafficker would pay for their journey to Child labor on cocoa farms 'tip of the
iceberg' Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org/en/news/2003/04/01/west-africa-stop-trafficking-child-labor [accessed 14 December 2010] Young Togolese boys
told Human Rights Watch they could not afford to pay school fees and so
agreed to do agricultural work in Building a network against child
trafficking Reporter, Anti-Slavery International, July
2002 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 12 September 2011] Tens of thousands
of children are trafficked in In 1997,
Anti-Slavery International's partner in Ship Discovered With Human Cargo Orando Yanquoi,
ExpoTimes ( www.diastode.org/Nouvelles/usnews190.html [accessed 30 December 2010] 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 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 Child Trafficking in West and UN Economic and Social Council, Commission
on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities, Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery,
24th Session, Geneva, 23 June - 2 July 1999 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 12 September 2011] The effect of
trafficking on children is devastating. Children are in danger of being cut
off from their roots, losing contact with their own family, sometimes
permanently, being subjected to harsh working conditions, as well as
physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Research by our partners in Bénin in 1998, found that even where children are
rescued, they are likely to encounter feelings of alienation from their own
family and culture and must undergo a long and difficult task of
reintegration. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
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