- The informal and traditional West African practice of poor parents sending their children to friends, relatives and to informal schools is being "misused to abuse children across a region," according to a new report. Senegal is developing into a centre of "schools" for children from all over West Africa, which are abused instead of educated.
According to a report released yesterday by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), "cultural and traditional beliefs in West Africa were being misused to abuse children across the region." In West Africa, an estimated two million children are thought to be victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation.
The IOM report in particular focuses on the West African practice of poor parents to send their children to informal schools such as Koranic schools or Daaras because they don't have the resources to send them to conventional institutions. In the region, this has long been regarded as a form of community support. Education in Koranic schools for both rich and poor is widely respected in teaching people to appreciate material deprivation and to help people become responsible adults.
"However, the practice, which is unregulated, can make children vulnerable to human trafficking and is open to abuse," the IOM warns.
"Some Koranic masters or teachers in Daaras, give little or no education to the children they are entrusted with," the organisation found. "Hundreds of thousands of children in West Africa are being forced to become street beggars for the personal enrichment of the masters themselves and are punished or beaten if they refuse to beg or don't collect enough food and money at the end of each day's work."
Although the teachers claim that making children beg is essential to the survival of the Daaras as well as being an important lesson to learn on the harsh realities of life, parents are usually ignorant of what is happening to their children, particularly if they have been sent to other West African countries or to big urban centres.
According to IOM, "Senegal is now the centre of the Daara system in West Africa, receiving boys from various West African countries." But it also receives many girls from the region, trafficked or exploited as domestic workers or in the sex industry along the beaches of the Petite Côte, where tourism is flourishing.
"The girls, also sent to distant family and friends as part of a long respected tradition, can be as young as seven or eight and forced to work for very long hours with little to no pay," the report says.
Other examples of child exploitation and trafficking, mentioned in the report, included Malian children in Mauritania working as domestic workers, Malian children working in exploitative conditions in the cotton fields of Côte d'Ivoire and Burkinabe children in Mali being forced to work on farms instead of receiving an education.
"Awareness of the issue among the public and families in particular is slowly gaining, but it is still very limited. Governments and civil society need to do much more to address this, and more importantly, the consequences on the children themselves. And they need to act much faster," said Armand Rousselot, the IOM's Regional Representative for West Africa.
Progress in fighting child trafficking in West Africa has been slow, but the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) recently agreed on a three year plan of action and adopted a cooperation agreement to protect women and children from human trafficking in their region.
"The plan of action is a very important step forward and is to be applauded. But it is critical that the actions listed are fully implemented if efforts to counter human trafficking in West Africa are to be really successful and the suffering of these children in particular, is to be stopped," said Ndioro Ndiaye, IOM Deputy Director General.
The organisation advices African governments and ECOWAS to work with partners on the ground, including national organisations, to both raise awareness of child trafficking and to help the victims. The IOM had received funding from the US State Department to conduct such work.
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