AFRICANEWS

ChildRights

Africa

Suffer Africa's little children

In 1994, the UN General Assembly criminalised trafficking in human beings. But that didn't mean that the trade has stopped. It surfaced recently in Benin when authorities impounded a ship suspected to be transporting child slaves.

�What's wrong with Africans, since they are still trading in slaves today?� posed an exasperated TV viewer in Norway, who was appalled by the recent child slave saga in Benin. There, a ship suspected to be trafficking 250 children ended up at the country's port of Cotonou in April, but with only 30 minors on board.

Few could answer the concerned Norwegian, Ivar Larsen. But, as the government of Benin, UNICEF officials, and other non-government organisations began to unravel the mystery, one thing was clear: trade in human beings is still alive, despite a motley of international conventions outlawing the practice.

The debacle also exposed the low esteem that many African governments hold on issues affecting children, even after such regimes have ratified children-centric laws. It has been reported that the suspected ship, MV Etinero, like many of its kind, has been plying the west coast for years.

"The plight of the children on board this ship serves as a timely reminder that slavery and bondage are still realities in the world and that labour secured on these terms is used to harvest primary products like cocoa," said Brian Wilson, British foreign office minister. Gaston Zossou, Benin's information minister, concurred: �This is a dramatic and shocking situation. We must condemn this practice and we must take measures to punish those responsible.�

It all began on March 30, when the Nigerian registered Etinero left Cotonou for the port of Libreville, Gabon. However, the vessel was refused permission to dock after reports indicated that child slaves were onboard. Etinoro then headed for the Cameroonian port of Douala, where it was also turned away, forcing it to drift back to Cotonou where it was expected on April 15.

By then, UNICEF personnel, relief workers, and the Benin government were waiting to pounce on the vessel. Interpol had issued an international arrest warrant for the ship's captain, Beninois Stanislas Abanton, who is said to have a criminal record. Later investigations revealed, however, that Etinoro is owned by one of Nigeria's famous soccer players, Jonathan Akpoborie, who plays for the German club, Wolfsburg. The club promptly suspended the player. �I was not involved in any way in the running of the vessel and � I deny any involvement in the incident,� said Akpoborie.

When the ship didn't dock at Cotonou as expected, rumours started flying. "Our biggest fear is that a sad fate might befall the children," said Adams Zachary, protection officer at UNICEF's Benin office. "We know that child traffickers do not hesitate to throw children overboard when they know they are being pursued or when the children are ill."

UNICEF officials were convinced that the traffickers would abandon the boat and the children somewhere in Nigeria, since there are six Nigerian ports between Cameroon and Benin. On April 16, Ramatou Babamoussa, Benin's social protection minister, claimed that Etinoro had been spotted off the coast of Equatoria Guinea, 800km from Cotonou. But then, on April 17, it docked at Cotonou and police promptly stormed it, finding only 30 children. Speculation arose that either the rest had been abandoned in a remote place along the Nigerian coastline or had been thrown overboard, but there was no evidence.

Babamoussa promised to investigate. On May 1, her government announced that the ship was, in fact, carrying victims of child trafficking. According to her, five of the children interviewed said that a financial transaction had taken place prior to their departure while eight others said they were travelling with "unknown intermediaries".

"It can be confirmed that the adventure of the Etinero ship falls within the framework of a sub-regional trafficking in minors and a network of clandestine work," she said. Babamoussa also indicated that the vessel had carried 147 people, including three babies and 40 children and youths aged between five and 24 years old.

Where the investigation goes next is uncertain. It should be noted that on April 17, Red Cross societies in sixteen West African nations announced that they would meet in Senegal to set up teams to monitor the region's main ports and to disseminate information about child labour and trafficking. To man the West African coastline is poor, as there is no international naval presence in the area. The Royal British Navy used to have a ship in the area until the 1990s, but was withdrawn under budget cuts.

A similar meeting held in Nigeria in February this year discussed the same issue but achieved nothing. During the meeting - dubbed the Pan African Conference on Human Trafficking - Dr. Rima Salah, UNICEF's regional director for West and Central Africa, admitted the magnitude of the menace: �We know that the scale of the problem is enormous. Studies have revealed clearly established trafficking routes involving Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Niger.�

One month later, 27 members of the Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU), UN agencies, and international NGOs met in Cote D'Ivoire to discuss the International Labour Organisation's Convention 182 on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Participants were shocked to learn that only 20 African governments out of 53 had ratified the 1999 convention and which member countries were expected to ratify by the middle of last year.

According to two reports commissioned by UNICEF last year and in 1998, about 200,000 children are trafficked each year in the West and Central Africa sub-region alone. Most of them are purchased for as little as US$10 and originate mainly from Benin, Togo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria and are shipped to Cameroon, Gabon, Cote D'Ivoire, The Gambia and Equatoria Guinea, where they work with little or no pay in homes, cocoa and coffee plantations, fishing boats and mines. Some from Nigeria are even purchased to work as sex slaves in some countries in the sub-region.

But the flow is not all that smooth, as some of these countries are both suppliers and receivers while others are just transit bases. �I must say that children and women trafficking in Africa is very complex,� admits Dr. Salah. He says that it is still unknown how traffickers manage to ship their cargo without being detected or arrested. �We are still at the very early stages of defining the issues and generating the data that will help us to better understand these movement patterns.�

In West Africa, millions of children are vulnerable to traffickers because of the many wars that have disrupted their lives. Analysts also agree that the opening up of common borders by the regional trade body, ECOWAS, to promote free trade has also contributed to the problem, since it makes it difficult to distinguish between criminal trafficking and cross-border migration.

Whatever the case, observers note that the beneficiaries are the organised crime networks while the children are left devastated. �In the underworld of human trade, children are exchanged for prostitution, for begging and soliciting, and for work on construction sites, in small shops, in factories and in domestic service,� says UNICEF's report. It notes that these children are abused, work under hazardous conditions, and are denied education, healthcare, nutrition, and other basic rights. �Many pay the ultimate price and lose their lives.�

UNICEF, the World Bank, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) agree that poverty is the largest causal factor in the shipment of children. Data produced last year by the Breton Woods institution estimates that 40 percent of the population in West Africa lives below the poverty line, with the level in some countries being as high as 72 percent.

�In the past few years, because of the deteriorating economic situation, there has been a much bigger trade in children�particularly large plantations which need a lot of cheap labour, obedient labour and children are perfect fro that,� says Esther Guluma, a UNICEF official in Benin. Thus, the traffickers find it easy to purchase children or lure them with pledges of education and employment opportunities.

With most informal sector economies in the sub-region being labour intensive, the demand for cheap, submissive child labour is very high. �Their vulnerability and eagerness to please make them attractive targets for the ruthless and greed driven predators in today's world,� says Dr. Salah. With most of the governments possessing inadequate legislation against child trafficking and labour, the perpetrators have a field day.

Nigeria recently introduced an "Anti-human Trafficking Bill" that aims to deal with the perpetrators. Gabon has also established a National Commission to combat trafficking in children while Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Guinea are planning conferences to discuss the issue. At the same time, Cote d'Ivoire and Mali have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to foster cross-border co-operation in combating the menace.

But all these will remain useless if the governments continue to ignore international conventions on children and also fail to deal sternly with the perpetrators. Even the presence in Gabon of a regional consultation centre under the auspices of UNICEF and ILO on human trafficking and a transit centre in Sikasso, Mali, to receive repatriated children have not deterred the perpetrators.

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