Stepping up the fight against child trafficking

Working out strategies to fight a practice that dooms thousands of West and Central African children to exploitation, hardship and abuse is the aim of a three-day conference that began on Tuesday in the Gabonese capital, Libreville. Some 150 delegates from about 20 West and Central African nations and international organisations are attending the 'Subregional Consultation on Developing Strategies on the Trafficking of Children for Exploitative Labour Purposes in West and Central Africa', organised by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The main objectives of the conference include "adopting a common platform of action which should guide programmes of action and coordinated interventions of the various partners at all levels", UNICEF's Regional Director for West and Central Africa Rima Salah told Tuesday's opening session. The meeting is also aimed at "deepening our knowledge of the problem of the worst forms of child labour, including the exploitation of children's labour in the region, whereby children are exploited, ill-treated and deprived of their childhood," Salah said. According to ILO figures, of the some 250 million working children in the world's developing countries, 32 percent or 80 million are in Africa. Of these, many are in West Africa where children have traditionally been placed in the households of relatives or close associates. However, "that cannot justify the bad treatment to which thousands of children are subjected today in their own environments or far from their parents," Benin's Minister of Social Protection and Family Planning Ramatou Baba Moussa, speaking on behalf of the ministers participating in the consultation, told the opening session. Child trafficking involves many of the countries of the subregion, according to background information provided at the conference, including the 'Subregional study on child trafficking in West and Central Africa', research commissioned by UNICEF in 1999. Networks of traffickers take children from Togo, Benin and Nigeria further south by sea to Gabon, where they work mainly as domestics. Malian children are taken as cheap farm labour to Cote d'Ivoire, which also receives domestics and fishermen's apprentices from Ghana. Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea and even Niger are also mentioned as experiencing similar situations but more in-depth information is needed in this regard, according to the UNICEF study. "It is inadmissible, at the dawn of the third millenium, that such abominations which, alas, are reminiscent of the slave trade continue to be perpetrated on the African continent for the sole purpose of satisfying the selfish interests of some individuals looking for easy gain," Baba Moussa said. Also represented at the consultation are Cape Verde, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Sao Tome e Principe, and Senegal.