US funds project to curb child trafficking

Efforts to curb the use of children for forced labour in West Africa received a boost on Friday with the launch of US $2 million initiative by the United States government. US Labour Secretary Elaine Chao, who was in Benin on the second leg of a three-nation African tour, unveiled the campaign tagged “Education First.” It forms part of Washington's support to the International Labour Organisation’s protocol for the elimination of human trafficking and child labour. “This project…will provide increased access for education for children removed from or at risk of being trafficked for exploitative labour,” she said. Terre des Hommes, an NGO which runs a rehabilitation center for child trafficking victims and abused children, and Catholic Relief Services are to be the main beneficiaries of the project. Terres des Hommes, which in French means 'Land of the People', treats children with average age of 10 years for psychological trauma, malnutrition and ill-health at a special facility in Benin for 55 children. Since 1990, 824 victims of child trafficking have passed through the institution, 500 of them in the last four years. Out of the number, 96 percent have been reunited with their families. Only six percent were sent back into child labour, according to the centre’s director, Elizabeth Ponce. At another centre run by Catholic Relief Services, Chao met boys and girls, between 14 and 17 years old who had been rescued from forced labour. They were now being taught skills such as dress making, photography, baking and tapestry. She also met new arrivals, some of whom had returned from Nigeria, where they had been made to work without pay in quarries, breaking granite into gravel. Chao arrived in Benin from the Democratic Republic of Congo where she launched a US $7 million project for the “rescue and rehabilitation” of child soldiers. She will conclude her four-day African tour in Ghana on Saturday. There she will meet with government officials and NGOs involved in efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS through action in the workplace. Child trafficking is widespread in West Africa, with children from the region’s poorer countries often moving to the relatively richer cocoa-growing Cote d’Ivoire or oil-producing Nigeria and Gabon. Benin is one of the countries that suffers most from the illegal trade. But Chao said Washington had selected the country for assistance because of great efforts made by its government to tackle the problem. Child traffickers in West Africa often taken children with the consent of their parents who are given money, gifts or promises that their son or daughter will be given a job or taught a trade.