Government creates anti-child trafficking committee

The government of Benin has set up a national child protection committee to oversee the fight against child trafficking and the work of child protection organisations. The 15-member committee includes the representatives of several child welfare organisations, the government and the police. It was set up last Friday for an initial period of 12 months. Rita Sodjiedo-Hounton, the president of the Beninois Association of Assistance to Children and Families, is a member of the committee. She told IRIN that the body would publish a directory of the country’s child protection organisations and evaluate how effective each one had been in the fight against child trafficking. Acccording to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), some 200,000 minors have been drawn into the illegal trade that spans West and Central Africa. However, Benin is perceived to have an especially acute problem. Child welfare organisations believe several thousand Beninois children have been acquired from poor families or seized by force to work in near slave conditions in neighbouring Nigeria. Many have been put to work there in gravel pits and quarries. Terre des Hommes, a French relief agency whose name means 'Land of the People,’ runs a rehabilitation centre for trafficked children in Benin that deals with up to 55 children at a time. The average age of its residents is 10. The facility treats the children for psychological trauma, malnutrition and ill-health. Since 1990, 824 victims of child trafficking have passed through the institution, 500 of them in the last four years. Child trafficking in Benin hit the headlines in 2001 with the case of the ‘Etireno’, a Nigerian-registered vessel that left the port of Cotonou, carrying dozens of young boys and girls, destined to work in Central African countries. The ship was denied entry to several ports and eventually returned to Cotonou.