Police arrest 10 for child trafficking

Benin police arrested 10 people on Tuesday for trying to take 23 minors to work in Cote d’Ivoire, a news source in Cotonou told IRIN. The source said on Wednesday that the traffickers were arrested at Come, some 65 km northwest of the Cotonou, and that the children, boys and girls aged 7-17 years were now being cared for by a non-governmental agency. AFP reported that another 10 Benin nationals were caught in Togo trafficking 11 children last week. Child trafficking has become a growing problem in parts of West Africa as impoverished parents give their children to strangers who promise them education and employment. It has been widely reported that most of the children work in plantations or as domestics in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon and Nigeria. They are often underpaid, abused and subjected to conditions akin to slavery. The traffic in children came into the spotlight when a ship carrying 43 children and youths returned to the port of Cotonou on 16 April after being refused permission to dock in Gabon and Cameroon. AFP reported that aid workers identified 13 Beninese, 17 Malians, eight Togolese, a Senegalese and a Guinean among the children and adolescents aboard the MV Etireno. Benin’s National Assembly ratified on Thursday the 1998 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 182 that prohibits the worst forms of child labour, PANA reported. It had earlier ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.