Coming home from the street – Photo Essay

On 21 November, 18 children returned home to a country they hadn’t seen in years.

They were trafficked from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal, like thousands of others – sometimes as young as four years old – who work the cotton fields of Senegal’s southern agricultural region or are taken to religious leaders who force them to beg on the streets in return for a Koranic education.

Known as the talibés, the forced child beggars are often subjected to horrible living conditions, beatings and sometimes sexual abuse. Many are malnourished, uneducated and do not have access to health care.

Increasingly, agencies are working to bring those trafficked children back home to their families, who have not seen or heard from their children since their departure.

Here are the stories of those 18 children and the thousands of others like them, in pictures.

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