Human Trafficking in [Cote d'Ivoire Street Children in [Cote d'Ivoire] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Cote d'Ivoire] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Republic of Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Cote d'Ivoire is a source, transit, and destination country
for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and
commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking within the country is more
prevalent than international trafficking. Women and girls are trafficked from
northern rebel-controlled areas to southern cities for domestic servitude,
restaurant labor, and sexual exploitation. Boys are trafficked internally for
agricultural and manual labor. Transnationally, boys are trafficked from
Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso for forced agricultural labor; from Guinea for
forced mining, from Togo for forced construction labor, from Benin for forced
carpentry work, and from Ghana and Togo for forced labor in the fishing
industry. During the year, Ivorian boys were also trafficked to Mali through
false promises of jobs in Europe as soccer players. Women and girls are
trafficked to and from other West and Central African countries for domestic
servitude and forced street vending. Women and girls from Ghana, Nigeria, the
People's Republic of China, Ukraine, the Philippines, and North Africa are
trafficked to Cote d'Ivoire for sexual exploitation. A local NGO estimated
that, in 2006, 58 percent of females in prostitution in Abidjan were not
citizens. Women are also trafficked from and through Cote d'Ivoire to Europe
for sexual exploitation. Refugee and displaced children in Cote d'Ivoire are
likely also trafficked within the region. Ivorian children are also
conscripted into armed forces by rebel and militia groups. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2007 [full country
report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** At five in the morning, well
before most children get up to go to school, 12-year-old Abula sets out on a
six-kilometre barefoot trek along a road made of mud and stone to work on a
coffee plantation in Bouafle, Côte d’Ivoire. When he gets there, wet and tired,
the foreman tells him where he is to plant that day. “You have to work fast
because they threaten to punish and starve us if we don’t do the set amount of
work,” he says. “If we can’t work because we’re ill, we risk being physically
tortured. One day I saw them torture two friends of mine who wanted to
escape. Both of them ended up dead.” ***
ARCHIVES *** Quick
Search for Missing Children - Select
Gender, Country ( U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - National armed forces and rebel groups are reported to recruit or
use children in situations of armed conflict, sometimes on a forced
basis. Rebel forces are also reported
to actively recruit child soldiers from refugee camps and other areas in the
western part of the country. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The
country was a source and destination country for trafficking in women and
children from The country's cities and farms
provided ample opportunities for traffickers, especially of children and
women. The informal labor sectors were not regulated under existing labor
laws, so domestics, most non-industrial farm laborers, and those who worked
in the country's wide network of street shops and restaurants remained
outside government protection. Internal trafficking of girls ages 9 to 15 to
work as household domestics in Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2001 [55] While noting the efforts
undertaken by the State party within its Plan of Action to fight child
trafficking, the Committee remains deeply concerned at the large number of
child victims of trafficking for the purpose of exploitation in the State
party's agricultural, mining and domestic service sectors and other forms of
exploitation. Human
Trafficking 'Unacceptable’, Says UK Confectionary Association Nearly half the world's cocoa is
harvested in the Cote D'Ivoire. As it is a hidden trade, exact figures are
hard to come by. In 2000 the US State Department Human Rights report found
that more than 15,000 Malian children were trafficked into this area to work
as slaves both on coffee and cocoa plantations, the majority being cocoa. "Chocolate manufacturers
promised to end the use of trafficked children in harvesting the cocoa beans
that make our chocolate by 2005," explained a spokesperson from Stop The
Traffik, "but this has not been done. They have started several worthy
initiatives but are not addressing the central issue of trafficked labour. At five in the morning, well
before most children get up to go to school, 12-year-old Abula sets out on a
six-kilometre barefoot trek along a road made of mud and stone to work on a
coffee plantation in Bouafle, Côte d’Ivoire. When he gets there, wet and tired,
the foreman tells him where he is to plant that day. “You have to work fast
because they threaten to punish and starve us if we don’t do the set amount of
work,” he says. “If we can’t work because we’re ill, we risk being physically
tortured. One day I saw them torture two friends of mine who wanted to
escape. Both of them ended up dead.” Planning
Intervention Strategies for Child Laborers in Côte d’Ivoire [PDF] [page 47 picture caption]
Eleven of the reported 108 children who were, two years earlier,
brought into Côte d’Ivoire to work on their Marabou’s plantation. The children
receive food and housing. Their only form of education is memorizing the
Koran at night. They have not received any form of wage payment for the two
years since arriving in Côte d’Ivoire. The children work harvesting cocoa,
coffee, corn, rice, cassavas and mangos. They said they were promised an
education and would be taught a job skill. Some expressed that they would
like to return home, but have no money, no idea how to get home, or where
they are. The oldest is 17 and the youngest is currently 9 years old. High
human trafficking profits increases practice in Ghana Statistics from the United Nationa’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indicated that human trafficking was rated the World’s third most profitable illicit business venture apart from drugs and prostitution. Subsequently, the number of children trafficked from Afram Plains in the Eastern, Yeji in the Brong Ahafo, and Atitekpo in the Volta Regions countries such as The Gambia and Côte d’Ivoire in particular, for hazardous occupation had increased. Statistics from the United
Nationa’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indicated that human trafficking was rated
the World’s third most profitable illicit business venture apart from drugs
and prostitution. Subsequently, the
number of children trafficked from Afram Plains in the Eastern, Yeji in the
Brong Ahafo, and Atitekpo in the Volta Regions countries such as The Gambia
and Côte d’Ivoire in particular,
for hazardous occupation had increased. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 6 Status: Not Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study 2004 Estimated - 15,000 child slaves 12 to 16 years old work on
cocoa, cotton and coffee farms How
can something so sweet taste so wrong? Forty-three percent of the cocoa
used in chocolate comes from Ivory Coast, which makes this African country
the biggest producer of cocoa worldwide. Most of the laborers on cocoa
plantations are between twelve and sixteen years old, some of them are even
younger, nine years old. These young children are treated like slaves – they
don’t receive any payment for their labor, and are beaten with sticks when
they don’t work, or try to escape. They are locked up at night, don’t get
sufficient nutrition and work eighty to one hundred hours per week. The children
are separated from their families, since they are ‘purchased’ from their
families in adjacent countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo, and they
live in constant fear on the cocoa plantations. Although it is not known how
many children are enslaved in Ivory Coast, it is estimated that approximately
fifteen thousand child slaves work on cocoa, cotton and coffee farms in this
African country. UNICEF:
Human Trafficking Affects Every Country in Africa The study describes trafficking as
a dynamic phenomenon that can change from day to day depending on the
changing circumstances of a country. Mr. Rossi says that for example, before
the civil uprising in Ivory Coast, it was a major receiving country. But
since the crisis, more people are being trafficked out of Ivory Coast to
countries where they often are used as slave labor or for sexual purposes. Drissa's
Story and the Origins of Slavery in Cocoa DRISSA'S STORY - Once in Korhogo, in the Ivory
Coast, Drissa was offered what sounded like a good job on a cocoa plantation,
but when he reached the isolated farm, he was enslaved. More than 300 miles
from home, far from any settlement, not even knowing where he was, Drissa was
trapped. When he tried to run away he was savagely beaten. At night, along
with 17 other young men, Drissa was locked into a small room, with only a tin
can as a toilet. On the plantation the work is
hard. In oppressive heat, with biting flies around their heads and snakes in
the undergrowth, the slaves worked from dawn till dusk tending and collecting
the cocoa pods. Often given only braised banana to eat for months at a time,
they developed vitamin deficiencies. Weak from hunger they staggered under
great sacks of cocoa pods. If they slowed in their work, they were beaten. 'Chocolate
Slaves' Carry Many Scars Drissa is a child but does not
care for chocolate so much. He still carries the marks of his time harvesting
the cocoa beans from vast plantations of cacao trees in the Ivory Coast. Numerous wounds from beatings adorn his
back. Some are down to the bone. Drissa was a "chocolate slave",
one of an unknown number of children from West Africa sold by their families
into bondage in the Ivory Coast, the world's largest producer of cocoa. They are paid nothing, beaten into
submission and abandoned when illness makes them useless. Labor
Group Demands US Ban On Imported Ivory Coast Cocoa A labor-rights group is
threatening legal action to require the U.S. government to consider banning
cocoa imports from Ivory Coast, alleging that forced child labor is employed
extensively in production. "Child slaves are used on
cocoa plantations all over (Ivory Coast) without any observable programs to
stop the practice," Aristide said. After talking with cocoa farmers to
get an idea of their demand for labor and what type they expect to employ, he
said he found that farmers are pressed to cut labor costs to maintain income
as cocoa prices have plummeted. Aristide suggested that one simple solution
could be for the large multinational cocoa processors to offer to pay more
for cocoa beans produced on farms certified free of indentured child labor. Slaves
to chocolate: thousands of boys toil on Ivory Coast cacao farms Aly Diabate, from the country of
Mali, was 12 years old when a slave trader promised him $150 and a bicycle
for working on a cacao farm in Ivory Coast, where 43 percent of the world's
cacao is grown. Instead, Aly was sold for about $35 to a cacao farmer, who
regularly beat the boy with a bicycle chain and branches from a cacao tree.
"The beatings were part of my life," Aly told a reporter for Knight
Ridder Newspapers in 2001, after he was freed by local authorities and
returned to his Mali village. Child Slaves
Caught in Glittering Traps Mali's modern-day slave traders do
not bother with abductions any more. They lure victims with a smile.
"Hey there," a stranger called, leaning out the window of a dented
white mini-van as it chugged to a stop on a dirt road. Two teenage brothers
looked up at the driver. He introduced himself as Solo. "You looking for
work? Years later, Moumouni and Seydou
Sylla recall how eagerly they jumped. "Yes!" And, with that, one of Mali's most
notorious child traffickers had laid his trap. Moumouni, 14 at the time, and his
16-year-old brother had left the village with dreams of paid employment and possessions
their impoverished parents could not provide: a bike and a pair of American
jeans. "Then, come on," Solo
beckoned. "I'll take you to someone who will give you a job. You won't
even have to pay for transportation."
The next day, the Sylla brothers found themselves captive in a
windowless hut -- caught in the web of smugglers who coax unknown numbers of
young people out of impoverished Mali each year and sell them into hard labor
in the prosperous country next door, Ivory Coast. The Sylla brothers sold for
the price of a pair of shoes -- $63 apiece.
The years that followed are a blur of backbreaking labor, vicious
beatings, food deprivation and dark nights in captivity. Businessmen called
"locateurs" wait in the little bus station in this large border
town, where crammed mini-buses leave for Ivory Coast every 30 minutes. They
search the crowds for children traveling alone, looking lost or begging for
food. "Would you like a great job
in Cote d'Ivoire?" they ask, using the official name of the former
French colony. "I can find you one." The dusty alley behind the bus
station is brimming with vendors selling everything from food to cigarettes.
There are cobblers and shanty kiosks selling bootleg tapes of West African
pop music. Chickens and goats abound, and dust mingles with the scent of raw
meat. There also is a dark warehouse
with blackened walls and a thick wooden door covered with tin sheeting that
locks from the outside. Malian officials say slave traders sometimes keep
their young victims here overnight so they can't escape. Mali and Slavery. There are an estimated 15,000
Malian youth ages 15 to 18 who are enslaved in the Ivory Coast, lured by
smugglers who promise the youth and their parents high wages and training.
Instead, most do manual labor in cocoa plantations. According to the ILO, the best
defense against the sale of children is to have local NGOs educate villagers
about what really happens to their children, and to step up enforcement of
laws that make recruiting and enslaving children a crime. Scandal
of Britain's Child Slaves Revealed Investigators also discovered a
trade in girls who can be bought for £ 5 a time at a market in Abidjan.
Documents can be quickly acquired through corruption - after a few minutes
outside the Ministry of the Child, Welfare and the Family, a tout approached
an African producer posing as a hopeful parent - $ 500 and less than 12 hours
was all he needed for the paperwork to be in order, and for the stranger to
become, officially, his daughter. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Cote d'Ivoire Street Children in [Cote d'Ivoire] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Cote d'Ivoire] [other countries]