Human Trafficking in [Sierra Leone Street Children in [Sierra Leone] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Sierra Leone] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
first ten years of the 21st Century -
2000 to 2009
Sierra Leone is a source, transit, and destination country
for children and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial
sexual exploitation. The majority of victims are children trafficked
internally within the country, largely from rural provinces, and sometimes
from refugee communities, to urban and mining centers. Within the country,
women and children are trafficked for: domestic servitude; commercial sexual
exploitation; forced labor in agriculture, diamond mining, and the fishing
industry; forced petty trading; forced street crime; and forced begging. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in
Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country
report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Children
working in Sierra Leone mines BLESSINGS - Undoubtedly, the children
number several thousands, and many of them get the blessing of their parents,
who have come to see them as breadwinners of the impoverished families. Over the past few days, I have been visiting
the mine sites here and what I see is incredible. The children aged between seven and 16 go
to the mines as early as 0800 and work through to 1800. They do hard labour,
like digging in soil and gravel, before sifting with a pan for gemstones and
shifting heavy mud believed to contain diamonds. Boy soldier
'recruited' at the age of 6 Kabba
Williams is thought to have been Sierra Leone’s youngest child soldier. He
was one of about 10,000 children forced to fight in the 11-year conflict by
rebel or army troops and spent almost his entire childhood in their hands One day in particular is etched on
his memory. At the age of 12 he was given a group of captives to kill. “I had
the nickname ‘Hungry Lion’. I was given a bayonet. They were tied up, six of
them. I stabbed them repeatedly with the knife.” ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Trafficking in persons declined with the demobilization of child
soldiers following the end of the civil conflict. Children have been trafficked to Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The
country continued to be a source, transit point, and destination for
internationally trafficked persons. The majority of victims were women and
the majority of traffickers were thought to be family members or friends who
lured victims from their home villages with promises of education,
caretaking, or employment. There were no specific figures on
the number of persons trafficked. However, anecdotal reports indicated the
following: children were trafficked from the provinces to work in the capital
as laborers and commercial sex workers and to diamond areas for labor and sex
work; persons were trafficked from neighboring countries for domestic and
street labor and for commercial sex work; persons were trafficked out of the
country to destinations in west Africa, including Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire,
Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau for labor and sex work; persons were also
trafficked to Lebanon, Europe, and North America; and the country served as a
transit point for persons trafficked from elsewhere in west Africa and
possibly the Middle East. Concluding
Observations Of The Committee On The Rights Of The Child (CRC) - 2000 [52] The Committee notes the
introduction by the State party of the 1989 Adoption Act, but is nevertheless
concerned that child nationals of the State party may remain vulnerable to
problems of illegal adoption, including inter-country adoption. Trafficking
of African women is thriving In January Italian police smashed
several human trafficking rings involving African and eastern European
females and netted some 800 suspects. Outside Nigeria, other main
sources of females for prostitution were the west Africa states of Cameroon,
Ghana, Sierra Leone and Togo. She said young girls were lured with
fraudulent offers of jobs in Europe, only to end up being violently forced
into prostitution. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 3 Civil Liberties: 3 Status: Partly Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide Four Nations Move Against Trafficking in Response to U.S. Report Bangladesh, Ecuador, Guyana and Sierra Leone have acted rapidly over
the last few months to reduce human trafficking in their borders. In so
doing, they have avoided U.S.-imposed sanctions, according to a White House
announcement September 10. "These four countries made
notable progress in many key areas including prosecution of trafficking
related cases; creating police anti-trafficking units; increasing efforts to
identify and rescue trafficking victims; drafting new anti-trafficking
legislation and procedures; and conducting high-profile public awareness
campaigns," said spokesman Scott McClellan. "These tremendous
accomplishments will punish perpetrators and help innocent victims of this
heinous crime around the world." Sierra Leone
court affirms child soldier recruitment is war crime The Special Court for war crimes
committed in Sierra Leone's civil war has made what rights group hail as a
"historic court decision". The Court, which only is to handle the
gravest war crimes committed in Sierra Leone, affirmed that the recruitment
and use of child soldiers was under its jurisdiction and an internationally
illegal war crime. International law history has been
written in Sierra Leone. The International Coalition to Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers today welcomed the decision by the UN-backed Special Court,
confirming that the recruitment and use of child soldiers as a crime under
international law. Children
working in Sierra Leone mines BLESSINGS - Undoubtedly, the children
number several thousands, and many of them get the blessing of their parents,
who have come to see them as breadwinners of the impoverished families. Over the past few days, I have been
visiting the mine sites here and what I see is incredible. The children aged between seven and 16 go
to the mines as early as 0800 and work through to 1800. They do hard labour,
like digging in soil and gravel, before sifting with a pan for gemstones and
shifting heavy mud believed to contain diamonds. Boy soldier
'recruited' at the age of 6 Kabba
Williams is thought to have been Sierra Leone’s youngest child soldier. He was
one of about 10,000 children forced to fight in the 11-year conflict by rebel
or army troops and spent almost his entire childhood in their hands One day in particular is etched on
his memory. At the age of 12 he was given a group of captives to kill. “I had
the nickname ‘Hungry Lion’. I was given a bayonet. They were tied up, six of
them. I stabbed them repeatedly with the knife. www.bellaonline.com/articles/art24082.asp Sierra Leone is probably is the
poorest country of the world due to the ravaging civil war and the terrorist
activities of the Revolutionary United Front, or RUF. For both men and women,
living under these conditions is producing hundreds of thousands refugees and
internal displacement. Generally speaking, it is difficult to differentiate
between women's rights and human rights. Women and children are known to be
the principal war victims. women and Children are often submitted to rape,
sexual slavery, forced labour, torture, mutilation
and forced recrutiation by the RUF. The RUF is
notoriously known to use terror against the civil population, especially
Women and Children. Violations such as these are one of their principal war
tactics. The biggest UN peacekeeping force in history is present, so now
exists some hope of peace in the country. USAID/Sierra Leone Transition Strategy Phase 2 - Fy 2004 – Fy 2006 www.usaid.gov/sl/background/programstrategy04_06.htm At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] BACKGROUND - The emergence of the
Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a loose grouping of former Sierra Leonean
soldiers and mercenaries backed by Liberian president, Charles Taylor, in
early 1991 led Sierra Leone down the path of a brutal, decade-long civil war.
It was to claim more than 20,000 lives, destroy an estimated 3,000 towns and
villages, and displace over half of Sierra Leone’s 4.5 million inhabitants.
Abductions, serial rape, involuntary conscription of adults and children
alike, forced labor, sex slavery, and amputations were the means by which all
parties to the war terrorized and subdued the local population. This decision is a betrayal of the
tens of thousands of African victims of the worst possible crimes imaginable
committed during the conflict in Sierra Leone. Charles Taylor has been
indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, established at the initiative
of Sierra Leone, for "bearing the greatest responsibility" for
crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of
international law falling within the Special Court’s jurisdiction and
committed against African men, women and children. The crimes with which he
is charged include killings, mutilations, rape and other forms of sexual
violence, sexual slavery, conscription of children, abduction and forced labour perpetrated by Sierra Leone armed opposition
forces with his active support as President of Liberia. 2004
UN Commission on the Status of Women. Violence against Women: universal but
not inevitable! VIOLENCE IN POST-CONFLICT
SITUATIONS - Peace
processes have routinely failed to include women and to deal with gender
issues, which can result in gender-based persecution and violence being
rendered invisible in peace agreements and not taken into account in their
interpretation and implementation. For example, an AI delegation which
visited Sierra Leone in 2000 reported that the process of disarmament,
demobilization and reintegration of former combatants was failing to address
the experiences of the many girls and women who had been abducted by armed
opposition groups and forced to become their sexual partners. It appeared
that when they reported for disarmament and demobilization, they were often
not interviewed separately from their "husbands" and not offered a
genuine opportunity to leave the armed forces, if they wished to do so. These
women and girls, many either pregnant or with young children, required
support to either return to their families where possible or to re-establish
their lives together with their children. UNICEF:
War fuels Africa human trafficking Some 80 percent of African nations
reported "internal trafficking," where individuals do not cross
borders but are shifted around the country to meet demand for cheap household
and farm labor and prostitution. Flawed or nonexistent birth
registration makes it easier for traffickers to move youngsters between
countries, because unregistered children never formally acquire a
nationality, said Rossi. "It
becomes impossible to prove whether a young girl working as a housemaid in
Gabon, for example, really comes from that country or has been trafficked
from elsewhere," he added. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 70
percent of births go unregistered, according to a separate U.N. study. That
represents about 17 million children. Sierra
Leone haunted by 'silent war crimes' Unknown numbers of the thousands
of women and girls abducted by the rebels still remain with their
"husbands" in conditions of sexual slavery, although the war was
declared over a year ago, HRW reports.
There has been no accountability for the thousands of crimes of sexual
violence, and a climate of impunity persists, the report says, allowing the
perpetrators of sexual violence (as well as other crimes) to escape
justice. Survivors of rape and other
sexual crimes - some boys as well as the thousands of women and girls - need
"drastically increased funding for trauma counselling,
health, education and skills training", according to HRW. Sierra rebels free
child soldiers Rebels in Sierra Leone have
released nearly 600 child soldiers as part of a process of ending the west
African country's decade-long civil war. Children have carried out some of
the worst atrocities of the war, including hacking off the limbs of enemies
and civilians. Forced
labour, human trafficking,slavery
haunt us still The report notes that outright
slavery, though increasingly rare in the modern world, is still found in a
handful of countries, and the wholesale abduction of individuals and communities
in such conflict-torn societies as Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Sudan is not uncommon. The forced recruitment of
children for armed conflict, deemed one of the worst forms of child labour, is also on the rise. Sierra
Leone: Childhood - a casualty of conflict MAY 2000 - CHILDREN AGAIN FORCED
INTO CONFLICT - In
his Fourth Report on UNAMSIL to the UN Security Council on 19 May 2000, the UN
Secretary-General cited preliminary reports which suggested that child
combatants were being used extensively as hostilities resumed. UNAMSIL human
rights officers who visited Masiaka on 15 May 2000
observed several child combatants, mostly boys, with the CDF, the AFRC and
former Sierra Leone Army and the reconstituted Sierra Leone Army. Some 25 per
cent of the combatants observed were under 18 and some freely admitted that
they were between 7 and 14. Almost all of them were armed. 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 [Sierra Leone Street Children in [Sierra Leone] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Sierra Leone] [other countries]