Human Trafficking in [Togo Street Children in [Togo] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Togo] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the first
ten years of the 21st Century
- 2000 to 2009
Togo is a source, transit and, to a lesser extent, a
destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of
forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking within Togo is
more prevalent than transnational trafficking and the majority of victims are
children. Togolese girls are trafficked primarily within the country for
domestic servitude, for forced work as market vendors and produce porters,
and for commercial sexual exploitation. To a lesser extent, girls from Togo
are also trafficked to other African countries, primarily Benin, Nigeria,
Ghana, and Niger, for the same purposes listed above. Although some Togolese
boys are trafficked within the country, they are more commonly trafficked transnationally to work in agricultural labor, including
on cocoa farms, in other African countries, primarily Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire,
Gabon and Benin. - 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 rescued from trafficking wait with their nightmares to go home www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=53334 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here] The wisp of a girl sits silently
to one side, staring at the scarred tips of her fingers. Probably no more
than five years old, Enyonam has just arrived at a
center for trafficked children in the Togolese capital, Lome. She doesn't remember the day her parents
handed her over to work for her "patron". But she does recall the
moment when her new master accused her of stealing eggs and burnt the ends of
her fingers with a match as punishment. HRW Report: Togo - Borderline Slavery - Child Trafficking in Togo SUMMARY - TOGO'S TRAFFICKED GIRLS - Girls interviewed by Human
Rights Watch were typically recruited into domestic or market labor either
directly by an employer or by a third-party intermediary. Most recalled some
degree of family involvement in the transaction, such as parents accepting
money from traffickers, distant relatives paying intermediaries to find work
abroad, or parents handing over their children based on the promise of
education, professional training or paid work. SUMMARY - TOGO'S TRAFFICKED BOYS - Boys interviewed by Human
Rights Watch were for the most part recruited into agricultural labor in
southwestern Nigeria. A small number worked on cotton fields in Benin, and
one child was recruited into factory work in Côte d'Ivoire. Traffickers
tended less to make arrangements with boys' parents than to make direct
overtures to the boys themselves-tempting them with the promise of a bicycle,
a radio, or vocational training abroad. Contrary to expectation, they were
taken on long, sometimes perilous journeys to rural Nigeria and ruthlessly
exploited. Most were given short-term assignments on farms where they worked
long hours in the fields, seven days a week. "When we were finished with
one job, they would find us another one," one child told Human Rights
Watch. Boys worked from as early as 5:00
a.m. until late at night, sometimes with hazardous equipment such as saws or
machetes. Some described conditions of bonded labor, whereby their trafficker
would pay for their journey to Nigeria and order them to work off the debt.
Many recalled that taking time off for sickness or injury would lead to
longer working hours or corporal punishment. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - In rural areas, young children are sometimes placed in domestic
work in exchange for a one-time fee of 15,000 to 20,000 CFA francs (USD 27.47
to 36.63) paid to their parents. In
remote parts of the country, a form of bonded labor occurs in the traditional
practice known as trokosi, where young girls become
slaves to priests for offenses allegedly committed by a member of their
family. Abuse of the cultural practice
of Amegbonovei, through which extended family
relations help to place children (usually from rural areas) with families who
agree to pay for the children’s education or provide them with a salary in
exchange for domestic work, contributes to the incidence of child
trafficking. Often the intermediaries who arrange the placements abuse
the children and rape the girls. These children are also sometimes
mistreated by the families with whom they are placed. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – While
official statistics for trafficked persons were not available, trafficking
occurred throughout the country. The majority of the country's trafficking
victims were children from the poorest rural areas, particularly those of Kotocoli, Tchamba, Ewe, Kabye, and Akposso ethnicities
and mainly from the Maritime, Plateau, and Central regions. Adult victims
usually were lured with phony job offers. Children were often trafficked
abroad by parents misled by false information. Sometimes parents sold their
children to traffickers for bicycles, radios, or clothing, and signed
parental authorizations transferring their children into the custody of the
trafficker. Children were trafficked into
indentured and exploitative servitude, which amounted at times to slavery.
Most trafficking occurred internally, with children trafficked from rural
areas to cities, primarily Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2005 [72] The Committee welcomes the
adoption of the National Plan of Action on the fight against child
trafficking for commercial exploitation and labor in 2001 as well as the
establishment of the Comités de vigilance
. However, the Committee is concerned that the Plan of Action did not
sufficiently involve the civil society and is not efficiently implemented. It
is further concerned that trafficking of children is not a separate offence
under the law, despite the wide scope prevalence of the phenomenon. The
Committee is further concerned by at the lack of measures taken to combat and
protect children from sale, trafficking and abduction. In
Togo, a 10-Year-Old's Muted Cry: 'I Couldn't Take Any More' www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/26/ST2008122600004.html
Adiza ran scared and crying into the
street. Ten years old and 4-foot-9, she fled the house where she had worked
for more than a year, cleaning and sweeping from before dawn until late at
night. She ran to a woman selling
food in the street and told her that since the day she had arrived in this
capital city from her village in the country, her employer had beaten her
almost daily and kept her in slavelike
conditions. "I couldn't take any
more," recalled Adiza, a slight girl with
close-cropped hair and almond-shaped eyes, who talked in a halting whisper as
she described how her employer beat her with her hands and with cooking pots
before the November day she ran away. Rarely making eye contact, Adiza spoke in a shelter here surrounded by other tiny
girls who had suffered physical or sexual abuse in the growing global trade
in domestic servants. The number of
girls like Adiza, who leave their communities or
even their countries to clean other people's houses, has surged in recent
years, according to labor and human rights specialists. The girls in the maid
trade, some as young as 5, often go unpaid, and their work in private homes
means the abuses they suffer are out of public view. A FRAYING OF TRUST - Adiza
was raised in Kpatchile, a few mud huts scattered among
fields of corn and yams 250 miles north of Lome.
The village is 12 miles from the nearest paved road, and Adiza's
home is another quarter-mile down a tiny path through the tall brush. "Everybody wants to leave," said
Yacoumon Djatao, the aunt
who raised Adiza, sitting in the shade on a
102-degree day, fighting fever and nausea from her latest bout of malaria --
a common ailment here. Rust-colored sorghum plants were drying on the roof of
her thatched hut. She will grind the dried grain into porridge, her main food
until the next harvest, six months from now. A closer
look at domestic child labour in Africa en.afrik.com/article14712.html When my master brought me from the
village, he said that I will show that I deserved to go to school by proving
my hard work at home. I was bent on going to school so I put my heart into
everything I was commanded to do. I Swept, cleaned, washed, mopped, ironed,
and fetched water from a public tap, two streets away, to fill the drums and
basins in our house. In-between these
chores I had to go out and hawk sachets water in traffic and in the streets
of the ghetto. I slept last and woke up first. I didn’t eat with my master, his
wife and his children at table, I ate a small portion of foodon
the floor at the back yard, after they had all eaten. Sometimes I could not
work because I was always hungry, but I had to work otherwise knocks and the Koboko cane will descend on me.’ An 8 year old Togolese househelp narrated. In most African families, wealth
entails owning a houseboy or a house girl as they are called. This cultural
practice that allows people to take deprived children from the remote
villages, offer them shelter, food and sometimes primary education in return for
their labor which is often child labor or even slave labor, is an issue that
needs to be addressed with regards to human rights, child rights and
international labor rights After 3 years, my master
registered me in a community school down the street. It was more like a place
where street children passed time, the teachers hardly came to class. My
chores and task were still a problem but I managed to deliver, so as to avoid
any problem with my master or his wife. I liked school, I wanted to learn but
I hardy had time to review my school work or do assignments and when I did
poorly, my master or his wife would beat me like a thief. Sometimes I thought
of running away, but to where? I wanted to go back to my mother, but how do I
tell my uncle that, when the last time I asked about my mother, I was given
the beating of my life, called an ingrate and denied food for two days. I
wasn’t doing well at school, I wasn’t happy at home, I missed my mother, but
I couldn’t do anything about it. All my mother knew was that her son was in
the city and was in school, and will be a big shot.’ In
smuggling case, 'victims' defend the accused Last September, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agents arrested two men and a woman from Togo who
they said smuggled 14 girls and young women from West Africa, forced them to
work without pay at hair-braiding salons in Newark and East Orange, and kept
them in line with threats and beatings.
It was, one agent said, a case of modern-day slavery. Now, four of the alleged victims say they
weren't exploited at all. They say they long to return to
the hair salons -- even if they weren't paid for their long hours performing
intricate hair weaves. And worse, they say, their parents in Africa are
blaming them for the downfall of the three jailed suspects, who had been
sending money to the workers' families before the salons were shut. When she calls home, says one 21-year old
woman, her parents blame her for disappointing the village, then they hang up
on her. 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. Children rescued from trafficking wait with their nightmares to go home www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=53334 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here] The wisp of a girl sits silently to one side, staring at
the scarred tips of her fingers. Probably no more than five years old, Enyonam has just arrived at a center for trafficked
children in the Togolese capital, Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 5 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Partly Free Combating Child
Trafficking in Togo through Education (COMBAT) PROJECT DESCRIPTION - CARE's
COMBAT project joins in the elimination of child trafficking in Togo,
particularly among girls in Central and Maritime regions, through improved
and extended programs of education and social support. COMBAT targets
children 5-14 years old and is implemented in collaboration with the two
local organizations that were CARE's partners in
PEP (above) and the international group Terre des Hommes.
COMBAT contributes to a multidimensional effort against trafficking;
complements the government's efforts to create a policy and enforcement
environment; mobilizes communities as the key actors in the social-cultural
change required for effective prevention; revitalizes the education system as
a cornerstone of prevention and re-integration; deploys NGOs as effective
intermediaries and complementary service providers; facilitates coordination
and collaboration at all levels; and works with and under the auspices of
national and international efforts such as International Labor Organization
and International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor. Children mobilization against Child Trafficking www.plan-international.org/wherewework/westafrica/togo/ourwork/livelihood/childtrafficking/ At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Child trafficking takes alarming
proportions in WHY DO
THESE CHILDREN LEAVE THEIR FAMILY? - Poverty, ignorance, children not attending school, the lack of a legal
framing are the main factors which make children vulnerable. These children
are generally brought to Aguegue (in Nigeria). They
found themselves trapped, because Woga – rich
traffickers – promise to them bicycles, clothes… others let themselves trap
because their friends and brothers told them that the country is beautiful…. Child
prostitution goes unchecked in Togo Adjo says she never knew her real
parents. But she and Amivi hand over all the money
they earn to a woman whom they call “Mama”.
If the girls give this woman too little cash at the end of a shift,
they run the risk of a severe beating.
“At the end of every day I have to give the money to a woman called
‘Mama.’ If I don’t have enough money to give her, I get beaten,” Adjo said. Besides Adjo
and Amivi, there are several hundred other young
girls aged between nine and 15 who can openly be bought for sex in the
downtown area of Lome called Devissime.
The name means “Child Market” in the local Mina language. Many of these girls have been separated
from their families. Others have simply been abandoned. Most are illiterate.
Being alone in the world all of them are highly vulnerable to exploitation by
pimps and brothel keepers such as ‘Mama.’ Scale of African
slavery revealed COMPLICITY - Much of this trade in children
often has the tacit collaboration of the victims' own families where it is
seen not so much as criminal activity but as a way for a large family to
boost its poor income. Joseph's back
bears the scars of his beatings. The story of Joseph in Benin is
fairly typical. When he was 13 years
old, a stranger arranged with his parents for him to go to neighbouring Togo for a better life. However, he was put to work from 0500 to
2300 each day as a domestic help and was regularly beaten. It took him three years of saving money to
be able to phone home and be rescued by an uncle. Now 16 years old, he is
back in school. "I was so happy
to see my little brother again when I returned home to Benin," he says. Child Trafficking in www.fredskorpset.no/templates/FredskorpsDagbok____17955.aspx At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] In HRW Report: Togo - Borderline Slavery - Child Trafficking in Togo SUMMARY - TOGO'S TRAFFICKED GIRLS - Girls interviewed by Human
Rights Watch were typically recruited into domestic or market labor either
directly by an employer or by a third-party intermediary. Most recalled some
degree of family involvement in the transaction, such as parents accepting money
from traffickers, distant relatives paying intermediaries to find work
abroad, or parents handing over their children based on the promise of
education, professional training or paid work. SUMMARY - TOGO'S TRAFFICKED BOYS - Boys interviewed by Human Rights
Watch were for the most part recruited into agricultural labor in
southwestern Nigeria. A small number worked on cotton fields in Benin, and
one child was recruited into factory work in Côte d'Ivoire. Traffickers
tended less to make arrangements with boys' parents than to make direct
overtures to the boys themselves-tempting them with the promise of a bicycle,
a radio, or vocational training abroad. Contrary to expectation, they were
taken on long, sometimes perilous journeys to rural Nigeria and ruthlessly
exploited. Most were given short-term assignments on farms where they worked
long hours in the fields, seven days a week. "When we were finished with
one job, they would find us another one," one child told Human Rights
Watch. Boys worked from as early as 5:00
a.m. until late at night, sometimes with hazardous equipment such as saws or
machetes. Some described conditions of bonded labor, whereby their trafficker
would pay for their journey to Nigeria and order them to work off the debt.
Many recalled that taking time off for sickness or injury would lead to
longer working hours or corporal punishment. Child
labor on cocoa farms 'tip of the iceberg' www.hrw.org/en/news/2003/04/01/west-africa-stop-trafficking-child-labor hrw.org/english/docs/2003/04/01/togo5489.htm Young Togolese boys told Human
Rights Watch they could not afford to pay school fees and so agreed to do
agricultural work in Building a network against child trafficking www.antislavery.org/archive/other/networktraffickingchildrenwafrica2003.htm At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Tens of thousands of children are
trafficked in In 1997, Anti-Slavery
International's partner in Togo, WAO Afrique
brought the relationship between child domestic work and trafficking to
Anti-Slavery's attention. Even though the practice apparently first became significant
in 1987, it was not until the mid-1990s that local organisations
became aware of the problem. Ship
Discovered With Human Cargo 250 children have been discovered
aboard a ship in the Gabonese port. The children who were allegedly sold to
human traffickers by their parents or guardians were taken to Gabon where
they were to be resold into child labour or slavery
of all kinds. According to Zardzo,
the children aboard the ship are between the ages of 9,10,and 11, who are
able to help government in the relocation of their parents or guardians. These children are said to have hailed from
the two West African countries of Togo
and Benin. Child Trafficking in West and Central Africa www.antislavery.org/archive/submission/submission1999-03Child.htm At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
The effect of trafficking on
children is devastating. Children are in danger of being cut off from their
roots, losing contact with their own family, sometimes permanently, being
subjected to harsh working conditions, as well as physical, psychological and
sexual abuse. Research by our partners in Bénin in
1998, found that even where children are rescued, they are likely to
encounter feelings of alienation from their own family and culture and must
undergo a long and difficult task of reintegration. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin,
"Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
Human Trafficking in [Togo Street Children in [Togo] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Togo] [other countries]