Human Trafficking in [Togo Street Children in [Togo] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Togo] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Togolese Republic (Togo) [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The 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, as market
vendors, produce porters, and for commercial sexual exploitation. To a lesser
extent, girls are also trafficked to other African countries, primarily
Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, and Niger for the same purposes listed above. Togolese
boys are most commonly trafficked transnationally to work in agricultural
labor in other African countries, primarily Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon,
and Benin, though some boys are also trafficked within the country for market
labor. Beninese and Ghanaian children have also been trafficked to Togo.
There have been reports of Togolese women and girls trafficked to Lebanon and
Saudi Arabia, likely for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation. Togolese
women may be trafficked to Europe, primarily to France and Germany, for
domestic servitude and sexual exploitation. In the last year, 19 Togolese
girls and young women were trafficked to the United States for forced labor
in a hair salon. -
U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008 [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 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. 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 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 Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide 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 Child trafficking takes alarming
proportions in Togo. It affects communities in the central and south-east
area of the country: between 1997 and 1999 police forces had intercept 128
children at the Togolese borders, and between 2002 and 2003 one count 687 children
forced into child trafficking. 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 Togo: A Way Out In Togo, two types of child
trafficking exist: internal, and external child trafficking. Children are
given away to wealthier relations who used to benefit from the work by those
trusted to them, and who are supposed to take care of the children’s
education and upbringing. The families from where the children are coming
from believe that they are unburdened, the children will be offered a better
future and hope for the intensification of the relationship of the two
families, but instead they became cheap manpower in urban households. As a
compensation, their parents receive a sum of money or other gifts. The agents
receive their own commission. They are used as domestic servants and market
vendors in the families where they found themselves and maltreatment is the
feature of the working conditions. Most children do not receive wages but the
money they receive can’t be equalled to the work they do. Sometimes, children
are left to the lender as a pawn for a borrowed sum. They are, sometimes,
left in exchange for money to a female or male agents without the parents having
the chance to influence his fate after the deal. They are recruited or
brought by agents in Togo and taken to Gabon or Nigeria and handed over to
the employer they are assigned to. Some of them were employed to be used for
prostitution. 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' Young Togolese boys told Human
Rights Watch they could not afford to pay school fees and so agreed to do
agricultural work in Nigeria. They said they cleared brush, planted seeds and
plowed fields for up to thirteen hours a day, getting beaten if they
complained of fatigue. Some were forced to use machetes to cut the branches
of trees and wounded themselves seriously. After eight months to two years,
they were given a bicycle and told to pedal it home to Togo. Building
a network against child trafficking Tens of thousands of children are
trafficked in West Africa each year. Although the majority are boys, the
largest single employing sector is domestic work and about 90 per cent of all
child domestics are girls. They are live-in servants, and unlike child
domestics in other parts of the world where most are teenagers, in West and
Central Africa most are children are as young as five years old. 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 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 |
Human Trafficking in [Togo Street Children in [Togo] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Togo] [other countries]