Human Trafficking in  [Senegal]  [other countries]
Street Children in  [Senegal]  [other countries]
Child Prostitution in  [Senegal]  [other countries]
 

Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children

Republic of Senegal                                                                   [ Country-by-Country Reports ]

The Republic of Senegal is located in W Africa [map] and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (W), by Mauritania (N), by Mali (E), and by Guinea and Guinea-Bissau (S).  Its capital and largest city is Dakar.  The Republic of The Gambia is an enclave (SW).  Infant mortality and maternal mortality levels are moderate in Senegal and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is among the lowest in the region.  However, immunization coverage has been declining in recent years and progress in education has been slow with only 75% of the children enrolled in primary school.

 

CAUTION:  The following links and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Senegal.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.  No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

UNICEF - The Big Picture

U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs

INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Most trafficking victims are young males forced into exploitive begging for Koranic teachers.  These boys, known as talibés, spend the majority of the day begging for their Koranic teachers and are vulnerable to sexual and other exploitation.  Domestically, some Koranic teachers bring children from rural areas to Senegal’s major cities, holding them under conditions of involuntary servitude.  Children from Guinea and Guinea-Bissau can also be found begging in Senegal’s streets as part of this exploitive practice.

CURRENT GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - Since 2003, Senegal’s Family Ministry has operated the “Ginddi Center” in Dakar to receive and care for street children, including trafficking victims.  Pursuant to Senegal’s 2004 anti-trafficking accord with Mali, trafficked Malian children are kept at the Ginddi Center prior to repatriation.

Bur of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005

CHILDREN - The law provides for free education, and education policy declares education to be compulsory for children ages 6 to 16; however, many children did not attend school for lack of resources or available facilities. Students must pay for their own books, uniforms, and other school supplies. Due to government, NGO and international donor efforts, school enrollment reached 82.5 percent during the year. In fact, President Wade established "Places for the Little Ones" throughout the country to serve as pre-kindergartens for children. He also encouraged increased school enrollment. However, the highest level of education attained by most children is elementary school.

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS – According to the UN International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the country had 100 thousand talibe boys and 10 thousand street children.

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2006 [DOC]

[58] While noting the steps taken by the State party to address the rights and needs of street children, the Committee remains concerned about the increasing number of street children and begging children in the State party.

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 1995

[14] The absence of compulsory and free education at the primary level raises deep concern.

SENEGAL: Why the`talibe’ problem won’t go away

These boys are `talibes’, followers of a `marabout’, to whom they were entrusted by their families to learn the Koran. But their `marabout’ - like many others who are caretakers of an estimated 10,000 children in Dakar - does not have the means to support them.  Thousands of `talibes’ spend hours each day walking the city in search of scraps of food and begging for money to meet a daily quota exacted by their `marabouts’, or face beatings, talibe children told IRIN.  Often with ripped clothes, barefoot and filthy, the children move alone or in packs. Many never learn the Koran, officials from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say, and rarely do they attain adequate schooling that will lead to jobs when they become adults.

Marching for street kids

The United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) in 2004 estimated that there are up to 100,000 child beggars in Senegal, constituting one percent of the country's 11.4 million people. It is unclear how many of them are talibes.

"We study the Koran from the morning up to midday. Afterwards the kids go out in the streets up to 3 p.m. in search of something to eat and then resume studying, which takes us up to 4 p.m., after which time we go back out to find something to eat," said Amadou, a pseudonym.

Lives of Street Children in Senegal to Improve through New Campaign

PILOT PROJECT - Over the next 18 months, the Partnership will implement a pilot project in Kolda, Tamba and Matam––the three main cities from which the majority of street children originate––to bring some 500 children back home or place those who cannot go home in appropriate structures, and to rehabilitate a dozen centers for children.

FEATURE-Senegal seeks better life for beggar boys

TRADITION - A 2004 estimate by the United Nations children's fund UNICEF indicated up to 100,000 children, mostly talibe, were begging across Senegal, representing nearly 1 percent of the population.  Aid groups say nearly all the hundreds of children sleeping rough in Dakar's streets have run away from daaras.

Success Stories - Abdul in Senegal

With limited access to education or training and few opportunities for employment, an increasing number of Senegal’s young people join the growing pool of unemployed or underemployed youth who have few positive options available to them. Like Abdul, an increasing number of young people turn to life on the streets. These youth, most of them boys, grow up in the shadow of drugs, diseases, delinquency, violence, and street gangs. They often resort to begging and working at an early age and thus expose themselves to various forms of exploitation. More and more of these boys are entering daaras, schools that generally offer a narrow education based on extreme religious teachings. In many cases these boys, known as talibes, do not receive the education they are promised and instead spend much of each day on the street, working, begging, or stealing money to support their teachers.

Sexually active street children increasingly vulnerable to HIV

One sees eight-year-old children who already have several male and female partners who are older than they are," said Adjiratou Sow Diallo Diouf, author of a 2005 study on the impact of HIV/AIDS on Dakar's estimated 6,000 street children.

The 30 children, aged between 8 and 17, Diouf questioned for the study revealed sexual relations that were both homosexual and heterosexual and rarely protected, leaving them highly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV.

West Africa: Children in danger: Living on the street

FORCED TO LEAVE THE VIOLENCE - It was because of another older brother that Ale left in the first place. When his father died, and with his mother gone to live in St-Louis, he was left in the village to work with his brother in the rice-fields.

“Whenever he came home and saw me and my friends and brothers playing instead of working in the fields, he would beat us,” Ale said. The boy ran away from the village three times to his mother’s small house in town, but each time she brought him back.

So in 2004 he fled as far as he could go, joining the tens of millions of other children living on streets worldwide.

Information about Street Children - Senegal [DOC]

A child normally has references within his or her family through which they build their own identity as adults, but as soon as s/he starts to feel ill at ease within the household, these ties break and the child starts to move away from the unit in which s/he no longer feels comfortable. The majority migrate to the urban areas to survive, and become street children.

Senegal - For The Smile Of A Child

Some street children experience family rupture. Others, called “talibés” (children entrusted by their parents to a wise man who insures their religious education), live in “dahras”, generally pitiful schools of the Koran. There, most of the day they beg to earn their living and that of the wise man’s. The last group of children is made up of adolescents called “fackmans” who, under the influence of drugs, become violent and have broken all family ties.

News Stories

SENEGAL MINISTRY SETS PLAN TO REACH THOUSANDS OF STREET CHILDREN - This outreach began when the leader felt a burden for the more than 300,000 street children of Senegal. Often poverty-stricken parents turn their children over to Muslim marabouts (spiritual guides), thinking that they are pleasing God and providing a better life for their children. However, the marabouts abuse their wards, often forcing them to beg on the streets for their own gain.

Street Children In Senegal: Awareness Raising In Europe, Intervention On The Ground

Children of Senegal's neighboring countries such as Mali, as well as children of Senegal's poorest regions, are often sent by their parents to religious leaders who commit to care for the children, and give them a Koranic education.

Children in Danger

The principal themes that emerge from this interview are that in Senegal street children can be rehabilitated and educated to play effective roles in society. Differences should be made between street children who are categorized as inadaptable, the delinquents, and those who are morally dangerous.

Senegal To Organize Seminar On Begging By Street Kids

She said there was a distinction between the talibés (pupils in Koranic schools) and other kids who begged in the streets, adding that there were some 500,000 street children in Senegal, including those from Mali, Guinea Bissau and Gambia.

Exit the players

Curiously, the other show, Enfants de nuit (Children of the Night), was also spun out darkness, absence, helplessness and despair. An exhibition-performance devised by 18 young artists aged between nine and 25 who come from the ranks of the poorest, most deprived and abused street children in Senegal, and who live or have passed through the Man-Keneen-Ki home-cum-art school in Dakar.

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Human Trafficking in  [Senegal]  [other countries]
Street Children in  [Senegal]  [other countries]
Child Prostitution in  [Senegal]  [other countries]