The past decade has shown reappearance in the unlawful trafficking of children slaves particularly in the western African nations of Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Benin, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.The United Nations has reported that at least two lakh children are trafficked every year in the Central and West African slave trade.
Context: Though slavery is unlawful universally, it continues to be present in several parts of the world. Its survival is seldom acknowledged by the citizens of highly developed industrialized nations in spite of the fact that it is a part of the international economy.The term slavery is not used now. These days slavery is known as ‘human trafficking’ or ‘bonded labor’.
Today’s slavery is altogether different from the slavery of two centuries ago. Particularly children are vulnerable to the new slavery system. In the year 2002, the International Program on Elimination of Child labor (IPEC) found that 8.4 million are bonded laborers out of 246 million child laborers in the world.
The life of a bonded child labor in West Africa: Traffickers generally approach poor families and offer them money as low as US $ 15 to hand over their children. Most of the families hope that their child’s employment will give them a better future.
The traffickers then shift the children to the employment with a host family, but he or she gets the children’s remuneration. The children don’t get remuneration for their work. They work in both the sectors commercial and household. Several work in plantations like cocoa and coffee. Some of them work as prostitutes also.They work between 10-20 hours per day, often seven days a week. They are not getting proper food and healthcare. They are being sexually and physically abused.
Growing awareness: The predicament of children-trafficking in West Africa is more noticeable in the media due to numerous sophisticated incidents concerning the finding of boats or buses transporting bonded children.Though child trafficking and slavery are unlawful in Benin, yet human rights personnel report that they are still huge.
Working to abolish slavery: Many organizations are working to stop the trafficking of children globally, though they are hindered by worldwide ignorance and denial of the dilemma.In 1999, the ILO and the UN joined together to form the ‘International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC)’.With the monetary support of the US Department of Labor, IPEC started a program named "Combating the children- trafficking for labor abuse in Central and West Africa." African NGO, as Enfant Solidaire d'Afrique ET du Monde, and global organizations, as Anti-Slavery International and the HRW are also working to fight the problem of bonded child labor.
The Government of Benin has of late taken fresh steps to make sure that children are not trafficked. Under the new law it is compulsory to have a certificate if somebody wants to travel outside the state with children under 15 years of age.
Banned by International law:
Slavery is banned under Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many others.
The children –trafficking is specially banned in numerous international conventions, as well as the Supplementary Convention of 1956 on the Abolition of Slavery, the Organization of African Unity's African Charter on the Rights; the Slave Trade; the 1989 UN conference on the Rights of the Child; and the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.
Though these are broadly ratified, bonded labor and trafficking of children continue to stay alive.