Three buses carrying some 140 children leave Guinea-Bissau heading to Senegal, the children are not going on a school trip, but are being trafficked to work in the cotton fields of southern Senegal. Two of the buses where stopped, but the third was never found, the children's fate is grim. Only weeks before an unnamed police official in Bafata said “A network of child traffickers which was preparing to smuggle 52 children to Koranic schools in Senegal was dismantled…” (Bissau stops 52 children being smuggled to Senegal), the children where between the ages of 6 and 11 years old. So far this year police have intercepted 301 children being trafficked to Senegal from the Bafatà and Gabu regions of Guinea-Bissau.
UNICEF estimated in a 2004 report that around to 400,000 African children where victims of trafficking. Children enslaved as domestics, sexually exploitation, forced to be beggars, or put to work in the cotton fields or on farms. Most of the children trafficked from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal are forced to beg on the streets. UNICEF estimated there were up to 100,000 child beggars in Senegal, most of which come from Guinea-Bissau. The majority of them are talibés, children sent to study the Koran and obtain a religious education with a marabout, a personal spiritual leader and scholar of the Koran. Enslaved the children are forced to beg on the streets, living in fears of beatings, clad in rags they scatter across the city streets day in and day out.
The problem of child trafficking is common in all of West Africa, as borders are poorly guarded the situation is difficult to gage and stop. However as the recent case has shown the police and local governments are beginning to take the issue more seriously and clamp down. And while catching smugglers and trafficking victims as they attempt to cross the borders is a great step forward, education and awareness to prevent children from being trafficked must also be given more substantial efforts.
"We want to fight this. We want our children to remain in our homeland," said Ousmane Baldé, public protection officer in the women and children section of the regional police force of Bafatà (GUINEA-BISSAU-SENEGAL: On the child trafficking route).
To find out more statistics and information on the issues of child trafficking and labor in Senegal, please see the Worst Forms of Child Labor Data in Senegal
