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Child Trafficking on the Rise in Southern Africa

Child trafficking continues unabated in Africa but efforts to rehabilitate those affected is hampered by poverty and long-held traditions, a regional forum has heard.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that some 1.2 million children are trafficked globally and a third of the victims - 400,000 - are in west and central Africa. However only around 10,000 children are rehabilitated and reintegrated into normal social life.

"A drop in the ocean," lamented Elkane Mooh, regional advisor for Save the Children, on the sidelines of a regional conference on human trafficking. The children’s re-insertion into normal life is rendered complex by the increasing numbers unwilling to return to their original homes, dreading the poverty that drove them out in the first place, the conference heard.

In 2004, about 60 children from Mali were rounded up in Senegal and sent home, but experts said a few months later they were spotted back in the country, considered better off than its poverty-stricken neighbours. In Africa, child trafficking and abuse is fuelled by poverty which forces families to entrust their children into the care of richer family members who often exploit them as heavy domestic or farm labour.

Most of the children earn very little or do not get paid at all, and some are sexually abused. As a result, child trafficking and exploitation is considered to be essentially sanctioned and run by families themselves.

Adapted from: "Child trafficking booming." Sunday Times. 12 May 2007.