RIGHTS: Child Slave Rings Rife in Southern Africa

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MAPUTO, Aug 15 2003 (IPS) - Trade in children, literally slave trading in infants to teenagers, has been a problem that African law enforcement officials thought was mostly confined to the western part of the continent.

But a new study by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has exposed the vulnerability of impoverished Mozambique, on the Indian Ocean on Africa’s southeastern tip, to the practice.

"Safeguards must be installed to protect Mozambican children," says Gabriel Pereira of UNICEF’s Maputo office.

But Leia Boaventura, an activist who is alarmed at what she sees as a growing trend in child trafficking in Southern Africa, feels that child slave rings are already operating out of Mozambique. Her organisation, Terre des Hommes, has found that foreign nationals, mostly from Russia and China, are currently involved in child slave operations.

Child slavery usually does not involve kidnapping, but a financial arrangement with the family or guardian of children who are from an impoverished background.

"Sometimes, desperate parents who cannot feed, clothe or give medical aid to their children will seek out someone to take them off their hands, to give them the necessities of life. In poor areas with underdeveloped social welfare institutions, this can mean selling a child into servitude," says Lawrence Ngwane of the refugee agency, CARITAS.

"All such deals are heartbreaking for everyone involved – the parents, the children who are torn from the womb of their families – though not for the child traffickers who can profit handsomely," he says.

An investigation by Child Network, a Mozambique non-governmental organisation, found that child trafficking currently occurs in Mahubo, in the Boane district of the Maputo province.

A UNICEF study found that annually 1.2 million children are "traded" worldwide. Most of the trafficking occurs in West Africa, in such countries as Sierra Leone, which has been impoverished by civil war. Child slaves end up as plantation workers in other African countries, or as household servants.

"They are financially exploited, mistreated, subjected to sexual abuse, to inhuman conditions, and made vulnerable to diseases like AIDS. All child labour laws are cast to the wind when it comes to slavery. Needless to say, the educational and emotional needs of these children are ignored. That such horrific lives are inflicted on innocent children is one of the saddest stories in need of committed action to remedy," a UNICEF official told IPS.

Child trafficking studies in Mozambique have shown that the nation’s children who are sold into bondage are often shipped overseas, to work in China and Russia where the slave masters originate.

Children reportedly enslaved further north, in Tanzania, can end up serving in Middle East households.

Poverty has been the driving force in child slavery, in terms of providing a supply of exploitable children and desperate families willing to part with them. But a new danger has arisen since the 1990s that has child welfare officials worried: AIDS.

"AIDS orphans are numerically on the rise. These are children whose parents have been killed by the disease, and they have to struggle to survive on their own. Some who cannot make it might find it easy to agree with a child trader who offers them food and a job. Of course, the children don’t know they are becoming someone else’s property," says the UNICEF official.

The United Nations Charter on Children’s Rights, which protects the welfare of all persons under 18 years of age, outlaws child trafficking. The world’s nations that have endorsed this charter are obliged to put its regulations into law through their national legislatures.

"There isn’t a country on earth where child trafficking is allowed, even in nations where underage girls are permitted to marry. It’s the commerce in human flesh that is outlawed," says CARITAS’ Ngwane.

Enforcement becomes a matter of tracking the traffickers. As law enforcement officers become more aware of the problem, they will be on the lookout for underage human cargo in transit.

"This is a problem that requires vigilance on the part of all communities. And we had better start awareness now, because the number of vulnerable children is mushrooming," says South African social welfare worker Andrea Mavuso.

The HIV-infection rate amongst adults in the Kwa-Zulu/Natal province of South Africa is near 40 percent, as it is in Swaziland, which shares a border with the province. Botswana has a similar HIV-infection rate. AIDS is also high in Mozambique. These statistics indicate an adult mortality rate that is guaranteed to generate orphans.

By 2010, UNICEF predicts that Swaziland will have 110,000 orphans under the age of 15. Given a national population that may be only 700,000 people due to AIDS-related fatalities, the orphan demographic will be one of the largest sections of society.

"Human vultures will descend to prey on these children," predicts Pastor Jabulani Dlamini, a social activist in Swaziland. "Unless there is an accounting for every child, and institutions and programmes to see to their needs, they may be swooped up by child traffickers, never to be seen again."

Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in the 1820s, in the United States in the 1860s, and in all countries by the 20th century. But operating underground, illegally, it continues into the 21st century, with children as the product of trade. Until poverty in Africa is eased, the condemnation of new generations into bondage will remain a threat.

More than 350 million people, over 50 percent of Africa’s population, live below the poverty line of one U.S. dollar a day, according to the World Bank.