RIGHTS-CAMEROON: Legislation Against Child Trafficking Only a First Step

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Sylvestre Tetchiada

YAOUNDE, Jul 21 2006 (IPS) - For 13-year-old Helen Angwa, days are long, beginning at 05.00 and continuing to about midnight. The hours in between are spent on ceaseless work for a restaurant owner who bought her when she was just nine.

“She (the owner) came to look for me in our village in 2002,” Angwa told IPS in broken French in the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé. “My parents said they did not have the means to provide for me, but that my new mother would take good care of me in Yaoundé.”

“Today, I do all the work in this maquis (a term used in several West African countries to refer to a restaurant) and I am not paid. I eat a little good food when the owner is not there, or when a client helps me out,” she said.

Unfortunately, Angwa’s story is far from unique. She is the victim of a trade in children that persists even though a law promulgated in January this year sought to ban it – making child trafficking punishable with jail terms of 10 to 20 years, and fines of about 95 to 1,900 dollars.

Legislation also forbids children younger than 18 from working. But, neither sanction appears to have had much effect on Emilienne Efon, the owner of the restaurant where Angwa works.

“I needed a cleaner…So, on the advice of a friend, I went to Santa to look for (a worker),” she told IPS.

“She (Angwa) was a minor when she arrived, but look, she is a woman now. She does everything that I ask her to, and does not give me any problems. Can one say that Angwa is a captive?” Efon asked. She declined to tell IPS how much she had paid for Angwa.

Santa is located near Bamenda, a town 400 kilometres west of Yaoundé. The region is severely affected by child trafficking, says Joseph Chongsi Ayeah, president of the Centre for Human Rights and Peace Advocacy: a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Bamenda.

“Ninety percent of inhabitants of the town of Bamenda are victims of, or practice, child trafficking,” he notes.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that some 600,000 children were victims of trafficking in Cameroon in 2005.

Horizon jeunesse (Youth Horizon), an NGO based in the capital, puts the number of children who are working or being trafficked in conditions of near slavery at about three million.

Cameroon has close to 17 million inhabitants, of which about 56 percent are younger than 20, according to official figures.

The exploitation of children takes various forms. Boys are typically put to work on cocoa, coffee and rubber plantations, while girls serve as cleaners and waitresses. They are often sexually exploited, and may later be drawn into prostitution.

“Once a transit country for child traffickers, Cameroon has become, for some years, a supplier of child slaves and prostitutes to neighbouring countries,” said Léon Noah Manga, president of the consultative committee for a project to fight against the trade and exploitation of children in West and Central Africa. This initiative is based in Yaoundé.

Statistics for last month alone tell a frightening story of just how many children are getting caught up in trafficking.

“About 200 children of Cameroonian origin and about 60 others of Beninese and Nigerian origin…destined for employers in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea were rescued at the borders of Cameroon and returned to their families,” said Manga.

But, no sentences have been passed yet against people involved in child trafficking.

“The law to track exploiters of children exists,” says Ghislaine Eballe, principal assistant in the Ministry of Social Affairs. But, “In the absence of any denunciation, we can do nothing concrete in the fight against child slavery.”

Activists condemn the ignorance and irresponsibility of parents who expose their children to traffickers – but also note that poverty plays a big part in the exploitation of children. Close to 50 percent of the country’s population lives below the poverty line of a dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

“The trade that affects our children today is a sad reality which has been aggravated by the combined effects of the economic crisis (and) the weakening of familial links,” Nicolas Mukama, president of Horizon jeunesse, told IPS.

This situation puts children at the mercy of “unscrupulous traffickers and ‘mamas’ (owners of restaurants) with whom they are exposed to the worst forms of exploitation, such as prostitution and drug trafficking.” Mukama noted, adding that drugs affected “close to 60 percent of children less than 15 years old.”

Eballe says that most people in Cameroon claim parents can do with their children as they wish.

“Nonetheless, we invite parents and all who love children – who represent the future of this country – to condemn the backward practices (of trafficking and exploitation) which are reprehensible.”