Child Trafficking: Hope for Young Affiba
By Stephanie Vidal ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, 9 August 2007 – In a centre providing services to children, Affiba , 14, is playing with her new friends. Telling each other jokes and whispering secrets, they are laughing loudly. Affiba, quite tall for her age, is very sociable, smiling and talkative. But she can also look very serious, especially when it comes to talking about the reasons that brought her to the centre. Then, shyness takes hold of her. While telling her story, she looks at her feet and plays nervously with her dress… as if she were ashamed. Affiba was born in Togo, located in West Africa between Ghana and Benin, and lived there until 3 years ago. She comes from a poor family of 10 children. Her father is a part time photographer. Her mother sells vegetables at the market. Feeding the family and sending the children to school is a daily struggle for them. By the time Affiba’s parents had saved enough money to send her to school, she was much older and taller than the other students, and soon became the laughing stock. Traumatized, Affiba never went back to school, too scared to be humiliated again. To avoid becoming a millstone for her parents, Affiba decided to work in a restaurant but for so little money that it meant condemning herself to poverty for the rest of her life. An alternative to poverty turns into a nightmare For Affiba’s family, it seemed as if there was no way out of poverty. Until one day, when a family friend offered to take Affiba with her to Côte d’Ivoire, where, she said, there would be more opportunities for the young girl. Affiba would earn enough money to financially support her family, said the lady.Thus, Affiba was taken to Aboisso, a small town located South-East of Côte d’Ivoire. “The lady told my parents she would send me to school, that she would make sure I get a good job,” says Affiba bitterly. “But I never went to school and never got paid for the work I did. During three years I had to take care of her baby and work in the rice fields, for her and for the neighbors. She gave me a bed in her house and fed me once or twice a day.” Child trafficking in Côte d’Ivoire, like in so many other West African countries, is characterized by the use of community and family networks for the recruitment of children by traffickers. The recruitment of children at the community level is in this way often perceived by the collectivity as a service that the traffickers offer to children and parents and not as a threat to children’s rights. Due to its fairly healthier economy compared to other countries in West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire is one of the main destinations of children trafficked in the sub region. Children smuggled into Côte d’Ivoire mainly come from Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Benin, Niger and Ghana. “There were 9 of us, 4 girls and 5 boys, traveling from Togo to Côte d’Ivoire with the lady, the friend of my parents,” recalls Affiba. “I stayed in Aboisso, two boys were sent to Abidjan and I don’t know what happened to the other ones.” Escaping exploitation 3 months ago, working in the fields like every day, Affiba hears villagers talking about a group of Togolese workers organizing their return home. Seeing an opportunity to going back to her village, she decides to join them. The next afternoon she leaves the rice fields without informing anybody and ends up in the streets of Aboisso. At night, alone and lost, she is found by policemen who takes her to the International Catholic Child Bureau (BICE), a NGO offering assistance to victims of trafficking and other vulnerable children. One of BICE educators recalls: “When Affiba arrived at our centre she had no luggage, she was extremely thin and her eyes expressed strong fear”.BICE, like many other international and Ivorian organizations is technically and financially supported by UNICEF. The NGO guarantees psycho-social, nutritional, and health assistance to children exploited by work or sexually, in the street, in prison or affected by war as well as disabled children. The right for a better future Affiba has spent some weeks at the BICE centre in Aboisso and is now at the NGO’s centre in Abidjan, waiting to go back to her family in Togo. At the BICE, Affiba receives basic education which allows her to learn how to read and write. The centre also provides psycho-social assistance and theatre activities. Affiba participates in these activities with her new friends; the plays allow her to express emotions within a supervised and safe environment. Affiba can also take advantage of cooking classes made available for children of the centre; they learn to prepare traditional dishes.“I enjoy my time here; but even though I made good friends, I miss my family,” says Affiba. “I’m looking forward to going back and play with my sisters and brothers.” To make sure children like Affiba get all the support they need to realize their dreams, UNICEF works with Government and partner organizations to guarantee that trafficked children are listened to, and that the best solution for their future is found, in accordance with their wishes. Sometimes it results into ensuring return to their country of origin and family but it can also result into providing social and economic integration in the destination country. “When I’ll get back to my village in Togo, I want to continue learning how to read and write; I also wish to take sewing classes,” says Affiba with bright eyes. “And after, I will become the best seamstress ever!”
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