At a glance: Guinea-Bissau

The return of Mamadou, a rescued victim of child trafficking in Guinea-Bissau

© UNICEF Guinea-Bissau/2009

Mamadou, age 11, is among 14 recently rescued victims of child trafficking who are being rehabilitated with support from UNICEF.

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau, 28 May 2009 – It’s 8 p.m., and a plane from Dakar is landing at Bissau airport. From the plane’s window, Mamadou, 11, tries to make sense of the fast-approaching landscape surrounding the plane. It’s the first time he has travelled by plane.

Mamadou is among 14 recently rescued victims of child trafficking who are being rehabilitated with support from UNICEF, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration, the Suisse Foundation and non-governmental organizations from Senegal and Guinea Bissau.

In a few days, Mamadou will be able to rejoin his family. Soon he will also attend a UNICEF-supported school close to his village. But his new clothes cannot hide the thin and injured body of this weak and malnourished child, who has been the victim of mistreatment and exploitation for over two years.

False promise of an education

At the age of nine, Mamadou was sent by his father to Senegal with a man who presented himself as a Koranic teacher. His father told Mamadou that he would receive a religious education better than the one he could get in their village.

But once he arrived in Dakar with other children like him from different villages, he discovered that there was no Koranic school to attend. 

Instead, Mamadou was forced to beg in the streets for the equivalent of about $1 a day. When he failed to collect this amount, he was beaten and screamed at – so instead of coming ‘home’, he would sleep on the streets.

Scars and dreams

“When I was in Dakar, I had to wake up every morning at 4 a.m., collect water from the well and clean my master’s house,” he says. “Then, I and other children went to beg in the streets. I was beaten several times with an electric cable when I got back without money.”

At this point, Mamadou stops talking, pulls up his new T-shirt and shows the scars on his back.

The only good times he had during those long months were when he was dreaming of going to school and becoming a famous soccer player – “like Thierry Henry,” he says.

‘For a while, I could forget’

“Sometimes, when I was in Dakar, I was hiding behind the door of a restaurant or a snack bar and could see … the television,” Mamadou recalls. “I was so happy when I could see Thierry Henry, my favourite soccer player!

“For a while, I could forget the beating, the hunger, the cold of the nights under the cardboard,” he adds.

UNICEF Bissau is helping children such as Mamadou by providing technical and financial support to the Government of Guinea-Bissau and local NGOs – including AMIC and SOS Talibe – in order to stop child trafficking once and for all, facilitate family reintegration and put in place community-based activities to prevent child trafficking.