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G/Bissau: Assembly urged to pass anti-human trafficking law
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 23:42
By Kemo ChamGuinea-Bissau's National Assembly has been urged to “act quickly” in efforts to criminalize human trafficking.
The National Assembly in Guinea Bissau is set to consider a draft law which seeks to empower police, judicial officials and civil society to improve protection of the country’s highly vulnerable children.
"This important piece of legislation is the first step to combat the serious problem of child trafficking from Guinea-Bissau," said Dakar based senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, Corinne Dufka. "Guinea-Bissau's National Assembly would finally send the right signal to human traffickers that the country intends to protect its children."
Guinea-Bissau, according to Human Rights Watch, presently has no law against human trafficking. One of the effects of this shortcoming is that “thousands of its children are moved each year both internally and across borders for the purpose of exploitation, including for agricultural labor and forced begging,” said Human Rights Watch.
The draft law is set for deliberation in the October-November session of the country’s assembly. And, accordingly, this will be just one of several past failed attempts to pass it into law. If successful it will harmonize domestic law with Guinea Bissau’s international obligations, including the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, which the West African nation ratified in 2007.
Lack of resources
Anti-human trafficking authorities in Guinea Bissau are some of the most ill-equipped in the world, thus increasing the chances of human traffickers to pass with ease. Amnesty International cited two main border regions in the east of the country where police and border officials have only one car and one motorbike “to monitor a combined 250-kilometer stretch of border with Senegal and Guinea-Conakry.”
In its report, last April, the rights watchdog documented the bizarre life thousands of boys go through in the hands of their traffickers (in some cases their own teachers). Human Rights Watch said the boys are taken on the pretext of providing them with residential Quranic schooling.
But “once in Senegal, most are forced to beg and suffer conditions akin to slavery by their Quranic teachers in the daaras. Many of these boys suffer severe physical and psychological abuse for failing to meet daily quotas of money, rice, and sugar demanded by their teachers. They also suffer from severe malnutrition and frequently from disease as a result of long hours on the street, abysmal conditions in the daara, and a lack of medical care.”
The forces behind the call for the passage of the anti-trafficking law include SOS Talibé Children (SOS Crianças Talibés) and the Association of the Friends of Children (Associação dos Amigos da Criança), both of which are locally based child-assistance organizations operating across the country.
"Improved training and resources for border officials could help reduce the flow of children at risk of being taken across the border, and we need that," said Malam Baio, director of Bafatá-based SOS Talibé Children. "But passing this law is essential. The lack of a domestic legal framework to address trafficking prevents officials from tackling the root problem."
For Fernando Cá of the Association of the Friends of Children, well-intentioned law enforcement authorities trying to combat trafficking in Guinea-Bissau currently have their hands tied. "Traffickers,” he said, “left at liberty to ply their ugly trade cannot be held accountable until this law is passed."
Last June, the international humanitarian news agency, IRIN, reported on the problems faced by former talibés as regards reuniting them with their families, as well as reintegrating them.
“Reintegrating ex-talibés into family life can be difficult as they have known little more than begging and beatings since their infancy, the agency quoted child protection NGOs in Guinea Bissau.
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