Washing dishes at a streetside eatery in Cotonou, Benin. Adam Cohn/Flickr. Creative Commons.
Many children in west Africa are brought up in households belonging to people other than their own parents. There is a long tradition of fostering, yet in many cases the practice is now considered to constitute ‘trafficking’ or ‘modern slavery’ because the children involved are put to work during their stay. This makes little sense, yet the terminology of ‘human trafficking’ and its consequences—namely that the ‘traffickers’ involved should be prosecuted—has remained in vogue since at least 2000 with the support of European and American funding. This has almost certainly caused more harm than good.
Alongside these foster children are the tens of thousands of independent adolescent migrants who deliberately leave home to search of work. In both scenarios some children are badly exploited and abused. Those that live with their employers, such as the region’s hundreds of thousands of child domestic workers, are particularly vulnerable. However, some prosper and flourish.
