CSEC in West Africa

In 2000, ECPAT International carried out an analysis of the situation of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in seven countries in West Africa. These countries were Senegal, Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. CSEC was found to be a problem throughout the region, and one that is on the increase. The following information is based on a report of this mission.

Contributing factors
Child prostitution is inextricably linked to socio-economic difficulties and child labour where young children are forced to work and/or prostitute themselves to provide for the family. Other reasons behind the increase in CSEC in the region are urbanisation, high illiteracy rates, early and forced marriage, unemployment, low status of women in the society, consumerism, civil conflict and tourism.

Domestic Workers
Most children who work as domestics are ill treated and sexually abused and those that run away from the oppression end up in the street or get caught up in the circle of prostitution. In Nigeria, for example, children as young as four or five years old are sometimes taken into families as domestic helpers because their parents are poor or in debt. When ill-treated, they run away and end up in the streets where they are vulnerable to CSEC.

Sex Tourism
Senegal is a major tourist destination with seven to eight months of peak tourist season. According to UNICEF Senegal, sex tourism has emerged as a new phenomenon. Boy prostitution is said to be on the increase, and children of both sexes harass tourists in the bid to lure clients. Sex tourism is also a problem in Gambia, where a sizeable influx of European women are seeking sex with underage boys, so called bombstars or beachboys. Child sex tourism has also been reported in Togo and Benin, where hoteliers are known to be recruiting young girls to satisfy their customers sexual needs.

Vulnerable children
Generally, the profile of victims and perpetrators of CSEC are the same throughout the region. The victims are children from very poor families, street children, refugees and internally displaced children, child hawkers of petty wares, children who are beggars, school drop outs and children of migrants. With no education or skills these children resort to prostitution as the only means of survival. In Nigeria, the average age for commercial sex workers is 16 years.

Perpetrators
The majority of perpetrators are rich local nationals like civil servants, politicians and businessmen. In Nigeria, child prostitution is prevalent in the oil rich regions where young girls are enticed by the large amount of money offered by expatriates and oil workers.

Other perpetrators are foreign tourists and, in countries affected by armed conflict, military personnel. As a result of the war in Sierra Leone, the bulk of the perpetrators are military personnel either on the government or rebel side, UN peacekeepers and foreign expatriates working for humanitarian agencies in the country. There is a general belief in Senegal that the presence of a strategic French military base is linked to the increase in the CSEC in the country.

Criminal Networks and Trafficking
There are reports of increased involvement of organised criminal networks in many parts of the region. In Cote d’Ivoire, for example, in addition to occasional prostitution, there exists professional prostitution run by criminal networks.

Far more prevalent, however, is the involvement of organised criminal networks in the trafficking of young women and children. This activity occurs within country borders, within the region and beyond the confines of the region. Children are trafficked for a variety of reasons: agricultural labour, domestic help and for commercial sex work. Children trafficked for whatever purpose become vulnerable to CSEC. The trafficking of children is a huge problem in Nigeria in particular. One report on trafficking in Nigeria states that hundreds of women and young girls are trafficked from Nigeria to service the European sex industry. Italy is reported to be the main destination, but Germany, Holland and Saudi Arabia are also on the list of countries to which young Nigerian girls are trafficked.

The trafficking network is run by criminal gangs who specialise in recruiting young girls, forging travel documents and smuggling their victims through various routes to Europe and other parts of the world.

Child Pornography
It is difficult to know the extent of child pornography but it is said to exist. In May 2000, two men from Holland were caught by the Senegalese police making pornographic films with children. It is reported that the men, with the help of their consular authorities, bribed their way out of the country without any charge being brought against them. There was wide local press coverage of the incident.

Another emerging and dangerous trend in the region is the increase in the number of video salons where pornographic films are shown to everybody, including children. There are no age tags on these films and there is very little or no censorship on films shown to the public in these video salons.

Obstacles
There is a paucity of information on the issue. This is primarily the result of taboos and stigma attached to CSEC, the underground nature of the phenomenon and the lack of concrete research on the issue. For example, child abuse and sexual exploitation of children appear to be realities in Gambia and Benin. Both, however, are underreported at official levels.

Due to HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns, most child prostitutes ask their clients to use condoms, but some take the risk of having sex without condom if the client is willing to pay more. A child sex worker in Togo, for example, admitted that most of them charge their clients 1000 FCFA with condoms and 3000 without. Official exchange rate at the time of the visit was 747 FCFA to $1 US.

Legislation and Law Enforcement
While laws to protect children from CSEC exist, they are usually inadequate and are not properly enforced. In Nigeria, for example, the laws protecting children against CSEC date back as far as 1904 to the colonial period. Even in countries where some legal reforms have taken place, like Senegal, law enforcement is still a problem in the region as a whole.

Confronting the problem
There is very little awareness on the issue, not only on the part of the general population, but also on the part of politicians and policy makers. This is not to say that nothing is being done. On 29th January 1999, for example, thousands of children took to the streets in one city of Ivory Coast and demonstrated against the rising cases of paedophilia and other forms of child sex abuse in their country. There is an active network of individuals, numerous NGOs and other organisations that are tackling the problem.

Increasingly governments are willing to acknowledge that CSEC is a growing problem within their borders, as well as the region, and are making efforts to combat it. The Togolese government, for example, has developed a national action plan on child trafficking and child abuse. The Department for the Protection and Promotion of the Family and of Children has been carrying out education and sensitisation campaigns against sexual exploitation and the trafficking of children for sexual purposes. In addition, it has been cooperating with governments of neighbouring countries, particularly Gabon, to remedy the situation.

This summary is based on a report by the regional officer for Africa in the ECPAT International Secretariat, Mr Saffea Senessie. The research was undertaken from August to October, 2000 and is based on interviews with prostituted children, organisations and institutions working in the field, and by personal observations of the situation while in each country. The complete report is available by contacting ECPAT International.

NATIONAL ACTION PLAN

The Stockholm Declaration and Agenda for Action on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was adopted by 122 governments in 1996. These governments committed themselves to developing national action plans on the issue by the 2000. Though 14 countries from West Africa were represented at Stockholm only one so far has done so : Togo.

In December 2000, ECPAT International organised a Regional Consultation on Networking for the Implementation of the Stockholm Declaration and Agenda for Action.

At the consultation, Madame Suzanne Aho, director of the Togolese Ministry for the Promotion and Protection of the Family and Child shared Togo’s experience of developing a national plan.

She outlined some of the actions undertaken to carry out the national plan, such as strengthening border controls to deter child trafficking, conducting sensitisation campaigns, putting in place structures within communities for the prevention and reintegration of child victims, and improving legislation.

In conclusion, she presented the plan with additional details on the justification for the plan, implementation strategy, actors responsible for the execution of various tasks, cost for implementation and follow-up mechanisms.