African Nation Sets Agenda to Pass Anti-Trafficking Law

Guinea-Bissau, a small African nation of only 1.5 million people located on Africa's western coast, suffers from human rights abuses of massive proportions: human trafficking, and in particular, child trafficking. Though the entire country's population is approximately the size of Philadelphia, the country is a major hub for child trafficking, with many sent to Senegal under the care of Koranic teachers to beg on the streets.

The U.S. State Department's 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report states that many of these former child beggars become traffickers themselves, returning to their home country to recruit more unsuspecting young boys. They can get away with it because, having graduated from Koranic schools, they are well respected in the Muslim community. Young girls from Guinea-Bissau are also vulnerable to traffickers; many wind up as domestic laborers both in the country and across the border in Senegal, and others are forced into prostitution.

The country was placed on the TIP report's tier 2 watch list and is clearly not getting any safer for young children. But the government is starting to take action; with no anti-trafficking legislation currently on the books, they are stepping up to the plate and just drafted a strong anti-trafficking bill that would include provisions that comply with international standards.

But so far, efforts at curbing smuggling or other illegal activity along the country's borders have been largely ineffective. Why? Well, there is one chronic problem when trying to tackle border crimes in some of the world's poorer nations: lack of resources. Human Rights Watch points out that border officials in Guinea-Bissau have only one car and a motorbike -- great assets for chasing fugitives on the run!

The government of Guinea-Bissau is moving one step closer, though, to providing the necessary resources, training, and legislation to combat trafficking by putting the draft anti-trafficking law on the agenda for the upcoming legislative session in October and November. If it passes, it will be the country's first and only law that aims at prosecuting and protecting victims of trafficking, particularly the country's increasingly vulnerable children.

So however small Guinea-Bissau may be, the implications of passing a solid piece of anti-trafficking legislation would be huge. But once it passes, it must be implemented, and often times, that proves too arduous a task for far too many countries.

Photo credit: Serigne Diagne