Beating Children When They Just Don't Beg Hard Enough

Modou is a 12-year-old student in Senegal, only instead of his teachers providing him lessons in math, reading, or theology, they're forcing him to beg on the streets for money, rice and sugar. And when Modou doesn't come back with enough money or food to satisfy his teachers?

"When I can't bring everything, the [teacher] beats me. He beats me other times too, even when I do bring the sum," says Modou in a new Human Rights Watch report that looks at the bleak, epidemic problem of forced begging in Senegal.

Specifically, the report focuses on talibés, students in Qur'anic schools in Senegal. These students, some as young as four-years-old, are forced into the streets by their teachers (also known as marabouts) to beg. For money. For rice. For sugar. For anything they can get that can be brought back to their teachers.

Don't call this education. Call it economic exploitation.

The report from Human Rights Watch, "‘Off the Backs of the Children': Forced Begging and Other Abuses against Talibés in Senegal," interviewed 175 students or former students, uncovering a child abuse problem that is widespread in many reaches of the country. And get this: while the students get whupped and smacked around by their teachers, those same teachers are collecting anywhere between $20,000-$60,000 USD, all off of forcing their pupils to beg. To put that in perspective, the average income in Senegal is $2 a day.

Guess it sure pays to be a teacher that commits human rights atrocities against your students. Especially when the government plays the role of an ostrich and sticks its head in the ground, ignoring the epidemic.

Matt Wells, the author of the Human Rights Watch report, told the Guardian that the discrepancies between the students (talibés) and teachers (marabouts) is appalling.

"Some marabouts are actually living in relative affluence whilst the children in their care suffer hunger, malnutrition, disease and are sometimes chained while beaten, or forced into stress positions," said Wells.

Perhaps this will all lead to Senegal's new tourism campaign: come for the tropical climate, stay for the childhood torture.

Human Rights Watch is calling on the government to get its ship in order and monitor abuses within the Qur'anic school system, you know, since the country of Senegal is a party to Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Meanwhile, the rights group is also calling on the Organization of the Islamic Conference to get involved, to make sure that religious schools aren't used as a ruse to trick children into a life of street begging.

And as for Senegal, what a week in the human rights doghouse. On Monday, the international community railed against the Senegalese government for creating a toxic climate for gays and lesbians in the country, after a deceased gay man was dug up from his grave, his decaying body dragged down the street, and deposited on the front steps of his elderly parents' home.

Yikes. Perhaps the only way to top that horrific scenario is an epidemic of four-year-olds being forced to beg for rice and sugar. Major FAIL, Senegal.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons