The slave children

Correspondent investigates the modern trade in child slaves which robs them of their childhood. Olenka Frenkiel reports from the West Coast of Africa.

On a quiet weekend last April news spread of a slave-ship, lost at sea off the coast of Africa. Hundreds of children were feared dead. Aid agencies warned they may have been thrown overboard. It had happened before.

When the Etireno finally limped into the port of Cotonou in Benin at 2 am on 17 April the world's press was waiting.

Twenty-three children disembarked. The adults who'd been travelling with them disappeared into the night and the world's press moved on grumbling.

No corpses were found floating in the sea - no bodies lay putrefying below decks. Clearly, the media speculated, this was aid agency hype. The ship had returned, they told their readers, with no child slaves on board.

My mother told me if I refused to go my father would not be happy and we would die of starvation

Adakoun

But they were wrong. The children who left that ferry after three weeks at sea had been destined to join the 200,000 children sold every year, in Africa's modern slave trade, their childhoods stolen.

The children of the Etireno

The Etireno children were under 14. More than half were under 10. They were taken, dazed and fearful, into the care of a Swiss Charity, Terre Des Hommes, where a picture of their story gradually emerged from their fragmented memories.

They told how strangers had come to their villages, paid money to their fathers and taken them away to work abroad.

"The man's name was Jean. He gave my father 500, (50 pence or 75 cents) and my brothers 500 to share. I had never met Jean before," said Victoire, a demure nine-year-old.

Adakoun, one of the children from the Etinero

Six-year-old Adakoun had refused to go but her mother insisted.

"My mother told me that if I refused to go my father would not be happy and we would die of starvation. That's why I got scared and agreed."

They'd been at sea for days when one night they were told to climb down the side into small boats and hide. Soldiers had caught them and put them in jail. Some had been beaten, others bitten by dogs.

Then they'd been ordered back onto their ship and sent again to sea where they'd drifted for days, their supplies running out.

"On the boat they said they were running out of fuel." Said Adakoun. "We were crying and they said if we didn't stop they'd throw us out of the boat."

After a few days in the care of Terre Des Hommes, they quickly became children again while the authorities began an investigation and tried to trace their parents.

They began to eat and play, unaware of the fate they'd narrowly escaped in Gabon, Benin's rich, West African neighbour.

Destination: Gabon

While Gabonese children go to school, a trade in foreign children thrives. As young as five, they come to work as housemaids, to sell in the markets and cook and clean for their wealthy masters who buy them from the traffickers.

They work unpaid. They're beaten and tortured and forbidden to leave. Their names are changed. Too young to remember their parents or their home, they forget their language, their village and their country.

Justine shows photos of her beaten body

Mainly girls, they're sold again and again - until they are grown. Their childhood stolen, illiterate and without skills, they are thrown on the streets to survive on their own.

Before Justine escaped she had a picture taken of the scars and raw wounds from the many beatings inflicted on her during her years working in Gabon.

Children are a lucrative commodity

The roots of this trade are partly cultural. It's the custom in West Africa to send poor children to live with wealthy relatives who will feed, clothe and educate them in return for a little help around the house. Benin's Foreign Minister Idji Kolawole sees nothing wrong with that.

We used to take about 80 or 100 children each year. Why? Because people just give birth to children but can't afford to take care of them

Philomene

"In our culture" he told me "we think that it's always good for a child at a certain age, when five years or more to go from his house... to go to an uncle's or to a parent's friend abroad from the parents... It makes them become men or women, become more educated, more skilled, and be better prepared for life."

Today the custom's gone global and children are sent not to relatives or friends nearby, but to strangers in far off countries. It's business. Money changes hands. Traffickers will buy a child for £10.00 (around $15.00) and sell that child for £200.00 ($300) in Gabon.

Philomene claims she's retired now, but when the Nigerian currency - the Naira - was strong, she took children there. For nine years.

Slave trader, Philomene T.

"We used to take about 80 or 100 children each year. Why? Because people just give birth to children but can't afford to take care of them. We would tell them influential people in Nigeria are looking for children and you will be paid a lot of money." Of course this was a lie, she admitted, and chuckled.

Slavery on the coast of Africa

Today in West Africa the "s" word, slavery, is reserved for the past. The Benin Government, which has admitted the Etireno was trafficking children - insists this isn't slavery. Even Unicef, that most political of child protectors, won't use the word lest it offend the governments of the region.

Benin's Foreign Minister, Idji Kolawole

After all, this is the old slave coast where for centuries millions were chained, sold and shipped to Europe and America to be sold to an owner and work unpaid. That was slavery, Benin's Foreign Minister insists. What happens today does not compare.

The trafficking continues. By sea, by land and by air. On an Air Gabon flight we filmed secretly and caught a well-known trafficker taking three children to the fishing port of Port Gentil.

West Coast of Africa

The government of Benin is poor. The government of Gabon is rich. Both have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Both have enjoyed 10 years of democracy. Yet neither country has framed a law to ban this trade in children or punish the traffickers.

Conferences and seminars there are many but until governments recognise this as a slave trade the traffickers will be free to ply their trade.

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If you would like to help, you can contact Anti-slavery International at:

Anti-slavery International
Freepost
LON 10246
London SW9 9BR

Please include a note specifying that you would like to help trafficked children in West and Central Africa.

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You can write to the leaders of Benin and Gabon via the addresses below:

His Excellency El Hadj Omar Bongo
President of Gabon
c/o Embassy of the Republic of Gabon
27 Elvaston Place
London SW7 5NL

His Excellency Matheiu Kerekou
President of Benin
c/o Consulate of the Republic of Benin
Dolphin House 16 The Broadway
Stanmore Middlesex HA7 4DW
or
c/o Embassy of the Republic of Benin
87 Avenue Victor Hugo
75116 Paris France

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The slave children: Sunday 7th October at 1915 on BBC 2.

Reporter: Olenka Frenkiel
Producer: Giselle Portenier
Editor: Fiona Murch