Slavery by Any Name

The universal willingness to believe that 180 children had been sold into slavery and were abandoned on a modern-day slave ship stranded off the coast of West Africa indicates the depth of the child-trafficking problem in that region. The truth may never be known about the vessel that docked Tuesday in Benin--whether its human cargo ever included scores of young slaves--but the world should keep paying attention.

UNICEF estimates that 200,000 boys and girls are sold into servitude in Africa every year. The children often come from very poor rural areas in Benin and Togo. The girls, as young as 8, cook and clean for wealthy families in prosperous areas of Nigeria and Ivory Coast. The boys are sent to work on farms or in industry in relatively rich countries like Gabon that have labor shortages. Many teenagers, male and female, end up in prostitution in Europe.

Rural parents often allow their children to be “adopted,” or they sell them to men and women who promise to educate the youngsters and provide more than they would get in a village where one more mouth to feed is an unbearable burden. Many city parents who agree to such deals are motivated by greed.

Selling a child is a crime, yet the practice remains common. A human rights study in Cameroon last year documented a thriving slave trade carried out openly in rural areas and cities, finding that children representing more than 12% of the general population had been sold. In Nigeria, British authorities thwarted two major smuggling attempts last year by asking children the names of the “parents” with whom they were about to travel to London; many did not know. In Ghana last month, authorities nabbed several alleged smugglers of children near the Burkina Faso border.

Stopping the practice altogether will require eradicating the direst poverty, plus the civil wars, government mismanagement and corruption that often contribute to it. Ending slavery will also require changing cultural beliefs. In pursuit of that goal, the Niger government last week sponsored a traditional-leaders workshop, according to the Pan African News Agency, to persuade chiefs to stop practices that dehumanize women and children. At that symposium, sponsored by UNICEF also, 100 traditional leaders promised to protect children and uphold the rights of women. In villages, the royal leaders rule and can discourage human trafficking. In cities, police must crack down and penalties must be increased.

The end is not in sight for the slavery that goes under the name of child trafficking, but world awareness and African vigilance can steadily diminish it.