Slavery: still alive and well in West Africa.

Slavery is still widely practised in West Africa.

But this could change in the future.

The BBC reported this month about a woman who was sold into slavery at the age of twelve in Niger who has recently been awarded damages by a regional West African court. She was sold as a sex slave, regularly beaten and made to bear her master’s children.

This is the first time that a West African court has ordered a government to compensate anyone sold into slavery.  The woman, Hadijatou Mani, now 26 years old, is to be paid 10 million CFA francs (almost 19,000 US dollars).

According to the BBC, she said, after the judgement:

"I will be able to build a house, raise animals and farm land to support my family. I will also be able to send my children to school so they can have the education I was never allowed as a slave".

How many?

No one really knows the true extent of enslavement.  Human Rights organizations say that more than 40,000 people are still in slavery in Niger, but that is of course only an estimate. We will probably never know the extent of the slavery still being practiced in these West African countries in the Sahel.

Many women and children are forced to look after animals or carry out domestic work without pay. According to ASI, many are badly mistreated.  Few ever have any possibility of gaining their freedom.  Other enslaved people work on large plantations and could be too frightened to volunteer the information to outsiders. Village people who still own slaves are likely to be skilled at hiding it, and neighbours will collude with them.  After all, the custom serves the slave owners well. Countries such as <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Mali still have an established slave caste; a status inherited from their mothers. ASI points out that few enslaved people will know anything about changes in the laws on slavery.

The BBC quotes Romana Cacchioli, Africa Programme Coordinator for Anti-Slavery International, who said this form of slavery began centuries ago when North African Berbers and Arabs raided the settlements of black Africans to the south and enslaved them.  It was Anti-Slavery International that helped Ms Mani bring the case, after she was finally freed by her master and given her "liberation certificate" in 2005. ASI appear to be working on a carefully thought out campaign in Niger. Although Ms Mani was freed, a court blocked her master's attempt to prevent her marrying another man. This was later overruled and Ms Mani was convicted of bigamy and sent to prison for six months.  (This is just the beginning of a nasty fight-back if more enslaved people take action!).

A change in the law:

Ms Cacchioli says Anti-Slavery International has helped free about 80 women in Niger over the past five years.  I imagine that ASI has been been planning this onslaught for some time.  This case is especially interesting since Mali abolished slavery only recently.  (I heard this news report last night and believe it said this had occurred in 2003).  According to Anti-Slavery International, Mauritania has also officially abolished slavery, but Anti-Slavery International says 18% of the population are estimated to be slaves, although these figures are strongly disputed. Some ordinary Mauritanians argue that it is difficult to define who is a slave and abolishing slavery is not straightforward. It occurs mainly in remote, rural areas.  When the Niger government outlawed slavery, it did nothing to ensure the practice was stopped. The BBC said that it was likely there will be many more cases brought against the Niger government. This could build up the pressure on other West African countries to do something serious about their slave populations.  

In an earlier report (Using the kids), I mentioned that child slavery is also widespread in the cocoa trade in the Ivory Coast, in West Africa. A British TV documentary - Slavery: A global investigation reported that 90 % of the Ivory Coast cocoa plantations still had child slaves working on them.  Many of these were very difficult for the film maker to track down.

The future:

Hopefully, this court case will spur the Niger government to take its new law seriously and put proper monitoring in place. The trouble is that slavery may well disappear underground. Whatever happens now, taking any further action is going to be a long, and a hard slog. After all the slave owners have too much to lose.  They are not going to give up easily.

Post script (Oct 29th):

Kevin Bales from Roehampton University, London and Rachael Harrison are both authorities on this topic.  Kevin Bales' book  (Free The Slaves) lists the countries where slavery is still rife.  Pakistan/Afghanistanm borders, Thailand (girls trafficked from Laos, Cambodia, Burma), Mauritania, Brazil, China (lots of action against slavry recently) and India (where, although the country has some of the best laws banning slavery, he says it has more slaves than anywhere else in the world).  I plan to write a more considered piece on this important topic once  have done some proper reading.

Incidentally, Kevin Bales' estimate (and he has met many people and knows an awful lot about he topic, but is not given to exageration for political purposes) is that there are about 27 million enslaved people around the world.  A tiny number of course compared with the size of the world population.  But it useful to think how it compares with the number of people throughout the world infected with HIV (40 millions).