AFRICA/BENIN - Children sold for 30 euro as slaves by their parents: a campaign against trafficking

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Porto Novo (Agenzia Fides) - "Poverty and family breakdown are, without a doubt, two of the main causes of child trafficking. To these we must add the lack of education of children and their families, conflicts and political instability in the countries of Africa and Asia in particular, the debts accumulated by the family and the impunity enjoyed by traffickers": This is what we read in the note sent to Fides Agency to present the campaign "I am not for sale", sponsored by the Salesian Missions in Benin to protect children against human trafficking.
"The trafficking of children is one of the worst realities with which we are dealing, because it destroys a child’s childhood and his/her hope for the future", continues the statement. Father Juan José Gómez, head of the Don Bosco reception center in Porto Novo offers a dramatic testimony: "We have welcomed children who had been sold for about 30 Euros by their parents ...". To promote this campaign a video has been prepared that shows the dramatic situation in Benin on this issue, a situation that reflects what is happening in Africa but also in other continents.
More than one million children worldwide are victims of human trafficking, according to the International Labor Organization. The number, however, increases if you count illegal adoptions, forced marriages and trafficking in organs. 27% of all victims of trafficking are identified as children in the world, according to UN figures. (CE) (Agenzia Fides 24/07/2014)


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