https://archive.is/xxJkj
Liberia: Adoption Or Child Trafficking
Relates to:
Liberia
U.S. State Department
Liberia - Misc. trafficking cases
Date:
2006-06-14
Source:
www.analystliberia.com
“Fake Philanthropists” Lure Liberia’s Kids Into The Unknown
Can Gov’t Rise To The Occasion?
The average Liberia family is under extreme socio-economic stress, compelled to fend sometimes without success, for each day’s meals. With no job and no job opportunities for moms, dads, and other extended members of the family for months and years on end, there is no telling how intense the rat race for survival in most homes is.
They want out: fathers, mothers, kids. In their desperation they have been groping for support, reaching out for any hand that seems to offer one, as a drowning man would do.
In order to help ease the situation, some families, in recent years, resorted to giving their kids to affluent families or individuals in the hope that the kids will survive the difficulties and help them in the future.
But it seems they were treading a quicksand and now it is clear that most of the kids taken away in past years on promises of a better tomorrow may never be seen alive.
A recent U.S. State Department report on Liberia says most of the kids who were taken away by child traffickers are currently being used as sex slaves or streets hawkers.
Now the State Department is requesting that the Liberian government to do something about the drain on Liberia’s humanity, human resources, and future, The Analyst Staff Writer reports.
“Liberia is a source, transit, and destination country for children trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation; the government must therefore integrate into each of these large objectives strategies for combating trafficking in persons.”
These were the words of a U.S. State Department report released early this month. While the report conceded that the issue of child and human trafficking in Liberia is a special case because it was in political transition during the reporting period, it indicated that Liberia’s trafficking picture has become grave and requires urgent government intervention.
“Most trafficking occurs within the country, though some children are trafficked to Liberia from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire and from Liberia to Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, The Gambia, and Nigeria,” the report said.
The reports did not also say how and under what conditions these children were taken from their parents and guardians, but noted that they were trafficked for domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, agricultural labor, and street vending.
Those trafficked by individuals from neighboring Cote d’Ivoire, the report said, were used to fight a proxy war in which they were used as guinea pigs at battlefronts to test the safety of the terrains.
“There are reports as well ofsome orphanages obtaining children through abductionor fraudulent means and exploiting those children in the commercial sex trade or for hawking in the street,” the report revealed, adding that the NTGL was unable to deal with the problem because some of its members allied with rebel groups that were involved in trafficking in persons for the Ivorian war.
Some kids as young as five months, according to recent reports, were abducted by white folks who come into the country under the guise of rendering humanitarian services.
“Some womenon the Mercy Ship use their Liberians contacts to take away childrenunder the guise of adoption without the proper involvement of the government. Also involved in this practice are heads of some mushroom churches with contacts in the U.S.,” one resident of New Kru Town told The Analyst recently.
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>She co-founded a non-profit called theShine Foundation that runs an orphanage in Bong County,Liberia