Africans 'locked in slavery'

2005-05-13 20:38

Abuja - More than 660 000 Africans, including many children, are still trapped in slavery, forced labour and prostitution, despite increasing efforts by the governments to free them, said the United Nations labour agency on Friday.

According to a report released in Nigeria by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) - a follow-up to an global report released this week in Geneva - African slave labour was worth $159m.

The agency noted in what it described as the most detailed study yet compiled: "In Africa, the eradication of, and even the clear understanding of, forced labour poses complex challenges in a context of poverty and tradition."

Inter-ethnic conflict

It said: "Unpaid services can be part of traditional kinship arrangements.

"There are reports that West Africans of slave descent still suffer discrimination and labour exploitation at the hands of their former masters.

"In some African countries forced labour has occurred in a context of severe political violence amid inter-ethnic conflict.

"Problems include slavery and abductions, debt bondage, forced overtime and forced domestic labour."

The ILO estimated that there were 660 000 forced labourers in sub-Saharan Africa, of whom perhaps a fifth had been trafficked across borders by people smugglers, while more were known to have been taken beyond the continent.

It said of those enslaved in Africa "80% are subject to economic exploitation, 11% to state-imposed forced labour and eight percent to commercial sexual exploitation".

Prostitution or pornography

The agency praised African governments for stepping up their measures to protect young women from being trafficked to Europe to be used in prostitution or pornography.

It singled out the trade in young women between Nigeria and Italy, where they were threatened with violence and forced to prostitute themselves to pay back so-called debts totalling up to 50 000 euros each.

But, the ILO regretted that action had concentrated in this high-profile area when the majority of cases of abuses in Africa were of economic exploitation of agricultural and quarry workers and of domestic servants.

In Ivory Coast, for example, between 10 000 and 15 000 Malian children were though to work in cocoa plantations.

The UN agency said more study was needed into the problem in Africa, which was less well documented than in other regions, and that it was helping government to raise awareness and campaign against exploitation.

- SAPA