Copyright 2000 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
          Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.

                      *** 29-May-0* ***

Title: DEVELOPMENT/RIGHTS: Italy to Help Vulnerable Children in Senegal

By Jorge Pi¤a

ROME, May 29 (IPS) - Italy plans to help finance an initiative
aimed at fighting child labour in Senegal, where nearly 500,000
minors work in virtual slavery conditions.

The two-year programme, to get underway within the next three
months, will be carried out in conjunction with the United Nations
children's fund (UNICEF) and several Italian non-governmental
organisations that are active in that west African country.

The Italian government will provide 1.2 million dollars in
funding for the programme, which will also focus on getting
children off the streets, where they are exposed to a broad range
of abuse, including child prostitution and sex tourism.

One of the most widespread forms of exploitation of children is
domestic work, with girls as young as eight working more than 12
hours a day, seven days a week.

Most of the young domestics were sent from the provinces by
their parents, who could no longer feed them, to the capital to
find work.

But those who are unable to find work as domestics in Dakar end
up living on the streets, where they are vulnerable to rape and
other kinds of abuse, Paola Viero, an Italian development aid
expert, told IPS after visiting Senegal this month to help
organise the project on the ground.

Many of the girls who do find jobs are not even allowed to
sleep in their employers' houses, and have to share a tiny rented
room with other domestics in nearby shantytowns, which are
dangerous places to live.

''It was very moving to listen to the mothers of some of these
girls asking for help so they would not have to send their
daughters to work in Dakar, aware of the dangers they would face
there,'' said Viero.

The mothers also expressed interest in family planning courses.
However, their husbands are opposed to birth control, in their aim
to have many sons, who they see as a source of labour power,
despite the fact that they generally work in agriculture, which
provides a steady job for only three months of the year.

The programme will also include a drive to register children,
to enable them to go to school. Most families in Senegal do not
register births, as many are unable to afford the fees involved.

But the most dangerous aspect of that phenomenon, said Viero,
is that since the children do not legally exist, it is a simple
matter for them to disappear at any time, abducted as sex slaves,
abused and murdered, or for the purpose of organ harvesting.

Another danger is that some extreme Islamist centres to which
families turn over their children to learn the Koran send them out
to panhandle.

''They send them out with a can to beg, and force them to bring
back a certain amount of money every night. If they fail to do so,
they are beaten,'' said the official.

The project will also help the government of Senegal to improve
treatment of minors by the justice system. Today, juvenile
delinquents are sent to the same prisons as adults.

In 1995, Senegal had a population of 8.35 million, 90 percent
Muslim and five percent Christian. Infant mortality stood at 68
per 1,000 live births, and illiteracy among people over 15 at 82
percent for women and 62 percent for men. The school dropout rate
averaged 62 percent, while 33 percent of families lived below the
poverty line. (END/IPS/tra-so/jp/sw/00)

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