| The international community has begun addressing child trafficking and the millions of young African girls that are kept in slavelike conditions. The following is an except from the latest issue of SPectrum, the Bank's Social Protection Magazine. The photograph shows a smiling Beninese family proudly showing off their newborn baby to a visiting friend. But it also reveals much more, capturing in a corner the face of a seven-year-old African girl, the family's domestic servant, who sneaked herself into the snapshot. Nobody noticed her at the time, but her tiny act of defiant longing spoke with powerful eloquence to the plight of five million little girls just like herself. These girls are working as domestic child labor in households far away from their families. Like the girl in the photograph, they are living in the shadows, unnoticed and unloved. Often as young as six, they work for very low pay if anything at all, enduring long hours and harsh treatment, often including physical punishment. Today, the number of working children in Africa is still lower in absolute terms than in other areas such as Southeast Asia, where child household labor is also a serious problem. But research suggests that a much larger percentage of children work here than anywhere else in the world. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 41 percent of Central and West African children below age 14 are working. That is nearly twice the rate in Asia. Domestic service is the only extensive market for child labor in Africa (although other serious child labor problems do exist, such as the high number of street children). The AIDS epidemic has had a devastating effect on the child labor situation in Africa, leaving many orphans fending for themselves after the death of their parents. In Benin, one in of four girls between the ages of 6 and 14 live away from their parents. Of these girls, only 12 percent attend school. More than 26 percent of Benin's households are housing a child under age 15 whose parents are not living in the household. Children Sold as Commodities In the past few years, the international community has begun paying attention. Analysts visiting the region began observing what was going on around them with a critical eye, identifying what is abusive, what the causes are, and what should be done about it. By the second half of the 1990s, these observations led to the recognition that there exists a regional market for child labor, in which children are bought and sold like commodities. Because migration is so deeply ingrained in West African culture, and migrants have so often in the past been accompanied by children, child trafficking is hardly an emerging issue. Moreover, many West African societies have a long tradition of sending children to live with a relative, where they are expected both to work and to get an education. But new patterns have developed since the 1970's: patterns of exploitation that are built on custom, but wholly commercial in motive. Michael Dottridge, Director of Anti-Slavery International, notes the readiness of inter-governmental organizations to launch projects concerning trafficked children in West Africa, but is disappointed by how poorly these same organizations have coordinated with each other and with NGOs. "On occasion, we have noted what appears to be faintly absurd competition between agencies," Dottridge says. "It is marvelous that everyone is interested, but it would probably be a better use of resources to appoint a single agency to coordinate the various projects concerning child trafficking." To start tackling the problem, Dottridge first suggests the need for clear agreement at a sub-regional, or even a pan-African level on the circumstances under which taking children across a border to work should be illegal. "Virtually every country needs to establish public standards in relation to child labor, notably the employment of child domestics from other countries,'' says Dottridge. These should determine, Dottridge contends, "when it is legitimate to put children to work and what rights must be accorded to young workers, such as a requirement that all families with a young domestic put the child through full-time education." He also wants stronger legal frameworks. "There is either a complete lack of law concerning cross-border trafficking of children, or what law does exist is not clear enough for the border police to enforce if they could be persuaded to do so," he says. He argues that resources should be allocated to the communities of origin to prevent migration by setting up economic alternatives for the children and their families. There is already considerable experience in assisting children living and working away from home, notably to child domestics in Haiti and the Philippines. "What is clear at the moment," says Dottridge, "is that it is time to learn from all the experiences which different agencies have had and to apply the lessons to help the children." Some in West Africa assume that it must be in the children's best interest to repatriate them and put them through some form of rehabilitation such as a children's home. Others suggest that children may be better off left where they are, but given substantial support, particularly to attend school. This was the suggestion made earlier this year by an NGO in Gabon, which observed that as fast as children from Benin and Togo were repatriated, new youngsters were sent to take their place. Be Realistic Maurizia Tovo, who works on child labor in Africa as a senior operations officer for the World Bank, agrees with Dottridge and urges a realistic approach to child labor in Africa. "Child labor is so widespread that it cannot be eliminated in the short term," Tovo says. "The families and the countries are so poor that they simply need the children's labor. So what we can do is to make sure that child labor is not harmful to the child." The World Bank is trying to address the problem through lending to awareness programs, education, poverty reduction, research, health, family planning, and infrastructure. Until the larger problems of poverty and AIDS are alleviated, millions of little girls like the one in Benin who stuck her head in the photograph will be working as little more than slaves in strangers' homes. SPectrum is published four times a year by the World Bank's Social Protection Unit and is intended to raise awareness around social protection issues. For a free copy, contact Raiden Dillard at RDillard@worldbank.org. Useful links: For the new child labor and protection website, go to www.worldbank.org/childlabor. Read current and previous issues of SPectrum online (pdf-files). | 
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