By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
Baba Kanu is an 11-year-old boy with a big ambition. It seems impossible for him to achieve his dream of becoming a banker because he hasn't had the best start in life like some of the famous bankers in the world.
Baba is also losing a lot of time - he is now in class five and the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has forced the government to close learning
“I want to become a banker when I finish school so that I will have a lot of money,” he says. Baba might have a child's idea of who actually owns the money in the banks but there's nothing stopping him from believing that there's a lot of money to be made in the banking hall.
I was speaking to Baba one morning at a place called Up-Gun Roundabout as I waited to catch a minibus to work and he had to temporarily suspend his quick movement through the morning rush hour traffic selling cheese balls and other assorted goods. The skill and persistence in persuading commuters to buy their goods is usually a hot topic of conversation among passengers. The views are usually many and varied.
There are many children of Baba's age and circumstance in Sierra Leone. I don't know how to track them, but it's perfectly safe to say that many of them will never achieve their dreams. Maybe this boy will scrape over the line.
Up-Gun Roundabout is not only a flash point of what experts call child labour and exploitation. Other areas carrying similar obnoxious pictures exist in the nation’s capital such as: Shell Junction, Lumley Lorry Pack, PZ, Abacha Street, Guard Street, and the notorious Eastern Police and so on.
I spoke to a lady who appears to be in her 40s at the Up-Gun Roundabout. Aminata Kamara, a petty trader, says “Children should contribute to the family income.” She has two children, none of them is in school and predictably they also hawk in the street to boost the family income.
There's evidence that these children are trafficked from the provinces to these uncertainties of the city by relatives such as uncles, aunts, elder sisters among others. The most common ploy, the traffickers adopt to achieve their aim, is the promise that these children will attend good schools, have good food, sleep in decent rooms - all ingredients for a bright future. They project all the 'goodies' of city life as a bait to trap these unfortunate captives. For poor rural families, for whom children are like solid investments for the old age, such promises are irresistible.
The children end up on the streets and in sweat shop conditions. Their parents hardly visit them in the city, relying instead on messages from the modern day slave masters who put them through hazardous conditions. The situation is not improving in Sierra Leone. If anything, it's getting worse.
At a time when the nation is being squeezed by Ebola, the point need not be emphasised that special attention must be paid to the situation of children in this painful and turbulent period the country is going through. The 'child folk' is the most vulnerable group in society since they have little or no knowledge about the ravages of Ebola, a contagious disease that has taken a huge death toll on the people of this country. I make this claim because children are still on the street carrying out their usual activities - selling different types of commodities, searching for used clothes and scrap metals in land fill sites, sleeping rough in ‘ghettos’, where they are introduced to all manners of people.
There are media reports, in recent times, that a considerable number of children has been affected by the Ebola Virus Disease. Horrible! A very gloomy picture is being left behind and according to the National Director of Herman Gmeiner SOS Children’s Village, Olatungi Woode, about 165 children have been orphaned as their parents have succumbed to the dreadful Ebola.
Furthermore, the latest report on the status of children in the three countries of the Mano River Union basin by the UN Agency responsible for children’s welfare, UNICEF, indicates that at least 3,700 children have become orphaned since the start of the Ebola outbreak. These children, the report reveals, are being rejected by their surviving relatives for fear of infection. That's pathetic. “Thousands of children are living through the deaths of their mother, farther or family members from Ebola,” says Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa who just concluded a two-week tour of the three most affected countries in the region.
The report further highlights that these children need special attention and support, yet many of them feel unwanted and even abandoned. Orphans are usually taken care of by a member of the extended family, but in some communities, the fear surrounding Ebola is becoming stronger than family ties.
Defense for Children International, DCI, is among one of those institutions that came into being during the post war period in this country. Its Advocacy officer, Henry Tucker, told me that with the aid of Social Workers they've been engaged in monitoring courts to ensure that when such children were in conflict with the law, they were treated as juveniles. But Tucker says about 100 such children are going through the criminal justice process in Freetown alone. DCI may have had some successes, but they look like a drop in the ocean.
This terrible situation of children has compelled me to investigate, with considerable reluctance, the role of the Family Support Unit, FSU, in the Sierra Leone Police; the unit which I consider to be crucial to the fight to keep families together and so provide a safe place for children to grow. It has attracted huge investment from the International Community in terms of training and the provision of logistics.
The goal for such an investment is to eradicate all forms of child labour and exploitation. The Commonwealth Community Safety and Security Project, CCSSP, has laid a very strong foundation to restructure the Sierra Leone police under the leadership of the former expatriate British Inspector General, Keith Biddle.
The FSU coordinator for the Western Area, Detective Assistant Superintendent of Police Sia Sandy, told me that about 90% of street children are constantly abused by their parents and community members.
According to her the FSU has put in place a strategy known as 'Operation Dawn'. She says it's in line with the Education Act of 2004 which calls for free primary and basic education for children in Sierra Leone. “We will fully implement this strategy when the government declares the country Ebola-free,” she adds. But the officer agrees that they don't have the logistics to make this possible. In fact, whatever happens to the Freetown City Council bye-law that prescribes a Le 100, 000 fine for parents who keep their children out of school for petty trading? There is no focus on children in the bye-laws developed by paramount chiefs. How can they do that?
Majority of Sierra Leoneans will agree with me that during the war period, children were exploited by all the warring factions. The various groups made children perpetrators and victims of heinous crimes. The vestiges of such incivility and brutality are still present with us.
As I write this article, Sierra Leone has fine laws for the safety and protection of children. These national laws, I believe, emanated from the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 1989, to which Sierra Leone is a signatory. This International document is further reinforced by the Child Rights Act of 2007 which has also criminalised the exploitation of children. Related to this law is the anti human trafficking Act 2005, which is a law to suppress the trafficking in persons.
I believe this country must critically examine the relevant sections of the Anti Human Trafficking Act 2005 for the elements that constitute the offense of trafficking in persons and try to relate them to these children who have been transported from the provinces to the capital city for the purpose of exploitation.
There's no more time to lose to take strong actions so that Baba Kanu, the 11-year-old boy with a big ambition, and children like him can live their dreams.
(C) Politico 07/10/14
