Benin 'voodoo convents' — child servitude for ritual debt

Cited record

Sources

United States Department of State (2023) 'Benin - United States Department of State', 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report. Available at: state.gov (Accessed: 29 June 2024).

'Officials reported that traffickers are increasingly using Voudoun curses as a means to control female Beninese trafficking victims... The government reported traffickers exploit children living in the lakeside areas of Benin—including the commune of So Ava in southeast Benin—in debt bondage. Criminal elements operate in urban areas under the guise of informal employment agents and recruit children for domestic work in private residences, where house managers and families exploit them in domestic servitude... Benin has been the largest source country for trafficking victims in the Republic of the Congo, with the department of Oueme in southeast Benin historically an area traffickers used to recruit child victims.'

UK Channel 4 (2008) 'Children sold to pay voodoo debts in Benin | Unreported World', YouTube. Available at: youtube.com (Accessed: 29 June 2024).

From the programme's narration: 'Gin is poured to appease the voodoo spirits. A series of blessings and offerings to the spirits as we enter the area. Here, children are taught voodoo's secrets. We've been invited in to meet the chief trainer and the chief priest, and a stream of these young children just walked in, and some of them look to me to be possibly two, even one years old... UNICEF says every year in Benin 40,000 children are sold into what amounts to little more than slavery, many to pay for voodoo.'

Page, T., & Carrington, D. (2016, June 2). 'These children were confined to a voodoo convent'. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/africa/benin-voodoo-convents (Accessed 14 July 2024). [archived copy]

'In Benin, when children fall sick, their parents often turn to voodoo. Now advocates are raising the alarm saying the facilities may harm the children they aim to help... 'Those who practice Voodooism believe that illness is caused by evil spirits. If children fall sick, their parents seek treatment through Voodoo gods. The children allegedly possessed by spirits can be sent or even 'sold' to be healed in Voodoo convents,' notes Hadrien Bonnaud, a communication specialist for UNICEF based in Benin. The ceremonies that are meant to heal these children are expensive: about $1800 (a princely sum for a population that lives on less than $1 per day). In order to afford treatment, UNICEF says some parents sell their children to work in the convents until the debt is paid off (a practice that can take months or even years). 'If they are unable to pay their debts, the children are forcibly taken from them,' explains Bonnaud. ... In some cases a voodoo god will be assigned to a child, and symbolic scars will be carved into the skin. Madeline, 10, another child that Plan International interviewed, recalls the scarification she received as part of her treatment. 'It was very painful and there was so much blood... it was everywhere.' According to the charity, children as young as two years old can be kept in these convents—where access to education and healthcare is minimal.'

un treaty body · concluding observations United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding observations on the combined third to fifth periodic reports of Benin, CRC/C/BEN/CO/3-5 (adopted 20 January 2016).

The Committee's own concluding observations, retrieved from the United Nations documents system and read in full. Paragraph 42 records that the Committee 'is concerned at the practice of sequestration of children, especially girls, in voodoo convents because of family traditions and beliefs', and 'is particularly concerned that such children are deprived of education and contacts outside of the convents, and are subjected to ill treatment, including scarification rites and sexual abuse'. It records continuing concern at the traditional practice of vidomegon affecting girls 'and at the limited measures taken to eradicate it and to hold accountable those exploiting them'. Paragraph 43 urges Benin 'to investigate and prosecute persons responsible for harmful practices against children, and urgently remove children from environments where such practices take place'.