Child-led anti-trafficking campaign

Awareness raising activities amongst working children in Africa on child-trafficking have long been a part of the work of the African Movement of Working Children and Youth (AMWCY). At the end of 2003, however, the movement officially adopted an anti-trafficking campaign. Find out more about the campaign and read the resolutions here.

Since 1994, 'the right to return to the village and not to migrate' has constituted one of the fundamental pillars of the African Movement of Working Children and Youth. Activities have been undertaken in several countries in order to implement this right. It is aimed at strengthening education and training in the villages and to inform the children and parents on the risks of early migration by children towards the town.

Some activities have been carried out by the AMWCY at strategic crossroads of child trafficking in West Africa on children themselves in order to warn them of the dangers linked to false promises made to them by traffickers. Working children and youth have listened attentively to hundreds of repatriated children across Africa, most of them child workers as well. The Working Children and Youth have condemned all sorts of trafficking and are engaged in throwing the weight of their networks against the trafficking networks which want 'to conduct trade in child labour'.

A regional consultation was held in February 2002 during which the NGOs which support working children and youth suggested that the children and youth movements should be actively associated with the struggle against child trafficking. The national associations of the AMWCY in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Niger and Togo have committed themselves to fight together against child trafficking in the region (please see the final declaration of the Ouagadougou meeting ). In January 2004 in Thies (Senegal) the African Movement met with the objective of drafting a common and regional action plan against child trafficking.