A TRAGIC STORY

A life ended by child traffickers.
By Jane Elliott BBC News health reporter.

Mounriatou and her baby died, Mounriatou was just 16 when she was taken from her home in Togo to the oil-rich state of Gabon. Less than a year later she was dead from Aids after being gang-raped by a group of boatmen on her way to the "promised land". Just before she died she told aid workers her story.

Now the charity, Plan International, is fighting to stop child trafficking and keep children like Mounriatou safe in their own countries. Mounriatou's family were in dire financial straits. She had been forced to drop out of school to help her mother make a living frying bean nuts. One day a woman came to their village to see her mother and told of a life of riches in the Gabon. Mounriatou decided to go with her to seek her fortune and left without telling her mother. She was taken with four other women to the capital of Togo, Lome, and from there to Lagos, in Nigeria.
While waiting to move on from Lagos, Mounriatou had to work as a maid to survive. She worked for just 55 US cents a day and when Adama, the woman who had recruited her and the other women, returned she took all their earnings. By now she had a collected a group of 14 girls and moved them to a village in the southwest of Nigeria. She promised they would soon be heading for the Gabon, but for months they were forced to work to pay for their trip with street traders - and were raped nightly by the canoe men.

Mounriatou told charity workers: "Finally, we were told one night that we were leaving by sea early the following morning at dawn. "There were between 300 and 350 clandestine passengers and children were in the majority. "We spent five days on high seas trying to hide from the coastguards. "This made some of us sick and the canoe men got rid of those who were very ill by throwing them into the sea." Mounriatou was ill, but she managed to survive.

But when she reached the shore it became obvious that she was heavily pregnant and of no use to her 'mistress'. "I was six months pregnant due to the numerous sexual abuses meted on us by the canoe men to pay for our trip to the Gabon." Adama dumped her with just $18. She was taken to the Togo Embassy and left with the Catholic sisters until she gave birth. When she gave birth, both she and her child had Aids. The Togo Embassy helped her to return home and within nine months both she and her child were dead.

Each year thousands of children like Mounriatou are enticed or snatched from their homes in Africa and Asia with promises of a better life. They are subjected to enforced labour and many are abused or forced into prostitution, contracting HIV/Aids. Many of the children become sick and die because the health infrastructure in these countries is often poor.
Charity workers want the international community to stop more cases like Mounriatou's. Plan International works with local NGOs and the Togolese government. Children rescued from trafficking are being offered the chance of vocational training to help them build a new life.
In addition they will get basic medical and psycho-social support and monitoring. Stefanie Conrad, country director of Plan Togo, says: "Plan not only calls for the abolition of child slavery, we are also supporting children who have already been trafficked. Children who are intercepted or returned often have nowhere to turn to for help. "The staff at the few transit centres and shelters that do exist often lack the qualifications and experience to deal with these vulnerable children. Where there is no temporary shelter available, many children are held in jails on their journey home. "It is common for children who have been returned home to be trafficked again due to the lack of other opportunities at village level.

"There has been no support for children left traumatised and in of need psycho-social support. Plan is now working to provide this type of essential support."

BBC NEWS REPORT.