Becoming somebody: Bissau-Guinean talibés in Senegal

Abstract

Parents of trafficked children are mostly ignored or represented in mass media and reports published by international institution and NGOs as desperately poor, ignorant or indifferent. This article gives voice to Bissau-Guinean Fula parents who are descendants of former slaves aiming to raise their social status by sending sons to Quran schools in Senegal. No parent argued they did so because of poverty. Concerned with discrimination, they sent their favourite son abroad hoping he would ‘become somebody’. At the same time, parents mentioned the importance of religious commitment, piety and serving Allah. To their outrage, global institutions and NGOs classify the practice of sending boys to Quran schools in Senegal as child trafficking. Anti-trafficking activities are ongoing, including repatriation of boys from Senegal, something seen as degrading and criminalising. Repatriation of their chosen son is seen as the worst outcome and proof of discrimination. Nonetheless, the parents are resistant and continue to send their sons to Senegal to seek knowledge and ‘fight ignorance’ through religious education.

Keywords:

• trafficking
• Senegal
• Guinea-Bissau
• parents
• religious education

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the participants in the research for their time and dedication. The research was supported financially by The University of Iceland Research Fund and Unicef.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jónína Einarsdóttir holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University. Jónína is Professor of Anthropology and responsible for the MA programme in Development Studies at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences. Main fields of research interests are anthropology of children, medical anthropology and development studies.

Hamadou Boiro holds an MA and DEA (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies) in Social Anthropology from the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar. Hamadou is a researcher at INEP and Director for the Center for History and Anthropology, Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa (INEP), Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Experience of research in Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, and in 2015 conducted research in Guiné on local responses to Ebola on behalf of the WHO.

Notes

1. Mark Goodale, Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Right (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Ellen Messer, ‘Anthropology and Human Rights’, Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993): 221–9; Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, ‘Ethics and Anthropology 1890–2000’, in Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology, ed. C. Fluehr-Lobban (Walnut Creek: Altamira, 2003).

2. The Executive Board, American Anthropological Association, ‘Statement on Human Rights’, American Anthropologist 49, no. 4 (1947): 541.

3. Ibid., 543.

4. Karen Engle, ‘From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947–1999’, Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2001): 559.

5. Mark Goodale, ‘Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights’, Current Anthropology 47, no. 3 (2006): 485–511. See also Goodale, Surrendering to Utopia.

6. Goodale, ‘Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights’, 490.

7. Goodale, Surrendering to Utopia.

8. Ellen Messer, ‘Anthropology and Human Rights’, Annual Review of Anthropology (1993): 221–49.

9. Ibid., 222.

10. Ellen Messer, ‘Comments: Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights’, Current Anthropology 47, no. 3 (2006): 503.

11. Goodale, ‘Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights’, 507.

12. Fluehr-Lobban, ‘Ethics and Anthropology 1890–2000’; Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, ‘Anthropology and Ethics in America's Declining Imperial Age’, Anthropology Today 24, no. 4 (2008): 18–22.

13. Barbara Rose Johnston, ‘American Anthropological Association Committee for Human Rights (CfHR) Five Year Evaluation Report’, 30 January 2001, http://new.aaanet.org/committees/cfhr/ar95-00.htm.

14. Shannon Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 66–76; Jason Hart, ‘Saving Children: What Role for Anthropology?’, Anthropology Today 22, no. 1 (2006): 5–8.

15. Jónína Einarsdóttir, Hamadou Boiro, Gunnlaugur Geirsson and Geir Gunnlaugsson, Child Trafficking in Guinea-Bissau: An Explorative Study (Reykjavík/Bissau: Unicef Iceland /Unicef Guinea-Bissau, 2010).

16. Sally Engle Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 3.

17. Ibid., 39.

18. Jason Hart, Business as Usual? The Global Political Economy of Childhood Poverty (Oxford: Young Lives, 2008), 10.

19. Ibid., 10.

20. Here we use the Wolof terms, which are normally used in mass media and other publications on the issue; however, each ethnic group has own terms.

21. Einarsdóttir et al., ‘Child Trafficking in Guinea-Bissau’.

22. Ibid.

23. Joye L. Bowman, Ominous Transition: Commerce and Colonial Expansion in the Senegambia and Guinea, 1857–1919 (London: Avebury, 1997); Carols Lopes, ‘O Kaabu e os seus vizinhos: uma leitura espacial e histórica explicativa de conflitos’, Afro-Asia 32 (2005): 9–28.

24. Ibid., 105.

25. Hamadou Boiro and Jónína Einarsdóttir, ‘Inverting Power Relations: The Case of Fula Forros and Fula Pretos in Guinea-Bissau’, African Engagements: On Whose Terms? ECAS 2011 – 4th European Conference on African Studies, Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, 15–18 June 2011.

26. In 2004, UNICEF estimated that about 100,000 children, mostly talibés, were begging in Senegal, and according to the head of UNICEF in Guinea-Bissau, ‘most of those child beggars come from Guinea-Bissau’, see IRIN, ‘Guinea-Bissau–Senegal: On the Child Trafficking Route’, 23 November 2007, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75485. A study conducted in 2006 estimated that ‘there are over 2,000 child talibes in Guinea-Bissau, and the majority of the estimated 120,000 talibes children in Dakar, Senegal are from Guinea-Bissau’, see UNICEF, UNICEF Bissau Country Programme 2008–2012, http://www.unicef.org/wcaro/wcaro_bissau_CPPres08-12.pdf. Another study conducted in 2007 in the region of Dakar found that 58% of begging talibés in the city were from Senegal, 30% were from Guinea-Bissau, and 10% were from Guinea, see UCW, ‘Enfants Mendiants dans la Région de Dakar. Understanding Children’s Work’, 2007, 37–8.

27. Leonardo Villalon, ‘ARS Focus: Islamism in West-Africa. Senegal’, African Studies Review 47, no. 2 (2004): 61–71.

28. Mara Leichtman, ‘Shi ‘i Islamic Cosmopolitanism and the Transformation of Religious Authority in Senegal’, Contemporary Islam 8 (2014): 279–80.

29. Donna L. Perry, ‘Muslim Child Disciples, Global Civil Society, and Children's Rights in Senegal: The Discourses of Strategic Structuralism’, Anthropological Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2004): 47–86; Rudolph Treanor Ware, ‘Knowledge, Faith, and Power: A History of Qur’anic Schooling in Twentieth Century Senegal’. (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2004)

30. Perry, ‘Muslim Child Disciples’, 47–86.

31. Ibid., 73.

32. Ware, ‘Knowledge, Faith, and Power’, 322.

33. Einarsdóttir et al., ‘Child Trafficking in Guinea-Bissau’.

34. Ibid., 45–51.

35. See M. Misha Hussain, ‘Senegalese Children Forced to Beg by Renegade Teachers’ Betrayal of Principle’, theguardian [online], 11 December 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2012/dec/11/senegalese-children-forced-beg-renegade-teachers; IRIN, ‘Senegal: Why the ‘Talibe’ Problem Won’t Go Away’, 3 January 2008, http://www.irinnews.org/report/76080/senegal-why-the-talibe-problem-won-t-go-away; IRIN, ‘Guinea-Bissau–Senegal: On the Child Trafficking Route’, 23 November 2007, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75485.

36. Human Rights Watch, ‘Off the Backs of the Children’ – Forced Begging and Other Abuses against Talibés in Senegal (HRW, 2010).

37. Ibid., 85.

38. Ibid., 87.

39. Ibid., 87.

40. Since 2001, The Trafficking in Persons Report has been published by the United States Department of State. It summarises the situation of human trafficking globally and ranks governments in line with their efforts to combat trafficking.

41. US Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2012, http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2012/192367.htm.

42. Marc-Andre Boisvery, ‘Senegal's “Religious Schools' – Places of Exploitation’, Inter Press Service News Agency, 11 June 2013, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/senegals-religious-schools-places-of-exploitation/.

43. UNICEF, ‘Guinea-Bissau Works to Put Child Traffickers Out of Business’, 23 March 2008, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/guineabissau_43391.html.

44. IRIN, ‘Guinea-Bissau Officials Urge Step-change on Talibés', 28 May 2013, http://www.ecoi.net/local_link/248682/359011_en.html.

45. IRIN, ‘Guinea-Bissau Still Way Behind on Education’, 20 May 2013, http://www.irinnews.org/report/98129/guinea-bissau-still-way-behind-on-education.

46. In 2009, some parents claimed they preferred to send their children to Dakar rather than elsewhere because the city was attractive with ‘many things' and electricity. Due to an increased risk of becoming repatriated, five years later parents of boys in Dakar expressed their intentions to move them to Fuuta Tooro.

47. Goodale, Surrendering to Utopia.

48. Ware, ‘Knowledge, Faith, and Power’, 322.

49. Human Rights Watch, ‘Off the Backs of the Children’.

50. Marc-Andre Boisvery, ‘Senegal's “Religious Schools” – Places of Exploitation’; IRIN, ‘Guinea-Bissau Officials Urge Step-change on Talibés’.

51. Perry, ‘Muslim Child Disciples’, 59.

52. Donal Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

53. Mahir Saul, ‘The Quranic School Farm and Child Labour in Upper Volta’, Africa 54, no. 2 (1984): 82–3.

54. Peter Easton and Mark Peach, The Practical Applications of Quranic Learning in West Africa (Center for Policy Studies in Education, 1997), http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACJ812.pdf, 18.

55. Perry, ‘Muslim Child Disciples’, 59.

56. Jean Schmitz, ‘Islamic Patronage and Republican Emancipation: The Slaves of the Almaami in the Senegal River Valley’, in Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories, ed. Benedetta Rossi (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 94.

57. Roy Dilley, ‘Reflections on Knowledge Practices and the Problem of Ignorance’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16, no. 1 (2010): S183.

58. Murray Last, ‘Children and the Experience of Violence: Contrasting Cultures of Punishment in Northern Nigeria’, Africa 70, no. 3 (2000): 359–93.

59. Roger Botte, ‘Stigmates sociaux et discriminations religieuses: l’ancienne classe servile au Fuuta Jaloo’ [Social Stigmata and Religious Discrimination: Former Slaves in the Fuuta Jalloo], Cahiers d’études africaines 34, no. 133–5 (1994): 109–36. For strategies to override former slave status in West Africa see also François Manchuelle, ‘Slavery, Emancipation and Labour Migration in West Africa: The Case of the Soninke’, The Journal of African History 30, no. 1 (1989): 89–106; Mirjam de Bruijn and Lotte Pelckmans, ‘Facing Dilemmas: Former Fulbe Slaves in Modern Mali’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 39, no. 1 (2005): 69–95; Lotte Pelckmans, ‘Moving Memories of Slavery among West African Migrants in Urban Contexts (Bamako, Paris)’, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 29, no. 1 (2013): 45–67; Lotte Pelckmans, ‘Slavery in the City? Travelling Hierarchies among West African Migrants in the Cities of Paris and Bamako’, Working Papers Series 38 (Paris: Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2013); Benedetta Rossi, Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009); Benedetta Rossi, ‘Migration and Emancipation in West Africa's Labour History: The Missing Links’, Slavery and Abolition (2013), doi:10.1080/0144039X.2013.796108.

60. Rudolph Treanor Ware, ‘The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State in Senegambia’, in New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity, ed. M. Diouf and M. Leichtman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 36.

61. Ibid., 36.

62. Ibid., 322.

63. US Department of State, ‘Trafficking in Persons Report 2012’.

64. Benjamin N. Lawrance and Ruby P Andrew, ‘A “Neo-Abolitionist Trend” in Sub-Saharan Africa? Regional Anti-Trafficking Patterns and a Preliminary Legislative Taxonomy’, Seattle Journal for Social Justice 9, no. 2 (2011): 656.

65. Schirmer, ‘Comments: Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights’, 505.

66. Hamadou Boiro and Jónína Einarsdóttir, ‘Bissau-Guinean Koran School Students in Senegal: Experiences and Identity’, in Collaboration, Intimacy & Revolution – Innovation and Continuity in an Interconnected World, 13th EASA Biennial Conference, Tallinn University, 31 July–3 August 2014.

67. Ibid., 162.

68. Goodale, Surrendering to Utopia.

69. Sally Engle Merry, ‘Inequality and Rights: Commentary on Michael McCann's “The Unbearable Lightness of Rights”’, Law & Society Review 48, no. 2 (2014): 285.

70. Ibid., 292.

71. Hart, Business as Usual?; Michele Poretti, Karl Hanson, Frédéric Darbellay, and André Berchtold, ‘The Rise and Fall of Icons of ‘Stolen Childhood'Since the Adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’, Childhood 21, no. 1 (2014): 22–38.

72. Jónína Einarsdóttir and Hamadou Boiro, ‘The Palermo Protocol: Trafficking Takes it All’, Icelandic Review of Politics & Administration 10, no. 2 (2014): 387–98; Anne Kielland, ‘The Exploitation Equation: Distinguishing Child Trafficking from other Types of Child Mobility in West Africa’, in Human Trafficking: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. M.C. Burke (London: Routledge, 2013), 149–82.