West Africa’s regional Court of Justice convicted the state of Niger on Monday of failing to protect a 12-year-old girl from being sold into slavery, in what campaigners hailed as a victory for human rights.
The ECOWAS Court of Justice said Niger had failed in its obligations to Hadijatou Mani, sold into slavery as a child in 1996 for around US$500 and regularly beaten and sexually abused.
“I am very happy with this decision,” Mani, now 24, told reporters at the court. She spoke via an interpreter in the Hausa language spoken widely in Niger, in the Sahel region on the southern fringe of the Sahara.
Rights groups welcomed the ruling.
“This historic verdict sets a legal precedent that we can take to neighboring states where slavery remains an issue,” said Romana Cacchioli, Africa Program Co-ordinator for Anti-Slavery International.
The case against the state was brought with the help of British-based anti-slavery organizations to press African governments to stamp out slavery, which campaigners say is rife in some African countries despite legal prohibitions.
The court sentenced Niger to pay 10 million CFA francs (US$19,030) in damages. There is no right of appeal.
Mani said she would use the damages to build a house and send her children to school “so they can have the education I was never allowed as a slave.”
Mani was once jailed for bigamy by a Niger court when her former master opposed her marriage to another man, insisting she had automatically become his own wife when he freed her in 2005.
“These events were in the past. This was about righting a wrong, and the Court of Justice saw fit to say this is what should be done. Niger will accept that,” Niger’s African Integration Minister Saidou Hachimou told reporters.
London-based Anti-Slavery International says 43,000 people are enslaved in Niger despite a 2003 law. According to estimates from other activists, the number was closer to 800,000 in a country of 12 million people.
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