Twelve-year-old Boubacar was picked up from the streets of Senegal’s capital at night by police, along with dozens of other children, in the latest crackdown on begging.
The boy was sent to the west African country by his family in neighboring Guinea to study the Koran at one of the capital’s 1,600 Islamic schools, known as daaras. He is among thousands of students, or talibes, sent out by teachers to beg for money and food. Some schools have been accused of keeping the children in unsafe living conditions and abusing them.
“I want to return to my family,” Boubacar said at a transit center for street children.
More than 500 such children have been taken from Dakar’s streets in the past two months.
Senegalese President Macky Sall announced the crackdown in June and said the government will prosecute, fine and jail parents or teachers of the Koran, known as marabouts, who are found guilty of abuses.
“A child’s place is not in the streets ... the children have rights to learn, and to be in good health,” said Maimouna Balde, the director of Centre Ginddi, the main government transit center.
On a hot summer day, dozens of children played games in a room and watched TV as authorities worked to find their families.
Senegal has staged these crackdowns before. Because of resistance from some marabouts and a lack of prosecutions, the abuses have continued and unfit schools remain open.
At least five children living in daaras died in the first half of this year from beatings or traffic accidents while begging, according to Human Rights Watch.
Dozens of children have been beaten, chained, attacked or sexually abused while begging in the past two years, the group said.
“While the government’s recent actions are commendable, removing talibes from the streets will not lead to long-term change unless Koranic schools are regulated and offending teachers are held accountable,” said Corinne Dufka, the rights group’s west Africa director.
Talibes represent about 90 percent of the roughly 30,500 children on the streets, said Niokhobaye Diouf, Senegal’s director of rights for children and vulnerable groups.
At the Centre Ginddi, the children are registered, cleaned up, given clothes and fed. If they come from a daara, they go into Koran classes. They are then reunited with their families, or with marabouts who come to find them. If there is no sign of abuse, they return to the daara.
Senegal’s penal code outlawed begging years ago and the country has ratified all major international conventions on children’s rights. However, previous efforts to enforce the measures on child beggars have fizzled.
In 2010, children were taken off the streets after the US, among other countries, threatened to cut off aid if Senegal did not address human trafficking. In 2013, after nine children died in a fire in a Koranic school in Dakar, the president said the government would close all schools that did not meet basic safety standards.
However, months later no teachers were in custody and no daara had been shut down.
Though arrests of marabouts accused of being abusive have increased slightly in recent years, rights groups say Senegal has prosecuted only a handful of extreme cases.
“The death of talibe children as a result of corporal punishment and abuse by some Koranic teachers must no longer remain unpunished,” said Mamadou Wane, president of the Platform for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, a coalition of 40 Senegalese children’s rights organizations.
Rights groups have said a failure to consistently enforce the laws regulating the school system has emboldened abusive teachers.
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