Child Prositution in Madagascar

Child Prositution 

In Madagascar 

           Child prositution is very common in Madagascar with young girls, and teenage girls, even though it is illegal. Many brothels in Madagascar have minors working in them and even young girls wander around cities at night and don't belong to a brothel. 

      

        Why young girls?

           Young girls are the main target, becuase they are virgins when they begin. Most of these girls are as young are between the ages of 8-17.  Instead of these young girls staying in school and getting an education they are pulled out of school to make money. Many of these young girls come from poor families, who are in desperate need of money.

          In some cases, parents even put their children into prositution which is very wrong for a parent to do, but when they are struggling day to day, they need any type of income in order to survive. Young girls could either make alot of money at first or make a little bit of money, becuase they are new to the prositution world. Their is also cases where young girls mothers also are prositutes and thats the way they live their lives, as in it passes from one generation to the other. It is seen as being an easy way to make money. 

What has the child prosiutution done for Madagascar as a whole?

      It has actually boosted it's economy. According to author Aaron Ross from www.minnpost.com he stated how "Madagascar has long grappled with the scourge of child prostitution. Yet since a 2009 coup d’état sent the country spiraling into political and economic disarray, the problem has reached crisis proportions". 

Foreign sex tourists?

      Many clients of children who are prositutes are foreign tourists and older men. According to Aaron Ross from www.minnpost.com he also stated how "Foreign sex tourists account for much of the demand. In 2011, the last year for which official figures are available, 225,000 tourists visited Madagascar, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Fifty-eight percent of those were from France, the former colonial power. And while most undoubtedly came to enjoy the country’s pristine beaches and lemur-filled forests, significant numbers arrived with less wholesome intentions". 

     

      Also child prositution occurs in the resort islan of Nosy Be; and other big cities like Toamasina, the capital, Antananarivo and many other cities and also in mining towns like Ilakaka in the south.

What can we do, to put a stop to this?

      Their is not much being done to somewhat allievate this issue. Many families within Madagascar are okay with child prositution and don't view it as being something unlawful or bad, which is what I don't understand. It's never okay to be involved in prositution especially child prositution and the fact that parents within Madagascar are okay with it and even pushing their kids into this type of indsusty leaves me feeling speechless. 

       The governent has done anything to resolve this issue or decrease it. They will not even address the issue and even ignore the issue becuase it provides a source of income with their economy needs, since many families within Madagascar live in poverty. 

         I feel like an issue like this is something that everyone should be aware of and address, it may bring income to many families, but it is not okay to to make your daily income in an industry like this. Children should be in school, getting an education and keep growing in a postitive way, and all of these families are leading their children or are supporting their children not in the right way, which is leading them down the wrong path in life. 

1st article: https://www.minnpost.com/global-post/2014/01/madagascar-where-child-prostitution-common-cheap-and-trivial

2nd article: http://www.humanium.org/en/madagascar/

You Tube video:

     

      

Child Marriage in Africa

Child Brides in Africa 

                   Child brides are very common in Africa. Many young girls marry at the age of nine years old, which is horrible. Aside from young girls, boys also marry young, under the age of 18. Child marriage is common primarily in rural areas and it's also mainly the poor who marry young. Within Africa, 42% of girls were married by the age of 18. 

       

          Health Problems:

                Child brides are more likely to die young due from health problems. They experience premature pregnancy, which is when child brides usually bear children before they are physically or emotionally ready to do so. Also they can experience maternal mortality because they are younger than 15, and are five times more likely to die during child birth or pregnancy than older women. They are also prone to inherit HIV/AIDS from their husbands. 

Physical, Verbal Abuse and Mental Health:

     Child Brides can also experience physical abuse from their spouse, and experience torture from them. Also verbal abuse is common as well. Mental health wise, child brides can experience post-traumatic stress and depression from the violence and abuse that they face from their marriages. 

Isolation&Abandonment:

   They are often isolated from their peers and they can be easily abandoned id they develop health problems. One in particular is Fistula. 

     

    Education:

         Child brides are all illiterate due to being pulled out of school at a young age and because they live in poverty. 

   Niger:

        Niger has highest rate of child brides within Africa. The lowest rate is Zambia. They are struggling to stop the practice of child marriages. According to BBC News.com they stated how within Niger, "About 24% of girls will be married by the time they are 15. That rises to nearly 80% by the age of 18. It is a social phenomenon that affects all significant ethnic groups in Niger, including the majority Hausa community"(http://www.bbc.com). Also the main reason as to why Niger has the highest rate of child marriages is because they suffer from economic issues. 

    If a family is living in poverty and a wealthy Nigerian man approaches them and wants to marry their daughter, they will immediately give their daughter away because it is one less person to feed, and they also need the money to survive. Many wealthy Nigerian man pay up to thousands of dollars for a wife, and it all depends on her beauty. 

    Also child marriage is often protected by religious leaders, because child marriage is something normal within Niger and Africa itself. Their has been cases where the Nigerian government tried to introduce laws that would give more protection to girls, but it faced strong opposition from prominent clerics in it's Muslim country. 

      UNICEF:

            The United Nations Children's Fund has been campaigning for change. They want child marriage and child brides to decrease and eventually have nothing of it left. They carry out awareness programs in tows and villages within Africa. 

        Unfortunately the world's poorest countries have the highest rates of child marriage and Africa is one of them. It's so tragic how families give away their daughters or in some cases their sons, to older partners for marriage, due to living in poverty and they are in need of money. The position that these families have to face everyday in their lives is depressing. I would never give away my children for money, but it's the only choice these families who live in poverty have within Africa, and primarily in Niger, if they want to continue living. 

  

     Their should be more awareness of child marriage and it should be put to an end. Education should become more important within Africa, and many religious leaders, should change their way of thinking when it comes down to child marriage. Poverty should be reduced as well. I hope that child marriage decreases over the next several years. 

1st article link: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/341/facts.html

2nd article link: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27619295

YouTube Video:

Possible Midterm Questions:

1.) When did the Trans-Atlantic slave trade take place? Which ethnicity groups didn't qualify to be slaves?

2.) What goods were being traded in the Ivory Coast?

3.) How did Christianity spread in Africa?

The Chocolate Industry in West Africa

Child Labor,Slavery&Human-Trafficking Within the Chcolate Industry in West Africa

             

      Have you ever wondered where our chocolate comes from? How is this chocolate manufactured? And who is doing all the labor? Unfornatley as we enjoy chocolate on a daily basics, the children who harvest it, dont get to enjoy it. 

    The Chocolate Industry, where is it located?                
      According to Foodispower.org they stated how most of the chocolate industry resides in "Western African countries, mostly Ghana and the Ivory Coast, supply more than 70% of the world’s cocoa. The cocoa they grow and harvest is sold to a majority of chocolate companies, including the largest in the world"(Foodispower.org).South america is also another country where the chocolate industry also exists.  Some well known companies that buy their supply of cocoa from Ghana or the Ivory Coast are Hershey's, Mars and Nestle. 


           Child Labor:
          "In recent years, a handful of organizations and journalists have exposed the widespread use of child labor, and in some cases slavery, on cocoa farms in Western Africa.Since then, the industry has become increasingly secretive, making it difficult for reporters to not only access farms where human rights violations still occur, but to then disseminate this information to the public"(Foodispower.org). 
  
     ^{Some interesting facts about child labor that occurs in these farms within Ghana and the Ivory Coast are that these children are "…surrounded by intense poverty, and most begin working at a young age to help support their families, Some children end up on the cocoa farms becuase they need work and traffickers tell them that the job pays well. Other children are "sold" to traffickers or famers by their own relatives, who are unaware of the dangerous work environment and the lack of any provisions for an education. Often, traffickers abduct the young children from small villages in neighboring African countries, sucha s Burkina Faso and Mali, two of the poorest countries in the world. Once they have been taken to the cocoa farms, the children many not see their families for years, if ever"(Foodispower.org).} 

      These children work everyday for about two dollars a day harvesting this chocolate meanwhile America, and Europe gets to relax while eating chocolate.  They are between the ages of twelve and sixteen, and many of them are as young as five years old. Also forty percent are girls, who stay for a few months, while others end up working on cocoa farms through adulthood. Typically a child's work day would consist of working from 6 am and their work day ends in the evening. While they are working, they tend to use dangerous equipment, such as chainsaws to clear the forest down, and even climbing the cocoa trees to cut bea pods, by using a machete. 

    They are also exposed to agricultural chemicals within the cocoa farms. These children also work in a tropical environment, which leads to having a insect population. They usually have to spray the pods with large amount of industrial chemicals which can cause health problems for these young children. Many farm owners give children the cheapest food that they have available such as banana's and corn paste. 

     Most of the children don't attend school, which is depriving them form their education. So when they reach adulthood, that'f if they continue to work on cocoa farms, they will continue to live in poverty, which is unfortunate. 

        I find it to be quite unbelieveable how within the choclate indsutry, their are laws that state that their shall be no child labor or slavery involved in the production of harvesting chocolate, but many farms  still continue to have child labor and slavery and human trafficking within their farms, and the fact that many well-known companies are buying cocoa from them after knowing this is horrible. 

Slavery/Human-Trafficking:    
      The reason as to why these children are seen as living a life where they are slaves is due to many of them working without pay. They are also victims of physical abuse and are often whipped for working slow or if they try to escape. In many cocoa farms, children and adults are locked in at night, becuase their bosses are scared that they may escape. Whenever a child or adult decided to escape, if captured they are severly beaten. This is quite shocking for me to read about. I know that racism, and child labor still exists in today's society, but I had no idea that slavery still did. I don't understand why this world still continues to live this way. 

      It's devestating to hear how young children are working in farms, and are treated horribly. After all that had happened in our world's history the same events still tend to occur. Big companies that get their cocoa from many Ghana and Ivory Coast cocoa companies should adress this issue of child labor, slavery and human trafficking, but rather to adress it, they act like they have no idea what is going on in these cocoa farms. Also unfornatley the people who run these cocoa farms have no choice to to obey these big companies orders. So they can't do much to change how these cocoa farms are runned or else they will lose profit and their farms. 

      I hope that one day, this will change, and kid's and adults who work for cocoa farms, won't have to suffer anymore. Children should be going to school,and not be working at cocoa farms. The same applies to the adults who also work at cocoa farms. Both children ad adults, shouldn't have to deal with modern day slavery. These children shouldn't have to deal with physical abuse and neither should the adults. Quite frankly, we live in a world where our lives consist of enertainment, and wealth, and technology, but we never happen to worry about what is truly going in within our world. 

    We shouldn't be worrying about celebrities lives, we should be worrying about normal people's lives, and how much people are struggling with the same issues that we put an end to in the past, but truth is we never did. I pray that this issue gets resolved soon, and that these children go back home and go back to school, and that the adults find new jobs, where they treat them as civilians and respectfully and pay them.       

 1st article link: http://www.foodispower.org/slavery-chocolate/

  2nd article link: http://www.thenation.com/article/your-favorite-chocolate-product-child-labor/

Youtube video:

 

South Sudan's Bloody Civil War 

       Imagine being taken away from your family, and putting your education on hold and not being able experience a normal childhood or have a normal teenage life. This is the lifestyle that thousands of children are living right now in Africa, specifically in South Sudan, where they are still fighting their on and off civil war. 

      According to Human Rights Watch. com, they stated how "“Despite renewed promises by both government and opposition forces that they will stop using child soldiers, both sides continue to recruit and use children in combat,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “In Malakal, government forces are even taking children from right outside the United Nations compound". Unforntatly South Sudan's government and it's opposition aren't doing much to stop this, which is a war crime if the child is under 15. 

      Opposition forces still continue to recruit thousands of children who reside in refugee camps and take them even if the children doesn't want to go. Also many children are forced to fight, right away without being trained. Their has also been cases where young adults get recuited along with children. Many rebel commanders who are part of the oppositon forces, who are known to be the bad guys, use  child soliders as personal assistants. They make them cook, carry water and also carry ammunition with them, which is dangerous. When being forced to train, if they resist to do so, they get beaten heavily. Also, the UNICEF stated "around 70% of an estiminated 11,00 child soldiers are serving with rebel groups, including the notorious White Army, known for sending thousands of Children into battle"(Burridge). 

     Yet their has been some improvment of putting an end to recruiting child soldiers. In 2011, the Sudan people's liberation army had become independent from Sudan, which meant that they had made progress of using child soldiers. In December 2013, child recruitment resumed. The reason why it had resumed was becuase government forces that president Salva Kiir and opposition forces led by Riek Machar began to recuit children, due to the conflcits they had with eachother. By this time thousands of children had fought in the war on both sides. 

     Their is also cases where children volunteer to fight.  According to BBC.com, author Tom Burridge stated in a news article how "The United Nations says the recruitment of children in South Sudan's on-going civil war is "rampant". It estimates that there are 11,000 children serving in both the rebel, and government armies"(Burridge).  Children who reside in villages or even in refugee camps, are prone to get recruited by the oppositon forces and by rebel groups.When taken, many children manage to escape and find their way back to refugee camps and are then forced to stay. They are not permitted to leave the camp, becuase they will be at risk of getting recuited once again by the oppositon forces or by the governement.  
      Even though their has been attempts to stop the use of child soldiers, which was once going away a couple of years ago, the war once again came, which meant that children are being recruited once again. It's unforunate how young children from the ages of thirteen to seventeen are being taken away from their villages and refugee camps and are being forced to fight in a war that they have nothing to do with. Instead of being educated at schools, their education is being taken away from them regardless due to rebel groups stationing at villages schools. The South Sudan government and the opposition forces and other rebel groups should be held accountable for their wrong doing, and they should put an end to recuiting children for the war.  A war shouldn't be fought by young children.

1st article link: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/16/south-sudan-government-forces-recruiting-child-soldiers

2nd article link: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29762263


Youtube video down below: