SENEGAL: URGENT ACTION NEEDED ON FORCED CHILD BEGGING
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(Dakar, March 19, 2014) – Senegal has made inadequate progress in protecting thousands of young boys in Quranic boarding schools from exploitation and often extreme physical abuse at the hands of their teachers, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The National Assembly should make it a priority to pass draft legislation aimed at improving living conditions and ending forced begging in these schools, and the government should swiftly enforce it.
The 43-page report, “Exploitation in the Name of Education: Uneven Progress in Ending Forced Child Begging in Senegal,” examines Senegal’s mixed record in addressing the problem in the year since a fire ripped through a Quranic boarding school in Dakar housed in a makeshift shack, killing eight boys. After the fire, President Macky Sall pledged to take immediate action to close schools where boys live in unsafe conditions or are exploited by teachers, who force them to beg and inflict severe punishment when the boys fail to return a set quota of money. While important legislation has advanced, authorities have taken little concrete action to end this abuse.
The 43-page report, “Exploitation in the Name of Education: Uneven Progress in Ending Forced Child Begging in Senegal,” examines Senegal’s mixed record in addressing the problem in the year since a fire ripped through a Quranic boarding school in Dakar housed in a makeshift shack, killing eight boys. After the fire, President Macky Sall pledged to take immediate action to close schools where boys live in unsafe conditions or are exploited by teachers, who force them to beg and inflict severe punishment when the boys fail to return a set quota of money. While important legislation has advanced, authorities have taken little concrete action to end this abuse.
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