Child Trafficking in West Africa - Policy Responses

The trafficking of children is one of the gravest violations of human rights in the world today. every year, hundreds of thousands of children are smuggled across borders and sold as mere commodities. Their survival and development are threatened, and their rights to education, to health, to grow up within a family, to protection from exploitation and abuse, are denied. The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre has worked with the UNICEF Regional Office for West and Central Africa to identify effective policy solutions to this issue in eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mali, Nigeria and Togo. This study focuses on a region that is badly affected by this phenomenon, aiming to increase understanding of this reality and maximize the effectiveness of measures to overcome it. It illustrates the importance of field-driven research and the essential role that research plays in policy formulation and the proper design of programmes.