VI. EXTERNAL TRAFFICKING OF TOGOLESE BOYS

Unlike girls, boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch were not trafficked into domestic and market labor, nor were any of them trafficked within Togo. Rather, with the exception of one child trafficked into factory work in Côte d'Ivoire,¹⁷⁰ boys were trafficked to Benin or Nigeria where they performed long hours of difficult, unpaid agricultural labor-amounting, as in the case of girls, to a practice similar to slavery.¹⁷¹ Boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch typically said they could not afford to attend school and had few opportunities for apprenticeships or paid work in Togo. Promised highly coveted goods such as bicycles, radios and sheet-metal roofing, they readily succumbed to the offers of child traffickers and in some cases encouraged their friends to accompany them abroad. Only after months or sometimes years of difficult labor, characterized by beatings, insufficient food and compulsory use of hazardous equipment, did these boys realize they had been duped. Human Rights Watch found scant evidence of the state intervening to protect trafficked boys at any stage of the trafficking process. On the contrary, interviews revealed that border patrols sometimes accepted bribes from traffickers taking large numbers of boys into Benin, and that armed soldiers sometimes stopped boys on their journeys home from Nigeria and demanded bribes for permission to let them go.

Recruitment
Most boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch were not recruited through an arrangement between their parents and an intermediary, but instead were approached directly by a trafficker and enticed by the prospect of paid work, vocational training or material rewards. "I thought if I could go to Nigeria and get rich, I could come back and learn a trade," explained Etse N., trafficked to Nigeria in 2001 at age seventeen. "We were poor and had no money . . . and I wasn't doing anything."¹⁷² Even more tantalizing to Etse was the thought of coming home with a radio, a bicycle, or some other luxury he had admired in his friends. "Some even brought second-hand motorcycles," he said. "They told me they went to Nigeria, worked in the fields and made a lot of money."¹⁷³

Human Rights Watch documented numerous strategies used to recruit boys into working abroad. "[The boys] start hanging around the [bus] stations, and traffickers look for them there," one local education official said.¹⁷⁴ Tchaa N., trafficked to Nigeria for nine months, recalled that "[s]omeone from my village approached me in the street and told me if I went with him, I would be able to buy everything I needed."¹⁷⁵ Tchaa said he brought his cousin along, a boy of nine who had just started grade four. Almost every trafficked boy interviewed by Human Rights Watch said something about being offered a bicycle, a radio or some other commodity by his trafficker. One child, trafficked with his half brother four years ago, recalled:

A man came around to both our houses. He was someone our families knew. He talked to us about work we could get in Nigeria. In the end, suffering is suffering. We had to do something. I tried hiring myself out with a pousse-pousse¹⁷⁶ and that didn't work. But this man, Mr. M. . . -who is now dead-said we could work and we would get radios and a bike. I needed both.¹⁷⁷

Of thirty-one trafficked boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch, sixteen said they left without their parents' knowledge and, further, that their parents would not have approved of their leaving. In other cases, the degree to which parents anticipated personal benefit from their children's work away from home appeared ambiguous. One parent, furious that her child left for Nigeria without her permission, reportedly also expressed disappointment that the child did not return with sheet-metal roofing for the house. Another reportedly forbade his son from going but said that he could go when he was older.

"A father who sends his child to Gabon or Côte d'Ivoire with the intention of having the child work and bring money home does not intend the death of his child," Justice Emanuel Edorh, chief magistrate of Togo's children's court, told Human Rights Watch. "He only wants to promote the child's upbringing because he's in a very difficult situation and thinks he can ameliorate it."¹⁷⁸ Victoire Lawson, project coordinator for the Togo branch of the Bureau International Catholique de l'Enfance (International Catholic Children's Bureau, or BICE), speculated that parents were more willing to send away girls than boys, as parents place a higher value on the education of the latter. "When a boy is a victim of trafficking, the parents are more likely to speak up," Lawson said.¹⁷⁹ Some local authorities were more cynical. "Parents want the sheet metal for their roofs, and they seem to think if their child continues and succeeds at school, the roofing will be delayed," said Zakar T. Nambiema, prefect of Bafilo. "I have never had a parent complain that his/her child has disappeared-never one time. This is the mark of their complicity."¹⁸⁰

The father of Wiyao A., twelve, told Human Rights Watch that a trafficker showed up at his wife's funeral and offered to take one of his sixteen children to carpentry school in Côte d'Ivoire. "The man didn't say how much he would make, or what the work would be like," the father said. "I didn't have any fears, because I thought the man was an honorable man. I had known him for a long time and thought he wanted to help me."¹⁸¹ When Wiyao arrived in Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d'Ivoire, he said he was taken to a carpentry workshop where six older boys were working-three from Abidjan, and three from Togo like him. "We had to get up at 4:00 a.m., clean the workshop and start working by 6:00," he said. "We sometimes worked until 8:00 or 9:00 p.m.-they had lights so that we could work at night."¹⁸²

For orphans, a lack of parental support renders them vulnerable to being trafficked multiple times. Atsou S. was first trafficked to Nigeria at age eleven, and when he got home there was no one to take care of him. "I stayed in Togo for two weeks and then had to leave again," he told Human Rights Watch. "There was nothing for me at home, so I thought it would be better to go back and find work."¹⁸³ He said the second boss was nicer than the first, which emboldened him to go again. "The third time," he said, "I left for Balanka and met a group. I stayed one year and then bought another bike and radio and came back. I have now sold both bikes and have one radio left."¹⁸⁴ In all of these cases, Atsou was brought to Nigeria by an intermediary who profited from his labor. Atsou said he would spend the money he made from selling his bicycles on his ailing grandmother. "If I leave again there will be no one to look after her," he said. "Here I can work on people's farms and make 500 CFA [U.S.75¢] for a day's work. They only need my help during the rainy season, though, and there hasn't been any rain yet this year. I am waiting for the rain."¹⁸⁵

Transport
Once recruited, boys endured long, sometimes dangerous journeys to their countries of destination. Boys trafficked from Togo to Nigeria told Human Rights Watch that they were transported across Benin and into southwest Nigeria. Each journey began with a trafficker setting a time and a place to meet the child in his village-sometimes late at night, almost always at some distance from the boy's house. At the rendezvous point, the child would typically be joined by other children from his village, all of them destined for work abroad. After assembling a small group of children, the trafficker would either take the children directly to Nigeria in a car, or keep them on the Togo side of the Togo-Benin border and await more children. From these border towns-Pagouda, Tchamba, Balanka, Kambolé-large groups of boys would cross into Benin and travel overland for several days into Nigeria.

Human Rights Watch's interviewees described traveling along diverse routes and in groups of various sizes. In one case, two boys said they traveled from Sotouboua, a town not far from Togo's western border, east to Sokodé, and then to the town of Tchamba where they met forty-three other boys. There all forty-five boys boarded a fifteen-seat truck and spent three days traveling to Nigeria. In another case, a boy from Dereboua said he traveled with two others to Kambolé-itself a circuitous journey-and then to Tchamba where he met eight others. Another frequently mentioned transit point in Togo was Balanka, a village just north of Kambolé on the Benin border. Several boys from the prefecture of Élavagnon reported taking long journeys to Balanka, where they crossed the border to Benin and met a large contingent-sometimes up to 250 boys-on the other side. One described his journey:

On the other side, another truck was waiting for us. It had no seats, so we had to stand up in the truck. We were 250 people in one truck, all standing. It was hot and we were falling on each other. The truck became so full that some boys had to sit on the edge. The boys on the edge would sometimes get hit by a tree and fall down-one boy fell from the truck and broke his leg. There was no hospital because we were in the bush, so we just picked him up and put him back on the truck. We drove in that truck for seven days, taking detours to avoid the soldiers. Sometimes we took the same route used to herd cattle from Nigeria to Benin. At night we got off the truck and slept in the bush.¹⁸⁶

At the Benin-Nigeria border, boys reportedly received various instructions from their traffickers on how to avoid police and immigration officials. In no case did a child interviewed by Human Rights Watch remember passing through a proper checkpoint; rather, children testified to being made to get out of the trucks at the border, crawling through the bush and taking multiple detours. "There were soldiers there," said one, "and the person who took us said we could be returned if we didn't hide. So we got out and walked around the fields, so they could say we were just peasants in the fields."¹⁸⁷ In most cases, boys testified to having evaded border patrols by being sent one by one, across rivers and through the bush, sometimes with the help of a paid accomplice.

Some testimony revealed collusion between traffickers and the border patrol. "We were told to bribe the guards if we got caught," said one boy, who was traveling without about fifty other children. "The trafficker gave us some money and told us to bribe them."¹⁸⁸ One of the boys being transported in the group of forty-five in a fifteen-seat truck (see above) said his trafficker was told by an official to pay a "surcharge."¹⁸⁹ Human Rights Watch interviewed only one child who was stopped at the border en route to Benin. After bringing the boy home, the police arrested both the trafficker and the boy's father, who had allegedly consented to the trafficking.¹⁹⁰ The boy's father told Human Rights Watch he was imprisoned for twenty-five days; according to the boy, the trafficker was still in prison at the time of Human Rights Watch's visit.

Truck journeys like the one described above lasted up to eight days, depending on how direct the route was and how often the truck broke down. Atsou S., fourteen, told Human Rights Watch that the first time he was trafficked, the back of the truck physically broke apart from the front:

My friend and I walked to Balanka and got on a truck to Nigeria. When the truck was passing through the bush, the back split in half and we all fell off. We had to wait a day for a second truck. There were nearly 200 children on that truck. When we got to the border, we got off and someone helped us across, where another truck was waiting. It took us eight days to get to Nigeria.¹⁹¹

Road travel in the region is notoriously dangerous, most roads being narrow, pot-holed and composed of hard-packed sand.¹⁹² Crossing Benin from west to east requires traversing up to three rivers-the Couffo in the south, the Zou and the Ouémé in the east. Children interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported swimming across rivers, pushing vehicles through shallow water and crossing in small boats or canoes. One described the river crossing as "wild." Another described having to cross the border at night and keep the truck from tipping into the river:

It was night when I got to Balanka. We left at 6:00 pm and got to the Benin border by 10:00. When we got to the border there were many routes to take-we got off the truck and passed on foot through the bush to avoid the police. We went one by one and had a meeting point on the other side. When we got to the river there was no bridge, so we crossed in the truck, trying to keep it balanced so it wouldn't tip. There was no food, and the truck was packed full. When we passed under the trees, some boys hit their heads on tree branches. I nearly fell off. We spent three more days on the road, sometimes stopping in a little village to eat some gari.¹⁹³

A small number of children recounted having been trafficked singly rather than in a group. Twelve-year-old Wiyao A., who worked in a furniture factory in Abidjan, said his trafficker first brought him to Atitogon, a small town in the far south of Togo. He slept at the man's house, and the two of them departed for Lomé the next morning. From Lomé, Wiyao said he and his trafficker took a bus to Ghana and then drove all night to the border of Côte d'Ivoire. The next day, they crossed without speaking to anyone and took a public bus to Abidjan.

Receipt and Exploitation
Most of the boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported working on farms in the towns and villages of Nigeria's southwest plateau. The use of child labor in this region is not limited to boys trafficked from Togo, but is part of a larger phenomenon involving boys trafficked from Nigeria's Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Imo states. A recent article in Nigeria's Insider Weekly magazine identified a Nigerian "slave triangle" between Ore in Ondo State, Shagamu in Ogun State and Lagos, Nigeria's largest city. According to the former chairman of the Yakurr Local Government, an area of Cross River State reported to be hard-hit by child trafficking recruitment, the trade is largely driven by local organized crime networks who profit from selling children to local subsistence farmers.

Togolese boys trafficked to Nigeria reported working on various farms in villages near Ibadan and Ogbomosho, both cities in Oyo State. Their testimony to Human Rights Watch revealed several trafficking routes within Nigeria: from Lagos north to Oyo city; from Ibadan to Awe; and from Ogbomosho to farms in the surrounding area. All of the areas in which they remembered working were either in Oyo state or in neighboring Oshun state.

Boys reported that from the beginning of the dry season in January until the end of the second rainy season in October, they cultivated yams, cassava, rice, beans, peanuts, sorghum, maize, sesame, and millet. Boys trafficked to Benin said they worked on cash crops such as cotton and cashews.

For the boys interviewed, work began almost immediately upon arrival and continued without respite. "We arrived in Nigeria and went straight to work," said one fifteen-year-old, trafficked in 2001. "We weeded the fields. . . . We planted cassava, yam, rice, and sorghum."¹⁹⁴ The tasks performed by the children, sometimes at ages as young as seven, varied. Many said they were told to shape the flat land into rows of small hillocks into which they planted yam shoots or other seedlings. "Dealing with the mounds was the hardest for us," one said, "because we didn't know how to do it."¹⁹⁵ Another child, trafficked at age eleven, said the mounds were prepared row by row and, as a small boy, he had trouble keeping up with the others around him. Other tasks included weeding, clearing the brush, sowing seeds, and plowing.

According to these boys, most traffickers found short-term work for their recruits on local farms and then collected their wages. In this way, traffickers maximized their profits by assigning multiple jobs over a short period. "When we were finished with one job, they would find us another one," said Etse N., who started in Ogbomosho with a group of nine others.¹⁹⁶ He described this routine:

If a job wasn't big enough for nine boys, the trafficker would divide us into small groups. I worked on many different farms, and my trafficker kept looking for more jobs. I worked on maybe thirty farms a month. My trafficker wanted to make a lot of money, so he would find me jobs that were too big to handle-I'd be told to start something at 5:00 pm and not come home until I finished.¹⁹⁷

Another child described going from one town to the next, often traveling distances of up to fifty miles, to earn money for his trafficker:

There were about twenty-five of us. We worked from 7:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon. Then we went to Isseyin, and we started the work. We worked from 5:00 in the morning until 7:00 or 8:00 at night. They gave us gari at noon. We did weeding, preparing the hillocks, everything, for cassava, beans, peanuts and millet. More boys would come during the harvest.¹⁹⁸

This assigning-out system apparently provided traffickers with an incentive to maximize profits by overworking children. "It was like slavery," said seventeen-year-old Sélom S., reportedly trafficked from Fasao after his parents died in 1994. "We worked from 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. without much of a break."¹⁹⁹ The hours children said they spent working in the fields were excessive by any standard, all the more so given their age. Children recalled working fifteen-hour days, starting at 5:00 a.m. and finishing as late as 8:00 p.m. They took few if any breaks, on average an hour at lunchtime to nap or eat some gari. They said they worked seven days a week and took no holidays. One child, trafficked at the age of twelve, described having to work longer hours in order to keep up with the older boys:

I had to do the same work as the older boys. The smaller kids would cry because the work was too hard. We told our boss the work was too hard, but he said we had to continue. If we didn't finish our day's work, he would make us get up at 3:00 a.m. the next day instead of 5:00 a.m. We had one rest at lunchtime and worked until 8:00 p.m.²⁰⁰

Many boys described conditions of bonded labor, or working in conditions of servitude in order to pay off a debt. "[My boss] said he would pay for the trip and I could work off the money," said Mawuena W., trafficked when he was eleven. "We worked from 6:00 in the morning until 6:30 at night, and at mid-day they gave us gari and pigeonpea."²⁰¹ Others described having to pay for directions home once the rainy season was over. "The boss hired someone to show us the road home, and we had to pay him, too," he said. "He left us in Benin." Asked why they did not flee sooner, children spoke of the fear of being in a foreign country, the fact that they had no money with which to get home, and the hope that the next job would be easier than the last. "I didn't know where to go," said Mawuena W. "I didn't know the place where we were, and the man kept saying if I wanted a bike, I would have to work."²⁰²

Exposure to Hazards and Abuse
Most boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported suffering physical injuries on the job. Some of these were from corporal punishment by their employers. "If you didn't work well or fast enough, they punished you," said one child. "You had to go draw and transport water all day or you were beaten with a stick. I was beaten ten times."²⁰³ Another child said younger children bore the brunt of the beatings. "Our boss would attack us if we complained, or beat the younger kids with a stick if they didn't work hard enough," he said. Having kept in contact with some of the younger children with whom he worked, this child said they were still scarred from their beatings.²⁰⁴

Other injuries resulted from the compulsory use of dangerous equipment. A few boys said they used machetes to cut the branches off trees, sometimes leading to physical injury. "It was only when someone had a cut on the leg from a machete or something else that they could see bleeding that they would let you stop working," one child told Human Rights Watch.²⁰⁵ Others were not permitted to stop working if they sustained an injury. "I nearly cut my finger off with the machete. My hand was completely swollen after two days," said one boy. "I showed the boss, and he said, `That's nothing-you are too lazy to work.'"²⁰⁶ Wiyao A., whose job was to saw and sand wood for furniture, cut himself twice with a saw, once on each hand.²⁰⁷ "Our boss never took us to the hospital," Wiyao said when asked about his injuries. "When we said we were sick, he would accuse us of lying."²⁰⁸

The fear of being sick or injured and thereby having to make up time or endure punishment was a recurring theme in Human Rights Watch's interviews with trafficked boys. "Because I got sick and couldn't work more, I didn't get a radio," said one child, who reportedly worked on a farm for eight months.²⁰⁹ Mawuena W., trafficked when he was eleven, told a similar story. "One time I got sick with malaria and had to go to the hospital," he said. "At the end I got a bike, but they didn't give me a radio because I had been sick and missed time."²¹⁰ Others said they kept their sickness to themselves, fearing they might even be deprived of food. "If you are ill and can't work," one said, "you are forced or you won't be able to eat."²¹¹

Return
Boys who worked in agriculture in Nigeria recounted spending anywhere from eight months to two years abroad, after which they were released by their traffickers.²¹² Typically around October or November, they said, they were given a bicycle and some other compensation such as a radio or sheet-metal roofing and instructed to find their way home. Some boys recalled being given cash for food or transportation, while others said they were referred to accomplices who charged them for indicating the path home. In one case, three boys said they found temporary paid work in Nigeria after being released from their traffickers. Many boys said they sold everything but their bicycles in order to pay for food, directions or bribes. The bicycles were often sold on arrival.

As detailed below (see Section VII: State Response), the Togolese government has a policy of assisting trafficked children with safe return home and prosecuting the perpetrators. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, however, boys did not recall receiving any state assistance on their journeys home, either from Togolese or foreign authorities. Those trafficked to Nigeria described unassisted journeys by bicycle from Nigeria back to their villages, lasting up to nine days. They told of being robbed, forced to bribe soldiers, and going days on end without food. "We were sent home with three bowls of gari and 6,000 CFA [U.S.$9]," said one boy, who left with two friends. "On the way from Nigeria to Benin, we had to bribe soldiers with 100-200 CFA [U.S.15-30¢] to let us pass."²¹³ His friend continued the story. "After we ran out of food, we would steal cassava from a farm and eat it raw, like pigs. We did this for three days."²¹⁴ Some boys told Human Rights Watch their money was stolen by bandits on the road. "Sometimes we were stopped by people who threatened to take our bicycles," said one boy. "They would intercept us and demand 500 CFA [U.S.75¢] or force us to sell our radios for a low price."²¹⁵

Asked about the situation of boys traveling from Nigeria back to Togo, Suzanne Aho told Human Rights Watch that some have not made it home. "There are cases of boys who have died on the road on the way back," she said. "If someone sees the cadaver, all they can do is bury it. These boys pay with their lives."²¹⁶

Wiyao A., in factory work in Abidjan, told Human Rights Watch that he fled with a friend two years after being trafficked, after receiving news that his mother had died in a lorry accident. Like the boys trafficked to Nigeria, Wiyao and his friend did not receive any state assistance from Ivorian authorities; rather, a stranger led them to the Abidjan office of the Bureau International Catholique de l'Enfance (BICE), which housed them temporarily, arranged for a government bus to Lomé and reunited them with their families. Once they arrived home, things apparently worsened for Wiyao's friend. "When we were in Abidjan, he was coughing a lot," Wiyao recalled, "but our master ignored him. Whenever we complained about being sick, he told us we were lazy and just didn't want to work."²¹⁷ Shortly after he returned home, Wiyao's friend died reportedly of tuberculosis. "They didn't detect it early enough," Wiyao said. "He went to the hospital, and he died almost a year ago."²¹⁸

While many trafficked boys said they were urged to return the following season for more work, most said the experience was not worth it. "The bicycle was too little for the work I did," said one. "If I could find a job here, I could buy three bicycles for the amount of work I did."²¹⁹ At the same time, boys spoke of their limited opportunities at home. "When I got home I had nothing to eat, so I looked for odd jobs," said one boy, reportedly trafficked when he was twelve. "I would go to the bicycle repairman and help him out in exchange for food. Before I left for Nigeria I was in grade four, but now I don't go to school."²²⁰ Others testified to a similar lack of prospects. "My parents are careful and they won't let me go," said one. "But I'm back in the same situation. I don't have money to buy fertilizer, and I can't get a government job."²²¹ Those who tried to persuade their friends not to go to Nigeria reported dubious success. "Once we knew of five people who were going," one said, "and we managed to stop them. But then they told everyone that we had bikes and didn't want other boys to have bikes like us."²²²

170 By comparison, the ILO-IPEC country study on child trafficking in Togo concluded that boys were "principally sent to Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire." Abalo, "Trafic des enfants au Togo," p. xv. The fact that only one child interviewed by Human Rights Watch was trafficked into factory work in Côte d'Ivoire does not mean the phenomenon is rare. Human Rights Watch only conducted interviews of formerly trafficked children currently residing in Togo. This may have excluded entire groups of children still living and working abroad in Côte d'Ivoire or any number of "receiving" countries. The fact that so many boys reported doing agricultural work in Nigeria may reflect the fact that these boys were instructed by their traffickers to return home to Togo after a period of work.

171 A more detailed discussion is provided in Section VIII: "Legal Protection against Child Trafficking," below.

172 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

173 Ibid.

174 Human Rights Watch meeting with villagers, Bafilo, May 2, 2002.

175 Human Rights Watch interview, La Binah, May 3, 2002.

176 A pushcart.

177 Human Rights Watch interview, Bassar, May 3, 2002.

178 Human Rights Watch interview with Emanuel Edorh, chief magistrate, Togo children's court, Lomé, May 13, 2002.

179 Human Rights Watch interview with Victoire Lawson, project coordinator, BICE-Togo, Lomé, May 14, 2002.

180 Human Rights Watch interview with Zakar T. Nambiema, prefect of Bafilo, May 2, 2002.

181 Human Rights Watch interview with father of Wiyao A., Vo, May 16, 2002.

182 Human Rights Watch interview with Wiyao A., Vo, May 16, 2002.

183 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

184 Ibid.

185 Ibid.

186 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

187 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

188 Human Rights Watch interview, La Binah, May 3, 2002.

189 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

190 Human Rights Watch interview, Tchamba, May 2, 2002.

191 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

192 See, e.g., U.S. State Department, "Benin-Consular Information Sheet" (February 20, 2001), at http://travel.state.gov/benin.html (accessed July 9, 2002).

193 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

194 Human Rights Watch interview, La Binah, May 3, 2002.

195 Human Rights Watch interview, Bassar, May 3, 2002.

196 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

197 Ibid.

198 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

199 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

200 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

201 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

202 Ibid.

203 Human Rights Watch interview, Bassar, May 3, 2002.

204 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

205 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

206 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

207 Human Rights Watch interview, Vo, May 16, 2002.

208 Ibid.

209 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

210 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

211 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

212 The most common lengths of stay were nine months, eleven months and one year. Two boys reported working abroad for two years.

213 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

214 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

215 Ibid.

216 Human Rights Watch interview with Suzanne Aho, Lomé, May 6, 2002.

217 Human Rights Watch interview, Vo, May 16, 2002.

218 Ibid.

219 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.

220 Human Rights Watch interview, Élavagnon, May 10, 2002.

221 Human Rights Watch interview, Bassar, May 3, 2002.

222 Human Rights Watch interview, Sotouboua, May 4, 2002.