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II. Recruitment into Domestic Work

Girls enter domestic work in a variety of ways. Though the explicit aim of the placement process is not always to use the girl for household work, in reality, they almost always end up doing domestic work. Many girl domestic workers experience labor exploitation as well as child abuse and neglect. Recruiters and employers are primarily responsible for this, but parents also neglect their duty to care for their child and monitor his or her well-being, even from a distance. Finally, the government fails to prosecute crimes against children and guarantee that their rights be fulfilled.

Recruitment of girls from Guinea

In West Africa, children are often raised by close (uncle, aunt, grandparents) or distant extended-family relatives; this tradition is sometimes called child fostering, or in Francophone West Africa, placement or confiage.³⁸ While many such placements are done with relatives, parents also send their children to live with non-relatives, such as friends, godparents, acquaintances, or even complete strangers. Seventeen of the 32 Guinean girls interviewed indicated that they had been sent to their direct aunts and uncles. One had been sent to a cousin. The other 14 host families were not relatives.

Motives of parents

Frequently, parents send their children to live with relatives when these relations live in a larger city. Parents in the rural areas often consider life in the city as easier, filled with more opportunities, even when their relatives in the city are poor. In particular, parents often hope that their children will get an education or vocational training in the city and hence get a good job later.³⁹ Indeed, general standards of health, nutrition and education are much lower in the rural areas than in the urban areas.⁴⁰ Many families have large numbers of children and find it impossible to adequately feed them all; this problem is accentuated by polygamy and limited access to family planning, which means that one man has several wives and even more children to provide for. One father explained:

I have three wives and many children. I sent one of my daughters to live with my younger sister. She is in Tamagali, in the prefecture of Mamou. The girl is 11 years old. I sent her at the age of five. I sent her because I have many kids, and my sister offered to help me by taking one of my children.⁴¹

However, poverty and underdevelopment are not the only factors at play. There is also a strong bias against girls’ education and independence in the rural areas, which serves to “track” girls into the path of domestic labor. Girls are expected to perform domestic work and then marry at a young age. Sending girls away to do domestic labor becomes one of few “career paths” available.⁴² Parents sometimes “offer” their child as a helper in a relative’s house or when they are requested to do so. For example, they may do so when their relatives do not have a child, almost as a way of “adjust[ing] the demographic imbalance.”⁴³

More specifically, parents send girls to do domestic work when the relative does not have a daughter, as illustrated by the case of eight-year-old Mahawa B. from Forécariah who was sent to her uncle and aunt’s village in the same prefecture. She told us, “My uncle asked my mother to send a daughter. He does not have any daughters. My father has many children.”⁴⁴ Mahawa was then sent to her uncle to do domestic work and agricultural labor on the family’s plantation. Both her parents and her uncle and aunt considered it normal that such work is done by a girl. Her three brothers were going to school; she and her sisters did not. By sending Mahawa to her relatives, her parents prioritized her work over her education, something that frequently happens to girls in Guinea.

Relatives also frequently asked for a girl to be sent when a baby was born, so that she could help rear the child. At the age of five or six, Dora T. moved from Norassaba in Upper Guinea to Conakry, a distance of 500 kilometers:

A woman [Dora’s aunt] came looking for me; she wanted me to take care of her child. She promised that afterwards I would go to school or do an apprenticeship. But since I am there, the child has grown up, goes to school now, but not me. Up to now, it is me who does everything in the house…. My parents sent me here because the woman made the promise. My father is now very unhappy about the situation.… When we arrived in Conakry, I cleaned the house, washed the clothes of the children, got the nursery child ready for nursery and stayed with the baby at home. Now that I am older, things are worse. Before I could not do everything, I was too small [five or six years old]. Now, I do everything in the household, I do hard work at home. Initially I was in contact with my father. But since the last time when he came, he has not been in contact again, because he was angry [with his sister]. Once he came to get me and take me back to the village. But she … pretended that she was already used to me, that she really loved me, she cannot stay without me. So she promised that now, she would put me into school. That was about three or four years ago.⁴⁵

In still other cases, parents send their children to stay with relatives because there is a crisis in the family, such as divorce or illness.⁴⁶ When parents divorce, children either with stay their mother, or their father sends them to a female relative, typically his sister.⁴⁷ In this case, relatives are seen as doing a favor to the parents, and “helping out” by taking in a child. Children were also sent to live with other families in the case of divorce. This happened to Justine K., who was sent to her aunt:

I came to Conakry as a young child after my parents divorced.  My father sent me here from Kankan and gave me to my aunt.  I have three other siblings, and they were all sent to other family members. Both my parents now live in Conakry, but my mom remarried, and I don’t see her anymore. My father didn’t remarry. At my aunt’s house, I was responsible for all household work, and I wasn’t paid.  My aunt would beat me when she thought I hadn’t done something. Sometimes it was with a piece of wood, and other times with a broom.⁴⁸

After being abandoned by her husband, Aminata Y. from the village of Madina in Forécariah prefecture sent her five-year-old daughter Rosalie to live with a family friend. She has seven children and found she was unable to care for them all. The friend who lived nearby had offered to help her. However, she made Rosalie work so hard that four years later, her mother took her back. She explained, “My friend was mean with the girl.”⁴⁹

The illness of a parent is yet another factor which leads to child fostering. When parents become very ill and realize they might die, they often send their children to stay with relatives. There are an estimated 370,000 orphans in Guinea, about 8 percent of all children. These children include about 28,000 AIDS orphans.⁵⁰ This large number of orphans poses challenges for traditional systems of child fostering, as families may end up with more children than they can care for. Of the 32 Guinean girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch for this report, four were orphans and nine had lost one parent.⁵¹ Two others had mothers that were permanently ill. Fourteen-year-old Fanta T. is among the orphans we interviewed; she told us:

My mother died of diabetes. My father died too. My mother sold pepper on the market; my father was a car cleaner. When my mother fell sick, she sent me to stay with my father’s younger brother. I was eight years old then. I cleaned the house, did the dishes, went to the market, cooked, and looked after the children.⁵²

Brigitte M.’s mother died when armed groups from Sierra Leone attacked the border town Pamelap. Brigitte lived with her father who slid into a state of misery as his other children left, and one son died. She recounted how her father decided to send her off with a complete stranger:

One day a woman came to the weekly market nearby. I was at the market too. I had hurt myself on the foot, and I cried from pain. The woman found me and consoled me, and suggested to my father that she could look after me and send me to school. He agreed. So I went with her. I was about eight years old. I have not been in contact with my father since. I don’t know if he is still alive.⁵³

As this case indicates, sometimes girls were sent to live with people unknown to the parents; in other cases girls were sent to family friends or powerful patrons.⁵⁴ At the age of 13, Angélique S. was sent by her family to live with their landlords, in a relationship that was reminiscent of feudal times. Her parents and older siblings are agricultural laborers on a plot of land; the owners do not pay them a salary but allow them to live there and keep enough rice and salt from the land for their own consumption.⁵⁵ She told us about her sister’s and her own experience of being pressured to do domestic work without pay:

The people where I do domestic work own a plantation in our village. My parents work on this plantation, and guard it in their absence. My older sister went with these people to Conakry and did domestic work for them. She found them mean and left. She was then placed with the daughter of the lady, to look after her baby twins.… She was often beaten and insulted. Finally, our brother went there and took her back home. Then they asked my mother to send me. But I did not want that because my older sister already had a bad experience. So I was sent to the mother instead. But she had the same bad attitude. My mother told me that I would have to stay there until God helped me.⁵⁶

According to her brother, the family was happy to send Angélique to Conakry because “there are no options here for her, here is nothing, neither school nor job–the only thing she can do here is find a husband.”⁵⁷ He also explained that the owner’s wife is Angélique’s namesake, which he considered to be like a godparent. According to the brother, “We knew that one day they would take [Angélique] to Conakry.” Although they promised that they would send the girl to school, this has not happened. However, Angélique has recently found an apprenticeship in tailoring, through the help of a local organization working with child domestic workers, Action Against Exploitation of Women and Children (Action Contre l’Exploitation des Enfants et des Femmes, ACEEF).

Motives of girls

Most girls are sent to host families at such a young age that they do not express any desire or make the choice to go themselves. Rather, it is likely that many of these younger children suffer from the sudden separation from their parents and other close relatives. However, some girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they were keen to seek out such work opportunities. They often felt that they should do so to contribute to their family’s low income. For example, Thérèse I. left her family at the age of 12 in Boke to earn money in Conakry:

A woman came and was looking for a domestic for her sister. The woman was a stranger to me. My mother did not want me to go but I wanted to earn money. So I came together with the sister to Conakry.… I would like to leave, but my mother is not in Boke any more. She has gone to Guinea-Bissau. And I don’t know where she is.⁵⁸

Some adolescent girls also seek positions as domestic workers of their own volition. Francine B. from Conakry decided at the age of 16 to seek work because she was an orphan and had only limited support at the house of her sister, where she lived. Through an acquaintance of her brother, she found a Lebanese-Guinean couple who employed her as a nanny.⁵⁹

Recruitment methods

When parents sent their daughter to stay with a relative, contact was easily made. When girls were not placed with direct relatives, contact with the host family often occurred through connections in the village or area. For example, parents sometimes placed girls with neighbors or people living nearby. When the host family moved away, the girl went with them. Parents also frequently sent their daughters to live with families from the same ethnic group or even village, and with whom they felt a connection even if there was no family relation or prior contact. Thirteen-year-old Sylvie S. from Kindia prefecture explained how this worked for her:

When I was small, a woman came to the village and asked for a child to be placed with a family in Conakry. I am not related to her. She was an acquaintance of a relative. I was placed in the family. The husband is a mason. There are no other children in this family. First when I came I did small things. I cooked and cleaned. Now I work a lot and I am not paid.⁶⁰

Other girls were recruited by women recruiters who visited their villages and negotiated a girl’s placement and terms with her parents. In some cases, the girls then worked for these women. In other cases, the women recruiters acted as intermediaries for a relative or friend who was seeking a child domestic worker. Georgette M. from Lola in the Forest Region of Guinea remembered:

I came two years ago. The tutrice is a teacher. My mother gave me to the woman. They are not part of the family. The woman’s younger sister had come to Lola to find a domestic worker, and she took me back with her to Conakry. The mother of the lady [tutrice] is from Lola as well. My parents are farmers. I am not sure why my mom sent me here.… Sometimes my mum writes to me. My tutrice buys things and sends them to my parents. For example she sends shoes or clothes. She does that every month and explains that herself to me. She has never given me a salary.⁶¹

Girl domestic worker in Conakry. © 2007 Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

In Conakry, several women act as recruiters. They place girls from their home region with families in the capital. Girls may arrive in Conakry and go to such a woman on their own initiative and stay there until they find a placement.⁶² A representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs observed:

It is easy to become an intermediary. You just place five girls from your village and that makes you an intermediary.⁶³

In Middle and Upper Guinea, local NGOs have also reported the presence of intermediaries who send larger numbers of children into domestic service.⁶⁴

The tutrices

Employers are mostly women from the urban middle classes. They tend to demand a girl from their poorer relatives in the countryside, or send intermediaries to find a girl in the home village or in Conakry. ⁶⁵ Ironically, increased levels of education and employment among middle class urban women in Guinea and other parts of West Africa have led to a higher demand for domestic workers.⁶⁶ Nowadays, many African women in the city have a job and want cheap help at home to look after their children and the household. Rather than employing adults who are more likely to demand a salary, they use girl domestic workers. However, some host families are also poor and live in rural areas, particularly when the arrangement happens within the family.

Recruitment of girls from Mali

Across West Africa, girls have increasingly tried to leave their villages and seek work elsewhere. Adolescent girls from Mali sometimes work in neighboring countries, including Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal. In Mali and other Sahel countries, the coastal regions are considered wealthier and have therefore become popular destinations. Migrant girls usually work for employers with whom they have no family relation. Migration has given these girls the opportunity to experience urban life, learn new languages, and accumulate their own possessions. Girls in particular have often traveled to accumulate goods for their dowry.⁶⁷ This type of migration by adolescents is generally more self-directed by the child than confiage, even though some parents might give their consent to their child’s departure, or even be involved in the process of organizing travel and work. For example, many children and young adults migrate from Burkina Faso, Mali, and other countries in the region to work in the cacao plantations of Côte d’Ivoire, even though the war and climate of xenophobia against people from the north have reduced the migration flow.⁶⁸ 

Motives of girls

Malian girls often migrate to the capital Bamako, but also to neighboring countries including Guinea to assemble their dowry (trousseau de marriage). The dowry often consists of kitchen utensils, clothes and jewelry, which is, upon her engagement, given to the family of the future husband. This is not a new phenomenon, but the number of girls migrating seems to have risen, and girls are now migrating further away. Studies in Mali and Burkina Faso have shown that peer pressure to assemble precious and original items for the dowry has risen tremendously throughout the region. ⁶⁹ As girls have traveled afar and come back with new items for their dowry, others have felt the need to do so too. After a period of work they return and get married.⁷⁰

However, not all girls leave to get their dowries. Some girls leave simply because they want a degree of independence, and they want to obtain material possessions, such as clothes and bicycles. Others might leave for the dowry, but end up rejecting the husband proposed to them, and seek greater independence. This is what happened to Carine T. when she left Bamako:

A woman called Fatoumata told me she could help me to come to Conakry…. [At that time] I worked as child domestic worker for a woman [in Bamako]. I was 15 years old then. She was the friend of Fatoumata’s. Fatoumata is a trader and sometimes stayed with this woman when visiting Bamako…. So I went to Conakry with the help of Fatoumata. Fatoumata placed me with a family of a customs official…. The woman for whom I worked said she would pay my transport if I stayed for two years. If you do not stay for two years we will have to subtract this from your salary. I worked there for two years.… The woman paid money to Fatoumata…. Fatoumata took 20,000CFA [about US$27] off it for transport. I was not paid directly. The woman gathered it all up and gave it to Fatoumata at the end. She gave me the rest, 880,000CFA [about $1200]…. After the two years, I bought fabric with the money and returned to Sélingué. But I did not stay for a long time because I was supposed to get married to a man who I did not want to marry. My father chased me away. So I went back to Conakry.⁷¹

Several other girls had initially gone to Bamako for domestic work and then met women who told them that they could earn more money in Conakry. Seventeen-year-old Florienne C. recounted her experience:

I met a woman called Agios, a Guinean living in Bamako. She told me she could get me a job for 25,000 Francs [Guinean Francs, GNF, about $4.16] a month. So I traveled with her and three other girls to Conakry. This was in 2002 and I was 12 years old. When I arrived here, I was sent to work in Madina [a neighborhood of Conakry].⁷²

Malian child domestic workers in Conakry have come from different areas, but in recent years, a large number of girls have come from the Sikasso area in southern Mali, in particular Selingué.⁷³ The departure of many girls from Selingué is partly explained by its proximity to the Guinean-Malian border. But it might also be explained through peer pressure and peer influencing. As more girls leave the village and later return with money, dowry prices rise, and other girls are motivated to leave.⁷⁴

Methods of recruitment

According to Human Rights Watch interviews with victims, Malian girls are often recruited by female Guinean or Malian intermediaries in Bamako who convince them that if they work in Conakry, they will earn more and lead a better life than they do in Mali. The actions of some of these women might amount to trafficking, when they make false promises, place the girls knowingly with exploitative and abusive employers and keep some of the girls’ money.

According to members of the Malian community, girls are frequently recruited in the Oulofoulogou and Medina Corah neighborhoods of Bamako. Several women–Malians and Guineans–are well-known in the community for their role as intermediaries between Malian girls and Guinean tutrices.⁷⁵ The girls are frequently sent in groups to Conakry. According to Carine T.:

Fatoumata [pseudonym] sends many girls. She is based in Siguiri. She takes goods from there and sends them to Bamako. She recruits through some girls’ friends she has in Bamako. She tells her friends she is looking for girls. The friends go from door to door, and some parents accept to send their daughters. Afterwards she goes into the streets and approach groups of girls…. When she comes back to Conakry she takes back girls with her, from the train station. Then she distributes them to families.⁷⁶

Two girls, Vivienne T. and Mariame C., told us that they were approached by a woman who got them interested by saying that they could earn a lot of money in Conakry. She frequently sent girls from Bamako to Guinea, and worked with a driver who took the girls there. Vivienne was 16 and Mariame was 14 years old when they were recruited by the woman in Bamako.⁷⁷

A list⁷⁸ of seven Malian domestic workers in Conakry who arrived between September 2002 and November 2003 identified two women intermediaries who had sent these girls. According to a member of the Malian community, these women were well-known for their activities.⁷⁹

However, in recent years, some intermediaries seem to have either reduced their activities, or they are operating more clandestinely. They tend to operate from Guinea rather than Mali, apparently because the Malian government scrutinizes their activities. One woman has allegedly reduced her work due to pressure from the Malian community in Guinea; another one has allegedly gone underground.⁸⁰

The tutrices

Most families employing Malian girls are based in Conakry, and belong to the urban middle classes. Our research found cases of Malian girls working for a judge,⁸¹ a border official, a pharmacist, a taxi driver and a businessman.⁸² According to a Malian living in Conakry, Malian girls are considered more reliable and “controllable” than Guinean child domestic workers.⁸³

Recruitment of refugee children from the region

In addition to the patterns of migration mentioned above, many children have crossed borders to escape violence or war. As a result of armed conflicts in neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, Guinea has hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees within its borders during the past decade. At the height of the crisis, more than half a million refugees lived within its borders.⁸⁴ As the situation in those countries has stabilized, most of the refugees have returned; but others, including those who came as children, have stayed and found employment in Guinea. In recent years, refugees from Côte d’Ivoire have also sought protection in Guinea. At present, there are about 30,000 refugees in Guinea, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).⁸⁵ Refugee children are in a vulnerable situation, particularly when they are separated from their parents. Many refugee children have become victims of labor exploitation, including as domestic workers.⁸⁶ For example, Julie M. from Sierra Leone was sent by her mother to Conakry when she was about seven years old, so she would escape the consequences of armed conflict in her home country. Her mother placed her with an acquaintance, where the girl worked as child domestic worker.⁸⁷ Eight-year-old Jacqueline C. is from Côte d’Ivoire and fled the war there with her mother and siblings. She was taken in by a well-meaning Guinean woman who explained that she and others took in individual members of refugee families. While Jacqueline C. is going to school, she is also spending most of her time doing domestic work.⁸⁸

Risks connected to travel

Guinean and Malian girls face risks when they travel to seek work. They often travel with persons whom they don’t know very well, but upon whom they are dependent during the duration of the trip. When 16-year-old Marianne N. left Conakry for Monrovia by bus, she was supposed to meet the brother of her neighbor, who would help her find work. But he did not turn up and she was stranded:

My neighbor thought her brother could help me find work. She took me to the bus station and called the brother. But when I arrived in Monrovia I did not find the brother. So the bus driver found a friend who hosted me. I stayed with him and he forced me to have sex with him. He told me otherwise he would kick me out.⁸⁹

Susanne K. traveled by herself to Conakry after her parents died. She found herself in an equally vulnerable position:

I am from Kolifora near Bofa, in Lower Guinea. I am told I am about 14 years old. My dad was an Arabic teacher at a Koranic school and my mum a street seller. My dad died of something that caused pain in the belly, and my mother died shortly after. I left the village after my parents died. I was about six or seven. I had no money and made my way to Conakry by going with truck drivers. First I tried to go by foot, but I was very hungry. So I was forced to go with men who wanted to have sex with me.⁹⁰ 

Traffic accidents are a serious problem in West Africa, particularly for poor persons traveling on cheap transport.  The 2003 death of two Malian girls en route to Conakry for child domestic work highlighted this problem dramatically. Sata Camara, 15 years old, and 14-year-old Fati Camara (their real names) died on the spot. Five other girls between the ages of 12 and 18, also in the car, were injured.⁹¹  After the car accident, the Malian community in Guinea mobilized against trafficking and exploitation of children.

Most girls from Mali cross the border without proper documentation. They rely on the intermediaries to organize the paperwork for them, and become dependent on them in that way. Intermediaries may bribe border officials in the absence of correct documentation–for children, this would include both an identity card and parental travel authorization.⁹²