March 14/2003

SALE AND TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN ON THE INCREASE

 Reliable reports from the Dire Dawa administration have affirmed that the trafficking in children is on the rise in Eastern Ethiopia. The reports indicate that on a single day in which close to three hundred plus people have left for the Middle East, some 110 children under eight years old were part of that number. The sale of small children to the Middle East and also to Europe (in the latter case under the convenient cover of adoption) is on the rise all over Ethiopia. Those elements profiting from the traffic are linked to the power holders in Addis Abeba and have thus proved beyond the reach of law.

It is to be recalled that thousands of young Ethiopian women have been trafficked to the Middle East and Libya ostensibly as maids or domestic workers but actually as modern day slaves. In Lebanon (where more than 30,000 such women are found),in Libya, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the young Ethiopian women have been reduced to a status of domestic slaves, have been murdered, raped, mutilated, disfigured by acid, made to work without pay and subjected to a crude and cruel racism that seems to have no limits whatsoever. Recently, young Ethiopian males have also fallen into the same situation as they are being sold off as "deck or ship hands" in the Middle East. The victims have found no aid be it from the EPRDF or any other international agency.

 Despite claims by the ruling EPRDF that it respects the rights of the child, it is proved beyond doubt that the violation of the rights of children is gross and wide spread in Ethiopia. The sale of children to the Middle East is one such violation that is being sanctioned by those in power. Under the cover of sending orphaned children to adoptive parents in Europe, the regime's loyalists and cadres are profiting from the sale of children. Ethiopian children and youngsters are presently defenseless given the existing dire political and economic situation and because the EPRDF in power is also directly and indirectly involved in the illegal and inhumane traffic.

 SOCEPP reiterates its condemnation of the ongoing sale and trafficking in children and young Ethiopians and calls on international public opinion and human rights bodies to raise their voices against the EPRDF sanctioned illegal trafficking. The Ethiopians in Lebanon, Libya, etc should also be given due legal protection and delivered from the existing situation of disguised slavery.

SOCEPP