Rights Group Charges Exploitation of Beggar Children By Senegal's Quranic Teachers

Human Rights Watch yesterday issued a 114-page report titled Off the Backs of the Children: Forced Begging and Other Abuses against Talibés in Senegal. [Links to full text and summary.] It charges that in the African nation of Senegal, over 50,000 boys, many under the age of 12, are forced to beg on the streets every day by brutal religious teachers, known as marabouts. According to an HRW press release:

In Senegal's predominantly Muslim society, where religious leaders wield immense social and political power, children have long been entrusted to marabouts who educate them in these residential Quranic schools, called daaras. Many marabouts, who serve as de facto guardians, conscientiously carry out the important tradition of providing young boys with a religious and moral education.

But research by Human Rights Watch shows that in many urban residential daaras today, other marabouts are using education as a cover for economic exploitation of the children in their charge. Many marabouts in urban daaras demand a daily quota from the children's begging and inflict severe physical and psychological abuse on those who fail to meet it.

A New York Times article also focuses on the HRW report.