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This report is based on 11 weeks of field research in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau between November 2009 and February 2010. During the course of this research, interviews were conducted with 175 children; 33 religious authorities, marabouts, and imams in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau; Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean government officials at the national and local levels; diplomats; academics and religious historians; representatives from international organizations, including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM);…
At least 50,000 children attending hundreds of residential Quranic schools, or daaras, in Senegal are subjected to conditions akin to slavery and forced to endure often extreme forms of abuse, neglect, and exploitation by the teachers, or marabouts, who serve as their de facto guardians. By no means do all Quranic schools run such regimes, but many marabouts force the children, known as talibés, to beg on the streets for long hours—a practice that meets the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) definition of a worst form of child labor—and subject them to often brutal physical and…
Existing scientific literature reveals that fostering is common in Africa, especially West Africa. However, little research has focused on the relationship between fostering and schooling.
By their nature, school statistics make it possible neither to study the factors influencing family schooling practices, nor to shed light on the relationship between family structures and school attendance. Aside from the pupils' age and sex, they provide no information on the children's individual and family characteristics, place of birth, family status; on the age, marital status, ethnicity, religion…