GOAL 2014 People_Places_Things_FINAL - Consortium for Street ...

People, places and things: A study of street and ‘hideout’ children’s experiences of vulnerability and resilience in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Tim Malcomson, Global Child Protection Advisor, GOAL Ireland August 2014

Abstract: Conducted as part of GOAL’s monitoring, evaluation and learning processes for its Children’s Empowerment and Protection Sector, this research analyses eighty street and ‘hideout’ children’s narratives of their experiences of vulnerability and resilience in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The research examines experiences in terms of family, migration and urban contexts of violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect. It looks at urban networks of power and examines how children navigate and manipulate these to gain some, though very limited, degree of control over their vulnerabilities. I use Wagner’s (2005) framework of community analysis to examine narratives around children’s aspirations for membership of the ‘good’ community (i.e. breaking away from the socio-‐economic shackles of their ‘hideouts’) and the factors and actions that exclude them. Finally I examine child labour and trafficking within legislation in Sierra Leone in which these children, their forced labour, and their urban gang masters (i.e. ‘bras’, ‘sissies’ and ‘Five-‐Os’) are clearly located. The analysis demonstrates absence of implementation of legislation and its envisaged protection mechanisms but, equally, deviant engagement with extremely vulnerable children and youths of community leaders, institutions and agents tasked with protecting them. These clearly endorse children’s narratives of victimization, criminalisation and re-‐victimization. I propose using a broad adapted ‘safe migration’ framework to develop a pragmatic package of ways for mitigating vulnerability for children at the source (i.e. the child’s rural home), at their destination (e.g. Freetown) and through community protection mechanisms at both source and destination. Demonstrating a clear link between intrafamilial migration (informal fostering) and trafficking, I suggest that it is necessary to include and therefore legislate for it as a potentially harmful tradition. Recognising a broad culture of violence against children in Sierra Leone, I also propose the necessity to challenge its justification in law, in child-‐rearing and protection institutions, and by community leaders. I appeal especially for more police accountability and deferment to Article 16 of the Anti Human Trafficking Act, the legal provision against criminalisation of children for their forced activities under the duress of situations of trafficking. 2

GOAL Ireland, Children’s Empowerment and Protection Sector – August, 2014

Contents Abstract: ............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................... 4 1.0 Background ............................................................................................................................................. 4 1.1 Workshop Objectives: ......................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Workshop Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Limits to the research .......................................................................................................................... 7 2.0 Workshop findings ................................................................................................................................. 8 2.1 Children’s experience of threat in their hideouts and in the community .......................................... 8 2.1.1 Threatening and disliked people ................................................................................................. 8 2.1.2 Fearsome places ......................................................................................................................... 13 2.1.3 Fearsome things ......................................................................................................................... 15 2.2 Children coping with vulnerability ..................................................................................................... 17 2.2.1 Good and bad relationships ........................................................................................................ 17 2.2.2 Children’s health strategies ....................................................................................................... 19 2.3 Street and hideout economics: financial and transactional activities .............................................. 19 2.3.1 On what children spend their money ............................................................................................. 21 3.0 Exploring street and ‘hideout’ children’s vulnerability: exploitation and resilience ............................. 22 4.0 Concluding remarks and recommendations ......................................................................................... 28 Safe Migration ......................................................................................................................................... 28 Urban networks of exploitation .............................................................................................................. 31 Re-‐victimisation at institutional and policy levels ................................................................................... 32 Violence against children ........................................................................................................................ 33 Children’s recommendations and endorsement of the findings ............................................................. 33 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 34

GOAL Ireland, Children’s Empowerment and Protection Sector – February, 2014

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Acknowledgements Thanks go to GOAL Sierra Leone’s CEDU team for their support in the research design, implementation, write-‐up of workshop notes and review processes. Their on-‐going programmatic engagement with ‘extremely vulnerable children and youth’ (EVCY), street and ‘hideout’ sub-‐cultures and environments has meant that the design, facilitation and review helped the research process to be truly child-‐centred and contribute considerably to the production of meaningful findings and their interpretation. We also acknowledge and thank the eighty children who participated in this research for their valuable, honest and insightful analysis of their experiences of vulnerability and coping strategies. Children’s spirit of fortitude and resilience in the most appalling abusive and exploitative environments that they describe is as much inspiring as it is shocking. It demands our attention and dedication as parents, community leaders, police, politicians and policy-‐makers across the globe – for the findings implicate us all – to pursue change assiduously. Finally, I would like to thank the technical team and management of GOAL Ireland for their support for the research.

1.0 Background Initially working with child soldiers and other street populations from 1999, for the past six years GOAL Sierra Leone’s Timap for Pikin (T4P) programme has progressively moved to an approach that examines and builds upon children’s experience of and resilience to vulnerability. T4P programme is currently implementing interventions with street children, young sex workers (through the support of Irish Aid) and, since 2011, child miners under the broader umbrella of child labour (with the support of the EU). Much work focuses on helping children through life transitions – from street to home, from out-‐of-‐school into the education system, and from youth gangs and prostitution to sustainable businesses or employment through skills training. The programme supports children-‐led routes away from the street and urban ghettos. Engaging extremely vulnerable children, however, requires considerable enquiry into the lives and environments that have, on one side, dominated and limited children’s opportunities but, on the other side, called upon children to develop coping strategies that help them to survive even the most dire and abusive of environments. This report – on four one day participatory workshops with these children between 30th October and 7th November 2013 – reflects upon and analyses children’s experience of vulnerability on the streets and in the ‘hideouts’ of Freetown. It not only looks at descriptions of children’s exploitation by people, places and things but also how children manage their vulnerability and build resilience in these exploitative environments through effective coping behaviours. By finding out how children are both dominated by and resistant to powerful people, places and things in the street and ‘hideout’, therefore, GOAL is able to clarify appropriate activities to support the most excluded children (e.g. helping children link positive decision-‐making to potential exits and opportunities). On the other side, such enquiry also clarifies the ecosystem of people, places and things at street, community and government levels that need to be challenged and changed to create sustainable urban environments that foster all children’s healthy development and maturation.

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61.7% per cent of Sub-‐Saharan Africa’s urban population live in informal settlements and slums (UN Habitat, 2011). There is a growing income disparity between the urban wealthy and urban poor – with the income of the richest 10% of the population in some emerging economies reaching a staggering fifty times that of the poorest (UN Habitat, 2013). A lack of leadership and political will in many major cities in Sub-‐ Saharan Africa to address urban inequality results in the deferment of provision of quality services and structures for excluded urban populations and their children. GOAL’s Children’s Empowerment and Protection Sector focuses on what it refers to as ‘extremely vulnerable children and youth’ (EVCY). These EVCYs in Freetown have the character of living away from family caregivers on the streets or in informal settlement ‘hideouts’. The hideout typically is characterised as a small room or veranda on which between four and twenty children live and for which they pay rent and/or provide labour under the often abusive and exploitative authority of a male or female adult (referred to as ‘bra’ or ‘sissie’). This research builds on previous programme studies into EVCYs and their urban environments in Freetown. It looks in detail at children’s experience of exploitation and abuse, but also at urban people and institutions with power and responsibility that are implicated in EVCYs’ marginalisation. Sections 1.1 to 1.3 look at the research objectives, the participatory methodology and at its limits. Section 2 presents findings, identifying where there are intersections between group and individual testimony and meta-‐narratives. Section 2.1 looks at what the eight groups of children see as fearsome people, places and things. Section 2.2 looks at children’s coping mechanisms and strategies. Section 2.3 examines the types of economic activities and transactions that are, on one side, demanded both by the context of survival but also, on the other side, demanded by those in authority over children or those who benefit from their labour. Section 3 presents an analysis of these findings in the context of children’s access and experience of existing health and protection services. The conclusion, section 4, makes recommendations aimed at impacting EVCYs’ ecosystem – proposing intervention at community, service institutional and policy levels.

1.1 Workshop Objectives: There were three principal objectives for the four-‐day workshop: 1. To look at how power is exerted on the street and in ghetto and community environments in the context of children’s experiences of vulnerability in terms of people, places and things 2. To gather a ‘thick’ description of children’s coping strategies in the face of vulnerability in hideouts/the street, and 3. To engage Timap for Pekin in discussions about potential future areas of intervention.

1.2 Workshop Methodology From GOAL’s drop-‐in centre and through GOAL’s extensive street outreach network, eighty street and ‘hideout’ children (forty girls and forty boys), aged from nine to seventeen years old, were invited to


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participate in this study. None of the children were staying with caregivers1, however, all standards for GOAL’s organisational protocol for ethical participation were applied (note that GOAL has worked with and built a strong relationship with this population for many years). All children approached accepted the invitation to participate in this study and all came to the agreed meeting points from where transport to the venue had been organised. The division of children between those engaged in GOAL’s intervention and those who were not was intended to test whether there was a difference between the two groups’ narratives – even though children belong to the same street and ‘hideout’ networks. However, as the data did not specifically refer to GOAL’s interventions and interventions only engage children for four hours per weekday, there was no discernible difference in narratives. Children were divided into the following four principal groups over the four days: • • • •

Day One: 20 under-‐14 year old children who were participants of T4P programming Day Two: 20 under-‐14 year old children who were not participants of T4P programming Day Three: 20 over 14-‐year old children who were participants of T4P’s programme Day Four: 20 over 14-‐year old children who were not participants of T4P’s programme

In order to have a clear idea about the gendered experience of the street and ghetto, for each day, the group of twenty (being 10 girls and 10 boys) were divided into two groups of boys and two of girls. Questions were the same for boys and girls over the four days except in one question referring to gendered discussions about new boys or girls joining a street group or hideout. The questions, methods of enquiry, group dynamics, facilitation guidelines, and formats for recording data to be used during the workshop and any ethical concerns were addressed and agreed upon by GOAL’s Child Protection Advisor, managers and workshop facilitators several days in advance. This guideline is presented as Annex 1. From a social constructivist perspective, a qualitative, participatory methodology was used that focused on exploring and bringing together children’s narratives. The research used focus group discussions, issue identification and participative ranking (based on the number of categories identified by the children), and group feedback. After the first day we had a facilitator feedback session. This allowed us to make small changes to how the facilitators would engage the groups. However, the questions were not changed. For example, rather than engaging in long discussions around specific fears throughout the process, it was decided that time would be saved and interest maintained if children for the second day should first identify fears (in terms of people, places and things), write these on flash cards, post these on the wall, rank them as a group and only then sit and describe each fear and re-‐rank them where the group felt it appropriate. This also made recording easier for the facilitator. We also felt that, apart from ranking, other pre-‐agreed codification was unnecessary until the data was later analysed. We also felt that children should be more involved in posting flash cards and ranking in a standing ‘discussion huddle’ to increase their participation and keep the group interest over the course of the day. A principal facilitator would also move from group to group occasionally introducing an energizer break where this was seen as necessary. 1

Many of the children were staying with ‘bras’ and ‘sissies’ within an economic rather than caregiving relationship. GOAL outreach staff have build a relationship with this population and permissions were sought for children’s attendance (and absence from economic activities), accordingly.

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Once the workshop was over, the facilitators were asked to write up the group reports. These reports provided the children’s ranking tables and group discussion and conclusions (backed up by photographic evidence of ranking). The completed reports were edited by the programme coordinator and any confusion (e.g. in use of street jargon) cleared up. The reports were sent to the principal compiler for codification, analysis and write-‐up. Other issues of street jargon or unclear language and terms were addressed by the street outreach social workers as the write up progressed. The draft report was then sent to the managers and facilitators for further feedback. Facilitators, language and instructions: facilitators were asked to translate proposed questions into a language that would be both familiar to children. To avoid misinterpretation both by facilitators and children as much as possible, translations were agreed upon before the workshop began. Complaints mechanism and ground rules: So that children and staff would be clear about child safety, a short session set out an agreed set of behaviours that participants committed to and came up with a complaints mechanism through a trusted boy and girl who had been chosen by the whole group. The group was also invited to speak about any concerns to any trusted adult who would then direct the concern to the appropriate organiser or protection focal point. Throughout this research paper, quotations, unless otherwise stated, are taken from the facilitators’ group discussion notes.

1.3

Limits to the research

Clearly the dynamics of a ‘group ranking’ methodology mean that it is important to also reflect disputed ranking within each group of five girls or boys. Although the findings do show a remarkable level of consistency of response across groups, the weight of information being gathered and the limited time in which to gather it meant that facilitators were unable to explore in further detail disputed points or issues. Although there are certainly clear patterns emerging on urban relationships and power dynamics, group discussions did not allow for in-‐depth analysis of these. The research team, therefore, had to also rely on their own in-‐depth working knowledge of the children and their urban contexts to fill in any knowledge gaps (e.g. about language and street terms or the background on significant people – such as the ‘Five-‐0’). Feedback from the team during this writing process helped to clarify knowledge gaps. Also, apart from broad statements, the research findings do not give evidence of children’s thinking on potentially new and collaborative ways of addressing their vulnerability. Indeed, the objective was to understand children’s experience of vulnerability and current strategies – looking at the potential for programme responses that might include limited participatory action research will necessarily be the next step. Time also perhaps did not allow for sufficient research team reflection upon the methodology and dynamics after the workshop. However, this research report and its annexes may also be used by the research team in Sierra Leone for reviewing these. The ranking – originally envisaged as giving a sense of relative importance children place on specific people, places and things – acted more as a framework within which participants could identify, organise and debate very complex relationships. Some ranking of people and places were similar across the groups. Many other people, places and things were ranked very differently for different groups – some for obvious gendered reasons, others with little evident unanimity about why one person or place was ranked over


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another. Indeed, based on one relatively isolated experience, in one group, girls felt obliged to place ‘grandmother’ as the most fearsome person to reflect the exceptional experience of one of the girls. Having said this, in order not to ignore the integrity of each discussion, I have decided to incorporate as many nuances as possible whose micro-‐narratives, I feel, all contribute to and consolidate meta-‐narratives (e.g. about marginalised children’s construction of a notional community to which they aspire or broad categorisation of ‘fearsome people’) that the study draws out in the analysis. Note, however, where there is unanimity about specific categories, such as the police or sissie for ‘fearsome people’, I also place emphasis on these as such emphasis may relate to specific programme responses to and recommendations for such specific categories. Finally, beyond children’s membership of street and hideout networks, it was not possible to profile individual children (e.g. the specifics of their street connectedness or hideout group). Although this might have provided clues to possible bias in the children’s narratives, we felt that such intrusive inquiry would more appropriately and ethically addressed as part of broader commitment to individual children beyond (and as a programme design consequence of) the study event.

2.0 Workshop findings 2.1 Children’s experience of threat in their hideouts and in the community 2.1.1 Threatening and disliked people Children’s definitions of threatening and dislikeable people can be divided into five broad categories: • • • • •

Fearsome people associated with gangs and hideouts Fearsome other people in the street/hideout environment having an impact on children Fearsome people associated with cultural traditions (e.g. secret societies and witches) Fearsome family members, and Fearsome government and traditional leaders and security agents (e.g. chiefs, police & soldiers)

Fearsome people associated with gangs and hideouts The children participating in the four days of workshops can broadly be described as ‘street children’. However, the term takes in a broad set of children’s experiences from children trafficked to ‘hideout’ gang masters by relatives to children living on the streets. The ‘hideout’ is a room, shack or space within the slums of Freetown where groups of children stay with a ‘bra’ or ‘sissie’ (roughly translated as male and female gang masters). In exchange for being taken in to the ‘hideout’ children have to follow the bra or sissie’s set of work and behavioural demands. Work is given and rent is commonly demanded by the bra or sissie or payment in other often exploitative and abusive forms (as shown by the findings below). From previous GOAL studies with children in hideouts and on the street and from this study, children describe gang hierarchies associated with the street and children’s ‘hideouts’. Above the bra and sissie, in terms of seniority, is the ‘five-‐O’, ‘five star’ or ‘gang-‐ster’ (terms used by different children to describe the same person). The ‘five-‐O’ is so named because they have the fearsome reputation of having stabbed at least five people. This leader will have territorial control over a number of hideouts. However, some children will also stay with the ‘five-‐O’. 8


As the relationship between gangs is territorial it is often based on conflict, children also include other street gangs and street boys as threats. Threats also seems to reflect different types of association with the street – children living on the street, and therefore outside the community structure, are seen as more fearsome than children in more settled hideouts within their geographical community. Although threat posed by these gang masters is common, children usually describe different forms of threat that are both to do with age and gender. Under-‐14 boys: Under-‐14 year old boys say that the bras, ‘five-‐Os’ and street gangs take their money and property, use them as child labourers, send them to steal and sell drugs, and physically and sexually abuse them. These boys also recognise that the ‘five-‐Os’ and ‘street gangs’ can kill and stab to exert their authority. Under-‐14 girls: Largely the under-‐14 girls’ groups described a similar experience. However, these experiences are associated with the sissies with whom they stay. These girls say that the sissies take their money, use them for domestic and hired labour, and send them out to steal. Girls describe the types of work they are forced to do. This includes street petty trading and selling drugs and alcohol. The girls also say that they are held responsible for any losses during sales – paying back the sissie by taking the risky action of pursuing customers (or through prostitution to replace the lost earnings). Indeed, both groups of under-‐14 year old girls say that sissies push them to prostitution or hire them out to men themselves. Over-‐14 boys: Based on a similar powerless position, the over-‐14 year old boys describe a similar pattern of threats to themselves. Again, the older boys also claim that bras force them to have anal sex. Over-‐14 girls: Again, referring to the sissies with whom the girls live, the groups of over-‐14 year old girls describe the same experiences as the younger girls. However, the age of the girls allows them to be more articulate about the experiences. All four girls’ groups explain that the sissie “… sends them out without protecting [them] …” and financial gains are either taken from them or, the girls felt, not shared fairly. Although in later narratives on fearsome places and things the girls list petty trading, bar work, etc. as risky, the biggest threat identified in association with sissies echoed by all over-‐14 year old groups seems consistently to be forced sex work. Sissies, two groups mentioned, force them to take drugs and alcohol so that the girls become “… light headed’ and compliant” (or ‘feel highly’). One group described how sissies “… introduce them to men that are bigger than them and their futures are spoiled” (referring to the danger of fistula and its impact). One group saw the work they do through the sissie as depriving them from going to school and being useful in society. One group also ranks street gangs as an environmental threat because they ‘beat, stab and steal’ from the girls and ‘sometimes attempt to traffic them. However, street gangs were ranked only at 6 by this group and was not mentioned by others. Fearsome other people in the street/hideout environment having an impact on children Under this heading are mentioned six different categories of people that are a threat: rapists, thieves, drug takers, raray men, motorcycle taxi riders, taxi drivers, ‘customers’ (i.e. for sex), ‘shrinkers’, security guards,


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and sissies’ sons (see explanations of these categories below). Interestingly, all these people who form an environmental threat are all identified by the two over-‐14 girls’ groups and none of the other groups. Environments of sexual violence: For two groups of girls, the threats from rapists and thieves were ranked higher than for sissies. The risk for both categories is rape and violence (even death) associated with this. Rape, the girls reason, also “… leaves them infected with sexually transmitted diseases”. A ‘raray man’ (male sexual partner) was mentioned by one group as a person who brutalises girls during sex. One group said that some ‘customers’ also refuse pay for sex. When the girls complain, they said, they are either beaten by the customer or he calls the police to arrest the girls. One group mentioned that customers force them to have unprotected sex or “… prick the condom”. On a ranking scale the group that mentioned customers ranked them higher than sissies (4 compared to 5 for sissies). On the theme of sexual violence against girls, in one group two girls also claimed to have experienced forced sex from the sissies’ older sons – with a threat of being driven from the household if they did not comply (mentioned and ranked 2 for one group). Environments of physical threat: ‘Okada’ motorcycle taxi riders and ordinary taxi drivers are a threat to girls during the night as they attack them in dark places or take them to secluded places to steal the girls’ earnings and belongings. However, for the two groups that mentioned them, these are only ranked at 9 and 11, respectfully. Apart from the threat of sexual violence to girls, described earlier, all boys’ groups also mentioned that thieves and armed robbers are a significant threat to boys. These people, the boys explained, stab, beat and sometimes kill during a robbery. Kidnapping (mentioned by one group) is said to be very uncommon, however, the kidnappers demand money for children’s release or will ritually kill them. The final fearsome people in this category that were mentioned by one group are private security guards. These guards arrest the boys, with “… no right to do so”, beat them and steal their belongings. Other people who constitute environmental threats: Over-‐14 year old girls also describe a problematic relationship with what they term ‘bad neighbours’. The girls complain that these bad neighbours say bad things about them and talk about them being ‘bad’ children. For the two groups who mention bad neighbours, there is a clear sense that the girls’ self-‐confidence and self-‐image is affected by this. Although one of the two groups ranks the bad neighbour 12, the other group puts such importance on what they see as injustice that they ranked them 3. Perhaps linked to this idea of understanding that behaviour has consequences and exclusion is felt strongly, one group of girls said that they “… hate drugs takers because when they have taken drugs they misbehave and do things that are not acceptable in society”. There is an element of dissociation here because, as mentioned earlier, most girls are drug takers themselves – whether willingly or not. The group ranks drug users at 3, perhaps acknowledging the negative impact of drug taking on girls themselves. Drug pushers are seen in a similar way but are seen to be violent and influence the girls to take drugs. However, in the group that mention them only ranked them 13, a relatively low ranking. Three groups mention Shrinkers, 419ers or Liars. These are different terms referring to the same person. The ‘shrinker’ is a con artist or fraudster. Three groups of boys ranked ‘shrinkers’ 8, 10 and 11.

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Fearsome people associated with cultural traditions (e.g. secret societies and witches) Fear of witches and what the girls term ‘societal people’ was mentioned by all but one group – four ranking these fearsome people at 4 or higher. Societal people: Secret Societies are a traditional socio-‐cultural mechanism making demands and establishing hierarchies of its members in Sierra Leone. Although it is not the aim of this study to describe secret societies, they function to bind people by rite, identity and seniority to a particular group. Examples of such groups are Bondo-‐Sowee, Poro-‐Payamba, Ojeh-‐Agba and Hunting-‐Agba. In an ethnographic study, Richard Fanthorpe (2007) suggests that, after the civil war, secret societies have strongly functioned as a means of re-‐establishing complex patterns of local authority that had been fractured by the conflict’s brutal assault on traditional structures. Re-‐establishing these patterns has meant binding members and non-‐ members to relative economic, political and ethnic identity – and challenging religious orthodoxies. To establish authority, he suggests, secret societies have particularly subjected socially marginalised young people (amongst other culturally peripheral groups) to forced initiation and sanction. However, only two groups of boys included mention of secret societies – describing forced initiation and ‘spillage of societal waters’ (the older boys suggesting that this causes illness). Both groups of boys talk about harassment and beatings for non-‐societal members; the younger boys claiming that fines are levied against them for abusive language. Witches: Witches are mentioned by five groups. The spiritual attributes given to witches includes: manipulation, death, spoiling people’s future, bringing sickness, bad luck and considerable fear, and, one group claims, even eating people. The fear of witches is mostly articulated by the older groups of girls and boys. Fearsome family members Aunties and stepmothers are largely blamed for children’s ending up in extreme vulnerability on the street and in hideouts. Whereas stepmothers are largely accused of pushing children out of their homes, aunties are blamed for luring children to Freetown with false promises of care and education. Stepmothers: Five groups attribute many of their feelings of injustice to their stepmothers. Older and younger boys blame their stepmothers for not treating them like their stepmother’s own children and of maltreatment that finally pushed them to the street. Older girls echo the boys’ views adding that, in pushing them to the street, stepmothers are ‘responsible for [the girls’] downfall’. One younger group of girls describe stepmothers as wicked, ‘bewitching’ and responsible for preventing girls from going to school. Perhaps echoing a very gendered analysis of their context, only one group places any blame for family conflict on their fathers. As this group explains: “Because they left their mothers for other women and for such reason, then the children are forced to go through hard times and they are deprived from getting education and they most times get disputes and misunderstandings.” Aunties: Aunties are female relatives from either the father or mother’s side of the family. Two groups of over-‐14 year old girls echoed the commonly told stories of ‘aunties’ luring the girls to Freetown from their rural homes with promises of school. Instead of schooling, girls end up in domestic servitude or petty trading where, one group remarks, ‘[we] are exposed also with different kinds of dangers’ and ‘while their


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own children go to school and live [a] comfortable life’. One of the younger groups of girls put it more succinctly – their aunties, they concluded, are ‘wicked’. Another younger group echoes the feeling of injustice by saying ‘[aunties] love some of their other relatives ‘cause they pamper them [but not us]’. Only two other family members were mentioned. One under-‐14 year old girl believed that her grandmother was a witch (pressuring the rest of the group to rank the grandmother 1), and one over-‐14 girl year old girls’ group said that they hate their uncles ‘… because their uncles want to sleep with them’ (the low ranking of 10, sadly, perhaps reflecting the multiple other ‘fearsome’ people being ranked). Fearsome government and traditional leaders and security agents Reading about the violent and abusive people that dominate the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in society in Freetown, perhaps the most shocking betrayal of children is that of people who are given the official role of protecting them. Implicated in this betrayal are chiefs, councillors, the police, politicians, soldiers and teachers. The police: the police are mentioned as a threat by all eight groups – being the most mentioned fearsome people to these extremely vulnerable children. The over-‐14 year old girls say that they feel that the police are not honest, twisting the truth for their own gains. Children in all eight groups say that the police routinely take all their money and belongings, lock them up on trumped up charges – or under laws that are a hang-‐over from colonial times (e.g. for loitering). The police, one group of older girls add, also use the pretext of the girls wearing short skirts to take their money. All boys groups reported that, during and after arrest, they are beaten frequently. Two older groups of girls claim that, at times of crisis, the police only help when they are given money for doing so. These girls also say that the police raid places of prostitution, beat the girls and take their earnings. Most disconcerting, the same groups of older girls claim that the police place them in custody so that they can have forceful sex with them (the older girls rating police at 1 and 4). Soldiers are sometimes called by government authorities into the slum areas to address public disorder. One younger group of boys and two older groups of boys give soldiers the reputation of beating, stabbing and even killing people. Chiefs: The dominant observation by two girls’ and two boys’ groups is that chiefs are biased against marginalised children. The four groups claimed that chiefs ‘… make you an outcast’, do not recognise them as part of the community and do not try to help them with their problems. The four groups feel that chiefs treat them badly whether they are the complainant or accused in a dispute. Typical sanctions imposed by chiefs on street and ‘hideout’ young people, the groups agree, are putting them in a cell, fining them, or, if the fine cannot be paid, forcing children to work for the chief under the threat of banishment. Teachers and Politicians: Some groups of children add teachers and politicians to their lists of people they do not like and partly blame for their vulnerable contexts. Teachers, they claim, beat and shout at them and only exchange grades for payment. One group of older boys complains that, in pursuit of influence, politicians lie, make false promises and gives boys drugs to encourage them to fight and ‘… do things they don’t wish to do’. 12


2.1.2 Fearsome places Identification of fearsome places by workshop participants is largely determined by children’s social and economic engagement in environments that are explicitly risky. Fearsome places are associated with locations of environmental risk (e.g. drowning), people risk (e.g. dangerous people) and work place associated risks. There is also a strong fear of the spirit world associated with cemeteries. Experience of risk is also strongly based on age and gender. For this reason I will list fearsome places under group characteristics. Under 14 year-‐old girls: Two groups mention cemeteries as fearsome places. The girls fear decomposing bones, snakes, evil spirits and ghosts. One of these two groups says that the cemetery ‘… has scary looks’. Girls also see dustbins and dumpsites as unhealthy places where bad smells and unprotected waste breeds mosquitos and flies that can make them sick. Three groups of younger girls see rivers, streams and the waterside as dangerous places. They fear drowning and the destruction of property by flooding – one group also mentioning their fear of water spirits. One group mentions the waterside as an unhealthy place where people empty latrines. However, waterside places are also associated with hazardous work demanded of them by bras and sissies: two groups mention carrying heavy loads and being used as ‘… sex slaves’. Apart from the danger of collapse, unfinished buildings are mentioned by one group of girls as places where they are exposed to rape, ‘butter waist’ (anal sex), kidnapping and where rituals happen. However, this is ranked at 12, perhaps indicating that girls can avoid these spaces. Similarly, one group of girls suggest that they can avoid police cells by avoiding criminal activities – however, this might appear more wishful thinking considering the demands of bras and sissies mentioned in the previous section on fearsome people. Two groups describe what they experience if they go to a police cell: beating, bullying, heat, smell and being forced to have sex in exchange for release. Under 14 year-‐old boys: Although boys groups do not mention sexual abuse, their experience of police cells (which the boys ranked 1 and 3) is similar to the girls. Apart from having their freedom curtailed, boys complain of having property taken from them, persistent punishment and beatings, being locked in with adults and older boys where they ‘… learn[t] bad habits’ (these bad habits were not expanded upon), and acquiring sicknesses. Boys mention Ghettoes and rum bars (i.e. drinking places) as places in which drugs (e.g. marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.) are sold by drug sellers and consumed. Here ‘bad people’ and armed robbers meet and the boys describe it as a place young people learn to take drugs. Both are places with reputations for fights, stabbings and killings. These are also places that are raided frequently by the police (ranked 2 and 5). Like the younger girls groups, one group of boys mentions dangers associated with being near water. Younger boys associate the seaside with drowning, being injured by sharp fish bones or pieces of metal, but also being attacked by snakes and sharks (ranked 4). Again, like the girls, dump sites are associated with sickness and the threat of chemicals and gas explosions (ranked 6). Over 14 year-‐old girls: Although it may be that younger girls are less articulate, that the environment gets considerably more risky as girls get older is clear in the sheer volume and spread of hazards the girls list – twenty-‐eight mentions compared with nineteen for older boys and considerably less for younger children.


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There are many places where the older girls feel vulnerable to and are aware of the ever present threat of rape (and usually being robbed at the same time), or as one group said, ‘… [people] doing evil things to them’. The girls list the following places: bushy areas (ranked 8 and 9), market stalls at night (ranked 5 and 6), police stations (ranked 1,2 4 and 7), ‘rum bars’ (ranked 8) the stadium (ranked 9), unfinished buildings (ranked 1 and 1) and two waterside locations, ‘Wharf’ (ranked 4) and ‘Long Step’ (ranked 2), which are notorious for rapists and ‘gang stars’. In terms of also feeling vulnerable around what they see as inappropriate sexualised environments, girls rank the beach 6, because ‘… it is a place they sex [girls] openly’, and cinemas (ranked 10) because they show pornographic films. One group of girls also mentions that ‘ghettoes’ introduce young children to drugs and alcohol, which affects both their behaviour and ‘future prospects’ (ranked 3). Indeed, ‘ghettoes’, dance halls and clubs, and ‘rum bars’ are all seen as threatening, because they are places where fighting, drinking and drug taking happen, where physical and sexual threats are constant but also places that are frequently raided by the police. Girls complain that the police always arrest them because they are drunk and they are street girls (rather than having committed any crime) – again, we note that the police are identified in the earlier section as also taking advantage of the girls’ vulnerability for both sex and stealing the girls’ property. One group of girls, however, explains that these are also places from which they get paying ‘customers’ for sex. Again, one group of girls warns that in ‘rum bars’ adult male customers may spike their drinks and sexually harass them. Perhaps because these are not the girls’ normal places of work and therefore they feel that they have far less control and protection, two groups of girls describe guest houses and hotels as holding particular fears for the girls (ranked 4 and 7, respectfully). Girls suggest that they are often duped into going to guest houses only to be drugged, photographs taken for blackmail, and possibly killed. Hotels, they suggest, are also used for rituals. There are also other specific locations the girls fear because of their association with gangs, heavy labour and physical and sexual threat. The football stadium (specifically, stand 21) is described as a territory carved out by groups of boys but where ‘butter waist’ occurs (ranked 9). Long Step and Wharf (two waterside locations mentioned previously) are places associated with street gangs and ‘gang stars’, where girls who don’t belong risk being robbed and raped (ranked 2 and 4). Long Step is also seen as a place where street gangs plan future robberies. Natural hazards the girls mention are bushy places, where there is the threat of snakes and baboons, and fear of drowning in streams. One group also mentions fear of ‘Budo Bush’, the hidden places of the secret societies, to where the girls say they are forced to go ‘… even if we don’t want to’. Over-‐14 boys: Cemeteries and shrines are fearsome places for the two older boys’ groups. They mention ritualism, cannibalism and kidnapping. As one group says, it is a place ‘… used for evil doings … God is not there’. As with the other groups, the older boys describe negative attributes to gamble grounds (i.e. open places where people gather to gamble, rum bars, ghettoes (i.e. place for dealing drugs usually owned by the drug dealer) and night clubs. Associated with ‘bad people’ (e.g. armed robbers and older boys), for the boys the biggest risks are of physical violence. Boys also say they are beaten and given heavy work at rum bars. Boys also associate making the wrong type of friends at gamble grounds and acquiring the need to rob to feed the gambling obsession. 14


Again, police raids are frequent in all these places. Police stations, police cells and prisons are places where these boys experience their belongings being taken from them, persistent beating, acquiring sickness and learning ‘bad habits’. Specific fearsome locations include the ‘Constantine’, the ‘football stadium’ (ranked 9) and unfinished buildings. The Constantine (a semi-‐submerged ship which acts, as mentioned earlier, as a place for stowing stolen goods and fuel), one group says, is a cold place to sleep – bringing on colds and sickness – and is a place where they are beaten by older boys with no one to defend them. Again, the boys echo the attributes given to unfinished buildings. However, although this is mentioned it is not clear if boys as well as girls are raped. Places of environmental threat are mentioned by three groups. Jetties and the seaside are places where one can drown but also, like dump sites, place where sharp hidden objects cause injury. 2.1.3 Fearsome things Although many things are feared by all groups, specific fears, such as sexual violence, are more clearly based on age and sex. Sexual violence and sexually abusive relationships: Most widely mentioned by girls in the session on ‘fearsome things’ was violence against them, with two dominant themes: rape and prostitution. Within prostitution, one group of under-‐ and two of over-‐14 year old girls’ describe the threat of STI’s, HIV, fistula, but also being beaten when they demand payment from a customer who does not intend to pay, or having a sissie demand that they pursue a customer who has not paid. The girls also fear being caught in a cycle of abusive relationships, acting, as they put it, as ‘… sex slaves’. One group also links prostitution with being denied the opportunity to go to school. Rape is addressed by all four groups of girls (rated highly at 1, 1, 2 and 3). The younger girls’ groups describes a common experience of rape or attempted rape by their own relatives. Older girls, on the other hand, refer to rape in their Freetown environment. They fear it because it is forceful, sometimes by more than one person, they become infected with STIs and HIV, and because ‘… [the girls] lose self-‐esteem’. Girls also feel abused by men who they say use them for free sex and then dump them (ranked 2) or because of sexual harassment by ‘big’ men (i.e. important men) from the community who after sex then speak out against the girls to the community (ranked 2). Physical violence and weapons: Five groups mention being beaten as a fearsome thing. One group of girls complains that sissies and policemen beat them. They further complain that no one is there to protect them when in trouble. Beatings, two boys’ groups claim, cause them poor health and means that they have to seek medical assistance. Mental anguish caused by beating is common to both girls and boys, bringing them ‘… pain, stress and embarrassment’ and ‘… torment’. It is also a strong cause for boys to run away from home and girls to flee their ‘auties’ homes in Freetown. For one group of under-‐14 girls, fighting is also fearsome because it causes ‘damage, and loss of life and property. Accompanying the threats of violence comes children’s fear of weapons for their purpose of wounding and killing. Three groups of boys mention their fear of guns. Next come knives, blades, ‘cutless’ and ‘babylon’. ‘Babylon’ is a string hung with lead or beads that children say is used to beat them or tie them up and, as one group of older girls explains ‘… leaves them with marks all over their body’. One older group of girls tells of their fear of acid attacks, ranking this 1 (although they did not mention from whom).


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Alcohol and drugs: Children draw strong links between violence and alcohol and drug peddling and its use. Groups mention these fourteen times under this section. Children describe the health problems of smoking ‘jamba’ (marijuana – as one group concluded, causing problems to lungs, cancer and TB), its link to violence through loss of self-‐control, but equally the dangers of being caught with it and therefore in conflict with the law. Drugs are mentioned five times, alcohol and smoking ‘jamba’ four times each. One the flip side, one group states that drugs reduce their stress – though acknowledging the damage to health, reputation and self-‐control. Animals: Interestingly, fearsome animals are mentioned nine times by different groups. Snakes are mentioned four times as are dogs – which both are dangerous and, as one older group of boys admitted, ‘… raises the alarm’ when they are involved in theft. Pigs are also mentioned three times ‘… because they have awful looks at times’ and one group mentions a cow because it can cause damage. Children’s economic activities: In their economic tasks, children describe work they do not like doing and talk about some of the hazards associated with their work. The older boys do not like stone-‐breaking where flying fragments of rock cut and wound them, especially damaging eyes and fingers. However, most fearsome things for boys are associated with searching for recyclable material. Three groups worry about exposed electrical wires that might kill, concealed sharp objects that cut them and motorcycles that hit them. Younger girls dislike selling water and soft drinks and heavy work around collecting sand, gravel and stones, and carrying heavy goods for people. Carrying chilled drinks on their head, they complain, gives them colds and makes them sick. However, they equally fear the approximation to violence, motor accidents and people and ‘bad friends’ who introduce them to drugs and theft during this mobile work. One group of older girls complains of little sleep. Two groups of girls – one younger and the other older – also rank their exclusion from school because of work at 1 and 2. They are strongly aware that they are treated differently to other children. Psychological impact of exclusion: Children’s apparent group bravado in coping with fearsome people and places, despite the constant threats of sexual and physical violence, perhaps acts as a coping mechanism. Below the surface, children admit to some of the feelings and fears that this bravado seems to paper over. Boys and girls talk about sickness, bad dreams that bring ‘… torment’, and fear of darkness, thunder and death, which brings ‘… final judgement’. They talk about their relatives false promises to support them, their stepmothers’ false accusations bringing them family disapproval and marginalisation, starvation causing them to depend on sex work, and neglect that makes them ‘… feel as if they are not fit to be part of the society’. Spirits and secret societies: Children also mentioned activities and things that they associate with the spirit world seven times. Curses, they say, brings physical and mental illness and death, the masked devils beat, kill and bring sickness, the Ariogbo (a ‘masquerade’ attributed with supernatural devilish powers that are used to foretell the future, catch witches/wizards, freemasons and devils) is understood to make false allegations against people, use ‘dangerous’ herbs on people, and are mostly ‘witches’. One group of younger girls also mentions that big trees are not only destructive when they fall but also have bad spiritual connotations.

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2.2

Children coping with vulnerability

This next section presents finding on how children say they cope with vulnerability in street and hideout contexts. It presents the reality for new children arriving in the street or in hideouts for the first time. But it also describes how children navigate between and negotiate with threatening people and environments to mitigate the worst forms of threat, abuse and exploitation. Strategies that include (a) engagement with significant others (e.g. with power over them), (b) health seeking behaviour, and (c) economic activities, demonstrate how children are able to retain some, though limited control over threatening people and abusive environments. 2.2.1 Good and bad relationships Worries for a child arriving in the street/hideout for the first time When first arriving on the street or in a hideout, children from all groups describe very similar realities and their feelings about these. All groups use the terms panic and shame to describe their mixed feelings: panic, because of the realisation that survival is entirely self-‐referenced and how they themselves find money, avoid or treat sickness, get food and find a place to sleep is predominantly dependent on the individual child. They feel shame, groups mention, because they can no longer rely on being respected. Here, all boys’ groups draw attention to being bullied, beaten, and being sexually abused (particularly ‘butter waist’ – anal sex). On first arrival, they also describe the unfamiliar street environment of fighting, smoking, drug use and police harassment, and their fear of being drawn into this and, as one group says, “[The fear of] meeting bad people.” All groups describe respect, on first arrival, only in relation to deference to others with power over them, as a means through which to negotiate relative safety – with a sense that if they don’t show respect something even worse will happen to them (this is looked at in more detail below). In this sense, one group talks about submissiveness. Children also talk about loneliness and the fear of death. If children are ill, on one side they worry about who to tell about their sickness and where they might secure and pay for treatment. On the other side, new girls, they suggest, worry about how they can secure a place to sleep safely and find food and make enough money to support all of these needs. One girls’ group suggested that there may be an initial few days where a new girl feels ‘accepted and accommodated’, but this is soon replaced with being put firmly on the lower rungs of the pecking order by sissies and older street children and the expectation of quickly paying their way by engaging in exploitive labour (particularly fearing being pushed into prostitution). How children manage these issues Children describe a number of strategies for coping with the vulnerabilities described above. All groups say that children could move to another location as a strategy for coping with too much violence and abuse. Whilst other groups talk about ‘migration away’ the younger girls talk about ‘running away’ – perhaps indicating the relative freedoms (or lack of freedom) children feel they have based on their age and sex. However, recognising few alternatives, children are also very realistic about the demand on them to adapt their behaviours to influence the powerful others who populate their street and hideout environment. Behaviours can be broadly divided into ‘submissive’ and ‘proactive’, although clearly, rather than opposing


17

strategies, these can be seen as interconnected. Submissive behaviours mentioned include ‘being humble’, ‘patient’, obedient and respectful, and following the rules and regulations of those with power. However, all groups suggest the need for far more proactive strategies for negotiating relative wellbeing than submissive ones. Children say that they look for an older person who will talk on their behalf. They say that they need to talk and be truthful with other children and adults about their feelings and any issues but also to find out what behaviours would be more acceptable to those with power over them – and therefore reduce abuse and violence against them. Children place emphasis on making new friends with whom to move as a group, but also on making allies of bras and sissies – allowing their complaints to be listened to and acted upon. Making allies of older people, they suggest, also requires bribes – financial or in kind. Children also say that, to be accepted in their environment, their behaviours need to reflect the norms of others. As one group suggested, to be accepted you “… need to live like the ones you meet” and another group, “… pretend to be wild so that other will see [you] as one of them”. This means that children see ‘dregging’ (hustling), stealing and selling drugs not only as income but as part of a broader strategy to become accepted by their peers and powerful others. Children forced to do things they don’t want to do Children therefore see many of these undesirable activities as forced upon them – either in terms of having to earn acceptance or because of the demands on paying off those in authority – or, indeed, in terms of being submissive to abuse and violence against them (e.g. by engaging in prostitution or other forms of transactional sex – for both boys and girls). However, equally these social and economic activities become part of being on the street or staying in a hide out. As mentioned in the section on people with whom children feel unhappy, for many adults and those in authority outside these environments, what they characterise as ‘negative’ coping behaviours (e.g. drug use and peddling, stealing, prostitution, etc.) are what define ‘street children’ – rather than children’s struggle to survive, the abuse they suffer and the heavy and hazardous work forced upon them. Good people and places to go to for help As mentioned in the previous section, children say that, apart from their friends, there are ‘good hearted’ adults who are prepared to protect them (e.g. some bras and sissies, relatives, ‘good’ neighbours, etc.), even if some of this good will is transactional (e.g. based on bribes or submissiveness). One group of older girls stress that they can have an influence over their environment by “… [making] sure they are united in taking decisions related to their safety”. Older girls also say that protection can be expected from boyfriends. Despite describing the same groups of people as fearful in the first section of this study, children from all groups also say that they can seek protection from the police, chiefs, councillors and ‘chair persons’. Countering strong feelings espoused in the earlier section on ‘threatening people’ (see 2.1.1) that these same people are threatening, this perhaps indicates that further abuse and marginalisation by people in authority of children from hideouts and the street are specific to some rather than all. Younger boys and girls say that ‘community centres’ or NGO ‘child friendly spaces’ are places of refuge to them. Children also talk about leaving for or running away to their ‘homes’ as a way of escaping the abuse and exploitation – which also potentially offers them the opportunity of going to school.

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2.2.2 Children’s health strategies Where children go for treatment Children mention accessing a variety of clinics and the ‘hospital’ (e.g. Fattah Raman Street, Dan Street, Kankalay and Cottage). However, all groups also mention that they would buy drugs and self-‐administer them. They also mention going to herbalists or traditional healer for ‘traditional problems’ (although children did not expand on these problems). Different groups identify different people that they feel might support a sick child. These include ‘bras’ and ‘sissies’, friends, but also two groups suggest that they would contact the child’s parents. Five of the eight groups say they would address sickness by also going to the church or mosque to pray. What can this person do to get money for treatment? To raise money for treatment, children suggest that they would get loans or help from the people mentioned above (i.e. bras, sissies, friends and family members). However, all groups say that typically they would have to labour hard themselves to earn the money for their treatment or sell or pawn their belongings. Children, however, also see themselves contributing to help a sick child – in terms of providing money or seeking help (perhaps from the child’s relative). Who will help this person at the hospital? Relying on friends and friendly people in the environment is children’s core coping mechanism. Friendly people includes some ‘… good hearted’ sissies, bras and ‘Five ‘0’s’, ‘friendly neighbours’, relatives and boyfriends or girlfriends. One group suggest that they would even go to community leaders if they had to. However, children also mention going to the herbalist or traditional healer if they could not afford treatment in a clinic or hospital. As one group mentioned, nurses will also be seen as allies in treatment but, the group noted, only ‘… if they are given a token every day’.

2.3 Street and hideout economics: financial and transactional activities Although we can broadly understand children’s economic activities as part of a singular process of exchanging one commodity for another, in this section I differentiate through the text between financial and transactional activities. On one side, children earn money in exchange for work – partly for themselves but, children claim, often predominantly for the bras and sissies. On the transactional side, children themselves give money, labour and favours for what they call the ‘protection’ of adults. The activities listed in Table 1, below, show these clear differences to which children draw attention. As illustrated in Table 1, below, it is perhaps not surprising that what children identify as the most dangerous and exploitative activities generally are also the most profitable – and, indeed, the activities that children feel are most encouraged by those in authority over and who profit from them (i.e. bras and sissies, Five-‐‘0’s, etc.).


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Prostitution

Theft: Including 'finger pocket'

Selling drugs / alcohol

Breaking and/or gathering stones, gravel and sand

Gathering scrap metal & rubbers

Petty trading: wood, brooms, casava, etc.

Petty trading: drinks, water, ginger beer, etc.

Odd jobs not for payment: empty rubbish, plait hair, etc.

Odd jobs for payment: Wash clothes, fetch water, sweep, etc. Begging/gifts: from relatives, friends, boyfriends, etc.

Carrying loads

Stage dancing

Broom and Blye

Emptying garbage

Washing cars

Smoking

Gambling

Fishing related

Hairdressing

Selling cosmetics

Sand mining

Construction work

Anal sex

Most dangerous ranking

Group*

Most profitable ranking

Children’s street and hideout financial and transactional activities

14BS 14BS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1

2

3

4

5

3

4

1

2

5

7

3

6

1

4

8

2

5

2

1

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

6

3

7

5

2

4

1

6

2

5

1

3

7

4

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

3

2

5

4

1

3

2

5

4

5

7

1

3

2

4

1

2

3

4

1

4

2

3

5

7

6

8

1

4

2

5

3

6

7

*Group codes: < or > 14 = below or above 14 years old; GG or GB = girls or boys engaged in GOAL programmes; and GS and BS = girls or boys not involved in GOAL’s programmes.

Table One: Children’s street and hideout economic activities (numbers represent group ranking) Under-‐ and over-‐14 year old girls agree that prostitution, stealing, and selling drugs and alcohol are the three most profitable economic activities. For all girls’ groups prostitution and theft are both the most profitable and the most dangerous. Girls in all groups describe the dangers of prostitution in terms of contracting STIs and HIV, unwanted pregnancy and fistula. To this the older girls mentioned that, through prostitution, they also are victims of physical violence and police detention (echoing findings under section 2.1.1). One older group of girls claim that prostitution also impacts their relationship with and integration into the community, “… when [our] community members have known [us] for [prostitution], it is hard for [us] to get married.” (>14GS) This again echoes girls’ strong feelings of being despised and marginalised by the community, described in section 2.1.

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Both older and younger girls’ groups suggest a number of ways to reduce risk in prostitution. They suggest using ‘preventation’ to avoid getting pregnant, using condoms to prevent STIs and HIV, and avoiding ‘bigger’ men so that they do not get fistula. All groups of boys and girls agree that the selling of drugs and alcohol is one of the more profitable activities available to them (rated 3 in seven of the eight groups and 2 in the other). This is, nevertheless, one of the more dangerous activities. Both boys and girls see risk in both selling and using drugs. There are risks from police raids (and therefore being jailed), from fighting and from having their gains violently stolen. Equally, children feel risk in being around addicts or becoming addicted themselves; to which they associate mental illness and loss of control. Girls see theft only in terms of its potential risks in being caught, with subsequent beatings and mob justice. Boys, on the other hand, appear to see theft as less profitable. However, these differences could be explained by the type of theft; girls focusing on sex work customers and boys in organised assaults – where boys claim that the bras, sissies and Five-‐0s who organise these thefts benefit far more than them, sharing little of the profit. The activities that profit the boys most include carrying loads for customers (rated 1 by three of the four boys’ groups) and ‘broom and blye’ (sweeping and cleaning). However, rather than having a choice, all groups describe these dangerous activities as commonly forced on them by those with power over them. Table 1 shows the variety of other economic activities in which children are involved. In gathering scrap metal and ‘rubbers’ (i.e. plastic jerry cans) or breaking and collecting stones, children commonly complain of suffering cuts. However, common to most heavy work are children’s feelings of tiredness, too much physical stress on their bodies, hazards (e.g. in terms of chemicals, refuse and dangerous places) and necessary proximity to violent and abusive people. Children also complain of work keeping them away from school and other opportunities. Both boys and girls activities include exploitative and unpaid work and, for some, sexual abuse as conditions imposed on them for their ‘protection’ by those who have power over them. Indeed, findings also show that what activities bras and sissies demand of the children are condemned by the community, on one side, but what activities the community benefit from the children (e.g. carrying loads, sweeping and cleaning, etc.) are discouraged by the bras and sissies for not bringing enough profit (that is, for the bras and sissies), on the other side. 2.3.1 On what children spend their money Older and younger girls have very similar things on which they spend their money. All girls spend money on having their hair done, buying clothes, food, rent, medication, toiletries and on their families and relatives. However, the older girls’ emphasise expenditure on cosmetics, manicures and pedicures, as one group explains, in order “… to look more attractive to their [sex work] customers”. Older girls also include the cost of transportation and “… satisfying their sissies” (i.e. earnings having to be shared). Boys’ expenditure on food, clothing, medication, family and relatives, and bras or sissies is similar to the girls. However, whilst girls predominantly spend on their needs (e.g. even spending on how they look references itself to ‘customers’), boys have much greater expenditure on satisfying their wants – on going to the cinema, playing computer games, gambling, going to night clubs, as well as expenditure on friends and girlfriends.


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3.0

Exploring street and ‘hideout’ children’s vulnerability: exploitation and resilience

This research has so far presented children’s narratives of their experiences of vulnerability and resilience. Eighty street and ‘hideout’ children from Freetown, clustered in sixteen discussion groups over four days, have described and ranked what they see as fearsome people, places and things. They described feelings of fear and shame but also necessary adaptive behaviours needed to integrate into a street group or into a ‘hideout’. Children described and ranked economic activities – the preferences, dangers, profitability and physical and emotional consequences. This section clusters and examines these experiences in terms of family, migration and trafficking. It looks at urban networks of power and how this power is exerted in the context of the street and ‘hideouts’. It also examines how children navigate and manipulate these exploitative and abusive urban environments. Although children’s narratives reveal considerable resilience in the face of extreme exploitation and abuse, this section also illustrates children’s limited capacity to mitigate vulnerability. Using Wagner’s (2005) framework for analysing community, I look at narratives around children’s aspirations for membership of the ‘good’ community and the factors and actions that exclude them. Finally I examine the depiction of child labour and trafficking within legislation in Sierra Leone in which children, their forced labour, and their urban handlers (i.e. ‘bras’, ‘sissies’ and ‘Five-‐Os’) are clearly located. The analysis will demonstrate that absence of implementation of legislation and its envisaged protection mechanisms, but also deviant institutional engagement of children who they are tasked with protecting, clearly endorse children’s narratives or victimization, criminalisation and re-‐victimization. The family: contexts for urban migration and trafficking Children’s experience of family weaves itself strongly into many of the group narratives. Whilst boys mostly talk about problems with step-‐parents, girls’ groups also bring up a common experience of intrafamilial migration that can take on the character of trafficking. This intrafamilial migration (or ‘informal fostering’ within the extended family) is not new in Sierra Leone. In terms of socio-‐cultural norms, the 1974 census showed that around 40% of children lived away from home (Robi, 2011). However, this trend is understood to have been intensified by the recent history of civil conflict and extreme poverty (Gale, 2008). Girls’ narratives strongly endorse the associations between intrafamilial migration and children’s exploitation suggested in other research (e.g. Gale, 2011 and EveryChild, 2011). Intrafamilial migration is usually based on ideas of exchange. Children stay with relatives but are expected to work or care for their relatives in exchange for a home or an education (Gale, 2011). In terms of children in this research, the informality of fostering, however, leads to the child’s family either being unaware or complicit in an arrangement of child exploitation – from which the child gains little but suffers considerably. In this context, although perhaps partly understood as having a function of rural resilience in the face of poverty and lack of opportunity, intrafamilial child migration, where children and their families vulnerabilities are exploited by relatives – as characterised in the narratives of this study – can also be implicated as a harmful tradition. A growing body of literature on ‘safe migration’ suggests that not only is it necessary to respond to exploitation that has happened (e.g. GOAL’s T4P urban livelihoods programme in Freetown), it is also necessary to look at (a) how migration broadly links to a targeted need to address the rural economy, (b) how young people are endowed with the skills and knowledge for successful migration, and (c) how legal frameworks and the private sector positively engage with the movement of young people with needed 22


skills. From a child protection perspective, we need to recognise that migration flows in countries like Sierra Leone often refer to children below the legal age of employment. Whilst it would be ideal to see a stop to children’s exploitation within this informal fostering culture, it is also necessary to be realistic about the state’s capacity to achieve this. Without functional formal child protection mechanisms at community level, therefore, it is necessary to also look at how communities might manage child migration (perhaps understood as ‘informal fostering’) more effectively and in the best interest of the child. In terms of managing migration, children’s own narratives in this study suggest that parents often are duped or unaware of the false promises of education and a ‘better life’ in the city. In considering opportunities for safer migration, children’s narratives also hint at urban networks of relatives – some who are seen as supportive of children in ‘hideouts’ and on the street. Certainly, GOAL’s practice in family tracing and reunification (FTR) often finds children preferring this urban family network to a return to their rural home. Such a family network at the migration destination point can potentially also be drawn into a better managed rural ‘safe migration’ community mechanism. For many boys, narratives of family dysfunction and children’s feeling of victimisation and exclusion appear to be significant push factors in migration. Within this study, the step-‐mother is implicated as the dominant adult influence that causes children to run away. However, challenging this very gendered analysis of family dysfunction, it is interesting that one of the girl’s groups makes the connection between dysfunction and fathers who leave one partner for another – bringing children with him into a problematic relationship with the step-‐mother or exacerbating vulnerability in the family he has left behind. Urban networks of exploitation Although aware since the early 2000s of the acute vulnerabilities of children in informal settlements in Freetown, GOAL only began to map and integrate ‘hideouts’ into its outreach work with Extremely Vulnerable Children and Youth (EVCYs) in 2008. An early rapid appraisal revealed organised sex work rings involving young girls in the centre of Freetown (GOAL, 2008). A later report helped to clarify the nature of hideouts and the powerful adults who had control over groups of children housed in ‘hideouts’. The report observes, “The term ‘pimp’ that is usually used [by social workers] as descriptor for [bras and sissies] is misleading. [Bras and Sissies] represent very diverse interactions with children. The [Bras and Sissies] will typically house (although this might just be a veranda) and sometimes feed a group of boys and girls in exchange for work and/or payment. Jobs children are expected to do may vary from sweeping market stores, hawking and keeping pigs, to the extreme of child commercial sex work. Numbers of children in each ‘hide-‐out’ might vary from 2 or 3 to over 20.” (GOAL, 2010) Significant also is the scale of the ‘hideout’ phenomenon. Participatory mapping with under-‐14 year old children living in hideouts in 2009, using Google maps for plotting specific sites, is illustrated in Figure 1, below. Each call-‐out box indicates a ‘hideout’ and the number of boys or girls who live there. Triangulated across four groups each, the estimated number in all girls ‘hideouts’ was 1,098 girls. For boys, the estimate was 1,029. Children’s narratives in this study explain the complex pattern of power that centres on the ‘bras’, ‘sissies’ and ‘five-‐Os’. However, this pattern is expanded to include not only people associated with street gangs and organised criminals but also ordinary people in the community (children often referring to them as ‘good


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neighbours’ or ‘bad neighbours’). Such a conclusion is perhaps evidenced by the scale and spatiality of children in hideouts (illustrated in Fig.1), and the apparent exploitation and abuse that permeates slums, and even broader community environments that children feel normalise child labour and sexual and physical violence. Community members (from ‘neighbours’ to cultural and political leaders) are complicit in exploiting children’s labour or being ‘customers’ for child sex work on one side, but condemn the same children they exploit, on the other side. Indeed, children’s narratives claim that some of the very people who society tasks with protecting children (with particular attention drawn to the police) are implicated in some of the worst forms of sexual and physical abuse. We look at this in more detail later.

Figure 1: 2009 maps of street and informal settlement ‘hideouts’ (source GOAL, 2009) The street and hideouts as places of sanctuary and exploitation Interestingly in children’s and ‘bra’ and ‘sissies’ narratives in other participatory research (e.g. GOAL, 2010 and the ‘Join hands for justice’ video produced in collaboration with Christian Aid in 2009), hideouts are also seen as a refuge from more exploitative experiences of intrafamilial migration. In essence, for the children living on the street or in hideouts, the street and ‘hideouts’ are experienced as comparatively ‘less’ exploitative than the extended family homes from which they flee – or, indeed, from which they are trafficked. Surviving the street and ‘hideout’: children’s coping strategies Children’s narratives around coping with extreme vulnerability focus primarily on navigation between and negotiation with threatening people and environments to mitigate the worst forms of threat, abuse and exploitation. Their narratives begin with how ‘new’ children are faced with and have to adapt to the realities of self-‐ reliance and dependency on abusive powerful individuals who have control over them. Some girls acknowledge an initial experience of being accepted and looked after. However, as was noted in section 2.2.1, within a few days they are put firmly within a pecking order and are expected to pay their way in cash or kind. Indeed, to retain some form of control, they observe, children have to move quickly from passive acceptance of vulnerability – boys in particular talk about being beaten, bullied and sexually abused in those first days – to active manipulation of people and places (even though with strong narrative references to deference and submissiveness as techniques – see below). Children have to find money, food and a place to sleep. They have to avoid becoming sick and know where to look for treatment. Children also have to 24


adapt to living with violence, drug use and ‘bad people’. In bad and reflective moments, children also acknowledge persistent feelings of loneliness and a fear of death. Although the option of moving to another location was mooted by children, their narratives suggest that they are equally realistic about their limited options and therefore how they necessarily focus on coping and adaptation. Interconnected coping behaviours can be broadly divided into ‘submissive’ and ‘proactive’. On one side, children have to show humility, be obedient and show respect for the rules and people governing spaces and controlling hierarchies. On the other side, children have to learn adaptive and acceptable behaviours from other children and adults – these behaviours need to reflect the street or hideout’s social, economic and cultural norms (where hustling, stealing and selling drugs is as much about being sub-‐culturally acceptable as providing economic gains). Children place emphasis on making new friends with whom to move as a group, but also on making allies of those with power over them. Making allies of older people, they suggest, also requires bribes – financial or in kind. Children being forced into exploitative activities: the worst forms of child labour However, having few alternatives, children’s narratives suggest that many of these social, cultural, and economic activities are forced upon them. Whilst girls talk about being pushed into prostitution with ‘customers’ arranged by sissies, both girls and boys describe being sexually abused within the hideout itself. Equally, whilst needing income to address their own needs, boys and girls describe considerable unpaid labour demands placed on them by their gang masters – the bras, sissies and Five-‐Os. The activities and behaviours children feel pushed into by those who have control over them are often the most profitable but also include those that children fear because they are the most dangerous. Although as sex workers girls are aware that prevention can help them avoid pregnancy, using condoms can prevent STIs and HIV, and avoiding ‘bigger’ men reduce the danger of fistula, it equally becomes clear in the narratives that girls often have little control of these preventive or avoidance measures. Indeed, other narratives conclude that prostitution brings with it sadism, violence, deceit and sickness. Theft and using and selling drugs also bring risk of violence and addiction. Commonly, gains are either stolen from children by others or are kept by the bra or sissie. Commonly also, as a consequence of the activities they are pushed into, girls and boys find themselves being detained and often abused by the police (we look at this in more detail later). Street economies: earning and transacting Although we can broadly understand children’s economic activities as part of a singular process of exchanging one commodity for another, we differentiate through children’s narratives between financial and transactional activities. On one side, children earn money in exchange for work – partly for themselves but, children claim, often predominantly for the bras and sissies. On the transactional side, children themselves give money, labour and favours (i.e. financial, labour or sexual) for what they call the ‘protection’ of adults. ‘Community’ endorsement and exclusion Generally, the term ‘community’ is employed as a very vague concept. Leonie Wagner (2005) argues a number of characteristics that are attributable to the community and that perhaps help us to understand and order to what children refer. She argues that community


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is not natural and self-‐evident structure but is constructed and changes; bonds that define a community are bonds of interest (e.g. cultural, economic or ideological) rather than defined by geography – but equally that common interests can break through differences between people; is defined by heterogeneity rather than by homogeneity. People of differing levels of ‘social capital’ might have very different and limited opportunities to invest and get returns from community interactions; is not intrinsically ‘good’, where narrowly defined inclusionary values that describe membership are counter balanced by exclusionary factors and acts – that may be based on poverty, age, affinity, ethnicity, etc.; includes disturbances – where members problematically accommodate both change and resistance to change; and is influenced by external cultural forces – and therefore, to its members, values are often unclear because they refer to external forces that are not plainly understood.

Street and ‘hideout’ children can be said to form their own communities. However, it is clear that children wish to be acceptable and be included in another, what we will call for the sake of this analysis, ‘good’ community – whose membership is defined by neighbours, chiefs, family, etc. Although sharing the same geography, children’s narratives of exclusion from the ‘good’ community focus on the narrowness of shared interest. Street and ‘hideout’ children are useful (i.e. share an economic interest) only in that they represent cheap and easily exploited labour. This might include gathering scrap metal and ‘rubbers’ (i.e. plastic jerry cans), breaking and collecting stones or sand, petty trading and carrying loads from the wharf or markets – however, it also includes sex work. Children also observe that the ‘good’ community’s values specifically function to exclude them. It is also very clear from the narratives that, being excluded from the ‘good’ community, street and ‘hideout’ children also have very little capacity to change their vulnerability and therefore their excluded status. Rather than expecting protection through inclusion in the protective values and mechanisms of the ‘good’ community, all groups emphasise that exclusion means that they have to pay adults for protection – either in money or in kind (e.g. through labour or sexual favours). Children’s narratives of ‘good’ community also acknowledge the problem of perception – and therefore exclusion – because of illicit activities into which they feel largely forced. Groups perceive the ‘good’ community to categorise street and ‘hideout’ children as different and outside the set of values and norms that it might apply to its own child members. The result is, they feel, that street and hideout children are treated differently, unjustly and inequitably – indeed, they are ‘criminalised’ and are punished accordingly. Good people and places to go to for help Despite children’s exclusion from the ‘good’ community, children say that, apart from their street and ‘hideout’ friends, there are ‘good hearted’ adults who are prepared to protect them (e.g. some bras and sissies, relatives, ‘good’ neighbours, boyfriends, etc.), even if some of this good will is transactional (e.g. based on bribes or submissiveness). Children from all groups also say that they can seek protection from the police, chiefs, councillors and ‘chair persons’. Although children identify these same categories of people as threatening, this perhaps indicates that experiences of abuse and exploitation are specific to some people in authority rather than all.

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Younger boys and girls say that ‘community centres’ or NGO ‘child friendly spaces’ (e.g. such as GOAL’s) are places of refuge to them. Children also talk about leaving for or running away to their ‘homes’ as a way of escaping the abuse and exploitation – also potentially offering them the opportunity of going to school. One group of older girls also stresses that girls can considerably reduce vulnerability and risk and respond to crisis by acting collectively. For pragmatic interventions from a participatory action research perspective, the question of children’s capacity to collectively change their exploitative environment is clearly linked to both age and productive alliances with powerful ‘good hearted’ people. Health coping strategies Street and ‘hideout’ children’s narratives place considerable emphasis on the sick child’s own agency in seeking and paying for medical treatment. Although children do mention many traditional or informal market-‐based forms of treatment (and where much of treatment is self-‐administered), they do also claim to use government clinics and health centres. However, it appears that, only when the child is very sick, do people, beyond the child’s immediate friends, offer some degree to support. Indeed, even these narratives of help often seem to present a degree of ambiguity. Where help is offered it appears to be accepted with obvious gratitude, on one side, but is often also attached to indebtedness or as part of a transaction, on the other side (e.g. where a nurse would provide care but equally would expect payment – what children referred to as ‘tokens’). Re-‐victimisation at institutional and policy levels Article 32 of Sierra Leone’s 2007 Child Rights Act states, “No person shall subject a child to exploitative labour”. Child labour is deemed exploitative if it “… deprives the child of its health, education or development”. Whereas ‘light’ work is permissible from age thirteen (Art. 127), the minimum age for hazardous work is eighteen (Art. 128). Article 128 goes on to describe the types of employment that are illegal for children. These include mining and quarrying, porterage of heavy loads, handling of goods at docks, quays, wharves, and work in places such as bars, hotels and places of entertainment “… where a person may be exposed to immoral behaviour”. Indeed, Article 128 reads like a menu of activities that street and ‘hideout’ children are forced to do in Freetown, represented in Table 1 and described in this research. Likewise, Sierra Leone’s 2005 Anti-‐Human Trafficking Act makes clear that trafficking in persons includes, “… recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation.” (Art.1) Article 2 states that exploitation includes keeping a person in a state of or practices similar to slavery. It includes “… compelling or causing a person to provide forced labour or services … keeping a person in a state of servitude, including sexual servitude … exploitation of the prostitution of another … pimping, pandering, procuring, profiting from prostitution, maintaining a brothel [or] … child pornography” (Sub. a) to h))


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Again, under Sierra Leone’s Anti-‐Human Trafficking Act of 2005, the descriptions of the act of trafficking very strongly resembles the characteristics of the ‘bras’, ‘sissies’ and the ‘Five-‐Os’ (and some family relatives) described by all eighty children who participated in the research. Task forces, child protection committees and a whole response mechanism are described in both acts of Parliament to address both child labour and the condition of being trafficked, held in servitude and being forced into labour or service as a child. Children’s narratives in this research implicate chiefs, councillors, the police, politicians and soldiers in the betrayal of these principles. All these guardians of the law and the rights of children are described routinely in the discussion groups as ‘fearsome’ people. Although children describe some officials as allies there is a much stronger narrative of acts against children by these officials. For infractions as mild as ‘bad language’ in arguments with members of the ‘good’ community, street and ‘hideout’ children are beaten by, have to pay fines to or do forced labour for chiefs and councillors – or face ‘banishment’. In cases of forced labour such as child prostitution, selling and using drugs or theft, children’s narratives describe ‘raids’ and routine arrest and incarceration by the police. All eight participant groups in the research also claim that some police officers also manufacture false charges or use the broad offense of ‘loitering’ to arrest and charge them. During arrest and incarceration children describe severe beatings, property and money being taken from them and sexual abuse by police officers or other inmates – either through rape or as a transaction through which they might be released. All groups suggest that it is necessary to transact release from police custody though payment in money or kind. On the other hand, some groups mention that some councillors, chiefs and police officers do offer some assistance (although one group claimed that this is usually based on payment for assistance). Article 16 of the Anti-‐Human Trafficking makes it very clear that “… A victim of trafficking is not liable for any criminal offence that [is] a direct result from being trafficked”. Article 132 in the Child Rights Act tasks the police with “… investigat[ing] [child labour] and tak[ing] the appropriate steps to prosecute the offender”. The legal framework is clear. However, actions based on this legal framework by officials tasked with protecting children against child labour and trafficking are clearly absent in children’s narratives of vulnerability and resilience. On the contrary, these custodians of the law are clearly implicated in re-‐ victimisation, exploitation and abuse of street and ‘hideout’ children.

4.0 Concluding remarks and recommendations In this concluding section I make recommendations based on both the findings of this research on children’s experiences of exploitation and resilience, and on examples (where they exist) of effective and innovative practice elsewhere. Safe Migration Literature on Safe Migration frames responses to unsafe migration at three moments of migration: 28


(a) the young person’s preparation, support and knowledge that equips them for successful migration in and from their community, institution or country or origin, (b) the accessible network of support for the young person at their destination (e.g. perhaps an urban centre, household or industry), and (c) the safe and non-‐exploitative mechanisms through which migration itself can take place. In the language of ‘safe migration’ we need to make reference to the ‘source’ of migration (i.e. often the child’s rural home), the ‘destination’ for migration (i.e. Freetown in this context) and the safe mechanisms through which the migration itself takes place. Below, I briefly make reference to all. Source community Children’s experiences of family, migration and trafficking strongly suggest a need for policy makers to examine more systemically, not only broader patterns of economic migration of young people, but also traditions of intrafamilial migration (or informal fostering) and unaccompanied migration of children. A traditional ‘safe migration’ perspective focuses on (a) functional education for young people around dangers, processes and needs within migration, (b) strengthening local community protection mechanisms, and (c) government and private sector collaboration on supporting but managing the migration of young people. From a child protection perspective, this research draws attention to migrating children who are not normally included in ‘safe migration’ literature. More aspirational recommendations for specifically street and ‘hideout’ children need to focus on strengthening foster care laws – making intrafamilial migration or migration to non-‐family households more formal (and consequently more difficult) (e.g. Gale, 2008). However, without strong legal instruments and equally strong mechanisms for implementing this, it is likely to be problematic as it largely positions policy against long-‐standing cultural norms and practices in Sierra Leone (Robi, 2011). Nevertheless, this research does make the link between intrafamilial migration and trafficking very clear. Intrafamilial migration does provide a traditional mechanism of social responsibility through which children’s vulnerability and lack of access to education has been addressed by the extended family (Robi, 2011). The issue, therefore, is around lack of more formal and accountable family and community mechanisms that protect children from the more exploitative practice of informal migration. However, whilst it would be ideal to establish a more regulated intrafamilial (informal fostering) migration, it is also necessary to be realistic about the state’s capacity to achieve this. Poor functionality and often lack of community trust in formal child protection systems (Colombia Group for Children in Adversity, 2011) suggest that addressing safer migration of children should focus on often more informal community mechanisms that might manage child migration more effectively and in the best interest of the child. Although necessarily couched in the language of managing legal migration of young people better, such ‘safer migration’ mechanisms should equally focus on impacting illegal trafficking of children. Recommendation: •

Policy level: o The state should be clearer about the dark side of intrafamilial and unaccompanied child migration, strengthening policy that acknowledges how, despite often acting as a positive


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family mechanism for reducing vulnerability and accessing education, it is also too often implicated as (a) a hidden form of trafficking and (b) a ‘harmful traditional practice’; o The state should tie ‘safe migration’ mechanisms to national child protection systems development (e.g. linking community registration of migration of young people to a district level database – see below) o The state should also explore integration of intrafamilial migration into workable alternative care policy, ensuring that regulation is doable (rather than unrealistically aspirational) and builds or adapts community mechanisms from existing traditional practices; o Education on migration needs to be included in the school curriculum. Awareness alone of the dangers associated with unaccompanied migration will reduce vulnerability should it happen (e.g. van de Glind, 2010). Intervention in communities: o Agencies could pilot participatory rural community level ‘safe migration’ mechanisms that (a) strengthen community awareness of the impact on children and magnitude of traditional infrafamilial migration that goes wrong (b) build on formal and informal community protection mechanisms that, through community migration registers, better control and record migration of young people through named and accountable intermediaries, and (c) make community decisions on intrafamilial migration contingent on both ‘the child’s best interest’ principal and the guarantee of a families’ capacity to regularly monitor the young person’s wellbeing.

Destination community Echoing the need for pragmatic action that acknowledges the limited capacity of the state to create functional mechanisms for the migration of young people and intrafamilial formal fostering in Sierra Leone, rural community ‘safe migration’ mechanisms need to include reference to traditional extended community and family support mechanisms in places to which young people migrate. Children in this research suggest that there are informal extended family support mechanisms in times of crisis – even if these are limited. Similarly, older girls refer to existing group dynamics that can be deployed to reduce vulnerability. However, families and children need to feel entitled to call on stronger formal and informal support mechanisms should migration go wrong. Research elsewhere also suggests that urban support networks based on ethnic, cultural and economic shared interests do exist to support young people who have migrated2. Recommendations: •

Policy level: o ‘Safe migration’ policy position papers and pronouncements need to look also beyond narrowly age-‐defined legal migration practices to acknowledge intrafamilial migration of younger children as a potentially ‘harmful traditional practice’. o Acknowledging the limited capacity of the state to change the economic environment that necessitates children’s economic agency to support their families, Sierra Leone’s laws on

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For example, van de Glind (2010)

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Child Labour and Trafficking of Persons need, at a minimum, to be fully implemented to challenge the worst expressions of exploitative and abusive labour for street and ‘hideout’ children, presented in this research. Child and Community levels: o Under a ‘safe migration’ framework, support agencies should explore opportunities to strengthen existing formal and informal ethnic, cultural, economic and social urban protection networks with both rural communities and with migrant children themselves. o Building on existing cultural resilience practices amongst sex workers, agencies should draw on experiences from elsewhere to explore Participatory Action Research opportunities for sex workers to self-‐organise for more effective impact on their educational, economic, health, social and protection environment. o The capacity of self-‐organised support groups should be equally enhanced to report and pursue criminal exploitation of children through formal referral mechanisms.

Urban networks of exploitation This study of street and ‘hideout’ children, and other GOAL research in Freetown since 2009, shows astonishing levels of societal complicity in their exploitation, abuse and neglect. Children claim that they are forced into prostitution, transactional sex (e.g. in exchange for protection), theft and peddling drugs. Rather than being protected from this exploitation, commonly children’s narratives are of beatings, having their property taken from them and, for girls, sexual abuse in police custody. Indeed, there is also anecdotal evidence of children’s gang-‐masters being members of Child Welfare Committees, whose function it should be to protect children. If the state of urban chaos after Sierra Leone’s conflict in the late 1990s had provided some degree of excuse for the emergence of ‘hideouts’ as functional refuge for street populations in the absence of alternatives3, fourteen years later any such justification should be strongly challenged. Recommendations: •

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Policy level: o The government’s migration policies that aim to encourage managed mobility in search of employment, need equally to balance this with their obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the ILO Conventions on the Minimum Age for Employment, (No. 138, 1973) and the Worst Forms of Child Labour (No. 182, 1999). o With the evidence of this and other like research, government needs to be clearer in its policies, pronouncements and consequent implementation of legislation, that urban ‘hide outs’ do have strong characteristics of trafficking of children and that adults in exploitative relationship with children (whether or not they are related) should be held accountable. o Apart from becoming places of referral, Children’s Institutions that provide quality temporary support and alternative care services to children in need of care and protection should become part of urgent discussions on intrafamilial migration and broadening the scope of alternative care to child victims of trafficking. Community level:

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For example, GOAL, 2010.


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GOAL and other agencies work with Child Welfare Committees. The findings that implicate community complicity in exploitation and abuse of children need to be fully examined with these committees. Community leadership itself needs to propose behaviour change and accountability mechanisms through which they can reaffirm values and by-‐laws that challenge such duplicity. Future Research: o Attitude change in community and institutions to reduce abuse and exploitation of children in slum and informal settlement environments, from an ecological modelling perspective, is core to systemic change. A quality literature review of successful practice and efficacy in attitude change processes in different urban community ecosystems would be a helpful tool to the practitioner. o

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Re-‐victimisation at institutional and policy levels Article 16 of Sierra Leone’s Anti-‐Human Trafficking Act makes it very clear that “… A victim of trafficking is not liable for any criminal offence that [is] a direct result from being trafficked”. Children’s narratives strongly affirm community leadership and law enforcement’s practice of both criminalising and re-‐ victimising child victims of trafficking. Rather than address the children’s condition of being trafficked, many community leaders demand fines, beat and demand labour of street and ‘hideout’ children for what they see as children’s legal or even social infringements. The police, in particular, are commonly cited as using spurious interpretations of the law to detain and incarcerate trafficked children – and, worse, to take children’s property, beat and sexually abuse them. This is clearly not just a question of lack of knowledge but of wilful abuse and exploitation of trafficked children’s vulnerabilities. Recommendations: •

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Policy level: o The government needs to reaffirm its policies and legal instruments to elected and traditional leaders and law enforcement agencies to make absolutely clear their obligations under Article 16 of the Anti-‐Human Trafficking Act not to criminalise children living in conditions of being trafficked. Community and institutional level: o Programmes for the prevention of violence against children need to advocate for and explore functional local administrative responses to the provisions of Article 16 of the Anti Human Trafficking Act to community leaders – even if acknowledging the resource limits for referral of children in need of care and protection. o Acknowledging this as a legal and reputational issue, the police administration needs to establish a functional and child-‐friendly accountability mechanism that allows children to report abuse and exploitation by police officers – whilst keeping anonymity for the children reporting. o Programmes for the prevention of violence against children need to work with the police to ensure police knowledge about and implementation of the provisions of Article 16 of the Anti Human Trafficking Act that absolves child victims of trafficking of crimes under duress that are associated with their condition of being trafficked. Equally, under the same Act, training should be provided in identifying and holding child traffickers to account.


Violence against children The eighty children participating in this research act as a mirror to society and its values. Government policy, therefore, needs to acknowledge the prevalence of a culture of violence (and equally a culture of ‘silence about violence’) – within the nuclear and extended family, community, institutions and local administration – throughout Sierra Leone. Cultural norms of violence against children and women can be challenged over time but only if they are equally challenged within a legislative framework. The near universal acceptance of a certain degree of violence in childrearing necessitates clarity in law that no degree of corporal punishment is acceptable or lawful. •

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Policy level o Article 33(2) of the Child Rights Act, confirming the concept of “reasonable” and “justifiable” correction, needs, at a minimum, to clarify that no corporal punishment should be tolerated by those in institutional care, schools and protective administrative positions (i.e. community leaders, care workers, teachers and the police, etc.). o The 2004 Education Act needs to be updated to reflect current received wisdom that links violence condoned by institutions to broader expressions of societal violence by forbidding corporal punishment in schools. o Addressing the ecological modeling perspective in education, modules on alternatives to corporal punishment should be developed and integrated into all national teacher training courses. Community and institutional level: o Penal institutions and police stations – Explicit prohibition should be enacted of corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure in all institutions accommodating children in conflict with the law, in addition to repeal of all legal defense for its use. o Alternative care settings – Explicit prohibition should be enacted in legislation applicable to all alternative care settings, including public and private day care, residential institutions, formal or informal foster care arrangements, etc., in addition to repealing all legal defense for the use of corporal punishment and all legislation regulating the use of corporal punishment in these settings. o To break the culture of violence, and whilst advocating for changes to the law, programmes for the prevention of violence against children need to challenge attitudes and administrative measures that promote or condone violence against children by community leaders within the ‘good community’ framework suggested in this research. o Teacher training needs to incorporate alternatives to corporal punishment.

Children’s recommendations and endorsement of the findings Findings of this research were fed back in August 2014 to children who participated in the group sessions. Children said that they felt that it gave a good representation of their experience on the street and in hideouts. Apart from agreeing with the recommendations presented above, children also proposed or placed further emphasis on the following. •

Policy level: o The government needs far more robust efforts to provide quality educational opportunities (i.e. both in school and vocational training) for children in vulnerable situations


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Protective laws and their mechanisms (e.g. on rape), children felt, should not only be enjoyed by the privileged few but should equally apply to children in very vulnerable situations Institutional and community level: o Because ignorance makes children feel even more vulnerable, the Government needs to ensure that messages of national importance (e.g. on Ebola, the upcoming census, cholera and other communicable diseases) are also provided in appropriate ways to children in particularly vulnerable situations and contexts. Dissemination of the research: o Children felt it important not to be personally identified in the dissemination of this research as they fear retribution from the police for telling their experiences. o Children also agreed to the dissemination of the research providing it helps children living in vulnerable conditions in Sierra Leone. Children felt that dissemination should be directed to the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, humanitarian organisations, chiefs and to the Children’s Forum Network (i.e. a form of children’s parliament – although they nevertheless felt this body tends not to reflect the interests of children in vulnerable situations). o

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Through capturing children’s own narratives and histories of exploitation and abuse at home, on the street and in urban ‘hideouts’, this research paints a very clear and unambiguous picture of social, cultural and political neglect of the most vulnerable children in Sierra Leone. We hope that this research presents a platform of evidence and pragmatic recommendations upon which the government, the police, community leaders are encouraged and cajoled into making and implementing tangible policies on street and ‘hideout’ children that brings both systemic attitude and behaviour change.

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