Child Sex Trafficking

 Burundi's child sex slaves include girls from poor rural backgrounds and those brought up in middle-class families in the capital. Photograph: Imagestopshop/Alamy


Pamela comes from an affluent family and was doing well in one of Bujumbura's best-performing high schools – until two years ago, when she became a sex slave.

She recalls befriending a group of girls when she was 14, who at first proposed she join them when they went out. The trips led to dates with older men who would pick up the bill, initially without asking for anything in return.

One night she was taken to a house in Kiriri, a smart residential district in Bujumbura, Burundi's capital, where she was held for three months under the supervision of men in police uniform.

"When a client came, if you didn't want to go with him they would slap you and whip the soles of your feet," Pamela says, her voice trembling. She was freed in a police raid after her mother reported her missing.
"Such places exist in every part of town. You just have to open your eyes to see them," says Florence Boivin-Roumestan, who leads Justice and Equity, a Canadian NGO that has exposed the vast scale of sex trafficking in the small central African nation.
"After months of investigations, we're seeing that human trafficking and sex trafficking in particular exists in Burundi on a scale no one would have imagined."

Victims include girls from poor rural backgrounds and those brought up in middle-class families in the capital.
In a months-long investigation, Justice and Equity found that young girls were being recruited across the country and either forced into prostitution or sold abroad. "You find girls of nine or 10, but most of them are in the 13, 14, 15 age range," Boivin-Roumestan says.

The trafficking takes different forms. In Bujumbura, it is girls from well-off families who are targeted in the best schools. Fellow pupils of both sexes are recruited by pimps to play the role of intermediaries. They gradually gain the confidence of the victims, who eventually end up in brothels.

Keza, who comes from a poor district in the capital, says she was locked up and used as a sex slave by a senior intelligence officer for several months when she was 15. "He threatened me and he threatened my parents," she says, adding that she no longer wishes to see her family after the ordeal.
"I filed a formal complaint against him and he received several summons, but he has never shown up. The case has gone nowhere."




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