Dougnon I. Child Trafficking or Labor Migration? A Historical Perspective from Mali’s Dogon Country

Humanity Vol. 2, Issue 1In 2000, Mali’s Ministry for the Promotion of Women, Children,
and the Family asked donors for 824 million West African Francs
(CFA; $1.7 million) to fight child trafficking in neighboring Cote
d’Ivoire. The question of child trafficking quickly drew so much
attention from state and privately owned media that it submerged
other issues, such as AIDS or poverty. As soon as the debate was
launched in Mali, child trafficking became the object of a moral
condemnation so strong that few researchers have dared to examine
it from a historical and sociocultural angle. Such an approach, however,
can put into strong relief the disparity between the regional politics of
applying formal international conventions on child labor and local ways
of thinking about labor and the life cycle in rural Malian societies. In
what follows, I attempt to do just that while focusing on the villages
and villagers of what is commonly known as ‘‘Dogon country.’’