U.S. Dep't of State, 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: Benin

BENIN (Tier 2 Watch List) The Government of Benin does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. These efforts included identifying adult trafficking victims, screening vulnerable populations for trafficking indicators, and conducting awareness raising activities. However, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period. The government initiated fewer investigations and prosecutions and did not convict any traffickers.

The government identified fewer trafficking victims and referred significantly fewer victims to services. The government remained without formal procedures for the identification and referral of trafficking victims to care. Additionally, the government did not have adequate protection services, including shelter, for adults. Therefore Benin was downgraded to Tier 2 Watch List.

PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS: Increase efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking crimes, and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms. * Develop and implement SOPs for proactive identification of trafficking victims and their subsequent referral to care and train stakeholders on their use. * Increase the availability of protection services for all trafficking victims, especially for adults, including by partnering with and allocating sufficient resources, including funding or in-kind support to NGOs and international organizations. * Expand training for law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and judicial staff to increase their ability to investigate, prosecute, and convict traffickers, including fraudulent labor recruiters. * Proactively identify trafficking victims by screening for trafficking indicators among vulnerable populations. * Consistently enforce strong regulations and oversight of labor recruitment companies, including by holding fraudulent labor recruiters criminally accountable. * Establish a hotline that is equipped to receive calls regarding adult trafficking. * Develop an information management system for the Ministries of Justice, Interior, Labor, Foreign Affairs, and other relevant government agencies – in coordination with international organizations – to improve access and utilization of law enforcement and judicial statistics. * Screen any North Korean workers for signs of trafficking and refer them to appropriate services, in a manner consistent with obligations under United Nations Security Council resolution 2397.

PROSECUTION

The government decreased law enforcement efforts. Existing laws criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Articles 499-504 of the Penal Code criminalized all forms of labor trafficking and some forms of sex trafficking and prescribed penalties of 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment; these penalties were sufficiently stringent, and with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with other grave crimes, such as rape. The 2006 Act Relating to the Transportation of Minors and the Suppression of Child Trafficking (Act 2006-04) criminalized all forms of child sex trafficking as well as labor trafficking and prescribed penalties of 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment.

These penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with those for other grave crimes, such as rape. The government reported initiating investigations of 20 cases involving 66 suspects, including five suspects for sex trafficking, 15 suspects for forced labor, and 46 suspects for unspecified forms of trafficking; this compared with initiating investigations of 176 suspects in an unknown number of cases during the previous reporting period. The government also reported continuing investigations of five individuals in an unknown number of cases from previous reporting periods. The government reported prosecuting 17 individuals under the penal code.

This compared with prosecuting 176 individuals during the previous reporting period; however, this may have included other crimes. The government also reported prosecuting 13 individuals for trafficking-related crimes under non-trafficking laws and continued prosecutions of 11 individuals from previous reporting periods. The government did not report convicting any traffickers, compared with convicting 94 traffickers in the previous reporting period. Officials reported judges often did not uniformly interpret the trafficking law, which resulted in traffickers being charged with other crimes.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) noted the lack of an effective data collection system resulted in the need for officials to contact individual courts to obtain case details. Many police stations lacked the technology and capacity necessary to maintain electronic databases; judicial personnel and most courts continued to record cases on paper, creating challenges in compiling and sharing law enforcement statistics. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in human trafficking crimes. Some civil servants may have exploited children in forced labor and sex trafficking through the traditional practice of vidomegon , which involves sending children to wealthier families to perform household services in exchange for educational or vocational opportunities.

Following an investigation into labor trafficking allegations involving a Beninese diplomat in the United States that occurred during previous reporting periods, authorities in the United States did not bring criminal charges. The government continued to partner with an international organization to train judges on institutional and judicial frameworks, victim protection and assistance, victim repatriation, and tools for detecting, investigating, and prosecuting trafficking cases. The National Police Academy provided training to law enforcement on child protection. Officials reported law enforcement efforts were hindered by limited resources and officials did not have a dedicated budget to address trafficking crimes.

The government cooperated with the governments of Gabon, Togo, Nigeria, and Niger on investigations and prosecutions. The government had agreements with the Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, and Togo to collaborate on anti-trafficking law enforcement activities.

PROTECTION

The government decreased overall efforts to identify and protect trafficking victims. The government reported identifying 504 trafficking victims, including one sex trafficking victim (one adult), 123 labor trafficking victims (disaggregated data unavailable) and 380 victims of unspecified forms of trafficking (238 children and 142 adults). This compared with identifying 1,451 victims in the previous reporting period. Unlike in previous years, the government referred only 98 victims to social services, compared with referring all identified trafficking victims to services during the previous two reporting periods.

The government reported NGOs identified an additional 98 victims of trafficking. The government did not have standard operating procedures for victim identification and referral to care. Despite the lack of formal procedures, government officials, including law enforcement, conducted some screening for trafficking indicators to proactively identify victims among vulnerable groups. The Central Office for the Protection of Minors (OCPM), MOJ, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and various international donors and NGOs coordinated to identify, assist, and repatriate child trafficking victims.

OCPM operated a temporary shelter for child trafficking victims in Cotonou with a capacity of 120 children. The shelter offered child victims legal services, medical, and psychological assistance and served as a short-term shelter while officials worked to place children in long-term NGO shelters. NGOs coordinated with Ministry of Social Affairs and Microfinance representatives to reunite children with their families. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Microfinance’s network of Social Promotion Centers ( Centres de Promotion Sociale ) continued to provide basic services for adult and child trafficking victims in all of Benin’s 77 communes, with additional Social Promotion Centers in more populated communes such as Parakou, Cotonou, and Porto Novo.

Female trafficking victims had access to services from the National Institute for Women, a government agency that provided overall protection for victims of abuse. There were no shelters available for adult trafficking victims and victims in rural areas had limited access to services. Observers noted limited shelter capacity hindered service provision and access to justice for some victims. The Ministry of Health had SOPs to provide health services to individuals in commercial sex that included a presumption that any minor involved in commercial sex was a sex trafficking victim; however, screening for trafficking indicators remained inconsistent and there was no corresponding directive or SOPs for adults.

Due to a lack of formal identification procedures, authorities likely detained some unidentified trafficking victims. The government continued implementing its social services data management system to track child protection cases, including child trafficking. Data was publicly available, yet remained incomplete as not all staff were equipped or trained to input data. With the assistance of an international organization, the government provided training to 25 staff members on the data management system.

Victims participating in criminal justice proceedings could provide written testimony; however, illiteracy prevented some victims from making use of this option. The government could assist victims with filing complaints against perpetrators but did not provide legal assistance to any victims of trafficking. The government operated one-stop care centers to support victim-witnesses; however, not all victims could access these services and some service providers lacked adequate training. Beninese law did not provide legal alternatives to the removal of trafficking victims to countries in which victims would face retribution or hardship, although the government considered cases involving foreign child trafficking victims for immigration relief on an ad hoc basis.

PREVENTION

The government maintained efforts to prevent trafficking in persons. The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Technical Commission coordinated the government’s anti-trafficking efforts. It was chaired by the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Planning and Development and comprised of the ministries of Development, Justice, Interior, Finance, Labor, Foreign Affairs, and Social Affairs, among other agencies. The commission met three times in 2023.

The Minister of State, in charge of Development and Coordination of Government Action’s General Directorate for Evaluation and the Observatory for Social Change, had working level responsibility for the government’s anti-trafficking efforts. The National Monitoring and Coordination Working Group for Child Protection, which monitored child trafficking cases, met twice in 2023. The government reported it continued to implement the country’s 2020-2024 anti-trafficking NAP. Child Protection Committees, comprised of local officials, police, and NGO representatives in all of Benin’s 77 communes, met regularly to discuss strategies to address child protection issues, including child trafficking.

The government conducted awareness raising activities on human trafficking risks in domestic work and in areas with high risks of trafficking. In coordination with an international organization, the Ministry of Social Affairs operated a child protection hotline, which fielded 8,035 calls; the government did not report how many calls related to child trafficking. The hotline was operational 24 hours a day and staffed with French and local language speakers. There were no hotlines available to report cases of trafficking of adults.

The government conducted an unknown number of labor inspections, including in sectors with high instances of child labor, and reported identifying 900 instances of violations of child labor laws, with 35 cases being prosecuted. The government provided training for labor inspectors on child labor laws. The government regulated formal recruitment agencies. The government also incentivized apprenticeship masters who complied with child labor laws and apprenticeship agreements by granting awards following inspections.

Authorities did not take action against informal employment agents who facilitated trafficking. Some illicit recruiters continued to recruit Beninese victims for employment abroad with fraudulent offers of employment. The government did not report any measures to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs trained diplomats on human trafficking-related issues.

A foreign government provided anti-trafficking training to Beninese troops prior to their deployment as peacekeepers. Although not explicitly reported as human trafficking, an international organization reported there were five open cases of alleged sexual exploitation with trafficking indicators by Beninese peacekeepers deployed to UN peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020 and 2021, the Central African Republic in 2020, and Mali in 2016. The government did not report on accountability measures taken, if any, for the open cases by the end of the reporting period. TRAFFICKING PROFILE: As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Benin, and traffickers exploit victims from Benin abroad.

Trafficking in the country is predominantly internal. The majority of child trafficking victims are from rural areas and are most often victims of labor trafficking. Children from low-income families and those without birth documents are especially at risk; officials report parent illiteracy and single-parent households also increase children’s risk of exploitation. Some community members and relatives use the promise of education or employment to recruit Beninese children from northern rural areas to the more urban southern corridor and exploit them in forced labor in domestic servitude, markets, farming, as “apprentices” engaged in various trades, and in handicraft manufacturing.

Beninese traffickers include farmers, traders, artisans, small factory owners, and civil servants; some belong to criminal networks and others may have been former trafficking victims. Adults are exploited in sex and labor trafficking. Officials reported that traffickers are increasingly using Voudoun curses to control female Beninese trafficking victims by threatening to curse their families if they leave. The government reported traffickers exploit children living in the lakeside areas of Benin – including the commune of So Ava in southeast Benin – in debt bondage.

Criminal elements operate in urban areas under the guise of informal employment agents and recruit children for domestic work in private residences, where house managers and families exploit them in domestic servitude. Some parents follow a traditional practice known as vidomegon , which involves sending children to wealthier families for educational or vocational opportunities; some of these families then subject the children to forced labor, often in domestic service and open-air markets, or sex trafficking. Some Quranic schools in northern Benin exploit their students, or talibe , in forced begging. Officials and civil society organizations reported that the northern, central, southern, and border regions are high-risk regions for human trafficking.

Beninese children are sent to Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, and to a lesser extent other West and Central African countries for domestic servitude and other forms of forced labor. Benin has been the largest source country for trafficking victims in the Republic of the Congo, with the department of Oueme historically an area in which traffickers recruit child victims. Child marriage remains prevalent nationwide, with some families forcing girls into marriages because of generational poverty; these girls may then be subjected to sex trafficking or domestic servitude. Thirty-one percent of girls in Benin are married before the age of 18.

Reports indicate criminal groups fraudulently recruit young Beninese women for domestic work in Lebanon, Algeria, and Persian Gulf countries and subsequently exploit them in forced labor or sex trafficking. In past reporting periods, traffickers and their accomplices have sent child victims to their destinations alone and met the victims upon arrival. International organizations report some adult labor migrants use airports, primarily in Togo – but also in the neighboring countries of Burkina Faso and Nigeria – to circumvent anti-trafficking screening procedures put in place by the government at Cotonou’s international airport, increasing the migrants’ vulnerability to human trafficking. An international organization reported victims from Thailand have been fraudulently recruited and forced into sexual exploitation in Benin.

Children from Togo, Burkina Faso, and Niger are exploited in forced begging in Northern Benin. North Koreans working in Benin may be operating under exploitative working conditions and display multiple indicators of forced labor. On This Page search > < BENIN (Tier 2 Watch List) PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS: PROSECUTION PROTECTION PREVENTION TRAFFICKING PROFILE: Tags Benin Bureau of African Affairs Human Trafficking Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Reports