6 Jan 2012 • Trafficking and exploitation Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso: Responsibility and solidarity with young domestic servants

- Published by Darcissac, Marion

Every year, after the harvest season, hundreds of young girls migrate to the urban centres of Burkina Faso to get work as domestic servants. These girls often suffer abuse and all kinds of violence. Terre des hommes has recently had a code of ethics signed by members of their communities living in the towns. This code relies on their solidarity and responsibility to protect the girls.

Since 2002, Terre des hommes has been seeing to the monitoring of 1000 young girls from the province of Sourou who are now working as domestic servants in the larger cities of Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso. But what Tdh mainly wants is to improve the mechanisms of traditional and official protection for these adolescents. So as to get their commitment and to increase the responsibility of the families and the communities towards the girls, Tdh has appointed ‘hosts’ – people also from Sourou province and originally from the same villages, they have the job of watching over these young domestics.

By signing the code of ethics, the hosts have undertaken to act as guardians for the girls and to be sure they have decent living and working conditions. The hosts are particularly responsible for sending girls under 16 back to their villages, for clearing defining the contract of employment between the girls and their employers, for making regular visits to them and denouncing any situations of abuse, exploitation, trafficking or maltreatment they may find to Tdh, the social services or to any competent organisation.

Code d’éthique des logeurs