The US is up to it’s old tricks again and like it does, tries to trick the us population into believing it is doing a service for this country! Well as we see to this day there has been a coup and the Arab president was ousted (as he should have been) and replaced with an African military leadership(African Leaders as it should be) because if you as me there should never have been an Arab presiding over Africans to begin with. So the us isn’t happy about this and cut off the slave funding they have been giving Niger for the past 13-14 years for the right to spy on all African countries and it’s enemies doing business in most of the Africa as we speak. This is a snipet of some of the problems these colonial powers bring when they come claiming to want to help!

Children in Niger, especially boys and girls from the Arab, Djerma, Peulh, Tuareg, and Toubou ethnic minorities, continue to be exploited as slaves and endure slavery-like practices, particularly in the regions of Tahoua and Agadez.  Some children are born into slavery; others are born free but remain in a dependent status and are forced to work with their parents for their former masters in exchange for food, money, and lodging. A particular form of slavery in Niger is the wahaya practice, in which men buy girls born into slavery, often between ages 9 and 14, as “fifth wives.” Even though Niger’s Supreme Court set a legal precedent by ruling wahaya to be illegal in 2019, the government has made limited efforts to inform the public of the court’s ruling.  Child slaves, including those involved in the practice of wahaya, are forced to work long hours as cattle herders, agricultural workers, or domestic workers, and are often sexually exploited. As with those involved in hereditary slavery, the children of wahaya wives are considered slaves, and are passed from one owner to another as gifts or as part of dowries. During the reporting period, children were also forcibly recruited and used as child soldiers by non-state armed groups.

In Niger, some Koranic teachers known as marabouts subject their students, boys known as talibés, to manual labor or forced begging rather than providing them with a religious education.  Children in Niger participating in seasonal migration or migrant children from West Africa traveling to Algeria and Libya may also be subject to forced begging or commercial sexual exploitation.  In addition, Niger has a form of internal child trafficking called confiage, in which family members send their children to live with relatives or friends with promises of better educational or trade learning opportunities. However, some children are instead subjected to exploitation, including forced labor, sex trafficking, and domestic work.

Although the Constitution guarantees free education, school fees are often required. A lack of school infrastructure and school materials, and the limited availability of teachers, especially in rural areas, impedes access to education, which may increase the vulnerability of children to child labor.  Due to insecurity, hundreds of schools were closed during the reporting period.

The US has been using Niger to fly drones, train troops, conduct espionage drills on the unsuspecting population all while claiming to be helping to secure the the country. Well France has been doing the same thing and it has done nothing to change the countries dire situation. The US is notorious for claiming to help while actually hurting the people with it’s lies and under handed aid packages. This is the tactics it employs to control the resources of a country it needs to fund it’s war-machine. I sincerly hope Nige and it’s new leaders stay the course and continue to fight for independence from these colonial powers so it can gain the ability to change the direction of it’s future! SG64