Author : European Centre of Law and Justice
Site of publication : UPR info
Type of publication : Rapport
Date of publication : 2022
The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) is an international, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting human rights around the world. This report discusses the status of human rights in the Republic of Benin (Benin) for the 42nd session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Benin is located in western Africa with a population of approximately 13.7 million people. Within the country, approximately 27% identify as Muslim, 25% as Catholic, 13% as Protestant, 11% as Vodoun, 9% as other Christian, 2% as other traditional religions, 2% as other, and 5% as having no religion.
Abortion
Under Article 15 of the Constitution of Benin, “[e]ach individual has the right to life, liberty, security and the integrity of his person.” Benin is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and is responsible for upholding the principles enshrined in it. Benin also has a responsibility to uphold pro-life principles enshrined in other international agreements such as the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development.
Human Trafficking
Articles 499 – 503 of Benin’s Penal Code establish the crime and punishments for human trafficking. Benin is also a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Under Article 32, Section 1 of the CRC, that States Parties recognize the right of children to be protected from economic exploitation, hazardous work or work interfering with the child’s education or harmful to the child’s overall health. Article 34 provides that States Parties shall protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse. Furthermore, under Article 8 of the ICCPR, “[n]o one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited. No one shall be held in servitude.”
Abortion
In 2021, Benin expanded access to abortion up until twelve weeks gestation when the pregnancy “is likely to aggravate or cause a situation of material, educational, professional or moral distress incompatible with the interest of the woman and/or the unborn child.” This is an addition to abortions that were permissible in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality, or to save the life of the mother.
Studies indicate that “[i]n Benin in 2015-2019, there were a total of 589,000 pregnancies annually. Of these, 227,000 pregnancies were unintended and 84,300 ended in abortion.” Thus, despite the fact that prior to 2021, abortion was quite restricted by law, a high number of unexpected pregnancies – thirty-seven percent – ended in abortion. Now that abortion has been further expanded, we expect that the number of abortions carried out in Benin will rise.
Human Trafficking
In fact, “Benin is a country of origin, transit and destination of child trafficking. It is estimated that more than 40,000 victims of child trafficking live in this country—two percent of the 6- to 17-year-old population—most of whom are girls from uneducated families.”
As a result of extreme poverty, it is common for families suffering and desperate to provide for their families to “rent” their kids to individuals in other west African countries. Employers of trafficked children promise to pay the parents a fixed monthly sum and provide food, clothes, and education for the children. However, these promises are usually broken and very few parents know what actually happens to their child after they have been rented.
In addition to economic and food insecurity putting children at risk of trafficking, a lack of security and enforcement along the border makes it extremely easy for child traffickers to transport children to and from Benin. In fact, “[t]he borders between Nigeria and Benin Republic are porous, with or without police checkpoints, and citizens of any country are easily admitted. It is, therefore, impossible to have accurate statistics of how many foreign immigrants are in the country, how many are children, or where they are from.”
In fact, “Benin is a country of origin, transit and destination of child trafficking. It is estimated that more than 40,000 victims of child trafficking live in this country—two percent of the 6- to 17-year-old population—most of whom are girls from uneducated families”
In August 2021, authorities arrested two individuals who were trafficking ten Nigerian girls through Benin.The ten victims were rescued in Benin before the traffickers were able to transport them to Dubai.
Some passports for the victims were secured from Nigeria while others were from the Republic of Benin with the assistance of some immigration officers who backdated the stamps on their passports.
In January 2020, authorities in the Ivory Coast rescued 137 children trafficked from Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Ghana, and Togo. “The children would have been destined to become child labourers and prostitutes.”
In April 2019, INTERPOL conducted an operation that rescued over 200 victims, many of whom were minors, of human trafficking between Benin and Nigeria. These stories represent a small fraction of the instances of human trafficking that are taking place in Benin.