An Awful Human Trade

In West Africa, an alleged slave-ship snafu reflects the trauma of an ongoing business of marketing children as forced labor

Juliette Zinwue still remembers her excitement when the men came to her village in southern Benin, West Africa, three years ago. "They said they would take me to work in Abidjan, and they paid my parents," she says, angelic-looking in her slightly tattered, short cotton dress, which is black with bold pink and red flowers. "There were a lot of children going. I wanted to go with them. We came to Abidjan in a car. I was excited to be going somewhere in a car." But the adventure soon became a nightmare. Put to work in the home of a relatively...

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