Enhanced Protections for Child Domestic Workers in Guinea

Following the publication of Human Rights Watch's report on child domestic workers in Guinea, Human Rights Watch used the media to raise enormous public awareness, including by speaking about the issue on most radio stations in Guinea. Along with other groups, we effectively pushed for a new Child Code in Guinea. The new Child Code ensures better legal protections for children and affords them the right to legal representation by non-governmental organizations. Working with the International Organization for Migration and a Guinean NGO, we led a successful effort to repatriate five Malian girls who had been trafficked into Guinea for domestic labor. Our report, which documented cases of girls who were trafficked to Guinea to work as domestics, contributed to the US State Department's downgrading of Guinea's ranking in its annual report on trafficking in persons. We found that tens of thousands of young girls work up to 18 hours a day as domestic workers, commonly without pay, and often are mistreated, beaten, or raped by their employers.