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West African Court Convicts Niger in Slavery Case

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/wo...=1&ref=world_&oref=slogin

Excerpt:

NIAMEY (Reuters) - West Africa's regional Court of Justice convicted the state of Niger on Monday of failing to protect a 12-year-old girl from being sold into slavery, in what campaigners hailed as a victory for human rights.

The ECOWAS Court of Justice said Niger had failed in its obligations to Hadijatou Mani, sold into slavery as a child in 1996 for around $500 and regularly beaten and sexually abused.
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The court sentenced Niger to pay 10 million CFA francs ($19,030) in damages. There is no right of appeal.

Mani said she would use the damages to build a house and send her children to school "so they can have the education I was never allowed as a slave."

Mani was once jailed for bigamy by a Niger court when her former master opposed her marriage to another man, insisting she had automatically become his own wife when he freed her in 2005.

"These events were in the past. This was about righting a wrong, and the Court of Justice saw fit to say this is what should be done. Niger will accept that," Niger's African Integration Minister Saidou Hachimou told reporters.
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"It was very difficult to challenge my former master and to speak out when people see you as nothing more than a slave. But I knew that this was the only way to protect my child from suffering the same fate as myself," she said in comments published by Anti-Slavery International.

"Nobody deserves to be enslaved. We are all equal and deserve to be treated the same ... no woman should suffer the way I did," she said.

Anti-Slavery International said Mani had been born the daughter of a slave and was bought by El Hadj Souleymane Naroua, a friend of her mother's master, at the age of 12.

She worked for Naroua for nearly 10 years doing unpaid household chores and agricultural labor and was used as a verbenium-slave, known locally as a "wahiya," bearing three of his children, the organization said.

Local anti-slavery group TIMIDRIA said the decision would force Niger to face up to the practice of slavery.