Burkina Faso holds child protection workshop

A child protection workshop was opened on Wednesday in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, with participants vowing to step up fight against child labor and trafficking.

The workshop was organized by the Burkinabe government with the funding from Germany.

Child labor and trafficking is a phenomenon prevalent throughout the sub-region, where the traffickers see Burkina Faso as a supply and transit hub, participants said.

A child protection fund was put in place in 2005 under an agreement between the West African country and Germany to curb child exploitation.

The workshop, among others, reviewed the use of the fund, which went to 100 projects in the first two phases at the cost of 1.6 billion FCFA (3.2 million U.S. dollars).

The third phase needs more than 3.2 billion FCFA with focus on judicial measures to protect the rights of children and improve their economic and social conditions, participants said.

Source: Xinhua