“These Children Don’t Belong in the Streets”

“If abuse occurs in the daara, talibés often prefer to stay in the street rather than return to a daara where they are always beaten, mistreated, with no freedom, no rights… or it’s the marabout who sends them out begging and exploits them… I always say, and I maintain this position: these children don’t belong in the streets.”
– Social worker, Mbour, Senegal, December 2018

For over a decade, Senegalese and international journalists, human rights advocates, and child protection experts have documented and denounced the ongoing exploitation, abuse and neglect of children living in many of Senegal’s traditional Quranic schools, or daaras. Thousands of these children, known as talibés, continue to live in conditions of extreme squalor, deprived of adequate food and medical care.