[3] In 1992, a prevention project, supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was implemented among sex workers in the largest city, Cotonou.
[5] The NGO, Centre d'Etudes, de Recherches et d'Interventions pour le Développement (CERID), provides sex workers with free medical treatment and counselling.
[7] Benin is a source, transit, and destination country for women, children subjected to sex trafficking.
Most identified victims are Beninese girls subjected to sex trafficking in Cotonou and across Benin's southern corridor.
Cases of child sex tourism involving both boys and girls along the coast and within the department of Mono have been reported in previous years.
The department of Oueme in southeast Benin was reportedly a primary area of recruitment for child trafficking victims subsequently exploited in the Republic of the Congo.
OCPM reports that traffickers no longer travel with child victims being moved internally or to nearby countries.
The 2006 Act Relating to the Transportation of Minors and the Suppression of Child Trafficking (act 2006–04) criminalizes child trafficking but focuses on movement of children rather than their ultimate exploitation and prescribes penalties of six months to two years imprisonment or fines if children are moved for the purpose of labor exploitation; these penalties are not sufficiently stringent.