Talibe
طلاب ṭullāb) is a boy, usually from Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Mali or Mauritania, who studies the Quran at a daara (West African equivalent of madrasa).
[6][7] Donna L. Perry disagrees with those who portray parents of talibés as “ignorant traditionalists or economic victims,” and marabouts as being “warped by the stresses of modernity.”[8] Based on interviews with Wolof farmers, she contends that the popularity of raising talibés remains essentially linked to West African values on child-rearing, rather than a response to “rampant population growth, intensified poverty, and neoliberal policy.”[9] The framing of the plight of talibés in socio-economic terms is, according to Perry, an intentional strategy of NGOs to “avoid accusations of cultural imperialism.”[10] Daaras have existed for hundreds of years.
[12] In 1992, UNICEF launched a five-year operation to raise awareness about talibés, and sought to work alongside marabouts to improve talibes’ living conditions.
These agencies sought to avoid the shortcomings of UNICEF's model which supplied marabouts with resources which were not always used for the benefit of talibés.
[14] Begging used to be characterised by the talibé asking for food to supplement the daara's supplies when it could not sustain its own demands from the harvests provided by the marabout's fields.
However, it became more economically viable for urban daaras to remain open all year round: Over time, the marabouts started to stay in the cities…Why return to the village, where they had to work the land for long hours, when [in the city] a child comes daily with money, sugar, and rice?
"[26] Perry cautiously agrees that "reverence of marabouts and respect for the talibé institution may be a dominant ideology, but it is not now, nor ever was, totalising or uncontested".
The Senegalese government was accused of neglecting and not doing enough to tackle the widespread and chronic abuse faced by children at the religious schools.
[29] HRW argues that states, parents and marabouts are in breach of CRC in failing to oversee the adequate housing, care and nourishment of talibés.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented boys exhibiting scars and welts, usually resulting from the application of electric cables, clubs and canes.
In other cases, a marabout might not supervise the children living in the daara, leaving the senior talibés to steal from the younger, as well as abuse them physically and sexually.
[46] It has been reported by the Senegalese non-governmental organisation XALAAT,[47] a leading institution that works to confront the issue in this country, that while the subject being very controversial, in some communities there are conclusive evidences that ill-treatment has always been very common practice in most of the traditional Koranic Schools called Daara.
Additionally, this ngo is arguing to have efficiently brought practitioners in this field to connect together the different clusters that have until now ignored while considering the problem.
[49] Given the ILO's views on forced begging, HRW has argued that marabouts, when transporting talibés with the primary intention of obtaining labour from them, are engaging in child trafficking.
[53] Hundreds of talibés are estimated to flee abusive marabouts every year, compounding the issue of street children in urban areas.
[55] Living conditions in urban daaras are often characterised by malnourishment, lack of clothing and footwear, exposure to illnesses, and poor medical treatment.
