Day: December 12, 2018

West Africa (Conversation) –There are global efforts fighting modern slavery, but one traditional system is still holding strong in West Africa: Trokosi. The Conversation Africa’s Moina Spooner spoke to Wisdom Mensah about the system and what can be done to finally put a stop to it. What is Trokosi? Trokosi is a traditional system where virgin girls, some as young as six years old, are sent into Troxovi shrines (shrines for gods) as slaves to make amends for wrongs committed by a member of the virgin girl’s family. Until the…

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United States (TexasTribune) – It had been six months since Maria fled for the U.S. She spent the first two weeks running from her tiny hometown in southern Guatemala, where she said gangs had threatened to kill her and her 7-year-old son, Jerson. After traveling through Mexico, they requested asylum at the U.S. border. They were separated for the next two months, with Maria detained at an adult detention center in Arizona and Jerson sent to a shelter in New York. Given the choice to reunite with her son in detention…

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