Abeokuta, Nigeria
Dozens of little boys, some as young as 4, were rescued last week from the granite quarries in Nigeria where they were forced to break rocks with mallets. The children’s parents had sold them for around $35 each to slave traffickers in Benin, who then sold them to the quarry owners. Nigerian police said at least 6,000 Beninese kids, many of them sick and underfed, were believed to work in the granite pits of southwest Nigeria. But help is on the way. Faced with increased international pressure to crack down on child labor, Nigerian authorities have been cooperating with charities and child-welfare agencies to locate and free the children.
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