- Title: Unreported World: School For Beggars (Senegal)
- Date: 26th November 2010
- Summary: Unreported World investigates Senegal's Islamic schools. Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Simon Philips reveal how many young boys living in the religious schools are subjected to abuse, and forced by their guardians to beg on the streets for their survival. And they meet those trying to save the children from exploitation and abuse. Senegal is a modern, relatively wealthy African country yet the team meet huge numbers of boys in the capital, Dakar, who tell them they have to beg for their education. Yaro, like around 50,000 other children, is one of the 'Talibes': religious students whose parents have sent them to boarding school to learn the Koran. He tells Rhodes how he's only been home once in four years and has spent that time begging with his classmates from a religious school, known as a daara. Rhodes and Philips meet other boys who are in a similar position; many have quotas to fill for the day. They claim that if they do not return with the desired amount of money or food they will be beaten by the religious guardians, known as Marabouts. The team also meets Kahn, a community worker in a poor suburb of Dakar. He leads them through the back streets to a rundown house that turns out to be a school. The teacher tells Rhodes he is going to sell everything his boys have collected and hopes to make the equivalent of five pounds from doing so. Rhodes discovers how brutal some punishments can be for boys who don't make their targets. He meets two young boys who were so severely beaten they are scarred for life. They break down and tell him they would be tied up if they hadn't managed to bring back the correct amount required by their guardians. Their teacher was one of the few who was prosecuted and the boys are now cared for in a government-run children's home. Rhodes also talks to Professor Ndiaye, an Islamic scholar who blames the unquestioning trust Senegalese people have in their Marabouts. He explains that when children lived in the countryside villagers would support the daara by feeding its students, but as people moved into cities following successive droughts this rural system broke down. The team visits another Koranic school, which is formal but well run and clean. The teacher explains to Rhodes the main problem with bad schools is poverty. Families are keen for their children to receive a Koranic education but few can pay and few marabouts can afford to offer decent facilities. Rhodes and Philips also meet Babakar, a 16-year-old from Gambia. He was sent to Senegal to learn the Koran four years ago, but ran away when the begging and beating became too much. He's now sleeping rough, too afraid to return to his school and too poor to make his way home to his parents. Rhodes concludes that not all the boys from Senegal's daaras will end up living on the streets like this, but while the system remains harsh and largely unreformed, many of them probably will.
- Description:Critically acclaimed foreign affairs series offering an insight into the lives of people in some of the most neglected parts of the planet.
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Quicksilver Films Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 19
- Transmission Date:26/11/2010
- Rights:UK and Eire
- Decade: 2010s