MUSLIM SLAVERY DEFEAT IN NIGER

Former slave girl’s lawsuit leads to banning Muslim practice of “fifth wife.”

After a ten year battle, a top court in the Republic of Niger, a West African country, ruled earlier this year against the Muslim practice of taking a “fifth wife,” also called “wahaya.” This brings a legal end to a barbaric form of slavery in Niger, in which thousands of young girls have long and cruelly suffered as sex and domestic slaves.

“This custom is contrary to the laws of the republic and the international conventions regularly ratified by Niger,” the Court of Appeals ruled.

This ruling represents the end of a ten-year battle started when a former slave girl “fifth wife,” Hdijatou Meni, brought a lawsuit about the practice to an international court in 2008 and won. The Community Court of Justice, a branch of ECOWAS, a political and trade group of West African counties, ruled that Meni was a “fifth wife” slave for nine years despite “the legal prohibition on this practice.”

‘I am very thankful for this decision,” said Meni of the 2008 decision. “It was very difficult to challenge my former master and speak out when people see you as nothing more than a slave. But I knew this was the only way to protect my child from suffering the same fate as myself.”

One African newspaper reported Niger’s Court of Appeals that made the 2019 ruling based its decision on Meni’s case.

While Muslim men are legally allowed under Islamic law to have four wives, many in Niger buy slave girls, most under fifteen years of age, as non-legal “fifth wives.” These men may have also multiple “fifth wives.” Wealthy men, it was reported, buy such “wives” as a sign of prestige. And while one anti-slavery activist states the exact number of “fifth wives” is unknown, it is “very common” in some areas of Niger.

Besides “wahaya,” there are also two other kinds of slavery in Niger. One is chattel slavery, whose numbers are estimated between 43,000 and 133,000.

The third is called “soft” or “passive” slavery, in which former slaves remain in a kind of “tributary and forced labor situation” with their former masters. Their “individual freedoms are still controlled” and a violation of this arrangement by a former slave could lead to his being severely beaten. It is estimated there are approximately 870,000 “passive” slaves in Niger, which has been called the country’s “most prominent” form of slavery.

Slave children also work in Niger’s gold mines. Boys are also sometimes castrated, an old Islamic practice. Slave masters are also reported to sometimes separate slave children from...

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