An Exerpt from Corp Watch (Holding Corporations Accountable)

The "locateurs" wait in the Sikasso bus station where crammed minibuses leave for Ivory Coast every 30 minutes. They search the crowds for Mali children traveling alone, looking lost or begging for food.

"Would you like a great job in Cote d'Ivoire?" they ask, using the official name of the former French colony. "I can find you one."

This is a part of Africa where many men have two or three wives and dozens of children, and it's common to see boys and girls as young as 6 selling coconut milk in shells on the streets.

Malian children whose parents are too poor to afford proper schooling are often placed with better-off families to learn skills such as farming. The apprenticed children are treated properly and almost always return home.

For decades, the more prosperous Ivory Coast has offered a living -- but also a chance to see the world outside their villages, to learn skills and to bring home money after a year or two.

That the tradition has been perverted is made clear at the border. In theory, children younger than 18 cannot cross unless accompanied by an adult. No questions are asked if the adult is a relative, so traffickers often order the children to call them "uncle" or "aunt."

"The police sometimes check the IDs, and sometimes they are the ones taking bribes," said Felix Ackebo of UNICEF.

Every month, traffickers bring as many as 10 boys to Siaka Cisse's small, ramshackle house in Daloa, well south of the border.

Virtually all the boys are illiterate, but the 60-year-old former bus driver gets them to sign -- more like a scratchy squiggle -- a "contract" scrawled in French on notebook paper. It says they agree to work for about $180 a year.

Cisse, who has 20 children of his own, said he receives only a small "gift" from each farmer -- $1 or $2 per child. But a boy named Mombi Bakayoko said his master paid Cisse about $13 for him, and a $20 "transport fee" to the trafficker who brought him to Ivory Coast.

Three children Cisse placed said they had to give him a cut of what they had earned.

"I have no deal with the kids," responded Cisse. "The farmers pay me."

Does he see anything wrong with dealing in children?

"I don't know their ages," he said. "I only pick sturdy kids."

Cisse said it's not his fault if farmers abuse the children. He said he had gone to farms a few times to retrieve children after they sent messages to him.