The West African regional Court of Justice convicted the state of Niger yesterday of failing to protect a 12-year-old girl from being sold into slavery, in what campaigners hailed as a victory for human rights.
The Ecowas Court of Justice said Niger had failed in its obligations to Hadijatou Mani, sold into slavery as a child in 1996 for around $500 and regularly beaten and sexually abused.
"I am very happy with this decision," Ms Mani, now 24, told reporters at the court. She spoke via an interpreter in the Hausa language spoken widely in Niger, in the Sahel region on the southern fringe of the Sahara.
Ms Mani was once jailed for bigamy by a Niger court when her former master opposed her marriage to another man, insisting she had automatically become his own wife when he freed her in 2005.
The case against the state was brought with the help of British-based anti-slavery organisations as a test case to press African governments to stamp out slavery, which campaigners say is rife in some African countries despite legal prohibitions.
The court sentenced Niger to pay 10 million CFA francs (€15,150) in damages. There is no right of appeal.
"These events were in the past. This was about righting a wrong, and the Court of Justice saw fit to say this is what should be done. Niger will accept that," the country's African Integration Minister Saidou Hachimou told reporters.
"It is now 2008 and I think Niger has made significant progress with the law voted in 2003 abolishing slavery," he added.
London-based Anti-Slavery International says 43,000 people are enslaved in Niger despite the 2003 law. Activists say slavery is common in some other countries, including Mauritania and Sudan.
"It was very difficult to challenge my former master and to speak out when people see you as nothing more than a slave. But I knew that this was the only way to protect my child from suffering the same fate as myself," Ms Mani said in comments published by Anti-Slavery International, which helped her case.
Anti-Slavery International said Ms Mani had been born the daughter of a slave and was bought by El Hadj Souleymane Naroua, a friend of her mother's master, at the age of 12.
She worked for Naroua for nearly 10 years doing unpaid household chores and agricultural labour and was used as a sex-slave, known locally as a "wahiya", bearing three of his children, the organisation said.
Ms Mani said she would use the damages to build a house and send her children to school "so they can have the education I was never allowed as a slave".