Trafficking in girls and women has easily become the modern parallel to the Atlantic slave trade. Ahmed Tahir explored the contours of this terrain, and wrote this revealing account, which highlights the methods and routes out of Africa, and the experiences the ladies pass through at their stations

Background

Pretty Osaro was in the 200 level class in a prominent university when she lost her father in a car accident in 1999.

Thereafter things became so difficult such that she had to leave the university and take up job as a cashier in a super market in Benin City to help with the upkeep of the family. One fateful afternoon, precisely 2nd March 2000, an expensively dressed lady of Osaro's age glided into the supermarket clutching a mobile phone. She turned out to be Ogechi, Osaro's childhood friend, with whom she had lost contact for years, and who now claimed to work as a model in Italy. She promised to link Osaro with a friend who will facilitate her movement to Italy where she would work and earn big money.

Ogechi kept her promise and a week later Osaro's passport and visa were ready.

In Italy her travelling papers were seized, and she was thereafter sold like a chattel to a "madam" who forced her to sleep with different men. She was however caught one day while on her way from the hospital where she had gone for treatment by the Italian Police, and she was repatriated back to the country along with some Nigerian girls.

Like Osaro, thousands of women and girls are being lured and coerced from the developing countries and also eastern Europe, to Italy, Spain, Paris, Zurich etc. every year, to engage in prostitution. Conservative estimates put the number of women and girls smuggled each year into the sex trade in Europe, at over a million world-wide. This is twice the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) estimated 500,000 for 1995.

Before now, the most prevalent form of trafficking known, according to an Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Mrs. A.J. Ojomo was that which related to drugs.

Trafficking in human beings according to her, came to the fore due to the gradual magnification of its practice, and the increasing number of women and children trafficked. Even then, trafficking to Europe, and the United States of both women and children, were mostly from countries of the eastern European bloc, South America, and the far east.

These migrants, she said, pay huge sums of money to organisations and syndicates who ferry them to their destinations in US and Europe, where they are used in the sex trade business.

She added that trafficking before the last decade was a limited vocation practised by a few gangs. This scenario however was said to have changed with "the global economic recession which adversely affected the economies of Asian countries, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conflict in the Balkans, the political transformation in most eastern countries, and the internecine conflicts with grave socio-economic consequences, in several African countries." These developments coincided with a rise in the number of trafficking cases, as well as a spread of the problem to areas, which were previously less affected.

African women and girls today, are said to constitute the bulk of women and girls presently in Europe. Conservative estimates put the number of African women in the trade to well over 500,000.

Nigeria women alone were said to constitute over 57 per cent of this figure. In fact, an estimated 10,000 Nigerian prostitutes were said to be in over 300 or so, brothels in Germany, Spain, and other parts of Europe and South America.

Syndicates

Trafficking in women is mainly done by major smuggling syndicates. These smuggling groups according to A.J. Ojomo, are amorphous and highly mobile. Unlike those engaged in drug trafficking she said, these tend to be highly organised, which makes their early detection, monitoring and apprehension, difficult.

Recruitment

Various recruitment methods, including outright abduction and purchase from family members, are used. But many more are seduced or tricked by false promises of better job opportunities. However, some know they are being recruited into the sex industry, and even that they will be obliged to work in order to pay back large recruitment and transportation fees, but are deceived about their conditions of work.

The recruited women are made to undergo ritual oaths of secrecy, so they cannot escape even if they want to. Travelling documents like passports and visas are procured through dubious means.

Routes

Some African countries are used as stop over points for those trafficked. For instance, Nigerian women are sometimes transported across West African countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast and even South Africa, from where they are transported by sea to Italy. Some North African countries, are also used as transit points for onward movement to Spain and France.

On arrival at their various destinations in Europe and US, their documents are confiscated, and they are thereafter sold out to the 'madams' who then put them through various orientation programmes, on how to satisfy 'clients' before they are put on the streets, or placed in brothels, for prostitution.

"The madam often lives alongside the women, and is responsible for handling all the money earned from their prostitution to repay the debts incurred in their transportation and back. This debt ranges from 80 to 100 million Italian lira (US $50,000)," Dr. Giovanni Germano, Italian Ambassador to Nigeria explained at a conference in Abuja recently.

"The web of dependence is a complex one. Traffickers generally seek to exercise control over a victim's legal identity by confiscating her passport or official papers. Her stay in the country of destination becomes illegal - serving to increase her reliance on the traffickers. Debt bondage is widely used to control trafficked persons, and to ensure their continued profitability. Physical restraint, violence and intimidation are frequently reported."

"If she resists, she is isolated, beaten, and often raped. Thus broken, she begins her brothel career, held by means of physical abuse and debt bondage in involuntary sexual servitude," The Economist of 26th August 2000 explained.

These traffickers operate with high levels of sophistication, aided by improved communication, and the benefits of information technology, which make their arrest and prosecution difficult. What is more the penalty for this offence is said to be relatively light, as compared to drug trafficking. Added to this is the fact that activities of these traffickers are rarely reported to the appropriate authority, as this is because victims of trafficking are treated as anything other than criminals, by the authorities of the receiving state, and are often detained, prosecuted, and deported in the end.

This reality, according to the World Conference on Racism which held in Durban, South Africa, sometime last year, as well as the fear of reprisals from traffickers, show that "trafficked persons have little incentive to co-operate with law enforcement authorities in the destination countries.' It went further: "A lack of knowledge of legal rights and entitlements, cultural and linguistic obstacles, and the absence of support mechanisms, combined to further isolate trafficked women, and to prevent them from seeking or receiving justice."

This does not mean that traffickers are not apprehended at all. Police reports indicate that efforts by the men of the force has led to the arrest of about 21 traffickers within the past two years. The force, it was said, has also been able to identify the mode of recruitment of victims by the traffickers, recruitment sources, and likely routes, and destinations.

What is more, the repatriation efforts of the Nigerian government, and the desire of some European countries to rid their countries of prostitution, is yielding dividends. WOTCLEF and police reports indicate that over 5,000 Nigerian women were repatriated so far from Rome, Holland, Saudi Arabia, Italy and some African countries, between March 1999 and September last year. 33 were also deported from Guinea, which is one of the transit points to Europe, last year.

But some of these repatriated girls often find their way back, as it is always difficult for them to reintegrate into society. Most of them are stigmatised, and are often cut off from community networks, and this increases their suffering, and makes it hard for them to start a new life. More so, the syndicates always incur losses when these girls are repatriated, so they often come for them.

However, non governmental organisations like Women Trafficking and Child Labour Foundation (WOTCLEF) co-ordinated by the wife of the Vice-President, Hajiya Titi Atiku Abubakar, have been trying hard to provide the returnees with rehabilitation. The foundation provides the returnees with basic acquisition skills, and soft loans, at the end of their courses, with the hope that it would stem the massive exodus to foreign shores.

Conferences and meetings are also being held, and these examine ways of combating the growing phenomenon of trafficking in women and girls, and also providing the deportees with means of reintegrating into the society.

At one such recent conference in Abuja, the Federal Government, and the destination countries like Italy, agreed on collaborative efforts to stem the tide. Also at a public hearing in October, last year, the Senate Committee on Trafficking was mandated to find out the extent to which the business is thriving in the country. This was followed by a two-day meeting in Accra, Ghana, where ECOWAS member countries pledged to fight the menace through stiffer laws, and effective policing of its borders, and the resolution was adopted at the Heads of State meeting in December.

Observers are however of the view, that these efforts will have little effect, if similar attention is not paid to intra-national trafficking, as this had over the years contributed to the expansion of cross-country trafficking.

On the way forward, experts suggested that government look into "such factors as poverty, low level of education and inadequate availability of educational, and training opportunities, particularly for women and girls, access to resources, particularly capital."

Also suggested was the need for government and international organisations to provide "Adequate funds to relevant non-governmental organisations, research institutes or centres, to carry out research on the situation of trafficking of women and girls in Nigeria (both at the intra-national and international levels)," and the need to strengthen existing legislation on trafficking is also advanced, among others.