Monrovia — The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) on Monday, October 14, 2024, begins its 16th Annual Meeting of the Regional Network of National Focal Institutions against Trafficking in Persons plus (RNNI-TIP+) in Monrovia.
The Annual Review meeting of the Regional Network of National Focal Institutions against Trafficking in Persons plus was established in 2007.
The 16th edition brought together several delegates from across the West African region to brainstorm on how to tackle the issue of trafficking in persons, the menace that is derailing the fabric of the region.
Addressing the gathering, the Resident Representative of ECOWAS in Liberia Ambassador Josephine Nkrumah said since the establishment of the Annual Review Meeting of the ECOWAS Regional Network of National Focal Institutions Against Trafficking in Persons Plus there have been lots of improvements and lessons learned year after year.
"I have looked at reports of previous meetings and I am satisfied and confident that this meeting will build on past achievements and afford us the opportunity to draw a new road map through our priorities for the next year," Ambassador Nkrumah said.
She added: "There is no doubt that trafficking in persons especially in our region has become a huge crisis and in fact, a pandemic which in recent times seem to be increasing within individual member states in varying degrees as a result of the economic crises across the globe including member states which has in turn affected livelihood and
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increased poverty, thereby, making our young people wanting to look for greener pastures elsewhere, thus becoming more vulnerable for trafficking."
"Insecurity due to activities of bandits and criminal non-state actors has equally not helped us. The use of technology has also not helped because there is now less physical recruitment in favor of recruitment through cyberspace where detection has become difficult. These have made fighting in many countries more difficult and more expensive," Madam Nkrumah stressed.
At one point, the Ambassador appreciated the Government of Liberia for playing host and at the same time applauded the president of the ECOWAS Commission and officials including the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), the institution that made the meeting possible.
"I am however confident that this meeting which provides a form of peer review for all of us will provide more positive solutions as we team up to counter this menace. We need to all
work hard as individual member states and members of this network to safeguard our region from the hands of criminal networks who seem to be more organized than us and capitalizing on the high profit, low risk nature of the crime to carry out their nefarious activities," Ambassador Nkrumah said.
She added: "We must brace up to protect victims and survivors of the crime; support them as much as possible in the areas of rehabilitation and reintegration into the society without discrimination or reprisals from the criminals. To achieve these, we need to think out of the box at this meeting to proffer far reaching and practical solutions to make our people
especially women and children safe."
