Introduction
In recent times, trafficking in persons (TIPs) otherwise referred to as human trafficking and child abuse has become a global problem that affects mostly children and young people including women in developing countries. The United State government considers trafficking in persons to include all of the criminal conduct involved in forced labour and sex trafficking essentially the conduct involved in reducing or holding someone in compelled service (United State Department, 2013).
Trafficking in persons, according to United Nation (2000), denotes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, labouring or a receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of powers, of position, of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation, servitude and child labour.
Ebigbo (2007) revealed high population of trafficking children in some locations like Owerri, Port-Harcourt, Lagos, Kano and Sokoto every year. The National Agency for the prohibition of traffic in persons [NAPTIPs], (2013) reported that between 2003 and 2007, it has rescued over between seven hundred and seventy six (776) victims of trafficking from various part of the country.
Operationally, trafficking in persons is viewed as a modern day form of slavery. It refers to the use of deceit and coercion to recruit and transfer persons either internally within the domestic borders of a country or externally across international borders for the purpose of exploitation. Trafficking in persons differs from abduction in the sense that’s while trafficking in persons (TIPs) is a modern say form of slavery, abduction is the forceful snatching away of people without negotiating for consent. Victims of human trafficking are young children, teenagers, men and women who are subject to force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation, servitude and child labour (Ekpe, 2008).
The United Nations [UN] in their millennium declaration on 13th September, 2000, resolved to intensify their effort to fight transnational crimes in all its dimensions including child molestation, human trafficking as well as smuggling of drugs (United Nation, [UN], 2004).
Policies, acts and laws have been promulgated by countries to control or curb the menace of trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation and other offences but these are yet to produce the desire effect, in spite of these laws child molestation and human trafficking still flourish in many parts of the world of which Nigeria Appears to have more than her fair share of the scourge (Ekpe, 2008).
Conceptual framework
The term “trafficking” as originally used in the English Dictionary implies the trading in illegal goods, in this case human being. However, with the growing international interest and concerns in trafficking in persons and its implications on the individuals, there have been several attempts by international organizations and groups to define the term and conceptualize it appropriately to the social, cultural and political economy of trafficking in persons. The definition used in this study is contained in the United Nations [UN] protocol to suppress and punish trafficking in person especially women and children (UN, 2012) the wife of the former vice president of the federal republic of Nigeria and the chairperson of the Anti-Trafficking NGO in Nigeria, chief Mrs. Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar, signed the protocol on behalf of Nigeria. Article 3 of the protocol defines trafficking thus.
Trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, labouring or a receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion of abduction of fraud, of deception of the abuse of powers or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation.
The International Labour Organization [ILO] (ILO, 2011) in its report provided an operational definition of trafficking within the Nigeria context as of a form of child abuse and neglect involving the migration of children from one place to another for the purpose of exploitation labour, in its own attempt to capture the concept, the International Organization on Migration (IOM, 2011) asserts that trafficking occurs when a migration is illicitly engaged (recruited, kidnapped, sold) and/or moved whether within national boarder, by intermediaries (trafficker) who during this process obtain economic or other benefit or profit by means of deception, coercion and other forms of exploitation under condition that violate the fundamental human rights of migrants.
The above definition acknowledge that the actors executing the practice do not usually enjoy social approval but internationally endangers the physical, emotional, moral and educational welfare of the victims. These acts, according to UN are unacceptable to the community but many endanger the wellbeing of those involved.
History of human trafficking
Human trafficking is a modern method of slavery has been with us from time immemorial. This from Roman times, woman and children were sold, battered, mutilated, abandoned and maltreated at the pleasure of the father her. Children were used to tools when necessary and at the pleasure of their parents and care taker
Nigeria has a similar history. Children were sold depending on what society or the parents felt about them. Ojomo, (2008) explains further that Nigerian, traditionally, farmers are known for their trade and travel in west and central Africa. Propensity for travel encouraged easy migration across the boarders for many Nigerians, especially those from the south-east, during the civil war (Nigeria- Biafra) of 1966-70, created conditions that made migration to neighbouring countries very attractive. In addition, the oil boom of the 1970s saw many other West Africa nationalists migration into Nigeria. In northern Nigeria, close ties with the Arab world have seen peoples move freely to and from the Middle East for trade and religions pilgrimages. This has created avenues for migrants that have begun to be exploited for international trafficking in children and woman for labour and prostitution.
However, it was the lack of appropriate legislation to punish offenders that constituted a major challenge in the fight against trafficking in the interim, the police and the court resorted to using portions of the country penal. This was the situation until the anti-human trafficking law was enacted in 2003. The law is known as the trafficking in persons (prohibition) law enforcement and Administration Act created The trafficking in person (prohibition) law enforcement and Administrative Act created the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Person and other related matters (NAPTIP). This government agency has been in the forefront of the fight against human trafficking. In fact Nigeria has become the first country in Africa to enact such law and establish a special agency to complement it. By November 2005, the high court in Benin in the southern part of the country, handed down the first conviction under this law. NAPTIP also investigated a number of law enforcement officials suspected of complicity in trafficking.
In 2004, Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) reported that 46% of Nigerian victims of trans-national trafficking are children, with the majority of them being girls trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. An increasing trend, reported on widely in the last year by the United Kingdom (UK) and international press, is the trafficking of Africa boys and girls from Lagos to the United Kingdom urban centres, including London, Birmingham and Manchester, for domestic servitude and forced labour in restaurants and shops. US State Department trafficking in Persons reports, June, 2008 state that some of the victims are Nigerian, while others are trafficked from other Africa countries through Lagos.
Child trafficking in Nigeria
The trafficking of children for the purpose of domestic service, prostitution and other forms of exploitative labour is a wide spread phenomenon in Nigeria. In view of the clandestine nature of trafficking, accurate and reliable figures are hard to get. Globally, child trafficking is one of the fastest growing organized crimes with an estimated number of 1.2 million victims per year, of which (32%) of them at the risk of being trafficked both internally and externally for domestic and forced labour, prostitution, entertainment, pornography, armed conflict, and sometimes ritual killings.
According to Teriba (2011), Nigeria is a source, transit and destination country for child trafficking. Currently, external trafficking of children exists between Nigeria and Gabon, Cameroon, Nigeria, Italy, Spain, Benin Republic and Sandi Arabia. The National Agency for prohibition of trafficking in persons and other related matters (NAPTIP) and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) situation assessment of child trafficking in southern Nigeria State (2013) reported that 46% of repatriated victims of external trafficking in Nigeria are children, which female to male ratio of 7.3. They are engaged mainly in prostitution (46%) domestic labour (21%), forced labour (15%) and entertainment (8%) internal trafficking of children in Nigeria was also reported to be for the purpose of forced labour (32%), domestic labour (31%) and prostitution (30%0. Boys are mostly trafficked from the south eastern States of Imo, Abia and Akwa Ibom to Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Congo, while those from Kwara go to Togo and as far as Mali to work in plantations. Between October and December 2003, over 500 children from the Republic of Benin were rescued from granite quarries and repatriated back to their country of origin, through a joint effort of UNICEF in Nigeria and Benin. Nigeria has recently seen an increased number of repatriation of trafficking victims from many foreign countries such as UK, Italy, Netherlands, USA, Belgium, Ireland , Sandi Arabia and south Africa
Ebigbo (2009) stated that family system breaking down and our standard of living has deteriorated in both urban and rural areas. According to him, when a society has trouble, particularly economic trouble, the family is the first to feel the shock and the children suffer most. Many people are out of work and the children are showing it. The rate of crime is high both in the urban and rural areas. Unemployed parents are having a hard time caring for their families. Being out of job has certain emotional consequences, it affects the mood of the entire household it leads to anger and despair which could be displayed in forms of trafficking of children.
Therefore, in Nigeria, child trafficking is due to poverty, ignorance, political and religious turbulence, but the most common cause of child trafficking is poverty. If, we are serious about protecting the children we will have to take a look at our culture and re-examine our attitudes towards the young and the physical violence used in disciplining our children. Chase (1976) Cited in Adidu (2012) State that experiments have shown that, rate among others will neglect and abandon their young. Monkeys removed from their natural habitat and placed in unfamiliar surrounding will bite and even eat their own litters.
Parental level of awareness about Tips
NAPTIP (2010) revealed that the awareness of parents and generally public about trafficking in persons is still low despite concerted efforts by relevant NGOS which have intensified campaign against the activities of trafficking in person in recent times. According to NAPTIP, parents are either ignorant or unaware of the collaborated recruitment and physical movement of their children to other countries of the world for exploitation. In the same vein, Ndaguba (2013), acknowledge that “agents’’ who are well known persons recruit victims of trafficking or acquaintance to the victims and the agents’’ relationship with the victims. He added further that agents thrive on falsehood or deceit in order to convince parents to release their children who are eventually trafficked with false promises of either sending the child to school or training them on a trade or vacation but on reaching the destination, the child is violently exploited without the knowledge of the parents.
It was further observed by Owasanoye (2011) that in the past, parents sent their children to stay and help prominent member of the community with the intension of training them in some vacation. He expressed that things have change and house helping has now become heaving commercialized, thereby elimination the training and proper upbringing and middleman have taken over using elaborated distribution network to put victims into prostitution and illicit transfer abroad. According to him, in such network, the welfare of the child is secondary to satisfying the commercial interest of the parents. The parents however may not be aware of what is happening with their children at the destination points. More importantly, Ebigbo (2009) posited that large number of victims do not live with their own parents but are hired out during holidays especially Christmas and other festival periods to others as servant to uplift the financial status of the family. The parents of some victims, as being observed, are usually poor and ignorant and often entrusted their children to persons who run uncreative unofficial business or exchange then as victims. He concluded that with such arrangement, the client will take the victim as he or her property without the knowledge of their parent.
The health implication of child molestation and human trafficking
Lott (2011) submitted that child molestation and human trafficking has been known to carry detrimental, physical and psychological consequences on the victims. These include medical and neurotically defects, defective intellectual and cognitive functioning, behaviour disorders and psychopathology. They have been known to experience social competence skills. That is they are often seen as more difficult to deal with in social interaction. In addition to these they have a poor self esteem, feelings of isolation and stigma many tend toward drugs and alcohol or may be sexually maladjusted among other things. It leads to stubbornness, aggressive and away from home. He further noted that it sometimes leads to death at the hands of traffickers during transportation.
In other words those children who are victims of abuse and neglect suffer untold harm that often live with them into adulthood, deprive them of opportunities, through their potential and stifle their ambitions. The activity of child victims of abuse, especially, those who go into prostitution either on their own or are forced to do so, has implications on their reproductive health and health in general. In view of the global threat to HIV/AIDS, the demands for young girls is on the increase and more of these are being abducted, bought, sold and trafficked across borders to serve as prostitutes notwithstanding the social economic consequences of prostitution, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate for some of these destination countries, notably Cote d’lvoire and Burkina-Faso are well above the threshold level of 5%, thus, exposing them to higher risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexual transmitted infections (STI) that has serious repercussions on their reproductive health. It is estimated that, to date, about two thirds of the reported AIDS cases have been females who incidentally also form part of the segment of the population who often migrate or are trafficked. It is possible that the increase in the trafficking of children from Nigeria to other countries, to a large extent, has contributed to the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 40% in 1998 to 46% in 2000 in Nigeria due to mobility of infected young girls, victims of trafficking. At the moment, a new approach is being adopted in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Nigeria following the development of a draft HIV/AIDS and STIs policy and the establishment of a National HIV/AIDS commission.
Available government legislation against TIP
On the available governments legislation against TIP, United Nations International Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI, 2012) pointed out that at independence, Nigeria acceded to the anti-slavery convections seeking the total abolition and prohibition of all forms of slavery and similar practices. A number of these were promulgated by the League of Nations after the formal abolition of slave trade and slavery, other key convections according to UNICRI that Nigeria become party to are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, convection for the suppression of traffic in persons and the Exploitation for the prostitution of orders. The latter convection abolished and prohibits all form of slavery and related customs debt, bondage and forced marriage. ILO (2014) also emphasized that provisions were made for offences related to trafficking in persons in the criminal and penal code while UNICEF reported that salient provision of the conventions were integrated into Nigeria legislation. The penal codes and other laws in use was inadequate when the federal government took the decision to enact on its most comprehensive piece of legislation to date, the Anti-trafficking in persons Act, 2003 which came into effect on the 4th of July, 2003 as a federal law prohibition and prescribing punishment for anyone engaged in the act of trafficking in persons. The act defines TIPs with all the constituent elements embodied in Article 3 of the UN trafficking in persons protocol out.
In the light of the above, WOTCLEF (2010) further reported that child’s right Act of 2003, complements trafficking in persons law Enforcement Administration Act in Nigeria. Other governments legislation available in Nigeria according to WOTCLEF is the immigration Act, CAP 171 laws of the federal discourages brothel keepers and others who might permit the defilement of young girls on their premises. The act also makes it an offence to allow the seduction or prostitution of girls younger than thirteen years of age to trade in prostitution of or act as a procurer. Non-Nigerians formed to be in violation of these provision are liable to be declared prohibited immigrant and deported.
However, Nigeria has signed and ratified some of the international instruments which include convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW) 1979, convention on the rights of the child (CRC, 1989), African Charter on the right and welfare of a child (1999), optional protocol to the CRC on the sale of children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2000), Unconventional against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) and supplementing trafficking protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, and African Charter on Human and People’s Right (1981) and its protocol relating to the right of women.
Method of enforcement of available government legislation against TIPs
Discussion method of enforcement of available legislation against TIPs, WOTCLEF (2010) revealed that the Anti-human trafficking United of the Nigeria police force, which is spread across the state of Nigeria, collaborated with other available stakeholders to fight trafficking in persons. The unit according to WOTCLEF the terms of reference to guide them in their method of operation. The term are, to investigate and prosecute cases of human trafficking and other related offenders, intercept deportees/trafficked person at airports, land boarders and other points in the country. Document, screen and release deportees to state liaison office to enable rehabilitation and immigration with families USAID (2005) further added that action against forced labour and trafficking in Nigeria comprised a wide range of projects aimed at creating and sustaining awareness repatriate, rehabilitate and reintegration of the victims.
Commenting on this Inyang-Abia (2010) posited that his Excellency, Chief Godswill Akpabio, Governor of Akwa Ibom State on 5th December 2008 signed the child Right Act (CRA) into law, to protect the growth of perpetual emotional intellectual and behavioural capabilities and functioning during childhood of Akwa Ibom children less than 16 years. This law, which specifically, protects the child from birth to adolescence is the first of its kind. According to him, the law emanated from UN convention, adopted by the African Union and domesticated in Nigeria by the National Assembly in 2003. It is designed in such a way that the child is afforded the necessary protection and assistance to enable him fully assumes responsibilities within the community. The child right law (CRL) empowers the children to enjoy physical, social and psychological well being thereby enforcing the children’s abuse. He further explained that as evidence commitment to the children well being, the state and federal government not only assented to the bill but also sees to its effective implementation through budgetary allocation and massive deployment of resources for health education, nutrition water and sanitations that, the penalties is that the CRL prescribe up to 15 years imprisonment without any option-stigmatization, accusation of witchcraft and child labour and trafficking CRL places a heavy burden on the government to ensure compliance, enforcement, prosecution, deployment of resources and provision of services furthermore, he stressed, that any act against the interest of children may be viewed as anti-government and as such attract the full weight of law in the federation.
Protection of the right of child victims of trafficking
Child victims according to Mmaduagu, (2012), have the right to receive immediate care and protection including security, food and accommodation in a safe place, access to social and health services, psychological support, legal assistance and education. Care and assistance shall respect the child cultural identify and origin, gender and age. Appropriate assistance shall be provided to children with special needs particularly in the cases of psychological distress, illness and pregnancies.
Social services, authorities with qualified personnel shall provide care for child victims by establishing appropriate services, if necessary in co-operation with competent international organization and governmental organization.
For instance, majority of children serving as house helps is a serious indication of continued child trafficking. Moreover, most streets are littered with children hawking in the streets despite all warning to the contrary thereby making trafficking easy by the perpetrators of child and human trafficking. The poverty level in the country, one would assume is a contributing factors to the ugly situation. All actions undertaken in relation to child victims shall be guided by and based on the principles of protection and respect for human rights as set in the United Nations Convention on the right on the rights and welfare of the child (1990). It was in this light that Akinboyo (2008), stated that child victims are entitled to special protection measures, both as victims and as children in accordance with the special rights and needs.
Concept of empowerment strategies
In reaction to perceived needed empowerment against TIPs, Fatai (2012) defined empowerment as the process by which young people gain inner power to express and defend their right and gain greater self-confidence, self-identity, self-esteem and control their own lives, personal and social relationship. The definition implies that young people become aware f adverse effect of trafficked in persons, they will develop self will and power to defend their right and have control over their lives.
Igbenweka and Aghenta (2013) maintained that empowerment of parents as one of the key factors predisposing young person to trafficking and forced labour will equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to resist the temptation of being deceived by traffickers, since the burden of expenditure on children well-being is greater in poorest households than wealthiest household, meagre household income encourages poor parents to send out there children to other people for forced labour or service. This is while, UNICEF (2012) declared that children and the families needed to be empowered educationally to increase their values required for better living and sustainable development UNICEF pointed at that, empowerment in this respect is not just responsible of government alone but demands coordinated actions by all concerned individual, non-governmental and voluntary organizations, local authorities, industries, media and religious organization to help stamps out TIPs in our society.
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