Nearly a quarter of Nigerian girls subject to human trafficking attempt

Nearly a quarter of young Nigerian women and girls responding to a survey said they had been subject to attempts to traffic them into sexual exploitation, domestic slavery or forced marriage.

UK charity Plan International polled 500 Nigerian women in their teens and 20s on their experiences of and attitudes to migration and trafficking. The survey found that many were keen to seek a better life abroad but were also at risk of being coerced into dangerous situations.

The survey found that 24 per cent of those questioned had nearly fallen victim to trafficking but had managed to escape.

And one in 10 of those surveyed said they knew someone who had been forced into domestic work, prostitution or some form of sexual exploitation either at home or abroad.

The poll, conducted in partnership with the People’s Postcode Lottery, was published alongside a report into the scale of trafficking in three countries: Nigeria, Nepal and Uganda.

Globally 71 per cent of victims of human trafficking are women and girls with inequality, conflict, violence and poverty making them vulnerable to being trafficked from home or forcing them to seek employment elsewhere and ending up in the hands of traffickers along the way.

The report uses data from the International Organisation for Migration which shows that around 94 per cent of Nigerian trafficking victims are women and girls, with 51 per cent of these under the age of 24 and eight per cent under the age of 18.

And more than eight of 10 victims were trafficked into prostitution or some form of sexual exploitation such as forced marriage.

The report found that Russia, Morocco, Italy, Denmark and France were the most common international destinations for Nigerian trafficking victims.

But internal trafficking is also common, with girls and young women most commonly taken from rural areas to cities such as Lagos to work in domestic servitude or sexual exploitation or sometimes both.

The report also highlights the country’s “baby factories” where women or girls who are already pregnant are held against their will and forced to give up their babies who are sold to third parties. In other cases women and girls are raped and after they conceive are held until they give birth. Some women endure multiple rapes and pregnancies.

In Nepal women and girls often end up in the Gulf states while in Uganda domestic trafficking is most common.

Plan International said that the Nigerian authorities were keen to crack down on trafficking but the number of prosecutions against traffickers was still too low.

Anthony Davis, one of the authors of the Plan report, said: “Primarily it comes down to the fact there is limited resources put into the identification of victims of trafficking. Because of low levels of prosecution it’s become a very lucrative business. One of the key findings is that some of the recruitment networks are very informal and they include members of victims’s communities and even family members,” he said.

The report focuses on the reasons why women and girls are vulnerable to being trafficked, rather than on the demand for women and girls.

Rose Caldwell, chief executive of Plan International, said that all countries signed up to the United Nations sustainable development girls, which include Nigeria and countries in Europe and the Gulf where victims of trafficking end up, had agreed to end human trafficking.

However, a report earlier this year found that progress to end trafficking was "hugely disappointing". The report found that in 47 nations human trafficking is yet to be criminalised, while forced labour is still legal in 96 countries and forced marriage has yet to be banned in 133 countries.

Ms Caldwell said: “There’s a great deal of political will to end this in Nigeria but there’s also a huge lack of awareness, particularly among girls and women living in very poor economic situations. In Nigeria half of the population lives below the poverty line."

The Plan International survey showed that women and girls were keen to migrate in a bid to improve their lives with more than half saying that leaving Nigeria would give them a better life.

But Ms Caldwell said that there was poor awareness of the risks.

“We’re not against migration - people have migrated for centuries. But there’s a real feeling of dreams being shattered. Girls believe they can have a better life elsewhere but the reality is very different,” she said.

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