Home Tracks Family Members Involved In Human Trafficking

Family Members Involved In Human Trafficking

human trafficking
Source: Enact Africa

A three-part investigative report published on ICIR has uncovered how family members, friends, and partners are involved in trafficking of women and children across the world to the tune of at least $150 billion annually.

Stories of victims: The victims who narrated their ordeal to Tobore Ovoure, an award winning journalist, described it as filled with desperation. “My family members were thinking I was enjoying in Libya not knowing I was in serious trouble,” said Isioma Peters, who was sold into sex slavery by her uncle’s wife in February 2016, at the age of 20.

The big picture: In April 2021, European Asylum Support Office (EASO) reported that victims of human trafficking—including child labour and sex trafficking, mostly from poor backgrounds—are exploited within and outside Nigeria, where women are used in ‘baby factories’ and others in organ harvesting.

In a recent statement confirming the arrest of a man who sold his girlfriend to Mali, Director General of The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Sen. Basheer Mohammed, promised that the agency will “continue to heat all parts of the country to run human traffickers out of business in Nigeria.”

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