Sefa Mnda Vivianne
From the oil rich nation of Nigeria, to the lush white beaches of Kenyan to the gold-laden coasts of Ghana, the African continent has been a major supplier of one of the most coveted natural resource on earth: people. Each year, millions of women and children are taken from their homes under false pretenses of well known paying jobs and better opportunities. While some give themselves up willingly, others are kidnapped or sold by their families. But their fates are the same, millions of them become victims of human trafficking. Human traffickers always seek out the most vulnerable populations to enslave and exploit, over 30,000 children are trafficked in South Africa every year while in countries like Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ghana, girls as young as 8 years old are sold as brides.
It is often contentious to pin down the concept of human trafficking especially with the divergent views between developed and developing nations as to what constitutes exploitation. A child hawking goods in an African country is a common sight and is seen as a child helping their parents, but in developed nations, that could amount to child abuse and exploitation. However, the Palermo Protocol defined human trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by the means of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception or the abuse of power or of a 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. Moving forward, it is important to understand what constitutes exploitation in the context of the description of human trafficking, exploitation can include forced prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or similar practices and the removal of organs without consent or compensation.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that children make up more than 75% of the victims that are trafficked out of West Africa, the report also found that Nigeria is an origin, transit and destination country for both domestic and cross border trafficking. And most of the people especially women who are kidnapped are forced to become sex workers to pay for their accommodation, feeding and repay their abductors for the cost of their visa and transportation from their home countries to the countries where they are being held captive.
Human trafficking is a $150 billion global industry, one of the most lucrative criminal ventures in the world. Also known as modern day slavery, human trafficking is very simply defined as the illegal trade of people for sexual exploitation or commercial gain, but there is nothing simple about the ways in which victims of this heinous crime are treated, exploited, raped, tortured, overworked, underfed and ultimately discarded when they become too weak and tired to fetch any more profits for their owners.
Just like the sub-Saharan slave trade, Africa is a major contributor to the trafficking especially in women and children and the United Nations has reported that the smuggling routes from East, North and West Africa to Europe generates $150 million in profits annually. While It is true that other regions of the world also make up the large number of people who are taken and exploited in unimaginable ways, the numbers coming out of Africa are especially alarming.
African countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Senegal not only supply traffickers with human cargo but are also transit and destination countries for trafficked women and children, young girls are also taken from poor rural areas in countries like Benin, Mali, Togo and Burkina Faso to work the plantations in Cote D’Ivoire. Trafficking is also as rampant in Southern Africa as it is in West Africa. Countries like South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Lesotho are knee-deep in the modern day slavery that is human trafficking.
It is worthy of note that often, trafficking victims are not kidnapped or forced to leave their homes. The victims make the conscious decision to migrate. In Nigeria, young girls willingly place themselves at risk of being trafficked by traveling long distances to engage in prostitution and give themselves up to be sexually abused and exploited with the promise of wealth and a brighter future. Young girls who consider their future in their home countries to be bleak contact strangers in other countries who prepare visas and passports for them and pay the costs of their transportation to other countries, once there, these victims are kept prisoners and forced to work to pay back the costs incurred on their transportation.
Immigrants fleeing their countries and attempting to reach North or South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Italy are often left stranded and quickly become victims. In 2016, 80% of the 11,000 women who arrived in Italy in search of a better life and better opportunities were from the African country of Nigeria and the women very likely became victims of sex trafficking or were forced into prostitution. It is no secret that some victims of human trafficking voluntarily give themselves up to be taken away or travel to other parts of the world with the knowledge that they will be forced into prostitution, sex slavery and unpaid labor. Which begs the question, why would any person willingly submit themselves to be exploited in the worst ways possible?
In another vein, family members of human trafficking victims also give up their loved ones into the hands of known human traffickers to be exploited in faraway places often convincing themselves that they are giving them the opportunities to find better opportunities for themselves. Illegal migrants often fall prey to traffickers in North Africa on their way to Europe to seek better opportunities. While Europe is their destination, they have to travel long distances and they soon run out of money and food, a situation that makes them vulnerable to traffickers who knowing their vulnerabilities subject them to hard labor and exploit them in other ways.
Human trafficking is a fairly common practice everywhere in the world, but the problem is endemic in Africa. And the reasons are not difficult to figure, the country has been bedeviled with innumerable crisis, chief among them poverty, hunger, corruption, nepotism and economic instabilities to mention a few, in addition religious extremism has led to terrorism, insurrections and extrajudicial killings, the boomerang effect has been the displacement of people, vulnerable women and children stranded in one too many camps for internally displaced persons, refugees in their own homes.
Measures to counter the scourge of human trafficking have mostly been unsuccessful because they have been focused on addressing the proximate causes of the crime instead of the root causes. Arrest, punishment and incarceration will not successfully address the crime of trafficking, only proactive measures aimed at finding durable solutions to the root causes of the problem will be enough to tackle the menace. The factors are embedded in the socioeconomic, cultural and social milieus of the countries that mostly participate in the crime.
In Africa, the best solution to human trafficking lies in the development of the continent. Employment, availability of opportunities, access to good jobs, healthcare and a marked reduction in the poverty index will go a long way in curbing the scourge of human trafficking. If citizens have a country that they can be proud of, they will not have reason to subject themselves to risk of exploitation to seek for greener pastures.
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