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Reporting female trafficking By "EVERY noble work is at first impossible" thus wrote Thomas Caryle. It is difficult to tell precisely when female trafficking gained prominence. There appears most chroniclers situate it between the years 1988 and 1989. This was also about the time of the historic events swept through Africa and Eastern Europe, leaving in their wake huge debris such as the collapse of dictatorships, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, weak economies, unemployment and mass exodus in search of a more ordered existence. Nigeria was affected rather indirectly through the emergence of a prostrate economy.
Before female trafficking, however, there was the upsurge in criminality manifested in incidents of drugs trading and advance fee frauds as well as exodus of the nation's intelligentsia to more fulfilling work conditions. All of these were adequately reported in the mass media. The gravity of the issues involved and their implications for national progress were effectively articulated. But female trafficking is not being reported as a criminal activity of a transnational syndicate with influential links. For several in the established media, the debate is still at the very elementary level of whether the young girls whose future is being mortgaged are economic adventurers or prostitutes by choice. Some familiar headlines are: 'Dissuading Bini girls from the oldest profession' (Pointer November 14, 1999); '37 Prostitutes deported from Togo' (Vanguard July 5, 2000) 'Prostitution: Envoy writes Delta House' (The Nigerian Observer, July 6, 2000); 'Prostitution: Delta girls flood Italy' (Vanguard July 6, 2000); "Eight Edo girls test HIV-positive" (Vanguard 3 August 2000). Highlights such as these tend to whet the appetite for the sensational and by the same measure blur our appreciation of the tragedy of huge proportions which female trafficking represents.
A publication by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy dated April 6, 2000, estimates that over one million women and children are trafficked around the world each year. Over 50,000 of this number are destined for the United States alone. For Western Europe, the estimate is about 500,000 women per year. The foregoing point to an undeniable fact of gender slant to trafficking. Women and young girls are the target, the commodity, and the victims. The Nigerian Press, except in few instances, has not appreciated or articulated this vicious threat to womanhood and, by extension, the human race. A society without women is bound for extinction.
Female trafficking and international prostitution may seem as different sides of the same coin, but there are significant differences. Mostly, it is the victims of female trafficking who end up as international prostitutes. But the obvious difference is that they are not prostitutes by choice. That is why an editorial opinion in the International Herald Tribune (June 24-25, 2000) is right in coining the word, "forced prostitution." Much of the local debate on this subject is still preoccupied with the question of whether the girls who are trafficked actually know the reality of what awaits them in Europe.
The reality, according to an article released by the President's Interagency Council on Women in the United States, is that "trafficking in women and children is now considered the third largest source of profit for organised crime, behind only drugs and guns." In female trafficking, profit is computed in billions. For every Nigerian girl successfully makes it to Europe a trafficker expects a return of U$50,000. If that trafficker successfully ferries 10 to 12 of such girls into Europe, his profit is multiplied tenfold. This is big business. It is also ugly and vicious. Some campaigners regard it as worse than drugs. There is however a tendency in the media to play up the issue of sex which so easily titillates the public. The media focus is more on international prostitution and deportees rather than on the sponsors and their evil trade. This is most unfortunate. Trading in human beings cannot be regarded as another survival strategy. That, in my view, would be the height of insensitivity.
Trafficking has been defined as 'the recruitment, transport, harbouring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons through coercion, force, fraud, or deception in order to get people in situations such as forced prostitution, domestic servitude, sweatshop labour or other kinds of work to pay off debts.' It is at once a moral problem, a criminal problem, a human rights problem, a global problem, an economic problem, a health problem and a labour problem. But so far in the Nigerian press, it is an academic problem meant to generate lucid editorials; a sectional problem restricted to the neighbouring states of Edo-Delta which must now contend with the unfancied label of home of prostitutes; a desperate survival strategy that offers succour to the teeming mass of unemployed youths. All of these are a jaundiced perception that conveniently leaves out the criminality of the traffickers, who are more notorious than drug barons.
In sum, female trafficking has not been reported with the same intensity with which drugs trafficking, advance free frauds, armed robbery and even the Niger Delta crisis have been reported. Before we drift too far, we should be reminded that the HIV-AIDS pandemic cannot be effectively contained without addressing female trafficking. The question often arises: is female trafficking an Edo/Delta problem? The Saturday Champion of June 17, 2000 reported an interesting debate on the internet under the caption: "Edo Girls in Foreign Sex Trade!" According to available statistics, both states account for the highest number of persons deported from Italy and Europe. But the distinction ends within our national boundaries. Outside our borders, it is the generality of Nigerian womanhood that is being debased and decimated. The young girls who are exposed to the high risk of AIDS, rape, gruesome murders and sexual perversity cannot hope to be mothers or senior citizens. They are marked for certain death at a premature age.
Somehow it does appear that the whole debate as to where these girls come from is a typical Nigerian attempt to shirk responsibility for tackling this problem with the seriousness it deserves. As long as we can conveniently identify it as their problem, then we are justified to sit arms akimbo and let them sort it out. After all, the ant must bear its burden alone, all alone. The wisdom in this saying must be juxtaposed with another to be fully appreciated: when oil touches one finger, it soils the others. What has been dented by female trafficking is the image of Nigeria. What other country would allow the cream of its womanhood such easy ride to suicide? The answer says a lot about the value we place on human life and our collective future.
We must now turn attention to the traffickers. Contrary to general impressions, trafficking does not occur merely because there are young, impressionable girls who dream of travelling abroad. Of course dreams alone will not take anyone abroad. That is where the traffickers come in. They are wealthy citizens who are searching for huge returns on quick investments. Sometimes they cajole desperate parents to pawn off valued family property such as a house or a parcel of land to finance their daughter's trip overseas. They have in their employment staff who play specific role in facilitating the trips to Europe. These are the recruiters, trolleys, the passport racketeers and others believed to include embassy staff, immigration officials, law enforcement agents and fetish priests who administer fearsome oaths on the victims.
The traffickers are the barons, and like all gang leaders, are elusive, faceless and amorphous. They often never show up till the victims have arrived their destination. But they are human. They are known. They can be trailed and apprehended. But the barons ñ trafficking kingpins ñ are hardly ever reported. They conveniently assume the disguise of opponents of government policies fueling rumours and creating public disaffection. The guilt of the press is in helping them to sustain this disguise rather than exposing them.
The culpability of specific individuals in this modern slave trade has not yet been established. But it can be done. Female trafficking unlike drugs trafficking, is carried out in the open, so to speak. There is no act yet to conceal a full-gown adult in the womb of another and transport her in that condition across national borders. As the Press know all too well, it can never be adequate to leave the investigation of this all-important matter to the lean and over-stretched resources of the Nigeria Police. Trafficking kingpins like all other criminals fear exposure, and that is the power of the press. In the kind of reporting that is presently done, there seems a tendency to personalise the campaign against female trafficking. While it is important and necessary to properly identify and credit individual contribution, it has often had the opposite effect of pitting the individual against largely ignorant segments of the community. It also ignores the fact that various groups and individuals are working at different levels to stem the unwholesome tide of female trafficking. In fact, I had made it clear at the very beginning that tackling this problem successfully, is not a one-woman effort. We are counting on the traditional institution as the enforcers of our cultural norms; the churches as the agents of moral restoration; parents, especially mothers; the mass media, school principals, concerned citizens to join us in our determined effort to end this ugly phenomenon. In most neighbourhoods, there are young girls who are sent home to die in agony, anguish and regret, mostly from having contracted full-down AIDS. Added to this, the deportees are castigated as bad Nigerians who have collectively dented our good image (as if international prostitution is the only thing that dents our image). It does appear therefore that the media must urgently convince itself that female trafficking is no longer a moral problem based on a rational choice. It is an international crime against humanity. The criminals are not the prostitutes, but the traffickers, the sponsors. It is they who should be vilified and stopped.
Mrs. Eki Igbinedion is the wife of the Edo State Governor and initiator of Idia Renaissance, an advocacy group against female trafficking and international prostitution. October 2001
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