The enemy of the Negro is the Negro himself: EDO, NIGERIA: THE CAPITAL OF TODAYS SLAVE TRADE IN BLACK WOMEN
The largest group of prostitutes from Sub-Saharan Africa comes from Nigeria, and they are usually recruited through a specific type of trafficking network. The term "trafficking in persons" is restricted to instances where people are deceived, threatened, or coerced into situations of exploitation, including prostitution. This contrasts with "human smuggling," in which a migrant purchases services to circumvent immigration restrictions, but is not necessarily a victim of deception or exploitation.
By Jørgen Carling International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) Benin City in the state of Edo, Nigeria. Most women trafficked from Nigeria come from Edo.
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•Changing Configurations of Migration in Africa
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•Confronting the Realities of Forced Migration
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July 2005
The Western European prostitution market has become increasingly globalized during the past 15 years. The processes by which Eastern European, Southeast Asian, Latin American, and Sub-Saharan African women end up as sex workers in Western Europe are highly varied.
The largest group of prostitutes from Sub-Saharan Africa comes from Nigeria, and they are usually recruited through a specific type of trafficking network. The term "trafficking in persons" is restricted to instances where people are deceived, threatened, or coerced into situations of exploitation, including prostitution. This contrasts with "human smuggling," in which a migrant purchases services to circumvent immigration restrictions, but is not necessarily a victim of deception or exploitation.
In West Africa, there is widespread trafficking in women and children within the region as well as to overseas locations.
Nigeria has signed and ratified the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, often referred to as the Palermo Protocol. Domestic legislation and legal practice in the area of trafficking remain erratic, however.
Among the other countries in the region, Ghana has been commended for successful anti-trafficking initiatives, while Equatorial Guinea — despite its oil wealth and ample resources — has failed to address the problem and is a hub for trafficking in women and children.
The Nigerian Setting
Trafficking in women often takes place within a broader context of migration. On the sending side, the Nigerian trafficking industry is fueled by the combination of widespread emigration aspirations and severely limited possibilities for migrating to Europe or the United States.
There is a sizeable Nigerian diaspora of almost 200,000 legal residents in Europe. The largest number live in the United Kingdom, followed by Italy, Germany, Spain, and Ireland.
Although academic researchers and the media have devoted substantial attention to Nigerian trafficking, prostitution, and organized crime, little is known about the vast majority of Nigerians in Europe who are not involved in these activities. Given the size of the Nigerian population in several European countries, it is a strikingly under-researched minority.
While poverty and unemployment are not unique to Nigeria, the level of peacetime violence, corruption, and organized crime surpasses most other African countries. The fact that these evils have persisted after return to democratic rule in 1999 has been a great disillusionment to many Nigerians, thousands of whom have sought asylum in Europe. In 2004, Nigerians were the fifth largest group of asylum seekers in Europe, but very few were granted protection.
Trafficking in women from Nigeria is strongly concentrated in the state of Edo in the South-Central part of the country. A survey by Women's Health and Action Research Centre in Edo's capital Benin City a few years ago showed that one in three young women had received offers to go to Europe.
Some researchers have pointed to specific historical and cultural factors as reasons for this geographical concentration, including the particularly disadvantaged situation of women, the importance attributed to luxury and material status, and the local tradition of slavery. Much of the explanation, however, lies in the self-reinforcing mechanisms that come into force once a migration flow has been initiated.
When networks, infrastructure, and expectations have been established, migration flows tend to increase, even if the initial movement was a matter of coincidence. The success of many female emigrants who went to Europe is highly visible in Edo, for instance in the form of grand houses built with remittances.
Working abroad is therefore often seen as the best strategy for escaping poverty. Ensuring a better future for one's family in Nigeria is a principal motivation for emigration within and outside the trafficking networks.
Destination Italy
The most important European destination for Nigerian trafficking victims is Italy, where there may be as many as 10,000 Nigerian prostitutes. Other significant destinations include the Netherlands and Spain, and, to a lesser degree, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Italy is the only European country where a clear majority of legally resident Nigerians are women.
When Nigerians began migrating to Italy in the 1980s, they were one of many migrant groups from developing countries attracted by Italy's demand for low-skilled labor in agriculture and services.
The first Nigerian women who worked as prostitutes in Italy usually did so independently and were not trafficking victims. In the early 1990s, however, the rising difficulties of travelling to and settling in Europe meant that prospective emigrants were increasingly dependent on large loans.
Coupled with the prospect of large revenues on the Italian prostitution market, this provided an opportunity for traffickers. Young women were enticed with promises of good jobs, and subsequently coerced into prostitution in order to repay their debt.
An Example of How Trafficking from Nigeria to Italy Is Organized
The Emigration Pact
The victim's initial contact with the smugglers is often through a relative, friend, or other familiar person. This is represented in the diagram (right), which shows one example of the organization of human trafficking from Nigeria to Italy.
After the initial contact, the victim is put in contact with a madam, the network's most important person in Nigeria. In many cases, the madam also has the role of sponsor, the person who finances the journey. Typical costs range from US$500 to US$2,000 for documents and US$8,000 to US$12,000 for the travel. The debt incurred by the victim is much higher, however. Typical amounts are between US$40,000 and US$100,000.
At this point, the victim and her sponsor make a "pact" that obliges repayment in exchange for safe passage to Europe. The pact is usually religiously sealed by an ohen, a priest of the indigenuous religious traditions. The ohen traditionally functions as a magistrate or registrar. Increasingly, the victim and her family also sign a formal contract with the sponsor, using the family's house or other assets as collateral.
As part of the ceremony, the ohen usually assembles a parcel with magic significance. This consists of hair, nail cuttings, or other bodily substances, and a variety of other items that protect against accidents. The parcel makes the woman attractive to men or otherwise supports the pact and its fulfillment. The victims regard the pact as a solemn promise to the sponsor, sanctioned by the ohen and monitored by the local communty.
The magic-religious element in Nigerian trafficking has received much attention in Europe. What is seen as a mixture of "voodoo," organized crime, and the sex trade appeals to the media. The police and policymakers in Europe have embraced the notion that the women are driven by fears of magic — a convenient explanation for enigmatic behavior.
Field research in Nigeria, by contrast, has shown that the initial religious sanctioning of the pact is not necessarily intimidating in its own right. Only at a later stage, if a woman is perceived as challenging the pact, does the magic becomes an element in violent repression.
Emigration pacts are frequently also sanctioned with prayer rituals in the Pentecostal churches to which most of the victims belong, further broadening the pact's legitimacy. As in the rest of Nigeria, indigenuous religious traditions coexist with Christianity and Islam.
Routes and Strategies
In most cases, trafficked women journey to Western Europe by air or over land through the Sahara. Flying via other West African and/or Eastern European countries lessens the risk of having forged documents questioned.
During overland journeys, men known as "trolleys" in the trafficking network escort women individually or in small groups. Nigerians play an important role in human smuggling in North Africa. The smuggling infrastructure that traffickers and their victims use also often serves asylum seekers.
In Europe, the women live and work under the control of a Nigerian madam, a counterpart of the madam in Nigeria. In many cases, the madam in Italy has a male partner known as "madam's (black) boy" who undertakes certain tasks in managing the trafficking.
In Italy, Nigerian sex workers are usually street prostitutes and constitute the low-wage end of the prostitution market. Their places of work (joints) are often located in the suburbs or along intercity highways. In the Netherlands and Belgium, Nigerian prostitutes are more likely to work in the big cities' red-light districts.
The trafficking of women to Europe is now a well-known phenomenon in Edo state. Many women therefore know they are likely to work as prostitutes if they agree to travel to Europe. However, they may have little understanding of the conditions under which they will work and of the size of the debt they will incur.
In anticipation of leaving Nigeria and helping one's family out of poverty, it is tempting for these women to believe in promises about good jobs. Whether this means being duped, or deceiving one's self, is not obvious. Importantly, the fact that the women may have known, or ought to have understood, that they would have to work as prostitutes does not excuse or legitimate subsequent abuse.
A Self-Reproducing Organization
It usually takes victims between one and three years to repay debts to their sponsors. The debt is sometimes increased as punishment, or the duration of the pact is protracted in other ways. Nevertheless, there eventually comes a day when the debt is repaid. The fact that the debt does not last forever may convince victims that adhering to the pact is their best option.
Once the pact has ended, it is common for a victim to work for a madam as a supervisor of other prostitutes, and eventually become a madam herself. In other words, Nigerian trafficking is not only characterized by female leadership, but also by a self-reproducting organizational structure.
In Italy, madams are usually between 25 and 35 years old. In the Netherlands, where many Nigerians prostitutes arrive as minors, some become madams around the age of 20. The prospect of upward mobility in the trafficking organization is a strong incentive to comply with the pact.
Conclusion
Ironically, the strength of the Nigerian trafficking networks lies in the element of reciprocity between traffickers and victims. The religious and legal sanctioning of the pact between the two parties, as well as prospects for a better situation when the indentured prostitution ends, give the majority of victims a strong motivation to comply. As a result, Nigerian trafficking networks are less reliant on the use of violence than their Eastern European counterparts.
The victims' commitment to the pact makes it particularly difficult to combat this form of trafficking. In several European countries, authorities have "rescued" women from their traffickers, but they return to prostitution to fulfill their obligations towards their sponsors.
For the police, the religious element has provided a convenient explanation. For the media, the combination of vice and "voodoo" has fueled sensational coverage.
Therefore, it is vital to understand the social and cultural context of trafficking while recognizing that the most intriguing aspects of this context, as in the Nigerian case, are not necessarily the ones that can best explain it.
Jørgen Carling is a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). His research focuses on migration from Africa to Europe, including human smuggling, trafficking, and transnational practices.
Sources
Carchedi, F., R. D'Arca, I. Orfani, S. Volpicelli, E.B. Arebu, S.F. Nwaonuma, and E.A. Okojie. 2003. "Il traffico di donne. Il caso della Nigeria." Roma: Fondazione internazionale Lelio Basso.
Carling, J. 2005. "Fra Nigeria til Europa. Innvandring, menneskesmugling og menneskehandel." Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO).
Okojie, C.E.E., O. Okojie, K. Eghafona, G. Vincent-Osaghae, and V. Kalu. 2003. "Report of field survey in Edo State, Nigeria." Torino: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), Programme of action against trafficking in minors and young women from Nigeria into Italy for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Oviawe, P.I.o., and J.P. Iyare. 1999. "Een nationaal onderzoek naar de handel in Nigeriaanse meisjes naar Nederland. Een analyse van de handel, de oorzaken, en de eventuele oplossingen." Amsterdam: De Nigeriaanse Vereniging Nederland & Nigerian Democratic Movement in the Netherlands (NDMN).
Prina, F. 2003. "Trade and exploitation of minors and young Nigerian women for prostitution in Italy." Torino: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), Programme of action against trafficking in minors and young women from Nigeria into Italy for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Smits, K. 2001. "Les filles de Benin City. Etude relative au réseau de la prostitution nigériane." Bruxelles: Direction Générale Office des Etrangers.
van Dijk, R.A., T. Rasing, N. Tellegen, and W. van Binsbergen. 2003. "Een schijn van Voodoo. Culturele achtergronden van de handel in Nigeriaanse meisjes voor de Nederlandse prostitutie: Een verkenning." Leiden: African Studies Centre, Universiteit Leiden.
Fresh moves to stop Nigerian prostitutes’ influx into Italy! Written by Fred Iwenjora Sunday, 28 September 2008
'Edo is main campaign focus'
Moves have been renewed to stop the trafficking of Nigerian women and minors to Italy and other European countries for prostitution.
SINCE it became known that several African minors and young women are victims of human trafficking, the world has become very alert to face the problem head on. Statistics show that over 80 per cent of young African women and minors who travel to Europe are going to fall into the prostitution racket.
The United Nations through its various agencies started making concerted efforts to combat human trafficking. Countries where it has become noticeable that it is being perpetrated are not also left out of the battle to stop or reduce its incidence. Reports say that the number of minors and young women who are trafficked for various reasons including for labour and prostitution have been on the increase within Nigeria, Africa and through out the globe. It is no longer strange to hear of traffickers in minors being intercepted with their victims in many countries of Africa.
Emma Eff and other leaders of the NGOsIn Nigeria, the police have regularly intercepted several Lorries and trailers loaded with young women and children headed to unknown destinations just like the perpetrators have faced the law. Efforts by influential Nigerians like the former First Lady of Edo State, Mrs Eki Igbinedion, who set up Idia Renaissance and created skills acquisition centres for young women in the state where most of those trafficked to Italy and other Europeans cities and countries hail from.
In Italy alone, several young Africans including Nigerians are trafficked for prostitution and sundry reasons that even the Italian government has seen that the menace is assuming unprecedented heights. Some of these minors are even punished or killed if they resist the terms of agreement.
Just recently, a middle aged woman who rejected all entreaties by her elder brother to go into prostitution abroad was set ablaze somewhere in Edo State. Several measures have been taken to see that the streets of Italy and indeed other cities in Europe are rid of this menace caused by the trafficking of these minors and young women just as several NGOs have been set up to counsel or rehabilitate victims. All hands seem to be on deck.
And here is where the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), in cooperation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), is of great assistance. It is a pilot project which its first phase came on stream from 2002-04, and now the second phase entitled, "Preventing and Combating Trafficking of Minors and Young Women from Nigeria to Italy", is starting.
To help their work there is also the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and Related Matters (NAPTIP), which was created five years ago and coordinated by Carol Ndaguba. A coalition of Nigerian NGOs has been created as well and it includes the Committee for Support of the Dignity of Women (COSUDOW), the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group (IRRRAG), the Women Action Initiative (WAI), the Girls Power Initiative (GPI), the African Women Empowerment Guild (AWEG), and Idia Renaissance. But there are not only Nigerians working everyday on this project.
There are also Italians in the team and their duty is to have a close eye on the activities of the project, meet victims as well as vulnerable subjects and get them to talk about this issue. The reasons for Italian government's involvement may not be far fetched because Italy records a considerable population of African prostitutes than any other country. Apart from the fact that they wear the shoe and know where it pinches, so to speak, the more there is awareness on this inhuman treatment, the closer the world will be to the end of this drama.
This begs the question whether these laudable efforts would ever succeed with the harsh economic condition of the people where far much money provides for far much less, a problem occasioned by bad appropriation of state funds by leaders in Africa. With the understanding that several of the young women-victims of trafficking for prostitution in Italy and other parts of Europe come from Nigeria, an Italian young woman, Emma Eff, has a mandate to help spread the word that the story that the streets of Italy is paved with gold, which is usually spurned by mistresses who traffic in young women for prostitution purposes, is not as it seems.
She has been traversing Nigeria working with the NGOs to help nip in the bud what has become a global menace and also to help rehabilitate the victims. She is very optimistic that the battle is tasking but very possible to win.
According to her "what we do is to help reduce the trafficking in minors and young women from Nigeria to Italy for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Edo State is the main focus and we are hooked with over six NGOs and NAPTIP whose counselling and rehabilitation unit has played and will continue to play a critical role in the implementation of prevention, assistance and reintegration activities." Nigeria and indeed the world hopes that these efforts would not go in vain to put an end to one of the greatest scourges that has plagued human existence.
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Italy, Forced Prostitution and Women From Nigeria
By Iain Guest Published: SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 2000
BENIN CITY, Nigeria: Visitors to Italy this summer might be taken aback by the number of African prostitutes competing for their attention with Italy's fabulous tourist attractions. They may be even more startled to learn that many of these young women are being held in a state of virtual slavery. Recently in Nigeria I met one woman who was lucky enough to escape. She had been offered the chance to travel to Germany, to work as an apprentice hairdresser. Instead, she was taken to Italy. Within a day of arriving, she was told she would have to earn 90 million lire (dollars 50,000) from prostitution just to purchase her freedom. At the going rate of 30,000 lire an encounter, that would have meant sex with 3,000 clients. Twenty-five days and many clients later, this young woman managed to escape with the help of an Italian charity. But she is very much of an exception. At least 15,000 Nigerian prostitutes are thought to be working the streets in Italy, and as many as a third might have been lured there under false pretenses. Far from home and without documents, they cannot break free from their bondage without being arrested, deported, and exposed to humiliation back in Nigeria. How can such an abuse flourish in Europe in the 21st century? How can the Italian government allow it? How can women be so gullible as to get trapped? Is it possible (or appropriate) to discourage those who knowingly enter the trade? Today in Opinion
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Questions like these have begun to capture the attention of policymakers at the international level. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently described the trafficking in women as the "fastest-growing international criminal enterprise." Up to now, most research on human trafficking has focused on Asia and Eastern Europe. Only recently has it become clear that other parts of the world are also exporting women and that within Africa, Nigeria is the largest single source, almost all of them from Edo and Delta states in the south. It began in the late 1980s when Nigerian women started traveling to Italy to work in tomato fields. From there they graduated to the cities and the streets. Traffickers spotted an opportunity and moved in. During the 1990s, they were able to exploit the poverty, corruption and collapse of services that occurred under Nigeria's military rulers. At that time, any foreign travel seemed appealing. Some feminists feel the traffickers can also draw on a culture that devalues women and girls. Whatever the root causes, scores of small enterprises in Edo state have invested in trafficking. They include forgers, immigration officials, police and phony lawyers. Parents have been known to sell their own children. Students have sold their best friends. The impact of all this is deeply corrupting. Traffickers are splitting families and undermining confidence in the rule of law. They are even starting to recruit in schools. Alarmingly, the rot is beginning to spread beyond Edo into other states of Nigeria, particularly the Muslim North. Civil society in Nigeria is beginning to fight back, and there have been several arrests in recent weeks. But there is no real consensus on how to proceed. Some would like to outlaw prostitution. Others feel this would only further victimize the victims. One thing is certain: Nigeria should not have to wrestle with the dilemma alone. Trafficking would not exist if there was no demand, and Italy bears a particularly heavy responsibility. Although Italian law is supposed to punish traffickers and give their victims an incentive to go to the police, it is not enforced with any conviction. Only one suspected Italian trafficker has been arrested, and that was in Nigeria. Meanwhile, in the past year more than 500 Nigerian prostitutes have been rounded up and deported back to Nigeria with barely a day's notice.The deportation policy plays into the hands of the pimps and traffickers, who often denounce veteran prostitutes to the police when they are close to paying off their debt. (The goal is to secure new, younger victims.) Even less do the deportations address the abuse that is flourishing on Italy's streets. But the real folly of deportation is that it adds to the stress of the women (many of whom are infected with the HIV-AIDS virus) and makes their reintegration much harder. This in turn adds to the burden on the financially strapped Nigerian authorities. Last year Italy and Nigeria drafted a "Readmission Agreement," under which Italy will support the reintegration of deported prostitutes while allowing more legal immigration from Nigeria. But the agreement has languished for a year and has yet to be signed. Next pages: http://www.iht.com/articles/2000/06/24/edguest.2.t.php
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3,000 Nigerian Prostitutes Await Deportation From Italy Panafrican News Agency, 14 September 2000 Lagos, Nigeria—Women trafficking has assumed a serious dimension in Nigeria, with a report that at least 3,000 girls awaiting deportation from Italian prisons for prostituting.
The number is in addition to the 403 others deported from various countries for the same reason between January and July, according to Titi Abubakar, wife of the Nigerian vice president.
Titi, founder of Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication, was speaking in Abuja while receiving the organisation's draft bill on women trafficking.
She problem of women trafficking in Nigeria has forced the mid-western state of Edo, where most of the girls originated, to enact an anti-prostitution law to curb the practice.
The state's anti-prostitution bill, signed into law by Governor Lucky Igbinedion last week, was the highpoint of his wife's campaign against international prostitution.
The state's first lady, Eky Igbinedion, had initiated the Idia Renaissance to ensure the “rebirth of social and moral values among Edo women.”
“Prostitution is not part of our culture, rather it is one of the inimical baggage that came with Westernisation and which also provide avenue for rapid spread of AIDS,” the governor said while signing the anti- prostitution bill.
Even though many of the deported women have been paraded publicly, it has not deterred those willing to travel out of the country for prostitution.
Italy is the country of choice for Nigerian prostitutes, though some also travel to other European countries.
The enormity of the problem, coupled with that of child trafficking, led to the formation of the organisation by Titi Abubakar
She said the Nigerian Embassy in Gabon had been repatriating not less than 15 child labourers monthly since the beginning of the year, and urged wives of policy makers to remind their spouses of the need for good governance, poverty alleviation and employment of youths.
“The menace of trafficking is neither geographical, tribal nor gender-based, It respects no status. It is a multi-dimensional problem,” she said.
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NRC Handelsblad Eindhoven prostitutes back to illegally working the streets Published: 10 March 2009 March 2009 10:05
The decision to shut down the designated street prostitution zone in Eindhoven in 2011 is coming up against criticism and incomprehension among prostitutes. "These ladies must be helped out of their dead-end situation," says the alderman. "Then I'll go back to illegal soliciting," says one prostitute. By Esther Wittenberg
This file picture shows the designated street prostitution zone in Amsterdam. The Theemsweg was shut down in 2003. Photo Maurice Boyer It is 12.30 at night. The road between the railroad tracks and industrial park is deserted. A red Renault stops. A skinny woman in a black jacket and miniskirt steps out from the dark. She walks up to the car, swinging her hips, says something through the open window and gets in the car. The driver pulls over and parks ten metres further along behind a perforated aluminium partition. A few minutes later another woman gets into a grey station wagon. The car drives on towards the second designated area, since the red taillights of the Renault indicate that the first area is taken.
Prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000 and six years ago Eindhoven opened a designated street prostitution area. The aim was to put an end to the nuisance caused by street prostitution in the working class area of Woensel West. Used condoms were being thrown into front gardens, cars were cruising around the area at night, and neighbourhood girls were being asked how much they charged. Thirty prostitutes with addiction problems were given a pass that allowed them to work in the special designated zone. The aim was also to provide addicted street prostitutes with better healthcare.
A sitting room facility was provided were prostitutes could shower, wash their clothes and get ready for work. Condoms, clean needles and coffee were provided. People from the Salvation Army spoke with the women, a doctor examined the women, and police kept an eye on the situation. The nuisance was reduced and the women's health improved, as Veronique Robeerts knows from her own experience.
Robeerts has been an addict since the age of fourteen. She worked as a street prostitute for ten years. She is now 28 and the traces of the rough life she has led are clearly visible. She has a glass eye and a scar on her stomach from an umbilical hernia surgery. Her sunken lower lip betrays her missing lower teeth. Her bony body all but disappears in her baggy light grey training suit.
Drug dealers and human trafficking
Before 2003 she hustled in the residential area, where she regularly had to hide from police. “There was good money in that, since it was 24 hours a day.” From the opening of the Eindhoven street prostitution zone, she was there seven days a week from 8 pm to 2 am. On busy evenings she would service ten clients, on quiet evenings sometimes none. She would turn tricks, go to the dealer and then use. She slept in squats or in a tent. She stopped selling herself seven months ago. She is now living in a shelter run by the Salvation Army.
Although the street prostitution zone has succeeded at virtually all its aims, according to an evaluation, the municipality wants to shut it down in 2011. In the next three years, aided by assistance workers, all the addicted prostitutes must become independent of the drug dealers and pimps. Alderman Mariët Mittendorff: “We do not want to facilitate these women in remaining in their dead-end situation. We would rather offer them a dignified existence.”
Opinions on street prostitution zones vary throughout the country. Amsterdam shut its zone down in 2003. Rotterdam and The Hague followed suit in 2006. The argument for closing the zones was that they attracted drug dealers and human trafficking. The street prostitution zones are still open in Utrecht, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Heerlen and Groningen.
Disappear from sight
Robeerts shakes her head vehemently. Her blonde spiky hair moves up and down. “There is no point in shutting down the street prostitution zone. Women will just go back to soliciting illegally."
She does not believe that her former colleagues are waiting for help. “There may be a few that are motivated to get out of that life, but most of them are not.” You can only help a woman who wants to be helped, is also what assistance workers have learned from experience.
“Don’t tell me that there are no longer any street prostitutes in Amsterdam,” says Kersten van Dalen. For years she was the coordinator of the street prostitution zones in Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. “Street prostitutes now have to quickly jump into cars to avoid police. No one sees what happens to them. No one gives them condoms or tests them for venereal diseases.” Nor will shutting down the street prostitution zones stop human trafficking. Van Dalen: “The victims will just disappear from sight. No one will notice a girl is missing if she disappears. That makes it tougher to intervene.”
The view city councils take of legal street prostitution zones is changing, says researcher Sander Flight. “When municipalities opened designated street prostitution areas in the nineteen eighties and nineties [when prostitution was illegal, but tolerated], the predominant idea was that street prostitutes had to have a safe place to work. Over the past years, city councils have largely espoused the moral conviction that these designated street prostitution zones are hotbeds of criminal activity. Places where women work in degrading circumstances and which they should not keep up and running. And they decide to spend the money on other things."
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The Dutch solution? Well, blame it all on the damn foreigners! But Dutch asylum procedures seem to favour the traffick in young Nigerian women. ============================================================
NRC Handelsblad
A billboard in Benin City, Nigeria, warns against the dangers of human trafficking. Photo HH
Nigerian human traffickers go on trial in the Netherlands Published: 16 March 2009 March 2009 10:57 By Sheila Kamerman and Dick Wittenberg
A high-profile trial against eleven suspects of human trafficking between Nigeria and Europe got off to a false start this week.
On May 4, 2006 a Nigerian woman who goes by the name of Jenny arrives at Schiphol airport on a KLM-flight from Lagos. She is travelling with a Nigerian man who had guided her through the check-in and customs in Nigeria. At Schiphol, the man asks Jenny to wait while he gets something to eat. When he doesn't return, Jenny panics.
That's how she was found by a policeman who belongs to a unit specialised in human trafficking. Jenny ends up at the IND, the Dutch immigration and naturalisation service, where she is introduced to Wilma Hompe, an immigration lawyer.
It doesn't take Hompe long to figure out that Jenny is a victim of human trafficking. She fits the profile: lured to Europe with vague promises on a paid-for trip, papers in her purse she knows nothing about and caarying a fake passport. Hompe has a pretty good idea of what is in store for Jenny.
Transit country
Jenny says she is 16. The Netherlands doesn't allow unaccompanied minors to be sent back immediately, not even to a "safe" country like Nigeria. The Dutch authorities are required to first make sure that there is adequate reception at the other end. Meanwhile, Jenny will be placed in an open shelter for unaccompanied minor asylum seekers. There a human trafficker will intercept her on her way to school or church.
"At the time, the Netherlands were being flooded with girls like Jenny," Hompe says. "The police weren't doing anything about it because the girls were not yet victims of human trafficking upon arrival; they were only potential victims. They had not yet been forced into prostitution. Although it was clear that the Netherlands were being used as a transit country, the police were concentrating on deportations. They had targets to meet."
The next day a Nigeria calls Hompe's office from a German phone number. He says he is Jenny's cousin. How he found out that Hompe is acting as Jenny's lawyer, he doesn't want to say. Jenny says she doesn't have a cousin in Europe. It is clear to Hompe that this is a human trafficker trying to locate Jenny.
Hompe puts in a call to a special police task force on human trafficking that was set up in 2005. A police investigation begins.
Public outrage
When the different police services start comparing notes, a pattern quickly emerges. Over the past few months, dozens of Nigerian women like Jenny have arrived at Schiphol airport. They all tell the same rehearsed story of how their parents were killed during fighting between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. Many of them have false identity papers. Most have since disappeared from the shelters - destination unknown.
It is nothing new that Nigerian human traffickers have been using the Netherlands as their gateway to Europe. From 1996 to 1999, some four-hundred Nigerian girls have disappeared from the government shelters. Some were later found in Amsterdam's red-light district or in sex clubs elsewhere in the Netherlands. In 1999, Dutch parliamentarian Boris Dittrich gave voice to the growing public outrage over this situation when he said that "Dutch asylum policy was facilitating the prostitution business."
A few Nigerian human traffickers were arrested in the 90s but the business at large was unaffected. The gangs no longer put the women to work in the Netherlands but in neighbouring Belgium and later in southern Europe. When circumstances changed, they quickly adapted destinations, supply routes and methods. Nigerian women may have disappeared from the Dutch brothels, but Jenny's arrival proved that Schiphol, with its direct flights to Nigeria, was still very much a hub for human trafficking in 2006.
In November 2006, the police start investigating a Nigerian called Solomon. His phone is tapped. His BMW 3-series is fitted with a transmitting device. Gradually, the police start getting a better idea of the organisation behind the human trafficking. A travel agency in Nigeria is in charge of getting papers for the girls, the customers are Italian brothels. The Netherlands is the transit country where a top operative takes possession of the girls and sends them on to their next destination. He has about twenty helpers, including several in Belgium and France.
The Dutch authorities are faced with a choice: either arrest the Dutch branch of the organisation, with the risk that someone else will take its place in no time, or go higher up the food chain. "We realised that if we wanted to uproot this organisation, we would have to go all the way: from the country of origin to the country of destination," says Warner Ten Kate of the national public prosecutor's office.
In March 2007, the Dutch police liaise with the Italian police who start their own investigation. Nigeria is a tougher nut to crack. There are no official police contacts, no extradition treaties, no direct experience with the ill-reputed Nigerian police. A local partner is found nevertheless in Naptip, a Nigerian organisation dedicated to the fight against human trafficking that reports directly to the president.
Jenny goes missing
Meanwhile, Nigerian women keep arriving in the Netherlands. Police count at least 89 potential victims in 2006 and 50 in 2007. And despite warnings about what awaits them, the women keep disappearing from the shelters. Jenny also has gone missing.
Through the phone taps, police discovered how the traffickers were putting pressure on the women. They reminded them that they had signed a contract back in Nigeria, and how higher powers had sealed that contract through rituals. Did they really think they could escape punishment? And what about their families back in Nigeria? One women panicked when she received a curse from a traditional Nigerian priest via a text message to her phone.
The Dutch authorities are faced with a dilemma. Given the opportunity, the police would have liked to plant chips under the women's skin to track their whereabouts, or better yet, to lock them all up. But locking up asylum seekers - minors who have not committed a crime - is going too far for NIDOS, the Dutch institution entrusted with the guardianship of minor asylum seekers. The women themselves blame the police for endangering the lives of their families by keeping them from fulfilling their obligations to the traffickers. In the shelters, the women start breaking windows and attacking the staff.
At the same time, the police investigation is starting to pay off. Police witness a meeting between Solomon and a British suspect in Sheffield. The take pictures of Solomon meeting an Italian suspect in Amsterdam. They find out that Solomon gets a money transfer from Nigeria every time a women disappears from a shelter.
On October 24, 2007, police in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Spain, France, Germany and the US raid the houses of eighteen suspects. The main suspect in Nigeria initially gets away but is later trapped with the help of Naptip. On January 15, 2008, the Italian police arrest 51 suspects.
Voodoo rituals
But the Dutch police now face another problem. Most of the suspects are in custody - seven from Nigeria, three from other African countries and one from Surinam - but none of the Nigerian women has filed a complaint. The women don't trust the police. They fear deportation but also the religious rituals.
The authorities seek the help of a former victim of human trafficking, a Nigerian woman who now has resident status in the Netherlands and is employed as an interpreter for the government. She tells the women about her own experiences. The police also turn to a Nigerian preacher, Moses Alagbe. He tries to calm the women's fear of spiritual vengeance. He tells them that God is mightier than any number of voodoo rituals. In the end, ten women agree to file a complaint.
Almost seventeen months after the arrests, the case finally went to trial this week. The public prosecutor's office is calling it an historical trial and the result of groundbreaking police work.
"For the first time we have been able to tackle the entire chain from beginning to end," says Ten Kate. He says the level of collaboration between the different European police forces is unique. "This rarely happens. Europe is a high-speed train when it comes to economics but it is a horse and cart when it comes to the justice system. And we have demonstrated that it is possible to work with the Nigerians in the fight against human trafficking. France, Norway, Italy, have already followed our lead."
But there is no reason to assume that the investigation has dealt more than a temporary blow to the human traffickers. The airports of Geneva and Budapest are reporting suspiciously high numbers of Nigerian women arriving there. And most of the women who came through the Netherlands are still missing.
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