COMBATING TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN AND WOMEN UNDER INTERNATIONAL AND NIGERIAN LEGAL REGIMES

BY

PROF. MUHAMMED TAWFIQ LADAN (PhD)

Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law,

Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

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A PAPER PRESENTED AT A

TRAINING WORKSHOP ON UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM AND PROGRAMME

ORGANISED BY:

THE NIGERIAN INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED LEGAL STUDIES, LAGOS

DATE:DECEMBER 5 - 8, 2011

VENUE: NIALS LAGOS
COMBATING TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN AND WOMEN UNDER INTERNATIONAL AND NIGERIAN LEGAL REGIMES

BY

PROF. MUHAMMED TAWFIQ LADAN (PhD)

INTRODUCTION

This paper aims at realizing the following objectives: -

  1. To provide conceptual clarification of relevant key terms such as: - Child domestics, Trafficking in persons, Child trafficking and victims of trafficking and human rights violations;
  2. To determine the extent to which trafficking is both a crime and a human rights violations under international, regional and national legal instruments;
  3. To examine the nature and scope of the rights of victims of trafficking;
  4. To determine the role of prosecutors and judges in the protection of victim’s rights and the administration of criminal justice.
  5. To conclude with some recommendations.

1. FACT SHEET: NIGERIA: CHILD TRAFFICKING

Based on current knowledge, Nigeria is a major supplier, consumer and also a transit route for human trafficking. Millions of children and women driven into different types of exploitative labour often become the most vulnerable groups.

Basic Statistics1

Estimated total population (2006)140.1m

Male: 71,709,859 (51.22%)

Female:68,293,683 (48.78%)

Life Expectancy 46.5 years

Poverty Incidence54.4%

Average Growth Rate3.2%

Adult Literacy Rate:69.1%

Scale of the Problem (Estimates)2

Average age of trafficked children

especially girls 15yrs (could be higher or lower).

Nigerian girls in sex trade in Europe60%-80% of girls in sex trade in Italy (over 200 in Italy while Belgium and Netherlands are experiencing an upsurge in the number of Nigerian girls).

Common routesWest Coast to Mali, Morocco and by boat to Spain, or West Coast to Libya – Saudi Arabia.

Means of transportation 90% travel by road across the Sahara desert, others through Airports, Seaports and bush paths.

Stop-over locationsCameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Niger, Libya, Mali and Morocco.

Impact on NigeriaLoss of lives, increasing prevalence of STDs including HIV/AIDS, increase in violence and crime rate, higher school drop outs, impaired child development, poor national image and massive deportation of Nigerian girls.

Nature of problemsNigeria serves as provider, receiver, transit and stop-over location.

Categories of Child LabourGirls: domestic help, prostitution. Boys: used as scavengers, car washing, bus conducting, drug peddling, farming. Both can be involved in head loading, community-based brass melting and menial jobs.

Volume of Trafficking3

  • About 8 million Nigerian children are engaged in exploitative child labour, putting them at great risk of human trafficking, as 43% of them are based in the southern border towns of Calabar, Port Harcourt and Owerri.
  • Approximately 19% of school children in Nigeria work after school in exploitative and dangerous environments.
  • It is estimated that 80% of children trafficked to Italy are from Africa and 60% of these are Nigerians.
  • Boys are mostly trafficked from the south eastern part, Imo and Abia and Akwa-Ibom into Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo, while those from Kwara move to Togo as far as Mali to work on the plantations.
  • Private transit camps exist in Akwa-Ibom, Calabar and Ondo States, where children are transported from South eastern states and forced into hard labour and prostitution.
  • Movement is from rural to urban areas, especially during festive period, most collection points were based in urban areas. As a result of on-going advocacy, trafficking agents now operate from the rural areas.

Types of Trafficking4

Internal Trafficking

  • Internal trafficking occurs with movement from State to State, originating from fostering and extended family systems, couple with inability of the child to trace family members.
  • Middlemen cheat employers by receiving money in advance but do not allow the children to settle in one family or employment. Payment for the children’s services often never reaches the poor parents.
  • Many of the children move out of koranic schools into the streets and are often used as human shields during religious conflict or as agents to ignite trouble.
  • Internal movement of children for trafficking usually occurs during festive periods and other cultural activities (March, April and December).

External trafficking (Not confined to Nigeria)

  • On average, 10 children daily pass through Nigerian’s borders especially at Seme, Maiduguri, Sokoto and Calabar.
  • Children from the south-south (Edo and Imo States) are the majority of those trafficked to Mali and Gabon, Saudi Arabia and Italy.
  • Socio-cultural and religious practices facilitate easy movement of children to Sudan, Mali and Saudi Arabia.

Major Causes5

  • Widespread poverty sparking the push-and-pull factors to urban centers.
  • Limited capacity of Customs and immigration agencies, making the borders very porous.
  • Lack of legal frameworks and weak policy implementation.
  • High level of illiteracy, unemployment and poor standards of living.
  • Increase taste for materialistic values among youths aggravated by peer pressure.
  • Poor reporting and monitoring of cases by law enforcement agencies.
  • High school drop-out rates, couple with long closure of higher institutions of learning.
  • Abuse of the common practice of placement and fostering, along with weakened extended family safety net.
  • Desperation of poor and illiterate parents with large families ignorant of the impact of child trafficking. (e.g. in the east, trafficking agents reportedly give poor parents money for a child to be trafficked).

SuppliersReceivers

* Parents/RelativesFamily households.

* Community and opinion leadersWorking mothers,widows.

* Well placed business womenSex tourism, hotels,

brothels, and cultural troupes.

* Universities, CollegesFarms/cottage

industries/motor parks.

  • Illegal hostels run by

SyndicatesSmugglers/drug

peddlers/trade associations.

* Rehabilitation centersNetworks in Africa, Europe,

Asia and America

Legal Framework

As stipulated in the Criminal Code for the South and Penal Code for the North, the Nigerian criminal law has several provision protecting children and youth from harm and sexual exploitation. Within the last three decades, the Nigerian government has not enforced these laws effectively, however, since the democratic transition in 1999, the government and several States Houses of Assembly have passed or are in the process of passing laws to protect children.

  • Edo State recently passed a law banning prostitution.
  • Anambra State banned children working during school hours.
  • Cross-Rivers States recently passed a Bill outlawing child marriage and female circumcision.
  • Governors from 19 Northern States commenced debates on promulgating laws to ban child street hawkers, child street beggars and prostitution.
  • Now in force are Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, 2003 as amended in 2005 and the Child Rights Act, 2003.
  • Signing of bilateral agreements with other countries for repatriation and rehabilitation of trafficked Nigerian Children and deportation of the barons.
  • The Federal Government started arresting and prosecuting those involved in child trafficking and other forms of child abuse.
  • International treaties and protocols on women and children signed/ ratified by the Government in December 2001.
  1. Convention 182 on Minimum Age.
  2. Convention 138 on Elimination of the Worse Form of Child labour.
  3. Optional Protocol to the Convention on Elimination of All Form of Discrimination Against Women.
  4. Optional Protocol on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflicts.
  5. Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.
  6. Convention Against Torture and other cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
  7. Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime.
  8. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in persons, especially Women and Children.
  • ECOWAS Declaration on the Fight Against Trafficking In Persons.

Limitations and Challenges

  • Weak data base on child trafficking and traffickers.
  • Inadequate provision of basis social services and weak enforcement of the law of prosecuting criminals.
  • Inadequate international and regional bilateral agreements against trafficking.
  • Due to the bilateral agreement between Nigeria and Italy, massive repatriation of the girls commenced, who often go as children and return as adults.
  • As some of the repatriated girls are temporally kept in police custody before family reunification, inadequate infrastructure makes them become violent and lawless.
  • Outcome from the continuous sensitization of policy makers, NGOs and CBOs must be followed up.
  • UBE/Scholarship schemes, skills development and job creation should be strengthened and sustained.
  • Production of public enlightenment materials for monitoring centers of neighbourhood assemblies.
  • Coordination of response among development agencies at the country level need to be fully mobilized.

INTERVENTIONS SUPPORTED BY UNICEF-NIGERIA BETWEEN 1997 AND 20106

Prevention.

  • Initiating a pilotstudy on child trafficking and child labour.
  • Advocacy through participation of top policy makers in national, regional and global conferences.
  • Sensitization of the police, immigration and prison officers on monitoring and border surveillance.
  • Establishment for Child Rights Clubs in schools with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) kits.
  • Media awareness generated through field visits, investigation reports and editorials.
  • Development of information materials through dramas, jingles, videos, posters and year planners.

Protection

  • Promoting regional and bilateral agreements of monitoring human trafficking.
  • Provision of basic services through local Plans of Actions to urban poor slums in six major cities.
  • Facilitating the establishment of an NGO Child Protection Technical Support Network.
  • Provision of life skills and credit facilities to out-of-school youth from poor families.

Strategies

  • Providing poor communities, access to qualitative basic education and health services.
  • Partnership and alliance building with NGOs and other agencies for children and women.
  • Institutional capacity building and follow up on the Libreville Platform of Action.
  • Networking with ILO, ECOWAS, UNIFEM, UNODCP and Embassies to promote public awareness.
  • Materials and technical support to government agencies and NGOs for rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration.
  • Research, monitoring and Evaluation.

Agencies tackling child/women trafficking

  • The Presidency (through a Special Presidential Committee on Human Trafficking, Child Labour and Slavery)
  • Federal ministry of Women Affairs and Youth Development
  • Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity
  • Federal Ministry of Justice
  • Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation
  • Nigeria Customs and Immigration
  • Nigeria Police Commission
  • National Boundary Commission
  • NGOs – WOTCLEF (Abuja), Idia Renaissance (Edo State), Heartland Care Foundation (Imo State), ANPPCAN (Enugu), Women Consortium of Nigeria (Lagos).
  • UNICEF, UNODCP, UNIFEM, ECOWAS, World Bank, IOM, USAID, USDOL, ILO, Embassies of Belgium, Italy, Britain, Netherlands, and U.S.
  • Media Organisations in Nigeria.

2.CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION OF KEY TERMS

2.1Child Domestic Service as a Human Rights Violation and Trafficking

Generally from large poor rural families, child domestics are invisible child labourers as they are often confined to their employer’s house and have very little contact with the outside world. At the beck and call of their employers on a 24 hours basis, these children are highly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.7

Child domestics toil mostly for working and middle-class families. Although this is a less inherently dangerous form of child labour the conditions under which it is generally performed lead to its classification as a worst form of child labour.8

The working environment is often characterized by long periods of isolation and long working hours, leading to physical and psychological trauma. It is estimated that many children in the child domestic service sector work between 14 to 18 hours a day. It is also true that many are not properly paid, as some employers charge for the food and accommodation given to the children. Sometimes payment is only in kind (e.g second hand clothes). Many girls aged between the age of 9 and 15 who migrate largely from rural to urban area are employed as domestic servants. These girls also risk physical and sexual abuse by employers or their family members.9

Working largely in the sphere of private households, domestic workers experience a degree of vulnerability that is unparalleled to that of other workers. Domestic work per se is of course not forced labour. But it can degenerate into forced labour when debt bondage or trafficking is involved or when the worker is physically restrained form leaving the employer’s home or has his or her identity papers withheld. The worst situations involve violence, sometimes extending to rape and/or torture10.

Even under less dramatic circumstances, working in forced labour circumstances can be particularly harmful, as when, primarily in developing countries, most often girls and sometimes boys spend long days toiling in private households instead of attending School. This phenomenon can be most common in urban areas, with children been lured from poor rural areas, as reported in Benin Republic (1000,000 children), Haiti (250,000 children), and Nepal (83,000 children).11

Once on the job domestic workers tend to work in isolation, creating ample opportunity for disregarding labour legislation, if it applies to them in the first place. Indeed domestic workers suffer prejudice on account of their frequent exclusion from the coverage of labour legislation (in developed and developing countries alike), and the obstacles they face in exercising freedom of association. This combination makes it all the more difficult for them to extract themselves from situations involving forced or compulsory labour. Some countries, such as Switzerland, have adopted special legislation on administrative measures intended to provide proper contracts of employment for domestic workers as a means of avoiding such a fate.12

Under the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), the trafficking of children is considered a worst form of child labour. But the situation of the working children of West Africa may also be considered a worst form even if the children are not trafficked but are:- under the minimum legal age for that type of work, as defined by national legislation in accordance with international standards; in work that endangers their physical, mental or moral well-being, either because of the nature of the work or because of the conditions under which it is performed; or in a situation that can be defined as slavery or bonded labour13.

Of the more than two hundred million children working in the world, it is impossible to know how many are exploited in domestic service. The ILO estimates that more girl-children under 16 years are in domestic service than in any other category of work or child labour.14 Because child domestic service takes place in a private sphere or home and is therefore ‘hidden’, there is no accurate breakdown of the figures15.

However child domestic labour is a long established tradition in West Africa. Children are trafficked not only internally but between Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Coted’ Ivoire, Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo16.

While boys in Africa are sometimes trafficked to work as house boys and on plantations and in other exploitative labour, it is clearly girls who are most vulnerable to trafficking, not only into child domestics service but also into sexual exploitation.

According to a recent UNICEF Fact sheet on child Trafficking in Nigeria,17 the volume of trafficking reveals:-

About eight million Nigerian Children are engaged in exploitative child labour, putting them at great risk of human trafficking; as 43% of them are based in the southern border towns of Calabar, Port Harcourt and Owerri.

Approximately 19% of School children work after school in exploitative and dangerous environments.

It is estimated that 80% of children trafficked to Italy are from Africa and 60% of these are Nigerians.

Boys are mostly trafficked from the south eastern part: Imo, Abia and Akwa-Ibom States into Gabon, Equitorial Guinea and Congo, while those from Kwara move to Togo and as far as Mali to work on the plantations.

Further, in terms of types of trafficking, the fact sheet indicates that children are trafficked both internally and externally. Internal child trafficking occurs with movement from state to state, originating from fostering and extended family systems, coupled with inability of the child to trace family members. Middlemen and women cheat employers by receiving money in advance but do not allow the children to settle in one family or employment. Payment for the children’s services often never reaches the poor parents.18

Furthermore, major factors responsible for external trafficking of children to Mali, Gabon, Sudan, Italy and Saudi Arabia include, widespread poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and poor standard of living high School drop out rates, weakened extended family safety net, and limited capacity of law enforcement agencies, making the borders very porous in terms of effective monitoring, reporting and interception of cases.19

Child domestic service in Nigeria today becomes violative of children’s rights if it is deprivative of the rights of the child to be given protection and care necessary for his/her well-being; deprivative of the rights of the child to survival and development, to freedom of movement and from discrimination; deprivative of the family union, to human dignity, to leisure and recreation, to parental care, protection and maintenance, to free, compulsory and universal primary education; etc, as provided by sections 2-15 of the Child Rights Act, 2003.20

Further, child domestic service becomes a human rights violation issue in Nigeria when it is in contravention of:- Section 28 of the Child’s rights Act, 2003, which prohibits any child forced or exploitative labour, including employment of a child as a domestic help outside his or her own home or family environment.21

Furthermore, section 30 of the Child’s Rights Act prohibits the buying, selling hiring or otherwise dealing in children for the purpose of hawking or begging for alms or prostitution, or domestic or sexual labour, unlawful or immoral purpose, slavery, trafficking, debt bondage, forced or compulsory labour or for the purpose of depriving the child of the opportunity to attend and remain in school as provided for under the compulsory, free Universal Basic Education Act.22