IOM helps stranded Nigerian migrants return home from Libya. Credit: IOM

By Baher Kamal
ROME, Aug 31 2017 (IPS)

Bako* (24), a Nigerian migrant, stares at newcomers at an old, local Roman bar. Extremely polite, he asks for money. If you offer to buy him some food instead, he immediately accepts.

Interviewed for IPS by Laurent Vercken, the young Nigerian migrant tells his story: originally from Kuje district, Southern province of Abuja, Nigeria, he has been living in Italy since the beginning of 2013 and moved to Rome shortly later.

That year, Bako docked at Lampedusa Island from Libya after a perilous sail trip through the Mediterranean Sea and a never-ending road travel through the northern African deserts, that began in Abuja, Nigeria.

The eldest of a large family of 4 brothers and 2 sisters, Bako decided to take on him the medical expenses of his father who suffers deep-vein thrombosis affecting his right arm.

So, at the early age of 20 the young man grabbed his ID card, all the money needed for the very long and arduous, unknown trip north and left the place where he was born and where he had lived until that moment: the village of Kuje, in the Southern district of the Nigerian capital city.

“After several days spent in the Lampedusa transit camp, I managed to get to the big Italian city of Rome early in the 2013 summer, hoping for a better chance to find a job and a regular residence permit, which he finally obtained in 2015 with a validity of only one year.”

Martha, a former paediatric nurse, travels around northeast Nigeria as part of IOM’s mental health teams. She offers counselling and workshops for adults, and runs games for children. Credit: IOM

Now nearly five years after Bako had the courage to leave his home country, he has still not found a decent job to contribute financially to help his family and ensure their livelihood.

The first residence permit granted to him by the Italian Government expired in 2016.

However, Bako is still longing for a better future, trying to survive the long days, accepting small jobs of gardening or cheap casual labour while still asking for money outside a local bar on a busy street of a European capital city, which also saw a lot of its own citizens migrate in the same search for a better future.

Like most Nigerian migrants, Bako is an honest, hard worker, willing to find a decent job, no matter what kind, to help him survive and send as much money as possible to his large family and, above all, cover his father’s expensive medical treatment.

“Lucky” Kingsley

Another Nigerian migrant, Kingsley* (35), has had better luck. “I am happy now! Three years ago, I managed to reach Italy after a long, really dangerous voyage through Morocco and then Spain,” he tells IPS.

After two long years of working as an undocumented summer fruits collector, loader at a small moving company, street vendor of CDs and handicrafts, among other jobs, Kingsley married an Italian young woman and they now have two children and, most importantly, a permanent resident permit.

Bako and Kingsley are just two of tens of thousands of Nigerian migrants trying for better luck in Italy.

Being males, they consider themselves lucky.

Nigerian female migrants face a much worse, dramatic fate.

The Tragic Fate of Nigerian Migrant Women

According to credible Italian sources, around 50 per cent of Nigerian migrant women and girls –in Rome in particular and in Italy in general–, are forced by smugglers and human traffickers to work as sex slaves.

IOM helped more than 1,770 stranded Nigerian migrants return safely from Libya this year. Credit: IOM

“I know of a girl, really a baby (14 years) who has been forced to sleep with more than 20 men a day… every day,” says to IPS Esther* who has also been obliged by her raptors to work as a prostitute in Rome’s outskirts.

Joy* approaches IPS with a mix of fear that she might be reported to Italian police for being an undocumented migrant working as a prostitute, and also some hope that she could be helped to escape prostitution.

“We have being victims of many peoples: first those who convinced us in Nigeria that they would take us to Europe, safely, and find a decent job here,” she tells. “They took us with tens of other migrants in a horrible voyage to Libya.” See Migrants – The Increasingly Expensive Deadly Voyages

“There, many of us women and girls have been victims of brutal, inhumane sexual abuse on the hands of smugglers and traffickers who would sell many of us to nationals to abuse of us,” adds Joy*. See: Millions of Women and Children for Sale for Sex, Slavery, Organs…

Esther and Joy’s cases are not unique. Their plights have been documented and denounced by international humanitarian organisations and the United Nations bodies. See: African Migrant Women Face “Shocking Sexual Abuse” on Journey to Europe

Nor are theirs just a couple of isolated cases affecting migrants from their home country.

Nigeria, Top Nationality

It is in fact estimated that around 51 per cent of migrants worldwide are women and girls, according to a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Italy: La Tratta di essere umani atrraversola rotta del Mediterraneo centrale” (Trafficking in human beings through the central Mediterranean route).

In the case of women, it adds, exploitation and abuse are above all sexual, representing 72 per cent of all cases, followed by labour exploitation (20 per cent).

According to IOM Italy, in 2016, the top nationality of migrants reaching the country via sea was Nigeria, with a notable increase in the number of women (11.009 compared with 5.000 in 2015) as well as of unaccompanied children, with over 3.000 compared with 900 in 2015.

It also estimates that around 80 per cent of Nigerian migrants arrived to Italy by sea in 2016 have been victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation either in Italy or in other European Union countries. Nigerian migrants women and unaccompanied children are among those at highest risk of falling prey to smugglers and traffickers.

Stranded Nigerian Migrants Return Home from Libya

The UN migration agency continues meanwhile to help stranded Nigerian migrants return home from Libya.

In just one case, it helped 172 stranded Nigerian migrants –110 women, 49 men, seven children and six infants– return home to Nigeria from Tripoli, Libya on 21 February.

“We had nothing in Nigeria – no house, no food,” explained 21-year-old Oluchi*, who together with her husband and mother decided to travel to Italy. Oluchi and her family were arrested and jailed in Libya, IOM quoted as an example.

Now, she was returning home with her son to Nigeria. “The dream of Europe is actually a nightmare,” she said.

So far in 2017, IOM Libya helped 589 stranded migrants return to their countries of origin, of whom 117 were eligible for reintegration assistance.

Where to Go?

Difficult question, if you only consider the fact that eight years of Boko Haram violence has forced more than 1.8 million people from their homes, leaving belongings, communities and lives behind across Nigeria’s North East.

The United Nations estimated that Boko Haram has abducted at least 4,000 girls and women in Northeast Nigeria, far exceeding the nearly 300 girls taken from their school in Chibok in 2014, sparking the UN viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign and drawing attention to the conflict.

Many say they were forced to witness killing or suffered sexual violence, the UN migration agency reports, adding that Boko Haram has also used children as suicide bombers and has forcibly recruited countless boys and men to commit violent acts.

To get a wider picture, also consider the rising social inequalities and the high youth unemployment rates in this oil-rich country of around 130 million inhabitants. Two facts that by the way are common to several other African countries who additionally suffer severe impact of climate change and man-made disasters that they have not caused.

*All migrants’ names have been changed to protect their identity.

Children from rural areas and disempowered homes are ideal targets for trafficking in India and elsewhere. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jun 20 2016 (IPS)

Sunita Pal, a frail 17-year-old, lies in a tiny bed in the women’s ward of New Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Her face and head swathed in bandages, with only a bruised eye and swollen lips visible, the girl recounts her ordeal to a TV channel propped up by a pillow. She talks of her employers beating her with a stick every day, depriving her of food and threatening to kill her if she dared report her misery to anybody.

“I worked from 6am until midnight. I had to cook, clean, take care of the children and massage the legs of my employers,” Sunita recounts to the journalist, pain writ large on her face. “In exchange, I got only two meals and wasn’t even paid for the six months I worked at the house. When I expressed a desire to leave, I was beaten up.”

Sunita is one of the fortunate few who got rescued from her hell by an anti-slavery activist and is now being rehabilitated at a woman’s home in Delhi. But there are millions of Sunitas across India who continue to toil in Dickensian misery for years without any succour. Trafficked from remote villages to large cities, they are and sold as domestic workers to placement agencies or worse, at brothels. Their crime? Extreme poverty and illiteracy.

The Global Slavery Index released recently by the human rights organisation Walk Free Foundation states that globally, India has the largest population of modern slaves. Over 18 million people are trapped as bonded labourers, forced beggars, sex workers and child soldiers across the country. They constitute 1.4 percent of India’s total population, the fourth highest among 167 countries with the largest proportion of slaves. The survey estimates that 45.8 million people are living in modern slavery globally, of which 58 percent are concentrated in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.Between 2011 and 2013, over 10,500 children were registered as missing from Chhattisgarh, one of India’s poorest tribal states.

Grace Forrest, co-founder of the Australia-based foundation, told an Indian newspaper that all forms of modern slavery continue to exist in India, including inter-generational bonded labour, forced child labour, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state armed groups and forced marriage.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), trafficking of minor girls — the second-most prevalent trafficking crime in India – has surged 14 times over the last decade. It increased 65 percent in 2014 alone. Girls and women are the primary targets of immoral trafficking in India, comprising 76 percent of all human trafficking cases nationwide over a decade, reveals NCRB.

As many as 8,099 people were reported to be trafficked across India in 2014. Selling or buying girls for prostitution, importing them from a foreign country are the most common forms of trafficking in India, say experts. Sexual exploitation of women and children for commercial purposes takes place in various forms including brothel-based prostitution, sex-tourism, and pornography.

Last year, the Central Bureau of Investigation unearthed a pan-India human trafficking racket that had transported around 8,000 Indian women to Dubai. Another report about a man who trafficked 5,000 tribal kids from the poor tribal state of Jharkhand also caught the public eye.

Equally disconcerting are thousands of children which go missing from some of India’s hinterlands. Between 2011 and 2013, over 10,500 children were registered as missing from Chhattisgarh, one of India’s poorest tribal states. They were trafficked into domestic work or other forms of child labour in cities. Overall , an estimated 135,000 children are believed to be trafficked in India every year.

Experts point to the exponentially growing demand for domestic servants in burgeoning Indian cities as the main catalyst for trafficking. A 2013 report by Geneva-based International Labour Organization found that India hosts anywhere from 2.5 million to 90 million domestic workers. Yet, despite being the largest workforce in the country, these workers remain unrecognized and unprotected by law.

This is a lacuna that a national policy in the pipeline hopes to address. Experts say the idea is to give domestic workers the benefits of regulated hours of work with weekly rest, paid annual and sick leave, and maternity benefits as well entitlement of minimum wages under the Minimum Wages Act of 1948.

“Once these workers come under the ambit of law,” explains New Delhi-based human rights lawyer Kirit Patel, “it will be a big deterrent for criminals. But till then, domestic workers remain easy targets for exploitation.”

Despite growing awareness and media sensitization, however, registered human trafficking cases have spiralled up by 38.3 percent over five years from 2,848 in 2009 to 3,940 in 2013 as per NCRB. Worse, the conviction rate for such cases has plummeted 45 percent, from 1,279 in 2009 to 702 in 2013.

Not that human trafficking is a uniquely Indian phenomenon. The menace is the third-largest source of profit for organised crime, after arms and drugs trafficking involving billions of dollars annually worldwide, say surveys. Every year, thousands of children go missing in South Asia, the second-largest and fastest-growing region in the world for human trafficking after East Asia, according to the UN Office for Drugs & Crime.

To address the issue of this modern-day slavery, South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation recently held a conference on child protection in New Delhi. Ministers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan and the Maldives agreed to jointly combat child exploitation, share best practices and common, uniform standards to address all forms of sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking.

One of the pioneering strategies adopted at the conference was to set up a toll-free helpline and online platform to report and track missing children. “We need to spread the message to support rescue efforts and rehabilitate victims. With the rapid advance of technology and a fast-changing, globalized economy, new threats to children’s safety are emerging every day,” said India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh at the conference.

Rishi Kant, one of India’s leading anti-trafficking activists, says it all boils down to prioritizing the issue. “For poor Indian states, providing food, shelter and housing assume far greater importance than chasing traffickers. Besides, many people don’t even see trafficking as a crime. They feel it’s an opportunity for impoverished children to migrate to cities, live in rich homes and better their lives!”

Initiatives like anti-trafficking nodal cells — like the one under the Ministry of Home Affairs — can be effective deterrents, say experts. The ministry has also launched a web portal on anti-human trafficking, while the Ministry of Women and Child Development is implementing a programme that focuses on rescue, rehabilitation and repatriation of victims.

But the best antidote to the menace of human trafficking, say experts, is a stringent law. India’s first anti-trafficking law — whose draft was unveiled by the Centre recently — recommends tough action against domestic servant placement agencies who hustle poor children into bonded labour and prostitution. It also suggests the formation of an anti-trafficking fund.

The bill also makes giving hormone shots such as oxytocin to trafficked girls (to accelerate their sexual maturity) and pushing them into prostitution a crime punishable with 10 years in jail and a fine of about 1,500 dollars. Addressing new forms of bondage — such as organised begging rings, forced prostitution and child labour — are also part of the bill’s suggestions.

Once the law is passed, hopefully, girls like Sunita will be able to breathe a little easier.

In June, New York state legislature will vote on a bill that will increase protection for sex trafficking victims. Credit: Bigstock

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

It started for Ruth when she was 12 years old and for Lowyal when she was 13. After being raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Ruth ran away from home and was picked up by a pimp, who sold her into prostitution.

Lowyal, bullied at school and facing a deteriorating situation at home, dropped out of school and eventually began working on the streets. In a drawing Lowyal created to depict this traumatic time in her life, a wide eye reflects a city skyline as red flames curl at the bottom, with menacing faces on both sides.

This month, New York’s legislature will vote on the New York Trafficking Victims and Protection and Justice Act (TVPJA), which would give more protection to girls like Ruth and Lowyal, and harsher punishments for those who trafficked them. It is part of the Women’s Equality Act that supporters hope will be voted on before the legislative session ends Jun. 20.

Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is working with the Jewish Child Care Association and the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition to get the law passed.

The organisation is encouraging supporters to send letters to Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, and State Senator Dean G. Skelos.

The TVPJA will direct resources to toughening laws to target and arrest pimps and buyers rather than victims. And under the new law, penalties for buying sex from a minor will be similar to those for statutory rape.

The law would also mean that all prostituted persons under the age of 18 are treated as trafficking victims instead of criminals in the state of New York. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds arrested for prostitution are prosecuted as adults.

“There are two provisions that we are having a hard time with and [are] getting opposition to,” Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, told IPS. Hersh is perplexed as to why these provisions are problematic."Sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born."
-- Lauren Hersh

The first is making sex trafficking a violent felony in New York State, which would send a message to law enforcement that trafficking is a violent crime, Hersh explained.

“Talk to any sex trafficking victim, and they’ll tell you how violent it is,” she added.

The second is aligning New York state law with U.S. federal law, which does not require prosecutors to prove that minors were coerced into sexual acts. Under the current law, with most cases in New York, victims have to testify in court, Hersh said.

“The New York State assembly is historically against raising penalties,” Emily Amick, staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families and legislative director for the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, told IPS.

“The law needs to evolve,” Amick said. “Albany is letting politics get in the way of helping people,” she added, with state lawmakers who oppose these provisions working against the livelihoods and futures of sex trafficking victims.

Despite some opposition, Hersh sees the bill as “excellent and comprehensive”.

The fact that women and girls are being trafficked not only inside U.S. borders, but also within city limits, may be a surprise to some people, Hersh said.

“When people think of sex trafficking, they often only think of women and girls being smuggled across international borders. But sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born,” Hersh said in a statement.

Legislative justice is one part of the solution. Sexually exploited girls like Ruth and Lowyal should also be given a voice in the process of advocacy and justice, Hersh said. Project IMPACT, a New York-based programme that allows trafficking victims to share their stories, if and how they choose to, is one way to do so.

“I think telling my story matters because it could help other girls like me,” Veronica, another formerly trafficked girl, said, after sharing her story at Project IMPACT. “Storytelling is important because I lived this – I’m the one who knows what it’s really like.”

Ruth, Lowyal and Veronica are part of Gateways, a residential treatment program for commercially sexually exploited youth that is run by the Jewish Child Care Association and allows them to rebuild their lives and self-esteem. Some Gateways residents visited Albany in May to lobby for the bill’s passing.

Reliable statistics on sex trafficking are difficult to obtain due to the hidden and underground nature of the crime, according to Hersh, but a 2010 State Department report put the number of people trafficked to the United States each year at around 15,000.

Two million children are exploited each year in the international commercial sex trade, according to 2012 data from the International Labour Organisation, which also estimates that women and girls make up 98 percent of sex trafficking victims.

And in the United States, while little data is available for the number of victims, the FBI estimates that 293,000 American children and teenagers are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

“The only way we’re going to have justice in New York is to pass this bill in its entirety,” Hersh told IPS.

Trafficking turns people into merchandise. Credit: Amnesty International

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 20 2013 (IPS)

In contravention of international law, in Brazil trafficking in human beings remains invisible and unpunished, which encourages the practice of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and the trade in human organs, according to experts.

Local laws punish drug trafficking more severely than human trafficking. The sale of drugs carries penalties of between five and 15 years, while trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation is punished with a maximum sentence of eight years, with work release allowed.

“Human trafficking is still an invisible crime. What we have here now is real impunity,” judge Rinaldo Aparecido Barros, a member of the National Council of Justice’s working group on human trafficking, told IPS.

An average of 1,000 persons a year are recruited in Brazil and sent abroad, the public prosecutor’s office said at a public hearing on “Tráfico de pessoas: prevenção, repressão, acolhimento às vítimas e parcerias” – Trafficking in persons: Prevention, repression, care of victims and (illegal) associations – that it held in this city on Friday, May 17.

The goal was to gather and share information about combating human trafficking and to organise joint action to prevent and crack down on the crime. The meeting focused on Brazil’s role as a source country of victims for other parts of the world.

Brazil is also a destination country for victims of human trafficking, and there is internal trafficking of Brazilians for exploitation within the country’s borders as well.

In the last three years, 3,000 Brazilians were transported abroad and subjected mainly to sexual exploitation and slave labour, participants at the meeting described.

“This is a significant number. A large group of people have been deprived of their dignity. The thousands of cases documented every year do not represent the total, because we do not know how many cases escaped our notice,” said federal deputy attorney-general Raquel Elias Ferreira Dodge.

The actual number of victims sent abroad by human trafficking rings is unknown, participants at the meeting agreed.

“We have to work more effectively so that these crimes are condemned without delay. The crime of trafficking in persons injures human dignity,” said Dodge, who is a member of the Higher Council of the federal public prosecutor’s office (MPF).

She said, “Slave labour negates the personhood of the individual and converts the victim into merchandise that can be smuggled and trafficked.”

But hindering the fight against human trafficking in Brazil is the fact that it is only a crime when it leads to sexual exploitation or slave labour, Erick Blatt, the representative of the federal police in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

“It is very hard to identify the crime; investigations can only be initiated on the basis of reports, without the certainty that illegality can be proved,” said Blatt, who is also the representative of Interpol, the international criminal police organisation, for the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Moreover, when it comes to international trafficking, “most people go voluntarily to the place where they are exploited: the majority do not know that their passports are going to be taken away,” he said.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, for the purpose of exploitation.”

The forms of coercion cited are “abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.”

People smuggling, on the other hand, is limited to profiting from covertly transporting migrants, at their request, from one country to another where legal entry would normally be denied at the border. This is illegal, but no deception may be involved.

Article 231 of Brazil’s criminal code defines the crime of sexual exploitation, and article 149 describes subjection to slave-like conditions. Both crimes are punished relatively leniently, with lighter sentences than for other offences.

The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, adopted in 2000 and ratified by Brazil in 2003, specifically identifies human trafficking crimes and proposes wide-ranging punishments, which Brazil has still not incorporated in its laws.

“We are going against the flow of international legislation. In Brazil, the issue has been inadequately treated. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity that robs people of their human dignity,” Judge Barros complained.

He said the best measures for fighting human trafficking were those that block the assets of the trafficking rings, in order to attack their economic flank.

Trafficking in persons is run by complex international crime syndicates that, in Brazil, recruit poor women who have no opportunities for a better life, lawyer Michelle Gueraldi of the Trama Project, an umbrella group for NGOs that combat human trafficking, told IPS.

These women emigrate voluntarily, often out of the desire to improve their lives, and end up being exploited in Spain, the United States, Portugal and Caribbean countries, among others, she said.

Blatt added that Brazil, in turn, is a destination country for women victims of human trafficking from Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Poland.

“Trafficking in persons is a violation of human rights. The Trama Project is working on prevention and on victim protection. We also receive denunciations of cases, and we find that the majority of recruiters are persons known to and trusted by the victims,” Gueraldi said.

In February the Brazilian government established its Second Plan to Combat Trafficking in Persons, but the challenge is to put these policies into practice, she said.

Blatt admitted that tracing victims of human trafficking across borders is difficult for the local police and for Interpol.

“If communications between the police and the prosecutors are slow here in Brazil, imagine what communications are like between police forces internationally,” he said.

Human trafficking is extremely lucrative. In Europe alone it generates some 3.2 billion dollars a year, according to speakers at the meeting.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says there are at least 2.5 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. A survey by UNODC found that 58 percent of respondents were victims of sexual exploitation and 36 percent of slave labour.

Malian children in the Abala refugee camp in Niger. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
BAMAKO , Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

One of Amina Diallo’s sons, 14-year-old Salif, has been missing since August last year. She thinks Islamists kidnapped him while he was on his way to the market in their hometown of Gao, in northern Mali, and recruited him as a child soldier.

“Wherever he is, he must know that I still pray for him to come back alive and well,” she tells IPS.

While a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north of the country in January – it had been held for more than a year by Islamist militants composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and the Movement of Unity and Jihad in West Africa – this West African nation still remains in turmoil with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, missing and abducted children and food shortages.

Diallo and her four other children now live at a relative’s home in Bamako after they left Gao last October. But despite Diallo’s hopes that Salif might return, chances are unlikely.

She tried to search for her missing son, only to be told by local authorities that they were sorry for her loss, and that the Malian army was doing its best to find out where the children were taken.

Media relations director of Christian relief agency World Vision, Laura Blank, tells IPS that children in Mali still remain at risk.

“Unsupervised children are also vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence, including the potential to be recruited as child soldiers by armed groups. This continues to be a concern for World Vision.”

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in February found that children as young as 11 were placed on the Islamist rebel frontline. Shocked residents told HRW researchers that they saw bodies of child soldiers lying in pools of blood after the fighting. The United Nations Children’s Fund reported at least 175 children were used as soldiers in the conflict last year.

Blank says that her organisation is working with volunteers to share valuable child-protection messages with local communities, which will hopefully empower parents to keep their children safe.

“Children and their families remain vulnerable. They have increasingly limited access to food, water, medicines, and safe shelter, and are prone to diseases,” Blank adds.

Not all children are reported to have taken part in active combat. Some were also used as porters, cooks and spies. Others were offered as sexual slaves to combatants.

Oumou Camara was forced to watch as heavily-armed gunmen, who conducted door-to-door operations in their area in Gao, snatched her 16-year-old daughter from her. They were looking for underage girls, widows and other unmarried women to “marry off” to the mujahidin (combatants of religion).

“They took my daughter away at gunpoint and threatened to shoot us if anyone in the house objected,” the mother of seven tells IPS. “I never saw her again.”

Camara has given up all hope of ever finding her daughter and has no faith in the authorities. “What can the authorities do if they couldn’t even fight their own war? I’m powerless and can only hope and pray.”

Getting comment from the Malian government is impossible. The state has barred independent reporters from entering the war zone, and threatened to detain and prosecute anyone who publishes “sensitive information” that could incite mutiny under the current state of emergency.

But as rights groups try to protect Mali’s vulnerable children, they are also concerned about the growing food crisis in the country.

Oxfam International says that food prices have rocketed, aggravated by a shortage of cereals on the market. Rice has gone up by more than 50 percent since October last year.

“Many traders in Gao region have moved and/or sold out their remaining stocks from Gao to villages and communes outside of the town,” Oxfam International campaign manager in Mali, Ilaria Allegrozzi, tells IPS.

Also, the population has very little cash available as banking systems were disrupted by the conflict.

“Most people in the Gao region don’t have any money left, are in debt, and have sold assets – exhausting their coping strategies,” she says.

Allegrozzi says Oxfam International aims to provide food aid to at least 70,000 people. And Blank says that as of December, World Vision reached nearly 130,000 people in Bamako, Segou and Sikasso, in southern Mali.

Against this backdrop, finding abducted or missing children will prove difficult, as the conflict here has displaced 260,665 people internally, according to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In addition, there are some 170,313 registered refugees in neighbouring countries such as Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

Many are reluctant to return to their former homes because of the food shortages. Diallo is one of them.

“I’m not in a hurry to go back because even if the war is over, what will we eat? What will I sell and buy in the market? Gao is thirsty, hungry and angry.”

Rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena lives in Bukavu, eastern DR Congo. She is one of the 2.2 million people have been affected by the fighting in the country which started in early 2012. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Passy Mubalama
GOMA, DR Congo, Mar 12 2013 (IPS)

A street in Goma’s city centre, the capital of North Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been nicknamed “the ward of death” because of the brutal crimes that frequently occur there.

“You will find every kind of person in this part, gays, lesbians, and unfortunately there are brothels where adults are sexually exploiting underage girls,” Major David Bodeli Dombi, the commander of the special police force for the protection of women and children in North Kivu, told IPS.

Over the last two years, an increasing number of brothels have opened in Goma where under-age girls are being sexually exploited and the illegal trade is on the rise.

“These brothels take in many minors, most of whom come from poor and destitute families in North Kivu,” Faustin Wasolela, the head of the child protection programme at the local non-governmental organisation Development Action for the Protection of Women and Children (AIDPROFEN), which helps young victims of sexual exploitation, told IPS.

The region has been in upheaval since April 2012, as fighting between government forces and rebel groups in North Kivu has displaced some 2.2 million people, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

M23 rebels near Sake, Eastern DR Congo. The rebel group withdrew from Goma on Saturday, Dec. 1. Almost 2.2 million people have been affected by the fighting in the country which started in early 2012. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

Other brothels have opened up in several other wards in Goma.

“Nowadays, you will find dozens of these brothels in every ward,” Victorine Muhima, the Kasiska ward chief in Karisimbi municipality, told IPS. Like Wasolela, she also said that harsh living conditions, poverty and incessant conflict were driving the trend.

Sixteen-year-old Masika* works at the Memoire ya Nzambe, a small bar with an area of only four square metres. It is also a brothel. “I work as a waitress during the day and as a prostitute during the night to feed myself and my two-year-old daughter. I don’t know who the father of my child is,” she told IPS.

As a waitress during the day she earns 20 dollars a month. But at night she earns five dollars per client.

“I have been working here since 2010. I come from Béni, where my family lives. My parents are poor and couldn’t send me to school. We could barely get enough to eat. So I decided to come to Goma to earn some money,” Masika said.

The Memoire ya Nzambe bar sells spirits, beer and even marijuana. Rooms for clients are located in the backrooms of the bar. “You can get a girl for one or two dollars,” Emmanuel Bisimwa, a 20-year-old regular, told IPS.

However, bar owners deny sexually exploiting children. “I have five employees, but they are all men. I have no young girls working for me,” Riziki Mufiritsa, the owner of Memoire ya Nzambe, told IPS. But his claim could not be verified.

Like Masika, many other young girls between 13 and 17 are being exploited by older men, and women, in order to make easy money.

The young girls say they have no alternatives to sex work. “I don’t have a choice, I have to buy my own underwear, lotion and even sanitary towels, but there is no other work around,” said 15-year-old Rachel*.

It is a common reason that Idelphonse Birhaheka of the United Nations Children’s Fund in Goma, hears often. “Some girls tell us that they resort to sex work to pay for basics like soap, lotion, or sanitary pads,” she told IPS.

“The armed conflict in eastern DRC has impoverished many families making them unable to care for their children,” Birhaheka added.

Dechine Birindwa is one of those fathers who is finding it difficult to support his family.

“Life has become very difficult. It’s hard to afford food, never mind buy clothes and shoes for my daughters. It’s very tough and they have to fend for themselves,” he told IPS.

Though the special force for the protection of women and children has launched an investigation into the increased sexual exploitation of girls, Dombi said that it was no easy task. “It is difficult to find these brothels, but once we do so, we bring in the owners for questioning and close some brothels after our investigation,” he told IPS.

According to Dombi, the police investigated eight brothel owners in 2012, and closed down five establishments.

“We need cooperation from everyone, from the police who need to put in place deterrents, but also churches, schools, parents and even the media to fight this trend,” Wasolela said.

*Names have been withheld to protect the identity of minors.

The courtroom broke out in angry shouts and cries when judges in Argentina unexpectedly acquitted 13 defendants accused of kidnapping a young woman and forcing her into prostitution in 2002.

The high-profile trial for the kidnapping of María de los Ángeles “Marita” Verón, who is still missing, ended late Tuesday after a four-hour delay by the three-judge panel in the courtroom in the northwest province of Tucumán.

The judges said there was no evidence that the seven men and six women kidnapped Verón.

Susana Trimarco, Verón’s mother, said she would try to get the three judges impeached, and accused them of receiving bribes. “We aren’t going to stop until these crooks are dismissed from their posts,” she said after the verdict was read out.

Susana Trimarco holding a missing persons poster for her daughter, Marita Verón. Credit: Courtesy of Metrodelito.

Trimarco later told a local TV station about a conversation she had after the trial with President Cristina Fernández, who gave her a human rights award on Sunday Nov. 9. “Cristina was shouting; she couldn’t believe it,” the activist said.

The trial began in February in Tucumán, where Verón was kidnapped at the age of 23.

More than 100 witnesses took the stand, including a dozen women rescued from sex trafficking rings thanks to Trimarco’s activism, which emerged from her unflagging efforts to find her daughter.

The women said they had seen and talked to a haggard, drugged Verón in brothels in the nearby province of La Rioja.

Trimarco had hoped that a guilty verdict in the trial would give a boost to the investigation into the whereabouts of her daughter.

The prosecutors were asking for 12 to 26 years in prison for the defendants.

While the accused, with looks of surprise and relief on their faces, hugged each other and cried tears of joys, people watching the trial in the courtroom shouted expletives and sobbed.

Verón’s mother left the courtroom before a summary of the arguments was read out.

“This ruling is a clear indication of the complicity of the judiciary in (sex) trafficking,” said Fabiana Túñez, director of La Casa del Encuentro, an NGO that campaigns against gender violence and has gathered testimony and evidence in 700 cases of girls and young women who have fallen victim to sex trafficking rings in Argentina.

“This sentence validates impunity,” she told IPS. “As nearly always occurs in cases of gender violence, the courts do not believe the victims – women who have been rescued. So we are going to hold a march to demand that they receive the necessary protection.”

Túñez was referring to the former victims of forced prostitution who took the stand in the trial. Trimarco said they now feel despondent and afraid.

Missing

Verón left her home on Apr. 3, 2002 for a doctor’s appointment. She never came back.

Trimarco, who received little help from the police, found out that her daughter had been kidnapped, beaten, raped and drugged, and forced into prostitution in La Rioja. Verón was also apparently forced to change her appearance – one witness said her hair was dyed blond – and reportedly had a baby boy with one of the ringleaders.

Three days after Verón went missing, an anonymous phone caller said she had been seen being forced by two people into a vehicle of the “Cinco Estrellas” car rental service. One of the defendants accused and acquitted of her kidnapping was the owner of the car service.

Trimarco has raised Verón’s daughter Micaela, who was three years old when her mother disappeared.

Marita Verón’s father, Daniel Verón, who searched for her tirelessly, eventually succumbed to depression and died in 2010, “from the pain” according to his widow.

Trimarco started out visiting brothels, posing as a recruiter of prostitutes. Her one-woman campaign grew into a full-fledged movement, and eventually she created a foundation – Fundación María de los Ángeles – that has rescued over 130 women from sex slavery. She was also granted the “Women of Courage” award in 2007 by the U.S. State Department, which provided seed money for the foundation.

The story of the search for her daughter was made into a popular TV series, and was the subject of a documentary film.

She finally managed to bring the 13 defendants to court. But they all declared themselves innocent, and none of them revealed Verón’s whereabouts.

The defendants were not accused of human trafficking because the law cracking down on that crime was not passed until 2008, six years after Verón was kidnapped. Trimarco’s activism played a major role in getting the law approved.

Trimarco brought not only the issue of sex trafficking to light in Argentina, but also the complicity of the police, government officials, and members of the judiciary.

The search for her daughter took her as far as Spain, after a woman rescued from a brothel told her she heard one of the traffickers say she had been sent to that country.

In Madrid, Interpol, the international police, carried out two raids, which led to the rescue of dozens of young Latin American women, Trimarco testified in court. But her daughter was not among them.

Contradictions

As a result of Trimarco’s activism, a number of government policies and measures have been adopted to eradicate sex trafficking.

However, the 2008 law did not have the support of women’s organisations, because it differentiates between victims under and over the age of 18. Women who are not minors are required to prove that they had not willingly practiced prostitution.

“This is barbaric – in our view the women are all victims, whether they are minors or adults,” said Túñez.

In response to such criticism, a new bill was drafted, with the universal support of women’s groups. But it never made it to the floor for debate, and this month it was shelved.

Nevertheless, Túñez said that in the realm of public policy, important progress has been made in rescuing victims. Specific departments against trafficking have been created in the provinces, and awareness has been raised about the gravity of the crime, she said.

But girls, adolescents and young women continue to fall victim to trafficking rings by means of kidnapping, force, deception or coercion, especially in the country’s poorest provinces, in the north, where they are forced to work in illegal brothels masked as bars, known as “whiskerias”.

In September, the case of two girls, ages 14 and 16, made the headlines when they disappeared on their way home from school in the northern province of Jujuy. They were carrying no money or identity documents, and their families, who are still looking for them, suspect that they were kidnapped by a trafficking ring.

“If a ruling like this is handed down in such a high-profile case as that of Marita Verón, what can we possibly expect in the rest of the pending cases?” an anguished Túñez remarked.