By Esther Alexander- (Abuja)
Participants at a one day conference have called for more collaboration from all stakeholders to end the issues of human trafficking in Nigeria.
They made the call on Tuesday at a press conference organized by The Sisterhood is Global Institute and it’s Gloria Steinem Equality Fund to End Sex Trafficking in collaboration with Associazione Iroko Onlus.
The Executive Director, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International New York, Taina Bien-Aimè, who lamented over the rising cases of human trafficking in Nigeria, called on the Federal Government to step up efforts to eradicate sex trafficking.
Ms. Bien-Aime urged the government to ensure that existing legal and institutional measures to protect individuals from human trafficking are adequately implemented
She also highlighted the importance of the movie “Òlòturé, a 2019 Nigerian crime drama film directed by Kenneth Gyang from a screenplay by Yinka Ogun and Craig Freimond in combating trafficking against women.
She said: “Òlòturé shows how sex trafficking and the exploitation prostitution develops and how it all functions”.
” The women and girls have needs, dreams and human rights not to be bought and sold in the multi billions naira sex trade that includes prostitution”.
” We’re not here only to celebrate Òlòturé but to also open new realities of sex trafficking and prostitution, we are also here admonish each of you to help end the this scourge especially in Nigeria”.
On her part, The Director of Associazione Iroko Onlus, Esohe Aghatise emphasized the need for gender equality, saying that “women should have the same kind of opportunities that men have and not only useful as sex objects.
Aghatise also called on Nigerians to change their negative attitude towards women, by shunning all forms of negative stereotyping.
She said: “The basis of all of this when you speak about Nigerian women and trafficking against human is sex inequality that does not provide equal opportunity for women”.
” I want to recognized the support we’ve had from American and European government in combating trafficking.
” The work we want to start today is to ensure that one day Nigeria would become the first African country that would sign into law in recognizing that prostitution is violence against women, the need to change the narrative and recognize the demand for sexual services as the origin of prostitution and sex trafficking and provide resources for these women to exit the sex industry”.
The Executive Director, while quoting the International Labour Organization (ILO), said: “every year millions of marginalized women and girls are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, which is a US $99 billion industry.”
“IMO estimates that there are at least 1.4 million victims if human trafficking, a majority of whom are women and girls.
The event was attended by the Ambassador of Sweden to Nigeria, Annika Hahn- England, Amb. of Argentina to Nigeria, Alejandro Herrero, Amb. of United States to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard , Amb. of Spain to Nigeria Juan Sell, among others.
Major highlights of the event were the screening of Òlòturé movie, a high level panel discussion of sex trafficking, group photographs amongst others.
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