TED Case Studies Number 656, January, 2002

I. General Information II. Legal Cluster III. Bio-Geographic Cluster IV. Trade Cluster V. Environment Cluster VI. Other Clusters

I. Identification

1. The Issue

Trafficking of Nigerian Women into Italy is a human rights issue that reflects a global problem. This case study uses the example of the Trafficking of Nigerian Women into Italy for reasons of prostitution and sexual exploitation to highlight the human rights violations committed against women, the massive infection of HIV/AIDS among the women, and the social repercussions of the most profitable global trade. This study examines the different aspects that determine a woman's entrance into the global sex trade, the conditions that define the human rights abuses, and what is currently being done to ameliorate all factors involved.

2. Description

While walking through the streets of Rome or any major city in Italy at night, or while taking a leisurely afternoon drive through the country, on cannot help but notice the hundreds of scantily clad women standing on the side of the road. The majority of these women are Africans, working as prostitutes to send money home to their families in the poverty sticken areas from which they come. Some women are working by their own choice, most are not.

The kidnapping, recruitment, and transport of women and children for sexual and other forms of slavery dates back thousands of years. It hasn't been until the turn of the 20th century that this activity has been recognized as "trafficking", a term that today, has many debated definitions. Trafficking is most often defined as the 'recruitment, transport, harbouring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons through coercion, force, fraud, or deception in order to get people in the situations such as forced prostitution, domestic servitude, sweatshop labor or other kinds of work to pay of debts.' It is at once a moral problem, a criminal problem, a human rights problem, a global problem, an economic problem, a health problem and a labor problem.(1) The Congressional Research Service estimates that every year two million people are trafficked against their will to work in some form of servitude. Annually, about 50,000 women and girls are trafficked into the United States alone. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that trafficking in human beings is a $5 to $7 billion industry worldwide.(2)

These figures indicate that trafficking in human beings is an industry more lucrative than the international trade in illicit weapons. In a review of data on the scale of and recent trends in trafficking conducted in April, 2001 by the IOM demonstrates the paucity of reliable data on trafficking across the world. This lack of data is explained by the underground and illegal nature of trafficking; the lack of anti-trafficking legislation in many countries; the reluctance of victims to report their experiences to the authorities; and the lack of government priority given to data collection and research. This suggests that the real numbers of trafficking could be even higher than those figures stated above.(3)

Extent of the Problem

There are 19,000-25,000 foreign prostitutes in Italy. Approximately 2,000 have been trafficked.(4) Rome is the concentrated region of trafficked Albanian and Nigerian women brought for the purpose of prostitution.(5) According to Police, about 50,000 Nigerian girls engaging in the sex trade have been stranded in the streets of Europe and Asia, most of whom come from Nigeria's southern states Edo, Delta and Lagos. This excludes thousands of those girls scattered across the world neither do they include the dead or those wasted by diseases such as HIV/AIDS.(6) Between October 25 and November 12 1999, eighty-four young Nigerian girls were deported from Italy to Nigeria. Seventy-one were from Edo State, nine from Delta State, two from Ondo State and one each from Enugu and Imo States. Between December 3 and 8 another set of eighty-seven predominantly female deportees arrived in Nigeria from Italy. In all, well over 180 Nigerian girls aged between 16 and 23 years have been deported from Italy within the last three months. 90% of them are from Edo State, Nigeria. So far 9 out of 87 screened for HIV have been found to be HIV positive. It is not known if those found to be HIV positive were positive before they went to Italy or got infected in Italy. This deportation has been a source of considerable embarrassment to both the Federal and Edo State governments.(7) President Olusegun Obasanjo pleaded with the Italian government and other European countries to assist Nigeria in putting an end to trafficking of Nigerian girls for prostitution abroad. The influx of Nigerian girls to Europe for prostitution, he stressed, was caused largely by the degradation of all facets of life in Nigeria during the military era. (8)

Carron Somerset of Ecpat claims "It's all about poverty. It's one less mouth to feed and if they think that child may be able to send money back and could possibly have a better life than they'll go for it. "I think some parents know what's going to happen to their children but I think a lot are duped as well," Ms Somerset said. The same uncertainty rests with how women are recruited. Depty Comptroller-General of the National Immigration Service Alhaji Usaini Mahuta remarked; "From our intelligence report and analyses, the major factor that pushes Nigerian girls and boys into prostitution and hard labor is poverty. Most of the girls deported from Europe and the rest of the world left Nigeria due to poor economic backgrounds." Because of the poor socio-economic condition in the country, human traffickers directly recruit their victims who are willing to submit themselves for either prostitution or hard labor while others are recruited through fraud. (11)

The Pull Factors

Recruitment of girls, usually teenagers, as sex slves often starts with the enticement of potential victims with promises of good jobs in Europe by baronesses who are ironically women. Some of the girls' parents also encourage them to go abroad insensibly in search of greener pastures and with the hope that the daughters would repatriate foreign currencies.

Girls are offered huge sums of money ranging from about 20,000 naira (about $174 U.S.) to 200,000 naira ($1,740 U.S.) by Nigerian sex slave trafficking agents with a promis of a good job for them. Traffickers promise work as shopkeepers, maids, waitresses, or other menial jobs in Europe. One woman in her 30s, who said she was married with five children, said she abandoned her home because she had found the promise of a good life in Italy irresistible.(12)

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The Traffickers and Modes of Entry

Contrary to general impressions, trafficking does not occur merely because there are young, impressionable girls who dream of travelling abroad. Of course dreams alone will not take anyone abroad. That is where the traffickers come in. They are wealthy citizens who are searching for huge retruns on quick investments. Sometimes they cajole desperate parents to pawn off valued family property such as a house or a parcel of land to finance their daughter's trip overseas. They have in their employment staff who play specific roles in facilitating the trips to Europe. These are the recruiters, trolleys, the passport racketeers and others believed to include embassy staff, immigration officials, law enforcement agents and fetish preists who administer fearsome oaths on the the victims. (13)

Trafficking from Nigeria is especially well organized, and centers around a female figure called "Mama" who plays a key role in persuading young women to leave their homes for Italy. Women are recruited by means of deception, physical threats or payments made to the women's families. The women are particularly easily controlled because they and their families are forced to pay back huge debts to the trafficking organization for the cost of their trip and related expenses. It can take several years to pay off these debts.(14)

Explaining the mode of operation of the syndicate, Guinean Lieutenant Sako siad that the agents usually take the girls to Guinea via the Republic of Mali where false Guinean passports were procured for them using fictitious Guinean names. The girls are then returned to Mali where they are sold to other syndicates which transport them to Europe, especially Italy and Spain. The syndicate was said to have been active in Guinea since 1998. Investigations revealed that after being recruited the girls are conveyed through long and torturous land routes mainly through the Sahara Desert to European countries. Once they arrive, the victims are forced to work as sex hawkers. The girls, often undergo a process of initiation or ritual which involves collection of underwear, pubic hair, and anyother personal items deemed fit by the baronesses. For as long as an hour these rituals and initiation endure. This is aimed at instilling fear in them in order to prevent them from revealing anything that could lead to the arrest of the baronesses.(15)

Rachel's Story

Rachel is a young Nigerian woman who managed to escape from traffickers and agreed to meet with the Advocacy Project. I have borrowed her story from the Advocacy Project's website. Rachel was living in Benin City with her sister when she was approached by a man who asked if she would like to go abroad and earn money. After a long and roundabout route she arrived in Rome, where she met her pimp, named "Madam Agnes." She was shocked to learn that she was expected to earn $50,000 dollars from prostitution, or be denounced to the police as an illegal immigrant. At the going rate that would have meant sex with several partners a day for three years.

Rachel tried to escape, but to no avail. After three weeks on the streets, a client drove her to the patch of empty ground. After having sex with Rachel in his car, he told her to hand over all of her earnings from the day. She kept her earnings in a sock and gave him an empty purse. He started to curse and hit her, whereupon she managed to open the door and start running. He started the car and drove it right at her, knocking her down. Luckily he then drove off, because as she knows only too well, she could have been killed. Covered in blood and crying, Rachel then walked back to the corner where she worked. In retrospect, it seems amazing that she returned. It shows how totally cowed she had been by her experience and by the fearsome Madam Agnes.

Rachel was rescued by a group of modern Samaritans from the Catholic group Caritas, who patrol the streets of Rome every Wednesday in an attempt to check up on the prostitutes. They quickly realized that Rachel was sick and asked her to go to a hospital with them. At first Rachel refused: "I thought I would not be able to afford treatment." They insisted gently and told her that the treatment would be free. Even ensconced in a hospital bed, Rachel was reluctant to sleep, afraid of how Madam would react. The staff carried out medical tests, which presumably included a test for sexually transmitted diseases and even HIV-AIDS.

Rachel's five days in the hospital finally broke the grip of Madam Agnes. The Caritas group asked if Rachel wanted to return to Nigeria and offered to help. She was taken to a convent in Rome, where she stayed for several days with two other girls. She then went to the Nigerian embassy in Rome and to the office of the International Organization of Migration, to collect the necessary documents and ticket. In one final act of pure malice, Madam Agnes had phoned Rachel's family after she had escaped and told them that she had been killed. When Rachel returned home, alive and well, they were overjoyed. They were also bitterly angry-so angry, in fact, that they went in person to confront the brother of Agnes. He was living in Benin City and had arranged for the departure of their child two months earlier.

Rachel's story rings true for most Nigerians, and it is only one of thousands of stories just like it that radiate from all over the world.

3. Related Cases

Burma-Traffic

Czech-Children-Trade

Myansex

Russex

Thai Women

 

4. Author and Date:

Allison Loconto, January 2002

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II. Legal Clusters

5. Discourse and Status: Disagreement and Inprogress

There are various United Nations agreements that work to stop the trade in women, including studies and reports completed by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in regard to the working conditions of the women who are trafficked. National laws exist which govern how the women are treated after arrest and regarding deportation in accordance with immigration laws, there has also been an effort on the part of the European Union to regulate the trafficking and smuggling of women in light of migration laws.

The greatest difficulty in legal framework of eradicating the trafficking of women is the lack of a consistent definition of the problem. The United Nations efforts to condemn or curtail trafficking have often been linked with efforts to eradicate prostitution.

The first UN document on trafficking was the 1949 United Nations Convention on the suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. The 1949 Convention, which fails to define trafficking, focuses solely on trafficking for the purpose of prostitution. Increasingly international instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, have included proscriptions on trafficking. Likewise, the World Conference on Human Rights and the Fourth World Conference on Women addressed trafficking in their conference documents(The Vienna Declaration and the Beijing Platform, respectively). The first international definition of Trafficking comes from the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime signed by 80 countries in December 2000. This is the most recent document that is working to eliminate trafficking in women for purposes of sexual exploitation, but even this document fails to define "sexual exploitation".

6. Forum and Scope: Italy and Unilateral

7. Decision Breadth: 2 (Italy and Nigeria)

8. Legal Standing: Treaty

Italian and European Union Action

There is no specific legislation in Italy that defines the crime of trafficking in women. However, various aspects of Italian legislation deal indirectly with the issue. Law n.75 of 20 February l958 "for the Abolishment of previous rules on prostitution and the fight against exploiting others' prostitution", better known as the Merlin Law, de-criminalizes the crime of prostitution if it is practiced privately, forbids prostitution in brothels, (which was previously controlled by the State), but criminalizes those who exploit prostitutes or who lead women into prostitution. This includes foreign women. Under this law (Article 3) it is a crime "to encourage or to transfer a woman into another place or another State, in order to practice prostitution;" "for national or foreign organizations to recruit persons for prostitution". Such crimes are punishable even if executed in a foreign country.

Migration laws also make some reference to the exploitation of prostitutes by foreigners stating that such crimes can result in the expulsion of the foreigners concerned. A foreigner who brings a migrant woman into Italy for the purpose of prostitution can, in theory, be jailed for up to 7 years. There are also legal provisions that sanction those who facilitate the access of illegal aliens into Italian territory. If this is done for profit, and by three or more persons together, penalties can include jail sentences of up to 6 years. Finally, laws against sexual violence offer trafficked women some legal protection at least on paper. Italian law foresees, for example, punishment of "whoever with violence or threats or, through abuse of authority, forces a person to commit or to suffer sexual relations (acts)" and that the violence is perpetrated "on a person in any case submitted to limitations of personal freedom" (Law n.66, 15 February 1996, article 3).(16)

In recent articles and practice Italy has seemed to treating the victims of trafficking more as rape victims than as criminals, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands now offer shelter, protection and residency permits to trafficked prostitutes so they can help identify and prosecute their exploiters. Under a revision of Italy's immigration law that has been in force since late 1999, more than 2,000 immigrants have obtained residency permits after breaking away from their pimps. Italy also offers schooling, job training and employment to help them start new lives. Throughout Italy, 48 various programs assist female victims of traffickers. Italian law gives participants six-month legal residency, even if they do not denounce their traffickers; and they can renew residency if they have found jobs. These provisions distinguish the law from others in Europe, where denouncement is obligatory to obtain residency and is sometimes followed by repatriation. According to government figures, there are an estimated 3,500 trafficked women in Italy, and 1,200 have taken part in the programs.(17)

Italy is leading the new approach, driven by alarm over an influx of Eastern European and African prostitutes since the late 1990s and by the coercive violence of the foreign pimps who bring them. Police say 168 foreign prostitutes were killed in Italy last year. Pope John Paul II embraced a tearful former prostitute from Nigeria on Italian television last year. Hundreds of volunteers across the country help "rescue" trafficked women, aided by a 24-hour, government-run hotline that has fielded tens of thousands of calls.(18)

Recently there has been an ongoing discourse within the European Union on the issue of human trafficking and smuggling and immigration laws. The Committee for "Equal opportunities for men and women" in the parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe organized, on 2 April in Paris, a public hearing on the trafficking of women. European Union governments agreed on May 29th to bring their jail sentences for smugglers of illegal immigrants more closely into line. EU member states will set maximum jail terms of between six and 10 years for people found guilty of smuggling or hiding illegal immigrants. Italy has said it will set the jail sentence to no less than 10 years. They also agreed on fines against airlines and other carriers that bring in non-EU nationals without proper papers and rules on sharing banking information needed in criminal investigations. (19)

Nigerian and ECOWAS Action

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has promised that the government will take immediate action to stem the traffic of Nigerian women. "We have to start a rehabilitation program," the president said. "We want to bring all our children back. We can't allow this type of thing to continue." Nigeria's first lady Stella Obasanjo has also been active in the cause, leading a publicity campaign against the prostitution rings, which she has called a national embarassment.

In recent months there have been some decisive actions regionally and on the part of the Nigerian government. In August the Federal Government approved the setting up of a search and rescue team to intervene in the countries notorious in the sordid practice, so as to repatriate Nigerian victims. The Nigerian government has signed a Readmission agreement with Italy, which would allow Italian authorities to deport Nigerian prostitutes who have overstayed their visas without even checking their nationality. But this does nothing to help Nigeria reintegrate the women or prevent the trafficking at the source. "After exploiting and infecting many of them with HIV/AIDS, Italy is sending these women back to a country which has no capacity to support them," says one Italian campaigner angrily.(20)

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) experts attended a two-day meeting in Accra, Ghana. They agreed on a political declaration and Plan of Action for combating trafficking in human beings in the sub-region. The one-year Plan of Action, to be implemented between 2002 and 2003, commits Member States to set achievable goals and objectives towards eradicating the scourge, involving organized criminal groups operating through a pervasive network and deploying developments in communication, transport and information technology. The Plan calls on members of the 15-nation Organization to ratify and fully implement important international instruments of the sub-region and the UN, that strengthen laws against human traffickign and protects the victims, particularly the most vulnerable - women and children.

It also commits countries to adopt laws criminalizing trafficking in human beings and to build necessary administrative structures for its eradication. The Action Plan calls for new special police units to combat trafficking in persons. Training of police, customs and immigration officials, prosecutors and judges is also an important element of the plan. The training will focus on preventative measures, the presecution of traffickers, adn the protection of victims, including protecting the victims from the traffickers. The plan will be submitted through the ECOWAS Ministerial Meeting for adoption by ECOWAS heads of state at their annual summitt in December.(21)

On the NGO front, The Adovacy Project has recently agreed to design a website for a new networking project, known as Turnaround, that aims to bring civil society together in Italy and Nigeria to prevent the trafficking of Nigerian women into prostitution in Italy. The project is the brainchild of the Turin branch of TAMPEP (Transnational AIDS/STD Prevention Among Migrant Prostitutes in Europe Project), a network of advocates across Europe that provides a range of social and medical support for foreign prostitutes.

In the past few years the issue of trafficking of human beings has entered into the forefront of international discussions. Hopefully the recent articles, reports, and advocacy campaigns by non-governmental organizations will work towards the eradication of trafficking, and help to ensure the human rights of every human being.

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III. Geographic Clusters

9. Geographic Locations

a. Geographic Domain: Southern Europe

b. Geographic Site: Southern Europe

c. Geographic Impact: Nigeria

10. Sub-National Factors: No

11. Type of Habitat: Temperate

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IV. Trade Clusters

12. Type of Measure: Import Standard

13. Direct v. Indirect Impacts: Indirect

14. Relation of Trade Measure to Environmental Impact

a. Directly Related to Product: Yes, Women

b. Indirectly Related to Product: No

c. Not Related to Product: No

d. Related to Process: Yes, Human Rights

15. Trade Product Identification: Women

16. Economic Data

The International Organization on Migration (IOM)

TABLE 1 ESTIMATED NUMBER OF FOREIGN PROSTITUTES IN ITALY
Regions/Towns	Estimated Data
	Minimum Column A	Maximum Column B
Veneto	800	1200
towns:
Venice	500	800
Vicenza	150	200
E. Romagna	1200	1800
towns:
Bologna	500	800
Rimini	400	600
Ravenna	200	400
Lombardy	3500	4500
towns:
Milan	2000	2500
Brescia	800	1000
Piedmont	1200	1800
towns:
Turin	700	900
Latium	4000	5000
towns:
Rome	3000	3500
Latina	500	700
Abruzzo	600	800
towns:
Teramo	200	300
Campania	1500	2000
towns:
Naples	1000	1200
Caserta	300	500
Total	12800	17100
Other regions	6000	8000
Total Italy	18800	25100
Source: IOM, TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN TO ITALY FOR SEXUAL EXPLOITATION, June 1996.

demonstrates the paucity of reliable data on trafficking across the world. This lack of data is explained by the underground and illegal nature of trafficking; the lack of anti-trafficking legislation in many countries; the reluctance of victims to report their experiences to the authorities; and the lack of government priority given to data collection and research.(22)

Today, about 30,000 foreign women, 12,000 of them younger than 18, are being forced to work as prostitutes in Italy, according to the Roman Catholic relief agency Caritas. In Italy, IOM Rome reports that of the estimated 20,000-30,000 irregular female migrants who are believed to enter the sex industry each year, 10-20 per cent (2000-6000) are believed to be trafficked. The following is a table that I found in the 1996 report conducted by the IOM on trafficking of women to Italy for sexual exploitation. (Table 1)

According to Nigerian President Obasanjo, 1,178 Nigerian women and children who were believed to be victims of trafficking were deported to the country between March 1999 and December 2000.

17. Impact of Trade Restriction: High

18. Industry Sector: Entertainment

19. Exporters and Importers: Nigeria and Italy

In the case of trafficking flows between Italy and Nigeria, there are fewer than 10 publicized exporters and importers. The top three importers of Nigerian women are Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. Germany and Spain also boast a large number of trafficked Nigerian women. (Table 2)

Italy imports trafficked women from four major areas: Albania, Nigeria, Ukrain, Serbia, Columbia, and Peru. (Table 3) Entry into Italy is usually legal on a tourist or entertainment visa. Friends and relatives usually recruit Albanians informally. Well-known smuggling routes from Albania to Italy are used to transport the women to Italy. Trafficking from Nigeria seems to be especially well organized, and centers around a female figure called "Mama" who plays a key role in persuading young women to leave their homes for Italy. Recruitment is achieved by means of deception, physical threats or payments made to the women's families. In Italy, the Nigerian women are easily controlled because they and their families are forced to pay back huge debts to the trafficking organization for the cost of their trip to Europe and related expenses. It can take several years before such debts are paid off.

 

TABLE 2 TRAFFICKING FLOWS FROM AFRICAN COUNTIRES
Origin countries	Destination countries
From Ghana	To Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Lebanon, Libya, USA
From Nigeria	To Italy, Belgium, Netherlands
From Ethiopia	To Middle East, Gulf states
From Mali	To Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria (children), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait (domestic labor)
Source: IOM field missions

TABLE 3 NATIONALITY OF WOMEN INTERVIEWED BY IOM
Nationality	Number
Albanian	26
Nigerian	10
Serbian	4
Ukrainian	5
Colombian	4
Peruvian	1
Total	50
Source: IOM field missions

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V. Environment Clusters

20. Environmental Problem Type: Rights

The Environment of my case study on the Trafficking of Nigerian Women in Italy holds concerns of human rights. Human rights abuses are inherent in the trafficking of women. The women are subjected to slavery-like conditions that strip the women of all human dignity, which is the core principle of human rights.

Human Rights Watch, one of the leading international human rights watchdogs, perceives the abuses that are committed by trafficking to be debt bondage, forced labor, torture, illegal detention, deprivation of freedom of movement, speech and association, and discrimination. An extreme example of the atrocities of debt bondage comes from Thailand where women in the sex industry can be confined in semi-darkness, allowed out rarely and only under armed guard. Some may be forced to receive twenty customers per day, powerless to protect themselves with condoms. In most cases the cost of medical treatment and abortion are added to their debt, and the women are often times discarded if they test HIV-positive.

The Right to Life?

A Rome study estimated that nine million Italians regularly use prostitutes. But as clients tire of the same woman, gangs often trade slaves to neighboring countries at "knockdown" prices. In extreme cases, slaves are murdered, especially if gangs suspect that a woman is trying to escape. In the early 1990s, th number of foreign women murdered in Italy - mainly Albanians and Nigerian - accounted for 6 percent of all murders. By last year, the figure had risen to 23 percent. (23)The wife of the Governor of Edo State recently announced that 116 Nigerian prostitutes were reported killed in Italy between 1994 and 1998. In many cases, death is the best possible alternative for many of these women who have been coerced into prostitution and are kept in the most inhumane conditions. In one sad incident this November a Nigerian girl slipped and fell to her death from a 2nd story window trying to escape from the police who came to her house because her visa had expired. (24)This story is typical of many that one can find leafing through the police bulletins.

While the main tenet running throughout trafficking for sexual exploitation is prostitution, current laws do no consider this practice a violation of a person's human rights. In fact, there are many women and prostitutes that are fighting to have this age-old profession recognized by the International Labor Organization, and thus fall under labor laws and regulations. In this fight the aim is also to protect the human rights of the women who work in this industry, by providing them with even the basic provisions of safe working environments and conditions as well as benefits. In is also been shown through research that a large majority of the women working as prostitutes in Western Europe entered into contracts with their traffickers with the knowledge that they were to work as prostitutes. But even in these cases, human rights violations are committed by the way in which the women are kept and treated by their pimps. Through their research and case studies, Human Rights Watch believes that in all cases, the coercive tactics of traffickers, including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, and/or debt bondage are at the core of the problem of trafficking.

The harm committed by these human rights abuses are detrimental to the lives of the women, it shapes how they continue to live their lives after they escape from their traffickers, if they are able to reach that point. This environment infringes upon healthy human development, which is at the core of the freedoms provided for in the Declaration of Human Rights.

21. Name, Type, and Diversity of Species

Human Dignity of Nigerian Women

22. Resource Impact and Effect: High and Product

23. Urgency and Lifetime: High and ~70 years

24. Substitutes: Education

Although one cannot substitute the stolen life of one person for that of another, education is effective in the battle against trafficking. Education can increase the awareness of women to common practices used by traffickers, if a job sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Education also works to create a skilled population and helps to reduce poverty which is one of the driving forces for women who seek unskilled job opportunities abroad. Trafficking of Nigerian and all women and children must end; education is the first step in curbing the amount of women who are vulnerable to the golden opportunities offered by traffickers. But education alone will not solve this problem, we must also work to extinguish the demand side of the trade.

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VI. Other Factors

25. Culture: Yes

26. Trans-Boundary Issues: Yes

27. Rights: Yes

28. Relevant Literature

Footnotes

(1) Eki Igbinedion. The Guardian/All Africa Global Media. Op. Ed. Sep. 25, 2001.

(2) Women's Edge: The Gains for Women and Girls Act. Policy Brief: International Trafficking in Human Beings.

(3) IOM International Organization for Migration. Trafficking in Migrants: Quarterly Bulletin. No 23 - April 2001 - Special Issues.

(4) Migrant Information Programme, "Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation to Italy," IOM, June 1996.

(5) European Race Audit Bulletin No. 25, The Institute of Race Relations, London UK, 25 November 1997.

(6)  Xinhua News Agency. "40 Nigerian Girls Deported from Guinea" August 19,2001.

(7) AFRO-NETS. Bolaji Tunji. Guardian on Saturday (Nigeria). 18 December 1999, pp. 14-15.

(8) All Africa.com Obasanjo Carpets Patrons of Sharia

(9) La Salle University, Press Release: La Salle's Diplomat-in-Residence Conference to Examine International Sex-trafficking of Women and Children. May 9, 2001.

(10) USAID Office of Women in Development, GenderReach Project. Gender Matters, Quarterly. No. 1 February 1999, 5.

(11) Xinhua News Agency "Nigeria Among Top 20 Countires in Human Trafficking." October, 17 2001.

(12) Gilbert Da Costa. "Nigeria President Quizzes 33 Women" The Associated Press, August 24, 2001. 

(13) Eki Igbinedion. The Guardian/All Africa Global Media. Op. Ed. Sep. 25, 2001.

(14) IOM. "Migrant Information Programme, "Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation to Italy," IOM, June 1996. 

(15) Yommi Oni. "Guinean Police Arrest 35 Girls En-Route Sex Slavery." This Day/All Africa Global Media. July 12, 2001.

(16) IOM, "Trafficking in Women to Italy for Sexual Exploitation" June 1996.

(17) Kristine Crane. "Italian Haven Offers Hope to Trafficked Women" Special to The Christian Science Monitor, November 01, 2001.

(18) Richard Bourdeaux, "Journey into sex slavery" Los Angeles Times, August 17, 2001.

(19) Marie-Louise Moller, "EU agrees sanctions for people smugglers" Reuters Ltd. BRUSSELS, May 29.

(20)  Network Against Trafficking Unites Civil Society in Nigeria and Italy. AdvocacyNet Vol. 1, Issue 1-November 2001.

(21)  Panafrican News Agency (PANA) "ECOWAS Adpot Plan of Action Against Trafficking" October 24, 2001.

(22) IOM. "New IOM Figures on the Global Scale of Trafficking" Trafficking in Migrants Quarterly Bulletin. No. 23 April 2001, 1.

(23)  Simon Mann. "Perspective - Slavery In Our Times" Australia: News - Features - Survivors of the Saleyard, June 4, 2001.

(24)  Fabrizio Caccia. "Prostituta muore per sfuggire alla retata" Corriere della Sera, November 14, 2001.

Bibliography