Press release made available to ITREALMS by Mr. Nyong Essien, the centre stated, that trafficking in persons, an act where persons are recruited, transported, transferred and received through the use of force, threat or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud or deception, through the abuse of power or giving and receiving of payments is against section 34 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the united nations protocol to prevent, suppress.
In addition, Essien noted that the constitution tends to punish trafficking in persons and the protocol against the smuggling of migrants by air, land and sea both protocols adopted in the year 2000 and brought into force in 2003 which supplements the united nations convention against transnational organized crime (UNTOC) the Palermo declaration, a protocol certified by Nigeria in the year 2005 which criminalises this act.
Statistics from the global slavery index show that 40.3 million persons are trafficked worldwide with India, China and Pakistan ranking tops across the world with 71% of persons trafficked being women/ girls and 25% being children.
Quoting the United States Department trafficking report (2019),he said Nigeria ranks number 32 out of 167 countries with the highest number of slaves and have been upgraded to a tier 2 country on the slavery index.
The National Agency for Prohibition of trafficking in persons (NAPTIP) an agency under the Ministry of Justice, he said, is saddled with the responsibility of preventing the trafficking of persons and all forms of human degradation in Nigeria places the average age of persons being trafficked at 15 years with 75 per cent of this persons being trafficked locally across states and 23% within the state with just 2% outside the country and with human trafficking being the 3rd most common crime in the country(UNESCO, 2016) with most trafficked persons being children and women who are deprived of education, decent forms of lively hood, used for forced labour and most at times forced into prostitution.
The centre calls on the government to address the menace by making provisions to reunite trafficked persons with their families and adequately re-integrated them into society.
Uboshe Uboshe/Editor
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