With over 40,000 Nigerian girls held as sex slaves in Mali and other West African countries, Nigerian officials complain of lack of support from these countries in their effeorts to rescuing these girls. In this interview with EZRA IJIOMA, the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) Commissioner Human Development and Gender, Dr. Adrienne Diop, says the Commission can do little to help Nigeria since it has not been officially informed. Excerpts
Tell us how your department is combating human trafficking in the region?
Human trafficking falls under human development and my department handles anything that has to do with the development of the human person. When I took office in 2008, ECOWAS had signed a multilateral cooperation agreement to combat trafficking in persons especially with women and children. We also entered into agreement with the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and we have a plan of action that both regions are implementing since human trafficking transcends borders and regions. When I took over, I wanted to move forward because there are many aspects to human trafficking. There are three approaches to human trafficking namely prevention, protection and prosecution.
Prevention involves sensitisation and enlightenment against human trafficking at the local communities, national and regional levels. Also, it involves training security agents and immigration officers at border posts to observe grown-ups and children who may seem odd and travelling together. They are trained to ask questions and not take answers that they are cousins or relatives or brothers and so on. They are also trained to detect the signs of those involved in trafficking.
The second one is protection. Once you manage to rescue someone trafficked, you must care for that person because he or she has gone through some very traumatic experiences. You must make sure that there are shelters and centres to make that person feel welcomed and accepted. Physically, some of them have been battered, sexually assaulted and starved and you need to rehabilitate them. You also need to find their families and reintegrate them in the society. You must also assist them build capacity in self-help ventures or help them go to school so that they do not fall prey to traffickers again.
The last is prosecution of traffickers. Once you catch a trafficker, you must ensure diligent prosecution so that they don’t come back to this business again and others are deterred from joining in the trafficking.
Does ECOWAS have the power to initiate prosecution of human traffickers?
ECOWAS does not have that power. It is left for each country to make laws on human trafficking and enforce them. There are specific laws to address these issues.
What are some of the responses ECOWAS is receiving on how member states are tackling human trafficking?
Every year, we have an assessment of how each country is implementing the plan of action. In fact, I think next September, there is going to be one, where we bring together all member states and they tell us how they are faring. But their difficulties are mostly related to prevention because in that are awareness is the beginning. If you manage to create and raise the awareness level, you have solved half the problem. That means you have less and less people who are going to be trafficked.
The other problem is inadequate resources to ensure protection. It requires skilled people to rehabilitate victims and most member states cannot afford the money and training needed for this. That is why we adopted a policy in 2009 with respect to the protection of victims. That policy sets out what to do to protect victims from rescuing them to sheltering to healthcare and rehabilitation. Each step is spelt out and that is what each country should do. It is a regional policy and a model but each country can do more. However, the policy sets a minimum standard that provides a basis for evaluation.
We still have problems with prosecution. Most of member states’ criminal system is not helpful. I don’t know about Nigeria but if you prosecute someone in some of our countries, you must feed the person while he is in the police station. And you don’t have enough resources for that. So you catch a trafficker and it is the same thing for a thief and take him to police station. For him to stay there you must bring food to him every day. So this is kind of problematic. So we must strengthen our criminal justice system to make human trafficking a very risky business and deter people from taking to that business.
Now with respect to specific human trafficking cases like child labourers in cocoa fields in Cote d’Ivoire, Nigerian girls trafficked for prostitution in Mali and other West African countries and slaves in Mauritania and Niger Republic; what is your department doing about these? Specifically, Nigerian officials have complained that Malian officials have been uncooperative in letting Nigerian girls return home. Does the commission sanction such uncooperative countries?
Well, I don’t know if any country can keep an adult who wants to leave that country. I mean if you have these adults in Mali or Italy and if they want to come back, nobody is going to stop them from coming back. And I don’t know what specific cases you are talking about. All those adults you are talking about, maybe they are still in the hands of the traffickers. Until you remove them from the hands of the traffickers and bring them home, there is no way they can be released. I don’t think it is the country. We have this freedom of movement which is good but unfortunately a bad thing because you have all these criminals and thieves also moving freely.
Specifically, I am referring to some of these under-aged girls who were tricked with promises of good jobs in Europe and dumped in some sub-Saharan African countries. And most of them work as sex slaves and forced labourers under intimidation and threats of violence. So, when such cases come to your notice, what does the commission do?
First, the commission does not do anything in member states. What we provide is legal framework for each member state to apply these policies that have been approved. I don’t believe that, if in a member state they catch a gang of traffickers and they manage to release the girls or the children and they want to send them home, that there would be a problem. The problem is to stop the link between the traffickers and the victims. Until that is done, there is no way you can release those young children or young girls from those traffickers.
What they should do, and we encourage them, is that each organisation working there, like NAPTIP here, have close links and then we recommend that in every country with a system or the agency or the network doing the same thing so that they can exchange information and say that we have heard that there are girls from my country that are here. This is the information that we have, try to help us get those girls, free them, catch the traffickers so that we can see how we can bring those youngsters back. It takes collective effort. ECOWAS does not police, does not have gendarme or anything.
But can the commission sanction a country it thinks is not helping in this fight? That is, deny the country some benefits?
No, but we have to have evidence. You are saying it but no country has come to ECOWAS to tell us that they have girls or boys in this country and this is what is happening.
But NAPTIP has said that most Nigerian girls trafficked to Mail want to come back but the Malian authorities are not cooperating with them. Are you saying that NAPTIP has not raised this issue with ECOWAS?
Not that I know of. And I don’t know this particular issue. But if NAPTIP has noticed that there are some Nigerian girls in Malian authority who want to come back, I don’t see Mali stopping them. The Malian government does not get anything out of it. I don’t see why any government should refuse to facilitate the repatriation of victims. I don’t see it. I would like to be more educated on this issue and I would gladly take it up, but I have not heard of it.
If those Nigerian girls are still in the hands of some traffickers, some Nigerian traffickers who took them there, who the Malian government or Malian counterpart of NAPTIP cannot get their hands on, that is another issue. I don’t think any government would be reluctant or unhappy to repatriate citizens who are in distress because it is a problem for that government to keep them there. I am not saying it is not happening but we need to have more evidence and facts and really the nitty-gritty of this issue.
Recently, ECOWAS raised concern over the movement of arms and mercenaries across borders in the region, is there an immediate and pressing danger?
This is not a new thing. Since 1998, we adopted the moratorium on the fabrication, importation and exportation of small arms and weapons throughout the region. There are five million small arms still in the region according to experts and that is an issue of major concern. Those small arms are creating conflicts, they are creating insecurity and if they fall into wrong hands, we know what that can do in conflict and post-conflict countries.
That is not really under my portfolio but I know about it. Now we have a convention. That moratorium has been changed into a convention which is legally binding on member states to fight against the proliferation, exportation, importation and manufacture of small arms. And we are the only region that has a convention because unfortunately, we know what roles these small arms have played in causing conflicts in the region.
Tell us about ECOWAS gender issues such as violence against women and gender differentials.
Gender violence is more widespread than you think. It happens in the workplace, in the family and very often between couples.
We have not really managed to address it properly because we cannot do everything but we are focusing on gender education because that aspect of gender issue is very important and we are trying to formulate a policy to address gender violence issues especially in the home. A husband might not think he is using violence against his wife meanwhile he is.
But we have to take into consideration our African mentality, culture and everything. It takes a lot of sensitisation and explanation to people that there can be violence between couples. In schools, it is more widespread and known. Girls are harassed by boys and sometimes teachers and this is an issue of concern. In the workplace, it is a sexual harassment kind of attitude and we are working on a document in that area.