Even as governments, families and individuals strive for their safety, the major causes of child trafficking in Nigeria has become increasingly of importance.
The problem highlights a dire need for a collaborative response from all strata of society.
According to the 2020 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report by the United States Department of State, an estimated 25 million people worldwide are currently victims of human trafficking. Out of these, 1 in every 4 of them is a child.
Traffickers often target children – persons below 18 – from vulnerable and marginalised communities such as poverty-stricken areas or conflict zones due to the lack of protection and the need to survive. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbates the risk of the child trafficking pandemic.
This is because the economic downturn results in further vulnerability and exploitation of children.
Major Causes Of Child Trafficking In Nigeria
What are the major causes of the child trafficking pandemic in Nigeria? The following four factors are telling enough and these include:
- Poverty: Poor families have limited choices than to abandon their children. For example, where a poor family consist of twelve children or more, the temptation on parents to hand over to others to stay with, or to the streets to hawker is high.
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- Broken homes: Millions of homes around the world have either been broken or the children rendered as orphans. This situation makes these set of children vulnerable to child trafficking.
- Illiteracy: Children are believed to constitute the majority global illiterate population. This makes them easy prey for traffickers, prostitution rings, forced labour camps or into forced marriage, domestic work e.t.c
- Gender: Gender plays a large role in what the child is being trafficked for. Females are far more at risk of being trafficked into sex trade, due to differing but similar cultural attitudes towards women.
These may not be the only factors, but they remain the major triggers.
Effects Of Child Trafficking
Child Trafficking can have some incredibly damaging effects on the children involved, which can be long- term or short- term.
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- Shorts- term effects of child trafficking may include:
- Fatigue: This can be caused by labour, poor sleeping conditions, and malnutrition.
- Physical injuries from labour or abuse: They may have marks on their bodies or injuries that they have a rehearsed explanation for.
- Immediate distress and separation anxiety: This can be caused because they have been taken from their homes suddenly and prevented from seeing their family again.
Long- term effects of the child trafficking pandemic.
These include
- Depression
- Low self-esteem
- Harming
- Suicide attempts
- Anxiety
- Aggressive behaviour
- Physical injuries
- Self- isolation
- And Poor health
Best ways to contain child trafficking
Given the serious social problem that it has become, there is a consensus of opinion on drastic measures to contain the social ill.
- Experts call for a prioritisation of victim identification
- prosecution of traffickers, and
- enforcement of the law to eradicate child trafficking.
- It is suggested that communities need to be vigilant and report suspicious activity
Other suggested solutions are:
- Creating awareness: The Government and relevant agencies around the world should create awareness and enlightened citizens on the issue of child trafficking, it’s causes, techniques used to lure children into trafficking, dangers of child trafficking and punishment for offenders.
- Enforcement of Laws: The legislative frame work for child trafficking should be strictly enforced across all countries. Where these laws are strictly enforced, offenders prosecuted and heavily sanctioned, the rate of child trafficking will reduce.
- Education: Illiteracy constitutes majority of the victims of child trafficking. The Government should therefore put measures to ensure that education and necessary knowledge is acquired by all children. Measures like free and compulsory primary and secondary education will be sufficient to drastically reduce the number of illiterates in a country and as such reduce the rate of child trafficking.
Cami Ezenwa is a writer, editor and concepts developer. He has worked with the Daily Times, Daily Independent, Financial Standard and Business Television, to mention a few.
Committed to grooming the next generation of impactful writers, he is an apostle of free flowing prose.
