At least 80% of
Nigerian women and girls arriving in Italy are sex trafficking
victims, Vatican news agency Agenzia Fides reported Wednesday.
"Hundreds of thousands of people fall victim to human
trafficking every year in Africa alone," Monsignor Ignatius Ayau
Kaigama told an international conference against human
trafficking organized by Christian Organisations Against
Trafficking in Human Beings (COATNET) and Catholic charity
Caritas in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
"Of the overall number of victims, 79% are sexually
exploited and the majority are women," said Kaigama, who is the
archbishop of the central Nigerian city of Jos and president of
the Nigerian Bishops Conference.
"The remaining 21% are coerced into forced labor, and the
majority of these are men".
"In some parts of West Africa, the majority of trafficking
victims are children under 18," he went on.
"This conference must find a way to put an end to child
labor in all its forms," the archbishop said.
He also called on the Nigerian government "to declare human
trafficking a national disgrace, and to take urgent and
long-lasting measures to address its root causes. This in light
of recent reports that 80% of Nigerian girls that reach Italy,
do so for reasons of sex trafficking".
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