USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: {'Yan Arewa} Criminalisation of commercial sex can end human trafficking – NAPTIP

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kabir Abdulkadir
Date: Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 8:34 PM
Subject: {'Yan Arewa} Criminalisation of commercial sex can end human trafficking – NAPTIP
To: Yanarewa@yahoogroups.com


Criminalisation of commercial sex can end human trafficking – NAPTIP
Premium Times - 3 hours agoNATIONAL, NEWS

NAPTIP wants human trafficking to be further criminalized.
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and
Related Matters (NAPTIP) has said that the criminalisation of
commercial sex can end human trafficking in the country.
NAPTIP's Director of Media and Communication, Arinze Orakwue, said
this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on
Friday, against the backdrop of the annual Slavery Remembrance Day.
The annual Slavery Remembrance Day is held on August 23 of each year
to commemorate an uprising by enslaved Africans on the island of Saint
Domingue (in modern Haiti) in 1791.
The date has been designated by UNESCO as Slavery Remembrance Day, a
reminder that enslaved Africans were the main agents of their own
liberation.
Mr. Orakwue said that human trafficking was a form of modern slavery
and called on Nigerians to join hands to help fight it.
"It is a shame that 100 years after slavery was abolished the crime
has sneaked back on us in other variances including but not limited to
trafficking in persons.
"Nigeria is a transit, a source and a destination country.
Unfortunately, that is the tag we have to live with presently because
of this particular scourge. It is a clear and present danger and it
requires the intervention of all sectors of not just governmental but
also the private sector and families.
"What we are asking is that the least we can do is to criminalise the
purchase of sex because prostitution is a function of demand, if
nobody is buying definitely nobody will sell.
"Anything that does not target the criminalisation of the purchase of
sex so long as sex can be purchased people will always be trafficked
because there is no end to the boom in the industry.
"Now the internet had become another platform where paedophiles
traffic children, all manner of fancies of people can be met so long
as you create the avenue for people to express it.
"I think there is the need for us to begin to look at some of the
excesses of some of our freedoms that people are enjoying and see how
those things have brought other forms of abuses that are inflicted on
poor and unsuspecting persons particularly from less developed
countries and that is the common challenge the world will face in no
time," he said.
Mr. Orakwue advised parents to invest more in their children and also
urged the Federal Government to provide free, accessible education in
the country.
"(My) advice for Nigerians is that the grass seems to be greener on
the other side and that parents must understand that the fortunes of
your child will not be better managed if that child goes out to a
country he doesn't know and many countries in the Europe are under
severe economic problems.
"What you watch on films is not what you see. They are going through
tortuous economic times and prostitution can never be seen as the way
out.
"The main effort and energy we expend trying to put that child across
if you put it here that child will find something to do. So long as
the government does its own to make sure that education is compulsory,
free and accessible to every child," he said.
He said the agency was planning to review the law guiding its
operations so that it could have the appropriate legal backing to
fully tackle the issue of trafficking in Nigeria.
"The regulations have not changed but what we are waiting for is the
amendment of the law that is being proposed which is to make
trafficking more stringent by removing the option of fine and
designing it in line with global standards,'' he said.
(NAN)


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