Nigerian victims of the sex trade (Credit: The Paper Online)
NAPTIP Fights Sex Trafficking of Nigerians in Muslim World
A decade of Islamic insurgency in Nigeria has left tens of thousands of Christians and non-Muslims dead and thousands more enslaved by jihadist groups such as Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) and Fulani herdsmen. As a result, this nation on the far-western fringe of the Islamic world has steadily climbed the global list of feeder states for female sex trafficking and forced labor throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. To counteract this trend, the Nigerian government founded NAPTIP, the National Agency for the Prevention of Trafficking-in-Persons. The agency has partnered with willing state governments and NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) around the region to disrupt the trafficking pipelines, rescue victims, and repatriate them. Efforts are now underway to locate and identify sex trafficking victims in Lebanon, and over 30 female victims were recently returned home from Mali to receive treatment. Another nine Nigerian women were prevented from flying to Dubai and other MENA nations via the nation of Lagos, on suspicion that they were being lured into sex trafficking.
The enslavement of sub-Saharan “black” Africans has a long history in the Arab slave trade, dating back to the earliest Islamic caliphates in North Africa. Islamic law forbade the enslavement of Muslims, driving the slave enterprise outside of the borders of the Umma (global Islamic Community) into Christian and pagan lands. The Arab slave trade created inroads across West Africa which would later be used by European slave traders until the 19th Century.
CLICK TO WATCH
a segment from our film The Frontier that explores FAI’s counter-trafficking initiative in the heart of the Mediterranean basin
Turkish Parliament Revisits “Marry Your Rapist” Law
Turkey’s ruling AKP party has reintroduced a bill to the nation’s parliament legislating that men who commit statutory rape with underage girls should have the option to marry their victims as a way of maintaining the “honor” of the victim’s family. The AKP is an Islamist party headed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A similar bill introduced by AKP four years ago was tabled after widespread condemnation by secular opposition parties such as the HDP, women’s rights groups in Turkey and the international community.
The current legal age for marriage in Turkey is 18, a holdover from the secularist governments founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. President Erdogan and the AKP have been quietly dismantling the Kemalist regime since his rise to national power in 2003, and so the previous defeat of the “marry your rapist” bill was only a temporary setback. Just months ago, Turkey’s “Diyanet” religious affairs commission published a statement declaring that Islamic law allowed for the marriage of girls as young as nine-years-old. In Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was given his second wife, Aisha, when she was nine.
Here are some great resources to learn more about human trafficking and slavery across the world:
US State Dept: 2019 Trafficking-in-Persons Report: https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-trafficking-in-persons-report/
Polaris Project: Myths, Facts and Statistics
Sources:
https://nationalaccordnewspaper.com/kwara-govt-naptip-partner-to-rescue-rehabilitates-trapped-victims-of-human-trafficking-in-lebanon/
https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/01/23/collaborating-against-human-trafficking/
https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/01/23/collaborating-against-human-trafficking/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-marry-rapist-bill-child-marriage-a9296681.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/23/turkish-activists-oppose-amnesties-for-child-rapists
breitbart.com/middle-east/2018/01/05/outrage-turkey-state-agency-says-girls-can-marry-age-nine/
