Women and children are being kept as slaves 400 years after
the first traders shipped their human cargo to North America.
Children are handed over to work for wealthy families in
Nigeria on false promises of schooling, while women are trafficked across the
world to be prostituted or kept in indentured servitude.
Blessing was just six-years-old when her mother arranged for
her to work as a servant for a family in the Nigerian city of Abuja, on the
promise she would be put through school.
But when Blessing arrived in Abuja, there was no school,
instead beatings with an electrical wire, rotten leftovers and endless
housework.
When her mother later moved to the city to be closer to her
daughter, Blessing was unable to be alone with her when she came to visit.
'They would tell me that my mother was coming, that I should
not tell her what was happening to me, that I should not even say anything,'
she says of the family.
'If she asks me how am I doing I should say I am doing fine,
they said.'
As the world marks 400 years since the first recorded
African slaves arrived in North America, slavery remains a modern-day scourge.
Over 40 million people are estimated to be trapped in forced
labour, forced marriages or other forms of sexual exploitation, according to
the United Nations.
Blessing, now 11, is one such victim. She was rescued in
2016 by the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation
(WOTCLEF), an anti-human trafficking group, after two years of isolation and
abuse.
She is still under the care of WOTCLEF, which gave consent
for her to be interviewed for this story.
Africa has the highest prevalence of slavery, with more than
seven victims for every 1,000 people, according to a 2017 report by human
rights group Walk Free Foundation and the International Labour Office.
The report defines slavery as 'situations of exploitation
that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion,
deception, and/or abuse of power.'
Trafficking of sex workers, many of them tricked into
thinking they will get employment doing something else, is one of the most
widespread and abusive forms of modern-day slavery.
The experiences of Claudia Osadolor and Progress Omovhie
show how poverty increases women's vulnerability to exploitation.
After Osadolor's family in Benin City in southern Nigeria
hit hard times, she dropped out of university and headed to Russia after a
cousin told her about someone who could help her get work there, with travel
expenses paid.
She left Nigeria with three other girls she did not know in
June 2012. When she got to Russia a 'madam' came to pick her up.
Osadolor, now 28, says she was forced into prostitution and
suffered internal injuries after being made to sleep with up to 20 men a day.
She was trapped for three years, with the madam coming round every two weeks to
take almost all of her money.
She cries as she recounts the trauma and her relief at
escaping thanks to a chance meeting with a representative of the International
Organization for Migration (IOM) at a metro station.
'I feel like I paid the ultimate price for my family,' she
says. 'But I thank God that I came back alive.'
Osadolor has been able to reintegrate into society after
training as a tailor back in Benin with the support of Nigerian charity
Pathfinders Justice Initiative.
Omovhie, 33, also found herself enslaved after leaving
Nigeria in 2015 in search of work. She paid an agent 700,000 naira (£1,600) -
money she had borrowed - to smuggle her on a journey across the Sahara desert
to Libya, hoping eventually to go to Europe.
The intended final destination of people smuggled across
Africa like this is often Europe, but few make it that far.
Many are jailed or sold as indentured labourers when they
get to Libya. Some are even sold on slave markets, according to aid groups - a
chilling echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade of centuries past.
Once in Libya, Omovhie says she started working long hours
as a cleaner for a well-off Arab family in Tripoli, often on an empty stomach.
'I worked three months and they did not pay me in that
house,' she said.
Another agent promised to help Omovhie escape by sending her
to Italy, but she was rounded up by police on the Libyan coast and detained
there for six months.
She returned to Nigeria in July under a state programme to
help refugees and migrants. It has helped over 14,000 Nigerians return home
since 2017.
Blessing and Claudia Osadolor are pseudonyms requested to
protect their anonymity.
(Daily Mail)
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