Aghatise aids trafficking victims from Nigeria

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Activist Aghatise Aids Trafficking Victims in Italy, Nigeria

*Association IROKO also attempts to educate youth on gender relations*

Esohe Aghatise, a lawyer who also holds a doctorate in international
economic and trade law, is among eight activists being honored during
the State Department's annual recognition of "Heroes Acting to End
Modern-Day Slavery."

For more than 10 years, Aghatise has worked to help the victims of sex
trafficking in Turin, Italy, and her native Nigeria. In 1998, she
founded Association IROKO (Associazione IROKO Onlus), a nongovernmental
organization that assists women who have fallen victim to sex
trafficking in Turin. Many of the women are from Nigeria, the main
country of origin for women and girls who are sold into prostitution in
Italy.

IROKO provides protected accommodations, counseling, legal and
psychological support, food and basic job training. IROKO also carries
out primary research on trafficking and violence against women and children.

Most of the women and girls are lured with promises of fantastic,
well-paying jobs in factories, offices and farms, but then find
themselves sold into sexual slavery in Italy to pay off debts they are
told were incurred by those helping them to come to Europe, Aghatise
writes in an article describing the trafficking process. The traffickers
also use various forms of coercion on their victims including threats to
kill their children or other family members left at home, voodoo rites
and physical violence.

Most of the trafficked Nigerian girls and women are illiterate and have
no prior experience in an urban area, says Aghatise. When they are sold,
they "undergo specific magic juju rites, during which they swear never
to reveal the identity of their traffickers and madams to the police and
to pay their debts without creating problems." These magic rites give
traffickers a measure of psychological control over trafficked Nigerian
women they do not have with victims from other countries.

In her articles in national and international journals, Aghatise argues
that it is impossible to combat trafficking where prostitution - which
she refers to as "paid serial rape" - is sanctioned legally. "We need a
global recognition that prostitution is a violation of women's human
rights and is inherently a violation of women's dignity as persons," she
says.

Aghatise also has produced a short film on trafficking entitled Viaggio
di Non Ritorno (Journey of No Return), which is being used in Nigeria
and other countries to raise awareness among young people of the risk of
falling prey to trafficking. "Prevention is the best way to combat
trafficking, warning potential victims and others about the methods of
traffickers and the ways in which they are able to create victims," she
says.

She has taken aim at what she calls "the myth that men will be men."

"It all comes down to what men see as culturally and socially
acceptable," Aghatise said in an interview. "I don't believe that men
cannot do without paid sexual services any more than I believe 'it's the
women who choose' [to be prostitutes]."

One way IROKO has attempted to stem the demand for prostitution is
through a new program developed in 2006 in two Turin secondary schools.
The program tries to educate youths between the ages of 15 to 19 on
gender relations and male demand as a key factor in the sexual
enslavement of women.

IROKO recently instituted a daycare center for the young children of the
trafficking victims it seeks to help, and plans to start a program in
Nigeria to help trafficking victims returning home from European countries.

For additional information, see 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report.
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issue ... eport.html