Upward of 20,000 missing young Nigerian women and girls are suspected to have been trafficked to Mali and forced into prostitution.

A fact-finding team within the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) worked together to uncover the ghastly pattern of trafficking from Nigeria during a visit to Mali. According to Arinze Osakwe, many of the girls were tricked by false employment opportunities they were told could be found in Malaysia. Hopefuls were swayed by potential salaries reaching $700 per month and jobs at high-end, five-star restaurants. Instead, they were brought to Mali and sold to prostitution rings or bought as sex slaves in gold mining camps.

IMO and NAPTIP were able to locate hundreds of the girls in southern Mali and discovered from local citizens that over 200 similar hubs existed within the same region, each of which held anywhere between 100 to 150 girls. The women and girls mostly range between 16 and 30 years old, Reuters reported.

“They are held in horrible, slave-like living conditions,” Director General of NAPTIP Julie Okah-Donli told Reuters. “They can’t escape because they are kept in remote locations, like deep in forests.”

In a 2018 report on trafficking, it has been revealed that Nigerian women and children have been traced along 40 countries, including European countries such as Italy, Spain, Austria and Russia, as well as West and Central African countries including Mali, Senegal and Cabo Verde.

Young boys are also victims commonly utilized for mining, agricultural and textile manufacturing labor, the report details, as well as street vending and domestic servitude.

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20,000 women and girls

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