boko haram and human trafficking

ISIS is not the only terrorist group to engage in kidnapping and trafficking. When I finished this talk, a government official approached me. Long history of human trafficking in west African nation lends credence to Boko Haram leader's reported threat. This is related to only minimal increases in funding, failure to enact stricter penalties against traffickers, and the remaining difficulties of the national police to identify trafficking victims. Pakistani terrorists buy children to serve as suicide bombers. The nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped last month from their boarding school in Chibok by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram are suspected to be deep in … In 2012, the Nigerian government and NGOs identified 480 victims of trafficking. German authorities in 2006 arrested an Iraqi and a Syrian who smuggled individuals from their home region and were suspected of having links with the Ansar al-Islam terrorist network. Boko Haram may be sourcing such children from cartels involved in human trafficking, without such cartels knowing the purpose for which the children were bought. In 2012, … After meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, May said the countries will work together on “shared security threats like Boko Haram and human trafficking.” The defense aid includes more training and equipment for Nigeria’s military, which has been criticized by human rights groups over alleged abuses that it denies. Human trafficking now serves three main purposes for terrorist groups: generating revenue, providing fighting power, and vanquishing the enemy. Boko Haram itself engages in trafficking by forcibly recruiting, abducting, and exploiting children as cooks, spies, messengers, bodyguards, and armed combatants. The intersection of drugs and terrorism has long been investigated. Those not in the direct sight of terrorist groups may also become victims of human trafficking, even as they flee to safety. Many of the women arrived in the United States as part of sports and religious delegations. As horrific as the kidnapping threat posed by Boko Haram is, human trafficking in Nigeria is far more widespread and has been for some time. One of the leaders of this trafficking ring registered the trafficked women as students at a language skills school, thereby obtaining “student visas” for the prostitutes in her organization. Ultimately, conflict, slavery and trafficking, as … Children have been abducted, killed, even used as suicide bombers. There are also diverse forms of both types of trafficking and victim profiles. According to our research, Nigerian victims have been trafficked to 33 countries in recent years. This must be added to our national security priorities and those of NATO. A report, Trafficking Terror, by the British think tank, The Henry Jackson Society (HJS), said there were clear links between terrorists, criminals, and traffickers. Nigeria is currently ranked as a “Tier 2” country by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Trafficking in Persons (TIP), which signifies a middle range of success in combating human trafficking but with room for improvement. To get a clearer picture of the human-trafficking challenges in Nigeria, we analyzed recent reports on the subject to get a better sense of the situation. ISIS’s dealings in kidnapping and human trafficking, Boko Haram kidnapped 200 villagers and killed dozens more in Nigeria, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism. Today they are more direct, especially in many conflict regions of the world. The fact that the girls have not been rescued is a " massive embarrassment to Nigeria's government and the military " amid its inability to stem a five-year rising Islamic tide, the AP noted. Terrorists smuggle drugs, arms, and people. Boko Haram and ISIS-WA continued to forcibly recruit, abduct, and use child soldiers as young as 12 as cooks, spies, messengers, bodyguards, armed combatants, and increasingly as suicide bombers in attacks in Nigeria In 2012, the Nigerian National Police and NAPTIP conducted 117 trafficking investigations and successfully convicted twenty-five traffickers. But it also must be given much higher priority by non-governmental organizations and peacekeepers who intervene in conflict regions. Women travel in … Boko Haram says it abducted hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls May 5, 2014 00:32 Indeed, human trafficking plays a growing role in the operation of 21st-century terrorist organizations. [3] Even the lower estimate of the … Continued Now, the recent actions of ISIS and Boko Haram are drawing attention to the role of human trafficking. Several years ago I gave a public lecture on the topic and mentioned a case that is in the first chapter of my new book, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism. However, the northeast Borno state from which the girls were taken has porous borders with Cameroon and Niger, and it is not clear how well trained the military units or border-patrol officials deployed to the region are in identifying and dealing with cases of human trafficking. Hundreds of women and children have been … In other words, the 9/11 hijackers and the trafficking victims shared the same “facilitator.” This facilitator was a point of intersection of crime and terrorism. [19] Human Trafficking and Boko Haram Refugees Last Week It was a Fellowship Meeting and there were a lot of jokes. The mass kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram is only the tip of on iceberg of slavery in Africa. Nigeria has a functioning, albeit under-funded, bureaucracy to fight human trafficking in the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). The recent kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram is putting the spotlight on the problem of human trafficking in Nigeria, a scourge that has existed for some time and reaches far beyond Boko Haram. Many more illegal migrants face labor trafficking in Europe as they flee the conflict regions of North Africa and the Middle East. In West Africa's Lake Chad region, Nigeria's Boko Haram insurgency has taken a drastic toll on the lives of millions of families. The current state of financial ties with Islamic State or other Two weeks ago, a Nigerian high school was raided by armed militants from the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. Another method used by Boko Haram is tunnelling. The language school did not focus on providing instruction but instead was a visa mill. The Boko Haram kidnappings only underscore this point. As recently as 2011, Nigeria was actually ranked among the top countries by the U.S. State Department’s TIP report for making serious efforts to address the problem of human trafficking (in the same tier as countries such as Denmark and Canada). While the government has made some progress in addressing the problem, it can still do more to prevent trafficking and protect victims. He informed me that he was on a task force studying human trafficking and his role was to find the links between trafficking and terrorism. To combat the link between human trafficking and terrorism, we and European allies must prioritize this problem. Boko Haram’s recent kidnapping of schoolgirls from the state of Borno in Nigeria, has brutishly underscored the most basic violation of human rights—human trafficking. Human trafficking continues to be a major issue not only in Africa, but in the rest of the world as well. The public pressure surrounding the Chibok kidnappings could spur the Nigerian government to pursue additional human-trafficking policy initiatives. October 19, 2017 Africa/International Comments Off Boko Haram in Nigeria has been listed among terrorist groups that are using human trafficking and slavery to fund their activities. Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 1000 children in Nigeria since 2013 according to UNICEF. Yet policymakers focus nearly all their attention on more visible crime-terrorism links—primarily drug trafficking—and miss the important links between human trafficking and terrorist organizations. Measures to … It not only generates revenue, but it decimates communities. However, access to these services may be more limited in the country’s less developed rural areas and additional resources and capacity may be required to provide treatment for any of the girls that are recovered from Boko Haram. He asked how I found it. But what is different is that traditional practices of the past have been combined with the business acumen of terrorist groups today. This is the latest account of ISIS’s dealings in kidnapping and human trafficking in which they target women and children, often from the minority Yazidi religion, and sell them for as little as $25 or keep them as slaves. Trafficking and smuggling are part of the business of terrorism, and constitute one activity in the product mix of terrorist groups. With Boko Haram increasing its violent attacks in the northeast, 50,000 Nigerian refugees have crossed into Niger. This crisis within a crisis shows the nexus between trafficking, and the Boko Haram conflict and is categorized as the “not so good Human trafficking was once a crime associated primarily with a range of small to large crime groups. Oliver Kaplan is an assistant professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver where he is the Associate Director of the Human Trafficking Center. Yvette Cooper, the chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "Isil, Boko Haram and other evil groups are increasingly seeing human trafficking as a … As we see in Nigeria and Iraq today, trafficking intimidates populations and reduces resistance just as enslavement and rape of women were used as tools of war in the past. Unfortunately, almost all attention goes to the drug trafficking-terrorism link without addressing the role that human trafficking plays as a terrorist funding source and a destroyer of communities. In his months in this position, he had not found a single example such as this. The Nigerian government has also conducted trainings in collaboration with foreign governments and international organizations. The girls and women may sell for as little as $25 and sometimes even less, suggesting that this is not a revenue-generating operation when a million dollars daily is gained from oil sales. The mass kidnapping of schoolgirls by terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria is neither a new nor rare occurrence, though this does not make it any less … Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). For terrorists, human trafficking is a dual-use crime like drug trafficking and kidnapping. But as terrorist groups begin to function more as businesses, we unfortunately observe the expansion of terrorist groups into this criminality. These terrorists kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian girls – with new reports that the… Support for refugees must include anti-trafficking measures that include targeting traffickers and support to safeguard women and children. © Copyright 2021 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. The White Lace Case in Los Angeles involved women from the former USSR trafficked into high-end prostitution. Boko Haram Human Trafficking State and Local Governments Sub-Saharan Africa Katsina is the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has denounced the kidnapping. Women and girls are trafficked for domestic servitude and sex trafficking, while boys are forced into street vending, domestic service, mining, agriculture and begging. Six years of Boko Haram violence has killed more than 25,000 people and forced 2.5 million from their homes. Moreover, recipient countries of refugees fleeing terrorist conflicts must prioritize anti-trafficking efforts to ensure that traumatized refugees are not subject to further victimization. I think that the President should abstain from telling jokes completely. Louise I. Shelley is a professor at George Mason University and director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC). Any Boko Haram members involved in the kidnappings and human trafficking that are captured will certainly face intense scrutiny. Nigerian human trafficking victims have been reported in 20 European countries, including Spain and Germany, and even countries such as France, which are currently rendering assistance to Nigeria to investigate the missing girls. I answered that I had gone and talked to many members of law enforcement who through their investigations understood these links. Of these identified cases, almost three-quarters of all trafficked women and girls are recruited for sexual exploitation. Boko Haram plays a large role in the trafficking of women in Nigeria by kidnapping girls and forcing them into slavery. Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab are among the main terrorist groups that have used human trafficking (including for sexual exploitation) and conflict-related sexual violence as tactics of terrorism, or ‘sexual terrorism’. Maoist insurgents in Nepal have exploited the long-standing trade of young girls taken from their country to the brothels of India to finance their activities. Associate of the Human Trafficking Center at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Slavery and trafficking is more often than not tied to conflicts in which core NATO member states and terrorist organizations with ties to their intelligence services play central roles. ISIS is not the only terrorist group to engage in kidnapping and trafficking. They have been trafficked throughout West Africa to countries such as Ghana and the Central African Republic and, although trafficking of Nigerians to the United States is not especially common, there are extensive human-trafficking flows from Nigeria to Europe. In order to extend their legal residence in the United States, they had to obtain other visas. Boko Haram attacks, human trafficking threaten progress in West Africa and Sahel - UN envoy 11 January 2018 – The security situation in West Africa and … In their effort to diversify their revenue, they have capitalized on traditional practices to new advantage. In Turkey, crime groups in border areas are exploiting the labor of Syrian male refugees who cannot find legitimate employment. However, Nigeria’s progress may have been exaggerated, and in more recent years, Nigeria has seen policy backsliding, falling from Tier 1 to Tier 2. The Boko Haram kidnappings are just part of a much larger problem. At that time, pre -9/11, the links were more subtle and had to be hunted down. Young girls fleeing with their families from the Syrian conflict today have been trafficked in Jordan and other neighboring states, just as occurred with earlier waves of refugees from Iraq. Historically, conquering armies have seized inhabitants of conquered areas and enslaved them. People displaced by terrorists are vulnerable to trafficking—both sexual and labor. In sum, the problem of human trafficking is widespread in Nigeria. (9) Boko Haram has used such tunnels for arms trafficking, especially As horrific as the kidnapping threat posed by Boko Haram is, human trafficking in Nigeria is far more widespread and has been for some time. While trafficking and smuggling does generate revenue, they are not central money-making endeavors for terrorists and are committed primarily for other reasons. Cells of the Ulster Volunteer Force of Northern Ireland received narcotics as payment from Chinese “snakeheads” in support of their smuggling networks. But the war is not yet won and the humanitarian impact will … Just a few days ago, Boko Haram kidnapped 200 villagers and killed dozens more in Nigeria, further terrorizing the already tormented community. Rather, human trafficking, like slavery in the past, is a way of demoralizing the conquered. More recently, Boko Haram shocked the world by kidnapping 276 female students and threatened to traffic them. Boko Haram is negotiating a ransom for the release of 276 girls still in captivity, some of whom have reportedly been taken across borders to Cameroon and Chad, the AP reported. Recovering from the trauma associated with being a victim of human trafficking often requires access to medical, psychological and legal services and vocational training. Its … Additionally, children from Benin, Ghana, and Togo are trafficked into Nigeria and forced to work in industries such as granite mines. Home » Boko Haram Attacks, Human Trafficking Threaten Progress In West Africa And Sahel ← South Sudan: In Search Of A Path To Peace – Analysis US … Human Trafficking in the Global Era Understand the various forms of human trafficking, including forced labor, forced marriage, and forced organ removal. By Jacob Zenn In July 2014, Cameroon’s Defense Ministry announced that Boko Haram[1] was a growing threat in the Lake Chad region and now has approximately 15,000 to 20,000 members. • Human trafficking is … Exploitation of trafficking victims may be most acute in conflict and adjoining regions, but it is not confined to these areas. But this case, already 15 years ago, shows that there were links at that time between human trafficking and terrorist activity even in the United States. Lauren Jekowsky is an M.A. Boko Haram funds itself primarily through criminal activities such as arms and human trafficking, extortion, bank robberies, looting and kidnap-for-ransom operations. This article will The added element of trafficking, as another author calls it, builds the arsenal of Boko Haram. The use of tunnels to traffic arms, drugs and other substances is not a new tactics among terrorist groups. However, the tier rankings can be imprecise indicators that conflate various concepts, including trafficking severity and policy response, obscuring deeper patterns in trafficking. ISIS members have taken young Azidi girls, raped and sold them off for trivial prices. Although likely a large undercount of the actual number of victims given frequent under-reporting and the often hidden nature of the crime, this is nearly double the number of girls that were taken by the militants in Borno state. Evidence suggests that the LTTE smuggled Sri Lankans to finance their activities and the PKK exploited the porous mountain borders in eastern Turkey to facilitate human smuggling from countries in the Middle East and South Asia. Since it began its insurgency in 2009, Islamist militants Boko Haram have abducted thousands of girls and women in northeast Nigeria – most notably … Nigerian human trafficking victims have been reported in 20 European countries, including Spain and Germany, and even countries such as France. In 2012, the Nigerian government and NGOs identified 480 victims of trafficking. The kidnapping has awakened the global public to the fact that slavery still exists. Nigeria’s recent record of arresting and prosecuting human traffickers has been mixed, but it is improving. Boko Haram and Al Shabaab are among the main terrorist groups that have used human trafficking (including for sexual exploitation) and conflict-related sexual violence as tactics of terrorism, also called ‘sexual terrorism’. [2] A Nigerian journalist with longstanding contacts with Boko Haram, however, says that Boko Haram has up to 50,000 members. Nigeria is currently ranked as a “Tier 2” country by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Trafficking in Persons (TIP), which signifies a middle range of success in combating human trafficking but with room for improvement. In 2002, Nigeria and Cameroon finally reached a border agreement after almost going to war in 1981 and again in the early 1990s. The Nigerian government offers protection services for victims of human trafficking and has funded eight shelters that can provide services for 293 people. She is the author of Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism (Cambridge University Press). Nigeria is a hub for human trafficking, with victims being trafficked both domestically and outside the country. Still, the Nigerian government may require additional resources and international assistance to efficiently bring them to justice and send a deterrent signal to other would-be traffickers. Boko Haram fuels human trafficking fight The House on Tuesday passed five bills to boost law enforcement efforts against human trafficking. This same language school also provided visas to the 9/11 hijackers. Women and children are disproportionately victims, but they are not alone. The list of atrocities committed by ISIS continues to grow, with the latest being a chilling pamphlet that details the organization’s policy on treating the women they kidnap and then use as sex slaves. Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. This Rebels in Africa trade in children to fund their conflicts and obtain child soldiers.

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