N A T I O N A L I N T E L L I G E N C E U N I V E R S I T Y

CSIRCENTER FOR STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH VOL. 02-2014 AUGUST 2014

Research Report ’s Situation in 2014: A Research Synthesis

Benjamin N. Lawrance Conable Chair of International Studies Rochester Institute of Technology

CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 1

Nigeria’s Human Trafficking Situation in 2014: A Research Synthesis*

The mass kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls at gunpoint in northern Nigeria, some as they sat for an examination, has thrust Nigeria’s trafficking problem to the center of a discussion about underlying causes. Were the events the consequence of religious radicalization, part of a broader regional conflict, or simply acts of terrorism to be combated by an antiterrorist operation? While the events in Chibok are undeniably horrifying, framing child abductions as terrorism is all too easy, and anointing the response as antiterrorism, misguided. Conflating the why and how in this narrative is part of a pervasive problem, and a casualty of cursory media storytelling. Understanding the “why” is generally the realm of speculation. “,” in the Hausa language spoken in the region, means something to the effect of “Western education is forbidden.” The girls were in a predominantly Chris- tian boarding school, and their seizure may have been part of Boko Haram’s attempt to witness (shahada) by forcibly converting Christians, as per- verse as it may seem to many Muslims and others familiar with the central te- nets of Islam. Details about this aspect will only become clearer, if and when the girls are rescued or released. The “how,” however, is much more readily accessible. As is often the case, the explanation is concealed in plain Abuja: Former Boko Haram negotiator, Shehu Sani, has said the group sight. Self-proclaimed leader Abuba- plans to exchange the 300 kidnapped schoolgirls for its “comrades” in kar Shekau tipped his hand when he jails in Nigeria, media reported Friday. threatened to “sell them in the mar- ket.”1 Other sources suggested the students were paid 2000 naira ($12) to “marry” Boko Haram fighters. Evidence is thus mounting that the 300 girls were able to be kidnapped from their schools because the region in which they live was, and continues to reside, at the dynamic intersection of three deeply interwoven social forces tied to contemporary slavery—child trafficking, forced marriage, and child soldiering. Nigeria is the site of important trafficking enterprises, and the country as a whole is embedded in rich and complex regional and international trafficking networks that today form part of one of the most

*This research report is the product of independent scholarly investigation and is not finished intelligence. It has not been coordinated with U.S. Intelligence Community agencies. The opinions expressed in this report are solely the author’s and are not those of the National Intelligence University, Defense Intelligence Agency, or Department of Defense. For an expanded discussion of the findings, please [email protected]. 2

vibrant slavery markets in the modern era. The U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) currently ranks Nigeria as a “Tier 2” country, which connotes a reasonable level of success in combating human trafficking, but describes specific conditions for improvement.2 The tier rankings are imprecise indicators, addressed to the U.S. Congress as a reporting tool for congres- sional reports; they conflate various issues, including the dimension of trafficking and policy responses, and they obscure complex and rich historical trafficking patterns.3 While Nigeria continues to make modest progress combating trafficking, the scale of the problem dwarfs the numbers of prosecutions and convictions. Neoliberal ideologies embedded in contemporary antitrafficking programs replicate the free-trade imperialism of earlier abolitionism. Today, as in the past, the Nigerian economy masks the different forms of unfree labor and exploitation of women and children through apprenticeship, kidnappings, and peonage. The Dimensions of Nigerian Human Trafficking In conventional trafficking literature, the topic as it pertains to African nations is examined through three lenses; namely, national, regional, and international. The greater emphasis in research has been on the in- ternational dimensions of trafficking as it pertains to Nigeria. Internal trafficking in Nigeria is a poorly understood dimension of the problem. The U.S. State Department (USDOS) reports have documented the persistence of human trafficking in Nigeria, and Nigeria’s role as a source, transit site, and destination for women and children. The 2013 Report on Trafficking in Persons for Nigeria notes: “Trafficked Nigerians are recruited from rural and, to a lesser extent, urban areas within the country; women and girls for domestic servitude and sex trafficking, and boys for forced labor in street vending, domestic service, mining, stone quarrying, agriculture, and begging.”4 A 2012 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) global trafficking report noted that less than half of all trafficking victims within Nigeria were children, and that the percentage had dropped from 50 percent in 2008 to 45 percent in 2010.5 Regional, continental, and international trafficking from Nigeria. Nigeria’s external regional and conti- nental traffic is better documented for a variety of reasons; in considerable part because the cases are more often uncovered at international borders and attract media attention. The USDOS 2013 Report on Traffick- ing in Persons for Nigeria notes that “Nigerian women and children are taken from Nigeria to other West and Central African countries, as well as to South Africa, where they are exploited for the same purposes.”6 Many of the regional and continental trafficking victims originate from the context of poverty, both urban and rural. Regional trafficking networks also include the trafficking of individuals into Nigeria from neigh- boring countries. Many children are brought to Nigeria by traffickers to work in quarries, cocoa planta- tions, urban domestic service, and under other conditions. Some scholars argue that certain dimensions of these movements do not necessarily constitute trafficking, but are reasoned responses to very narrow sets of social and economic options.7 However, the movement of children from Benin to Nigeria to work in stone- breaking quarries in Abeokuta meets the legal definition of child trafficking in Benin and Nigeria, and also meets the international Palermo Protocol definition, insofar as children cannot consent to their movement or sell their labor, nor can their parents.8 The role of Nigeria in international trafficking operations often receives the greatest attention in the media and in government reports. The 2013 USDOS Report on Trafficking in Persons for Nigeria notes that, CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 3

“Nigerian women and girls—primarily from Benin City in Edo State—are subjected to in Italy, while Nigerian women and girls from other states are subjected to forced prostitution in Spain, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Russia.”9 Whereas Edo remains a central point for understanding trafficking, as Tim Braimah demonstrates, the International Organization for Migration notes that more recently trafficking has spread beyond Edo State, and now women and girls from areas all over Nigeria are trafficked, particularly from the Muslim north and the delta region of the southeast.10 Regional patterns within Nigeria persist, but external international trafficking is now a Nigeria-wide phe- nomenon. The 2012 UNODC report noted that 18 percent of trafficking victims in Europe were from West Africa, and the majority of these were from Nigeria. Nigerian victims were detected in 16 European countries, and were 11 percent of total victims detected.11 Indeed, since the early 2000s, the link between Nigeria and European trafficking networks has been the focus of considerable attention.12 In 2002, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stated that 80 percent of young women engaged in prostitution in Italy were Nigerians.13 An international non- governmental organization (NGO), the Advocacy Project, estimated in 2003 that Nigerian women made up 70 percent of 70,000 African victims of trafficking, and that about 70 percent of these Nigerian women ended up in Italy.14 The 2008 UNODC report on human trafficking identified Nigeria as the largest source of non-European trafficking victims in Italy. Nigeria has also long been prominent in Middle East trafficking networks. According to the Nigerian Task Force on Trafficking in Human Beings, a statutory body, which paved the way for the current Nigerian antitrafficking regime, from 1999 to 2001, about 7,000 undocumented migrants were deported back to Nigeria from Saudi Arabia, in contrast to approximately 2,000 from other countries (mainly in Europe and West Africa).15 Explaining Nigerian Trafficking Patterns Migration and trafficking. The contours of international trafficking are complex and expansive, but they also are tied to historical patterns of migration, which remain poorly studied. A traditional migration flow from Nigeria to Italy into the agricultural sector since the late 1980s has led many Nigerians to settle in Italy and other European countries. Some of these settled Nigerian women, many of whom are married to local European men, also operate as traffickers/madams, moving seamlessly back and forth from Europe to Nigeria, recruiting and trafficking. In general, women migrating to the Middle East tend to be Hausa and come from the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria. The roots of Nigerian trafficking. Many international trafficking experiences originating with Nigeria involve forced prostitution and sexual slavery. Although the Nigerian government and NGOs engage in sensitization programs about the nature of sex work and migration, many women are unaware of the con- ditions facing them, including the possibility that identity documents will likely be confiscated to control movement, and that they will be forced to work longer hours and oftentimes forced to serve a minimum number of clients per day, or subjected to physical abuse, threats, and debt bondage.16 The causes of internal trafficking are poorly understood. Utilizing restricted opportunity theories, Olubu- kola S. Adesina argues that poverty and lack of parental support render Nigerian children more vulnerable to being trafficked. Findings from her study suggest that the root causes of child trafficking and the vulner- ability of rural communities to trafficking are attributable to acute poverty, unemployment, ignorance, and 4

ineffectiveness of the legal framework for tackling trafficking in Nigeria.17 Joshua Oyeniyi Aransiola and Christina Zarowsky have found that urban street children are particularly vulnerable to trafficking networks and organized crime syndicates.18 Debt obligations are also an important dimension for understanding how people are drawn into trafficking networks—national, regional, and international.19 Approximately 75 percent of Nigeria’s population lives below the poverty line. Roseline Emeh Uyanga, Anthonia Affiong Dickson, and Mary Donald Mbosowo conducted research on sex slaves in Abuja and Lagos, and found that 70 percent of girls tricked into the sex trade are victims of “smuggle and upkeep/maintenance indebtedness” to their masters. The study found that respondents were variously indebted to their “masters” or “madams,” a situation that exposed them to different categories and patterns of enslavement.20 At the same time, some data suggests that many uneducated women still perceive trafficking and trans- actional sex as an empowering initiative to protect themselves and others from the oppressive culture, which hinders their access to critical economic resources but which pro- vides privileges to men. Clementina A. Osezua researched the status of Bini women, which was changing because of the increasing and endemic nature of trafficking for transactional sex. Her ethnographic data revealed that “success- ful” trafficked Bini women enjoyed high socioeconomic status in their families of procreation, especially where fam- A screen grab from a video obtained by the AFP reportedly shows the ily members were the direct recipients nearly 300 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria. of the proceeds from transactional sex. By Associated Press May 12, 2014 at 5:17 PM EDT Most mothers of “successfully” trafficked victims wielded greater influence in the family of procreation than was the case in traditional Benin family structure, and prior to the era of traffick- ing in the study area. In addition, girl children who are “successful” victims of trafficking are highly revered by their older male siblings, as long as they send “hard currency” from overseas.21 Nigerian trafficking patterns are embedded in larger criminal syndicates and patterns of illicit activity that eclipse West Africa, but there is scholarly disagreement about the nature of organized crime originating in Nigeria. Organized crime in West Africa generally, and Nigeria in particular, is a rapidly expanding prob- lem. Antonio Mazzitelli, of UNODC, identified a variety of factors that “attract unscrupulous economic operators, facilitate the establishment and development of local and transnational criminal networks, and foster a cultural model under which money can buy everything, including impunity, political power, social status and respectability.” These factors include ongoing regional political volatility, ethnic and cultural tensions, resource allocation, natural resource exploitation, high levels of unemployment and poverty, and institutionalized corruption.22 Mazzitelli argues that transnational organized crime in West Africa “operate[s] according to strict rational principles aimed at minimizing risk and maximizing profit.” Mazzitelli reports that syndicates are very loose CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 5 and fragmented, and have business-oriented features that made them extremely successful in the global village of modern “disorganized” crime. Traditional organized criminal models, such as those used by the Sicilian Mafia, the American Cosa Nostra, or the Japanese Yakuza, would hardly fit the “hit-and-run” condi- tions that characterize the African context, where project-based, business-oriented structures perform much more effectively. Mazzitelli identified several “prime characteristics” of “African Criminal Networks,” of which secrecy and loyalty are paramount. He notes that “secrecy and individuals’ total loyalty to the group are further ensured by cultural pressures (belonging to the same village, clan and ethnic group) and by the use of religious and occult rituals.” By contrast, Johan Leman’s and Stef Janssens’s research on convicted Nigerian traffickers in Belgium found that the Nigerian and Moroccans, most of the time, did not seek to conceal their operations through legal entities. Leman and Janssens describe their “learning practice” as “reactive,” insofar as there appears to be “no proactive longer-term vision and no intention to create legal structures that hide their praxis.”23 Simi- larly, researching Nigerian madams in Italy, Marina Mancuso found that being able to operate also beyond Italian borders and being, at the same time, part of “relational systems” involving “transnational” people whose activities extend beyond national borders are the main requirements for occupying a “successful brokerage role.”24 Nigeria’s Antitrafficking Law Liza Buchbinder has provided an authoritative account of the unusually cosmopolitan origins of antitraf- ficking law in Nigeria.25 As observed above, a growing tendency developed in the mid-1980s for Edo State girls to travel to Italy to work as prostitutes caught the attention of Italian immigration and Nigerian devel- opment organizations. Buchbinder interviewed the executive director of the Women’s Consortium of Ni- geria, Bisi Olateru Olagbegi, who was involved early in the process. She recalled the families’ elation when their daughters left for Italy. She stated, “In the beginning, parents were happy that their daughters were leaving . . . everyone thought it was a good thing.” Yet pressure from Italian immigration authorities to stem the influx of Nigerian sex workers and rising international awareness of child trafficking as a human rights violation shifted the climate. During a 1997 pan-African conference in Uganda, Italy emerged as a new priority for the Nigerian human rights community, and delegates designated the practice “trafficking”—a finding that was later confirmed by a 2001 UNICEF publication that reported 20,000 Nigerian girls had been trafficked to Italy.26 Buchbinder explains that the first major step in the formation of Nigeria’s campaign came with the govern- ment’s ratification of the Palermo Protocol. Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar, the founder of the Women Traffick- ing and Child Labour Eradication Foundation, and the wife of the then vice president, was chosen to draft West Africa’s first nationwide antitrafficking legislation. Coming from a central figure of the antitrafficking community, Abubakar’s story provides an important backdrop to the particularities of Nigeria’s campaign. Before becoming Nigeria’s “second lady,” Abubakar lectured at Kaduna Polytechnic in the Department of Catering and Hotel Management. She noticed that many of her female students would abandon school to travel to Italy. Initially, she assumed it was for religious pilgrimages to Rome, until she traveled to Italy and witnessed the number of Nigerians working as prostitutes. Buchbinder cites Abubakar’s explanation in a quarterly antitrafficking newsletter: “Before I left Rome, I had a covenant with God that if one day, I am given the opportunity to help these victims who are the future mothers of the nation, I will not hesitate to do 6

it. It happened that as soon as my husband was sworn in as the Vice President in 1999, I remembered the covenant I had with God and I said to myself, time has come for me to liberate these victims from the traffickers’ bondage. I could no longer fold my hands and allow these children to wallow in bondage. The passion I had for these victims motivated me to start the fight.”27 Abubakar’s efforts culminated with the passage of Act 24 of 2003, the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act, which created the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP). NAPTIP and the governing law elevated the response to human trafficking beyond neighboring responses in Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger, some of which were simple extensions of criminal law, to an entirely new administrative level. In creating NAPTIP, Article 4 of the Nigerian law delegated to an agency the power of “co-ordination of all laws on traffic in persons and related offences and the enforcement of those laws,” and the responsibility for the “adoption of measures to increase the effectiveness of eradication of traffic in persons.” The text of the act provides expansive catego- ries for antitrafficking enforcement. The definitions of “trafficking” and “trafficked person” are consistent with evolving international standards and language.28 Nigeria’s statute was the first sub-Saharan antitrafficking law to deploy the language of slavery,qua “Any person who imports, exports, removes, buys, sells, disposes, traffics or deals in any person as a slave or ac- cepts, receives, or detains a person against that person’s will as a slave, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for life.”29 While Nigeria’s law is the first example of a law targeting trafficking in humans and not just children, it nonetheless contains specific articles addressing core child-related con- cerns. Article 19(1)(e) provides that whoever with intent to deprive any parent, guardian, or other person who has the lawful care or charge of a person under the age of eighteen years, of the possession of such person forcibly or fraudulently takes or entices away, or detains the person, or receives or harbours the child, knowing the child to have been so taken or enticed away or detained, commits an offence, and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for fourteen years without an option of fine. Nigeria appears to conceive of trafficking as a domestic, internal matter, but Chineze Onyejekwe has docu- mented how external global trafficking trends are deeply affecting internal trafficking networks in Nigeria.30 Nigeria’s Human Trafficking Act invested significant enforcement power, via the creation of NAPTIP, with the Minister of Internal Affairs. The minister recommends appointments to the twelve-person NAPTIP board, and provides policy and regulations for its operation.31 The Ministry of Internal Affairs (or Home- land Security, in U.S. parlance) has no authority over extraterritorial issues and does not traditionally meet with neighboring states to discuss common regional concerns. The “domestication” of trafficking is under- scored by the composition of the NAPTIP board,32 which provides for a “Chairman, being a person who by reason of his ability, character, experience and knowledge can deal with the problem of trafficked person; and (b) 12 other members, two of whom shall be appointed from each of the six Geo-Political Zones on the recommendation of the Minister.” The 2003 law was amended in 2005 to increase the penalties for trafficking offenders, and prohibits all forms of human trafficking. The law prescribes penalties of five years’ imprisonment, or a fine up to $645, or both, for labor trafficking offenses. The U.S. State Department describes these as “sufficiently stringent.” But the law allows convicted offenders to pay a fine in place of prison time for labor trafficking or attempted CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 7 trafficking offenses, resulting in penalties not proportionate to the crimes committed. The law mandates penalties of 10 to 15 years’ imprisonment for sex trafficking offenses and a fine of the equivalent of ap- proximately $1,250, or both. NAPTIP proposed amendments to the antitrafficking law, which would give prosecutors more authority and restrict the applicability of fines in lieu of prison time, but these have yet to be adopted by the National Assembly.33 Nigeria’s Antitrafficking Operations Scholars routinely examine antitrafficking operations in Nigeria and beyond by adhering to the tripartite division established by the USDOS and the UN, namely prosecution, protection, and prevention. But as Nlerum S. Okogbule argues, this does not adequately account for the comprehensive nature of antitraf- ficking operations in Nigeria, which involve NAPTIP, the Nigerian Police Force, the Nigerian Immigration Service, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, the Department of State Services, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as judges, prosecutors, border patrol officers, and increasingly the Nigerian mili- tary.34 At the same time, NAPTIP’s budget for 2012 was approximately a trifling $3.5 million. This sum can be compared with the gross domestic product (GDP) of Nigeria, which, in 2012, was $262.6 billion; and with military expenditure by the Nigerian government, which, over the past decade, has routinely con- stituted 1.2 to 1.5 percent of GDP. Liza Buchbinder has provided one of the most thorough assessments of the Nigerian antitrafficking pro- gram. She explains that, in contrast with other West African government responses, Nigeria’s antitrafficking campaign is centralized, adopting a law-enforcement approach, with mandated reporting of all NGOs to NAPTIP—a federally legislated “multidimensional crime fighting agency.”35 Independently, both Jacque- line Berman and Anne Gallagher have cautioned, however, that strategies emphasizing enforcement tend to reinforce state sovereignties at the expense of victims, and frequently conflate complex free-market migra- tion practices with violent crimes against women and children.36 In 2012, the Nigerian government reported that NAPTIP initiated 117 trafficking investigations, com- menced at least 17 prosecutions, and achieved 25 convictions. Another 143 prosecutions remained pend- ing at the end of 2012. All prosecutions occurred under the 2003 Trafficking Act, and sentences upon conviction ranged from three months’ to eighteen years’ imprisonment. Of the 25 convictions, 17 resulted in prison sentences without the option of paying a fine. The USDOS noted that this was “a significant- de crease” in the number of investigations, compared with the previous reporting period’s 279 investigations.37 It may be that as law enforcement officials are now better trained to identify trafficking cases and are not mistakenly referring numerous nontrafficking crimes to NAPTIP for investigation, fewer false positives are being reported. The UNODC reports that 64 percent of convictions were of males, and 36 percent were of females.38 Because NAPTIP mandates that all NGOs report on the status of antitrafficking operations, data for Nige- ria may be considered more reliable than data for other West African countries. In 2012, the government and NGOs identified 480 trafficking victims within the country, including 303 victims of sex trafficking and 177 victims of labor trafficking. Another 92 individuals were identified as victims of trafficking-related crimes. All victims identified by NAPTIP received initial screening and assistance by NAPTIP, after which 250 victims were referred to government-run care facilities for further medical care, vocational training, education, and shelter. NAPTIP reported that 26 victims served as witnesses or gave evidence during trial in 2012. All victims were eligible to receive funds from the victims’ trust fund, which was financed primar- 8

ily through confiscated assets of convicted traffickers. During the reporting period, the paltry equivalent of approximately $22,000 was disbursed to 10 victims for purposes ranging from medical costs to school tuition.39 Other Considerations Forced marriage. Equally important for understanding the dimensions of trafficking are related and paral- lel developments, including northern Nigeria’s massive state-sponsored forced marriage programs. Over the past several years, literally thousands of young girls and women, including widows, divorcees, and former sex workers, have been forcibly coupled with Nigerian men. The social reality in northern sharia states is shaped by cultural traditions, including fatherly authority (ijbar), and an Islamic value system that perme- ates every facet of life. Judith-Ann Walker has documented how Nigeria’s judicial system languishes in the shadow of sharia enforcement agencies, Hisbah Boards, which categorize and reinforce women and children as legal minors. Between 2012 and 2013, more than 1,350 women and girls were forcibly wed in Kano alone.40 The Kano program came to the attention of the global media, and is widely regarded in northern Nigeria as a success story and a model to address the poverty of women and girls. Between 2011 and 2012, delegations from state governments in Gombe, Zamfara, and Sokoto visited and studied the Kano mass marriage “solution” and have replicated similar programs in their states. Forced marriage is tied to trafficking because the widespread acceptance of various forms of forced mar- riage has its roots in historical alliances between the state and the religious/traditional authority structures, which conspire to exercise direct and complete control over the lives of working class (talakawa) youth, and particularly girls and women. Some who support the mass marriages argue that they go some way toward countering the radicalization of young men and they operate as a “counterterrorist tactic.” No independent scientific research has validated this hypothesis, however. Nate Rawlings, writing forTime magazine, notes that there is “little independent data on radicalism prevention and terrorist rehabilitation,” because judg- ments on programs come largely from national governments. Some studies have found that “the radicaliza- tion process is not particularly predictable.”41 Child soldiering. Another dimension that helps make sense of the kidnapping of the schoolgirls in Chibok is the ongoing use of children in violent armed conflict, and also for ransom as a funding source. Stacey Hynd has described how girls battling boys in the streets and fields of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, at the turn of the millennium, is rooted in a deep historical practice of child soldiering.42 Annie Bunting has highlighted how young boys and girls form the backbone of numerous illicit and renegade fighting forces throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Recent post-conflict trials of combatants from the Congo documented the intentional recruitment of children. Every day, schoolgirls are kidnapped in Uganda and South Sudan to serve as servants, porters, cooks, and, of course, as sexual objects.43 Al Chukwuma Okoli and Fakumo Agada have attempted to document the extent of kidnapping/hostage taking for ransom in Ni- geria. Whereas anecdotal data supports the view that kidnapping has been motivated and sustained by the criminal quest for material accumulation, the extent of the practice is little more than guesswork, currently. Viewed in this light, the kidnapping of the girls is part of a larger practice of child soldiering, wherein, consistent with the “Cape Town Principles,” any child involved in any capacity in a warlike situation, or used to sustain warfare, must be treated as and offered protections as a victim/survivor of child soldiering.45 My own experience serving as an expert witness in dozens of asylum claims for women who are survivors of trafficking and forced marriage in the United States and elsewhere offers further insight. Many asylum CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 9 seekers narrate how, as they approached what their fathers or uncles considered “marriageable age,” they were removed from school and paraded before prospective spouses. It would be a crude oversimplification to suggest that the 300 girls were destined for domestic slavery and forced marriage, abducted or otherwise. But there is compelling anecdotal data to support the view that, as the end of schooling loomed, the girls were increasingly vulnerable to various forms of exploitation. Conclusion The abduction of young children, anywhere, anytime, is horrifying: mass kidnapping at gunpoint, espe- cially so. But conflating the why and how impedes our understanding of this persistent problem. The kid- napping of nearly 300 schoolgirls in Chibok is tied to the persistent problems of human trafficking, forced marriage, and the use of children in armed conflict.Whereas kidnapping may operate for Boko Haram as misguided attempt to adhere to the Islamic concept of shahada, by forcibly converting Christians to Islam (they were paraded on television wearing the niqab), this action conceals a much more com- plex set of practices that made such an outrage possible in the first instance. While the “crime-terror continuum” may be a compelling concept for those seeking to understand “trans-African security” issues, it is not well supported by objective data or scholarly research.46 The issue is far more complex than a simple antiterrorism problem. More than a decade after George W. Bush’s so-called “War on Terror,” we would do well to question the alacrity with which Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan embraced “the kidnap of these girls” as “the beginning of the end of terrorism in Ni- geria.”47 There are far more intractable dynamics that have greater bearing on the kidnapping of women.

For further discussion of this issue, see: Robert Siegel interviews Benjamin Lawrance on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/09/311119363/nigerian-kidnapping-highlights-scale-of-child-trafficking-in-africa?sc=17&f Brent Bambury, CBC’s Day 6, interviews Benjamin Lawrance: http://www.cbc.ca/day6/blog/2014/05/08/boko-haram-and-the-missing-chibok-schoolgirls/ Rick Gladstone’s New York Times article from May 7, 2014: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/africa/real-threat-in-a-known-market-for-children.html?_r=0

CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 11

NOTES

1 Dion Dassanayake, “Four Nigerian Schoolgirls Kidnapped by Islamist Militants Boko Haram Escape Captors,” Express, May 28, 2014, http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/478846/Boko-Haram-Four-kidnapped-Nigeri- an-schoolgirls-escape-captors. 2 U.S. Department of State, “Nigeria,” Trafficking in Persons Report 2013 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 2013), http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/210741.pdf. 3 Janie A. Chuang, “The United States as Global Sheriff: Using Unilateral Sanctions to Combat Human Trafficking,” Michigan Journal of International Law 27 (Winter 2006): 437–494. 4 Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. 5 UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2012 (New York: United Nations, 2012), http://www.unodc.org/ documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/Trafficking_in_Persons_2012_web.pdf. 6 Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. 7 Neil Howard, “Teenage Labor Migration and Antitrafficking Policy in West Africa,” The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 653 (May 2014): 124–140; Liza Buchbinder, “After Trafficking: Togolese Girls’ Orientations to Life in a West African City,” Cultural Dynamics 25 (July 2013): 141–164. 8 United Nations, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supple- menting the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (New York: United Nations, 2000), http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_%20traff_eng.pdf. 9 Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. 10 Tim S. Braimah, “Sex Trafficking in Edo State, Nigeria: Causes and Solutions,”Global Journal of Human Social Science 13 (June 2013): 17–29; Elaine Pearson, Study on Trafficking in Women in East Africa: A Situational Analysis Including Current NGO and Governmental Activities, as well as Future Opportunities, to Address Trafficking in Women and Girls in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria (Eschborn, Germany: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Tech nische Zusammenarbeit, 2003). 11 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2012. 12 Jørgen Carling, Migration, Human Smuggling and Trafficking from Nigeria to Europe (Geneva, Switzerland: Inter- national Organization for Migration, 2005); Francesco Carchedi and Isabella Orfano, La tratta di persone in Italia (Milan, Italy: FrancoAngeli, 2007); United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, Trafficking of Nigerian Girls to Italy: The Data, the Stories, the Social Services (Turin, Italy: UNICRI, 2010). 13 UNICEF, Child Trafficking in West Africa—Policy Responses (Florence, Italy: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2002), http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/insight7.pdf. 14 The Advocacy Project,http://www.advocacynet.org/. 15 Pearson, 30. 16 Ibid. 17 Olubukola S. Adesina, “Modern Day Slavery: Poverty and Child Trafficking in Nigeria,”African Identities 12 (January 2014): 1–15. 18 Joshua Oyeniyi Aransiola and Christina Zarowsky, “Street Children, Human Trafficking and Human Security in Nigeria: Competing Discourses of Vulnerability and Danger,” African Population Studies 27 (March 2014): 398–410. 12

19 Cristina Giordano, “Practices of Translation and the Making of Migrant Subjectivities in Contemporary Italy,” American Ethnologist 35 (November 2008): 588–606. 20 Roseline Emeh Uyanga, Anthonia Affiong Dickson, and Mary Donald Mbosowo, “Female Indebtedness and -En slavement: A Study of Relationships and Trends in Nigeria,” Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities 3 (May 2014): 44–54. 21 Clementina A. Osezua, “Changing Status of Women and the Phenomenon Trafficking of Women for Transactional Sex in Nigeria: A Qualitative Analysis,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 14 (July 2013): 14–30. 22 Antonio Mazzitelli, “Transnational Organized Crime in West Africa: the Additional Challenge,” International Af- fairs 83 (November 2007): 1071–1090. 23 Johan Leman and Stef Janssens, “Creative Adaptive Criminal Entrepreneurs from Africa and Human Trafficking in Belgium: Case Studies of Traffickers from Nigeria and Morocco,”International Journal of Criminology 2 (2013): 153–162. 24 Marina Mancuso, “Not all Madams have a Central Role: Analysis of a Nigerian Sex Trafficking Network,”Trends in Organized Crime 17 (2014): 66–88. 25 Liza Buchbinder, “Ranking States: Tracking the State Effect in West African Antitrafficking Campaigns,” in Benja- min N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2012). 26 Tony Hodges, Children’s and Women’s Rights in Nigeria: A Wake-Up Call: Situation Assessment and Analyses (Lagos, Nigeria: UNICEF Nigeria, 2001). 27 NAPTIP, “I am Proud of NAPTIP’s Successes,” NAPTIP News (December 2005–March 2006), 13. 28 Nigerian Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act 2003, art. 50. 29 Ibid., art. 23. 30 Chineze J. Onyejekwe, “Influences of Global Human Trafficking Issues on Nigeria: A Gender Perspective,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 7 (2005): 141–151. 31 Nigerian Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act 2003, art. 3, 46, and 49. 32 Ibid., art. 2, sec. 3 (3). 33 Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. 34 Nlerum S. Okogbule, “Combating the ‘New Slavery’ in Nigeria: An Appraisal of Legal and Policy Responses to Human Trafficking,” Journal of African Law 57 (April 2013): 57–80. 35 Buchbinder, “Ranking States.” 36 Anne Gallagher, “Human Rights and the New UN Protocols on Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: A Preliminary Analysis,” Human Rights Quarterly 23 (November 2001): 975–1004; Jacqueline Berman, “(Un)Popular Strangers and Crises (Un)Bounded: Discourses of Sex-trafficking, the European Political Community and the Panicked State of the Modern State,” European Journal of International Relations 9 (March 2003): 37–86. 37 Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. 38 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2012,75. 39 Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. 40 Judith-Ann Walker, “Between Global Standards and Local Realities: Shari’a and Mass Marriage Programs in North- ern Nigeria,” in Annie Bunting, Benjamin Lawrance, and Richard L. Roberts, Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015 forthcoming). CSIR RESEARCH REPORT 13

41 Nate Rawlings, “Bridges Before Bombs: Nigerian City Fights Terrorism With Mass Weddings,” Time, October 23, 2013, http://world.time.com/2013/10/23/brides-before-bombs-nigerian-city-fights-terrorism-with-mass-weddings/. 42 Stacey Hynd, “To Be Taken as a Wife is a Form of Death: the Social, Military, and Humanitarian Dynamics of Forced Marriage and Girl Soldiers in African Conflicts, c.1990-2010,” in Annie Bunting, Benjamin Lawrance, and Richard L. Roberts, Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio Univer- sity Press, 2015 forthcoming). 43 Anne Bunting, “Forced Marriage in Conflict Situations: Researching and Prosecuting Old Harms and New Crimes,” Canadian Journal of Human Rights 1 (2012): 165–185. 44 Al Chukwuma Okoli and Fakumo T. Agada, “Kidnapping and National Security in Nigeria,” Research on Humani- ties and Social Sciences 4 (2014): 137–146. 45 “Cape Town Principles and Best Practice on the Prevention of Recruitment of Children into the Armed Forces and on Demobilization and Social Reintegration of Child Soldiers in Africa,” adopted by the participants in the Symposium on the Prevention of Recruitment of Children into the Armed Forces and Demobilization and Social Reintegration of Child Soldiers in Africa, organized by UNICEF in cooperation with the NGO Sub-group of the NGO Working Group on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Cape Town, South Africa: April 27–30, 1997), http://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/Cape_Town_Principles%281%29.pdf. 46 David Luna, “Trans-African Security: Combating Illicit Trafficking Along the Crime-Terror Continuum” (speech delivered at the U.S. Embassy in London, February 26, 2014), U.S. Department of State, http://london.usembassy. gov/humrts183.html. 47 Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Lanre Ola, “Nigeria’s President at WEF Pledges to Free Kidnapped Girls,” Reuters, May 8, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/08/us-nigeria-girls-idUSBREA470BP20140508.

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE UNIVERSITY