MICHAEL AWO EJEH, is a private legal practitioner and Notary Public with 15 years work experience in human rights, law reforms, legal research, and criminal justice reforms. Founder and Executive Director of Ogedegede Community Development Foundation, a nonprofit and non-governmental organization in Nigeria, dedicated to human rights and social-economic justice. He was a delegate to African Union’s ACWERC34 Conference at Cairo Egypt in 2019 and UNSDGs Global Festival Bonn, Germany in 2020. He is currently the Publicity Secretary of NBA Abuja (Unity Bar).
In Nigeria, like most parts of the world, there is obviously the interplay of child trafficking and child labour as an economic warfare on the child. Everywhere you turn, the Nigerian child is overworked, toiling on the scorching streets, chasing after vehicles on the high ways, and expending all the energies of childhood on one economic activity or the other. It is more complex than what meets the eyes. There are many vulnerable children working in factories, farms, hazardous environments, mines, fishing in high seas, working in prostitution, or working and being exposed to adult environments such as clubs, bars, or simply working as nannies, sellers, house helps or simply become the objects of pornographic contents and targets for online business platforms.
Many of these children work far away from home, and in most cases, far away from any near relatives. Children are trafficked from the rural communities to urban communities for the purposes of labour and sexual exploitation in domestic trafficking, or are moved within circles of communities and settlements for exploitation. For international trafficking, children are trafficked across the international borders with manipulated or altered identities. The primary purpose of trafficking is exploitation.
According to ILO, 15 million of Nigerian (2021 World Day against Child Labour) children are child workers. This represents a 43% of the total population of minors in Nigeria. This is the highest recorded rate of child labour in West Africa. There is a clear need for urgency in our approach to countering child trafficking in Nigeria.
According to ILO[1] child labour is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. It refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children, and or interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school, obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.[2] Child labour is a violation of fundamental human rights and has been shown to hinder children’s development, potentially leading to lifelong physical and psychological damage.
To determine whether child labour is abusive, certain factors are worth noting;
- The age of the child.
- The nature of the work.
- The duration of engagement at work.
- The environment in which the work is done.
- Energy input required.
- Impact on the education and developmental needs of the child.
- Impact on his life chances.
Article 3 of the International Labour Organization’s Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour,[3] defines child labour as follows:
- All forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including, forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
- The use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or pornographic performances
- The use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;
- Work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.
Article 7 (2) [4] provides that each Member shall, taking into account the importance of education in eliminating child labour, take effective and time-bound measures to:
- (a) prevent the engagement of children in the worst forms of child labour;
- (b) provide the necessary and appropriate direct assistance for the removal of children from the worst forms of child labour and for their rehabilitation and social integration;
- (c) ensure access to free basic education, and, wherever possible and appropriate, vocational training, for all children removed from the worst forms of child labour;
- (d) identify and reach out to children at special risk; and
- (e) take account of the special situation of girls.
Section 28 of the Child Rights Act[5] defines child labour as follows:
- Subject to this Act, no child shall be-
- (a) subjected to any forced or exploitative labour; or
- (b) employed to work in any capacity except where he is employed by a member of his family on light work of an agricultural, horticultural or domestic character; or .
- (c) required, in any case, to lift, carry or move anything so heavy as to be likely to adversely affect his physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development; or
- (d) employed as a domestic help outside his own home or family environment.
- (2) No child shall be employed or work in an industrial undertaking and nothing in this subsection shall apply to work done by children in technical schools or similar approved institutions if the work is supervised by the appropriate authority.
- (3) Any person who contravenes any provision of subsection (1) or (2) of this section commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding fifty thousand Naira or imprisonment for a term of five years or to both such fine and imprisonment.
- (4) Where an offence under this section is committed by a body corporate,
- any person who at the time of the commission of the offence was a proprietor, director, general manager or other similar officer, servant or agent of the body corporate shall be deemed to have jointly and severally committed the offence and may be liable on conviction to a fine of Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira.
- Section 30 Child Rights Act also prohibit the buying, selling, hiring or otherwise dealing in children for the purpose of hawking or begging for alms or prostitution or domestic or sexual labour or unlawful or immoral purposes, slavery, tricking, debt bondage, forced or compulsory labour or for the purpose of depriving the child of the opportunity to attend and remain in school.
Section 15 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, provides as follows:
1. Every child shall be protected from all forms of economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development.
Article 32 (1) Of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, provides as follows:
States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.
Child trafficking supplies the labour markets in Nigeria with the manpower required to sustain their trade.
ILO has identified a number of hazards to which domestic workers are particularly vulnerable, some of which are:
- Long and tiring working days,
- Use of toxic chemicals,
- Carrying heavy loads,
- Handling dangerous items such as knives, axes and hot pans,
- Insufficient and inadequate food and accommodation, and
- Humiliating or degrading treatment, including physical and verbal violence and sexual abuse.
Several factors have been identified as the remote causes of child labour in Africa. Some of them include poverty, lack of education, gender and ethnic discrimination, domestic violence, displacement, rural – urban migration and loss of parents due to conflicts and diseases, ignorance, social and economic disparities, debts bondage, family ties and the illusion that domestic services gives the child workers an opportunity for education.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has made frantic efforts at curbing or reducing and even possibly eliminating the scourge of domestic child labour. It has done this by enacting legislations or instruments meant to fight child labour, some of which include Minimum Age Convention (No.138) in 1973 and the Worst Forms of Child Labour (No. 182) in 1999. Under these Conventions, member States are called upon to commit to action and implement specific measures to eliminate child labour. Monitoring and follow up mechanisms have also been instituted to evaluate a country’s compliance to its international obligation as enumerated in the Convention. Such mechanisms include periodic reports by Governments, report to the Committee of Experts by workers and employer’s organizations, and the revision of individual cases by the Annual International Labour Conference.
Convention No. 138 requires the adoption of national policies for the effective abolition of child labour and specific minimum age for the admission to employment. The enforcement of these Conventions, particularly as far as domestic labour is concerned, is the main challenge since this sector is often excluded from the coverage of the Convention and from national laws. It calls on Governments to implement effective time – bound measures to eliminate the worst forms of child labour, undertake action programme to prevent it, promote and support reintegration of child work into the communities and families, provide access to force education, identify children at specific risk with a view to protecting them and particularly relevant for child domestic labour. It gives special attention to the vulnerabilities of the girl-child.
According to Trafficking in Person (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act[6] “trafficking” includes all acts and attempted acts involved in the recruitment, transportation within or across Nigerian borders, purchases, sale, transfer, receipt or harbouring of a person involving the use of deception, coercion or debt bondage for the purpose of placing or holding the person whether for or not in involuntary servitude (domestic, sexual or reproductive) in force or bonded labour, or in slavery-like conditions.
The International Labour Reports prove that an estimated 60% of sex workers in Italy are from Nigeria. In the words of Meera Sethi of the International Immigration Organization, Africa has become “a supplier of flesh” for countries in the European Union via Pedophile and prostitution rings. He further said that Belgium, Britain and Italy receive the youngest African girls, while Germany and Spain are major transit countries.
Article 3 (a) of the United Nations Protocol Against Trafficking in person defined child trafficking to mean, the recruitment, transportation, transfer, habouring or receipt of person by means of threat or by force or by coercion, or abduction, fraud, deception or the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payment or benefits to achieve the consent of a person of exploitation. Exploitation shall include at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. Hence, whether or not consent is obtained is altogether immaterial. The child involved here is a child less than 18 years.
Many of the children who work as our house helps in our homes or shops are victims of trafficking in person. NAPTIP has limitations in areas of capacity development, manpower, office and shelter facilities, funding, advocacy, investigation, prosecution and empowerment of survivors. Child labour violates the dignity of the child, deprives the child access to education, health care, leisure and recreation, family and childhood. The expansive and innovative provisions of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, are well intended to expand culpability of offenders and seek protection for children of all victims of abuse. Stakeholders in CTIP and law reform are by this article called upon to broaden the scope of research and advocacy in the areas of Child trafficking and child labour in Nigeria.
[1] What is Child Labour: https://www.ilo.org/ipec/facts/lang–en/index.htm
[2] supra
[3] C182- Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 9No. 182) https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C182
[4] supra
[5] Child Rights Act, 2003, Act No. 26; an Act to Provide and Protect the Rights of a Nigerian Child; and Other Related Matters, 2003.. Enacted by the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 31st July 2003.2C“ 1
[6] An Act of the National Assembly of Nigeria.