Africa

Cameroon appoint Dutchman Clarence Seedorf as coach of the national team with compatriot Patrick Kluivert named as his assistant.

Former Cameroon captain Samuel Eto'o leaves Turkish club Konyaspor by mutual consent with two years still remaining on his contract.

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The violence that followed the election has created a febrile environment, writes Fergal Keane.

Samuel Karimbo is a Kenyan inventor who prides himself on thinking outside the box.

The aftermath of a disputed election has seen violence and opposition claims of fraud.

Arsenal midfielder Alex Iwobi signs a new "long-term" deal with the club, reportedly until 2023.

David Kaye is the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression for the United Nations and Edison Lanza is Special Rapporteur for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

By David Kaye and Edison Lanza
GENEVA / WASHINGTON, Aug 3 2018 (IPS)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the free press are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts.

The President has labelled the media as being the “enemy of the American people” “very dishonest” or “fake news,” and accused the press of “distorting democracy” or spreading “conspiracy theories and blind hatred”.

Journalists wait for the arrival of official delegations at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, in Montreux, Switzerland. Credit: UN Photo/Violaine Martin

These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law. We are especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence.

Over the course of his presidency, Mr. Trump and others within his administration, have sought to undermine reporting that had uncovered waste, fraud, abuse, potential illegal conduct, and disinformation.

Each time the President calls the media ‘the enemy of the people’ or fails to allow questions from reporters from disfavoured outlets, he suggests nefarious motivations or animus. But he has failed to show even once that specific reporting has been driven by any untoward motivations.

It is critical that the U.S. administration promote the role of a vibrant press and counter rampant disinformation. To this end, we urge President Trump not only to stop using his platform to denigrate the media but to condemn these attacks, including threats directed at the press at his own rallies.

The attack on the media goes beyond President Trump’s language. We also urge his entire administration, including the Department of Justice, to avoid pursuing legal cases against journalists in an effort to identify confidential sources, an effort that undermines the independence of the media and the ability of the public to have access to information.

We urge the Government to stop pursuing whistle-blowers through the tool of the Espionage Act, which provides no basis for a person to make an argument about the public interest of such information.

We stand with the independent media in the United States, a community of journalists and publishers and broadcasters long among the strongest examples of professional journalism worldwide. We especially urge the press to continue, where it does so, its efforts to hold all public officials accountable.

We encourage all media to act in solidarity against the efforts of President Trump to favour some outlets over others.

Two years of attacks on the press could have long term negative implications for the public’s trust in media and public institutions. Two years is two years too much, and we strongly urge that President Trump and his administration and his supporters end these attacks.

The post Trump’s Attacks on Media Violate Basic Norms of Press Freedom, Human Rights Experts say appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

David Kaye is the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression for the United Nations and Edison Lanza is Special Rapporteur for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

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Stefan Ingves is the governor of Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, described as the world’s oldest central bank.

By Stefan Ingves
STOCKHOLM, Aug 3 2018 (IPS)

Sweden is rapidly moving away from cash. Demand for cash has dropped by more than 50 percent over the past decade as a growing number of people rely on debit cards or a mobile phone application, Swish, which enables real-time payments between individuals.

More than half of all bank branches no longer handle cash. Seven out of ten consumers say they can manage without cash, while half of all merchants expect to stop accepting cash by 2025 (Arvidsson, Hedman, and Segendorf 2018). And cash now accounts for just 13 percent of payments in stores, according to a study of payment habits in Sweden (Riksbank 2018).

Stefan Ingves

Digital solutions for large payments between banks have existed for some time; the novelty is that they have filtered down to individuals making small payments. And my country isn’t alone in this regard.

In several Asian and African countries—for example, India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Tanzania—paying by mobile phone instead of cards or cash is commonplace.

Given that the role of a central bank is to manage the money supply, these developments potentially have wide-ranging consequences. Are central banks needed as issuers of a means of payment in a modern digital payments market?

Are banknotes and coins the only means of payment for retail payments that should be supplied by a central bank? Is there a risk of future concentration in the payments market infrastructure that central banks should be monitoring?

In Sweden, clearing and transfers between accounts are concentrated in one system, Bankgirot. Once the payments market infrastructure is in place, the marginal costs for payments are low and positive externalities are present. What do we mean by “positive externalities”?

A classic example is the telephone. Having the first telephone is not very valuable, as there would be no one to call. However, as more people eventually connect to the telephone network, the value of the phone increases.

The same is true for the payments market—the value of being connected to a payments system increases as more people join. Moreover, payments can also be regarded as collective utilities.

Considering this, my view is that the state does indeed have a role to fill in the payments market—namely, to regulate or provide the infrastructure needed to ensure smooth functioning and robustness.

Citizens can expect a payments market to meet a few basic requirements. First, its services should be broadly available. Second, its infrastructure should be safe and secure. Sellers and buyers should be convinced that the payment order will be carried out—a necessary condition for people to be willing to use the system. Third, it should be efficient: payments should be settled fast, at the lowest possible cost, and the system should be perceived as simple and easy to use.

Do we fulfill these requirements? I am becoming increasingly uncertain whether we can respond with an unequivocal yes.

If banknotes and coins have had their day, then in the near future, the general public will no longer have access to a state-guaranteed means of payment, and the private sector will to a greater extent control accessibility, technological developments, and pricing of the available payment methods.

It is difficult to say at present what consequences this might have, but it will likely further limit financial access for groups in society that currently lack any means of payment other than cash. Competition and redundancy in the payments infrastructure will likely be reduced if the state is no longer a participant. Today, cash has a natural place as the only legal tender. But in a cashless society, what would legal tender mean?

In this regard, one might ask whether central banks should start issuing digital currency to the public. This is a complex issue and one central banks will likely struggle with for years to come. I approach the question as a practical, not a hypothetical, matter.

I am convinced that within 10 years we will almost exclusively be paying digitally, both in Sweden and in many parts of the world. Even today, young people, at least in Sweden, use practically no cash at all.

This demographic dimension is also why I believe that cash’s decline can be neither stopped nor reversed. While the Nordic countries are at the forefront, we are not alone. It is interesting to see how quickly the Chinese payments market, for instance, is changing.

And then there is the emergence of crypto assets. I do not consider these so-called currencies to be money, as they do not fulfill the three essential functions of money—to serve as a means of payment, a unit of account, and a store of value. This view is shared by most of my colleagues.

Crypto assets’ main contribution is to show that financial infrastructure can be built in a new way with blockchain technology, smart contracts, and crypto solutions. Although the new technology is interesting and can probably create value added in the long run, it is important that central banks make it clear that cryptocurrencies are generally not currencies but rather assets and high-risk investments.

The clearer we are in communicating this, the greater the chance that we can prevent unnecessary bubbles from arising in the future. We may also want to review the need for regulatory frameworks and supervision for this relatively new phenomenon.

It is worth mentioning that digitalization, technical improvements, and globalization are positive developments that increase our collective economic welfare. We can only speculate on what new payments services may be developed in the future. But there are several challenges ahead.

One key issue we face is whether central banks can stop supplying a state-guaranteed means of payment to the general public. Another is whether the infrastructure for retail payments should be transferred to a purely private market. The state cannot entirely withdraw from its social responsibility in these areas. But exactly what its new role will become remains to be seen.

The link to the original article follows:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2018/06/central-banks-and-digital-currencies/point.htm?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

The post Going Cashless, Led by Sweden appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Stefan Ingves is the governor of Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, described as the world’s oldest central bank.

The post Going Cashless, Led by Sweden appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Troops patrol the streets of Harare after President Mnangagwa narrowly won the post-Mugabe vote.

A rice farmer in Northern Ghana during better days. Croplands that were once fertile in northern Ghana are now unproductive, which has led to decreased incomes while water sources are drying up due to prolonged droughts. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2018 (IPS)

Sustainability, stability, and security—the three overlapping issues are an increasing concern among many especially in Africa where land degradation is displacing citizens and livelihoods.

African ministers and United Nations officials convened at the U.N. as part of the Initiative on Sustainability, Stability, and Security (3S), which aims to address migration and instability caused by land degradation across the continent.

“We need to take ownership of our responsibility,” said minister of environment and sustainable development of Senegal Mame Thierno Dieng. The west African nation was one of the countries that helped launch the 3S initiative."We need to ensure people have jobs within their communities and environment. We want them to stay on their farms and farm." -- Ghana’s deputy-minister of environment, science, technology, and innovation Patricia Appiagyei.

Among its objectives, 3S hopes to stabilise “at risk” areas by creating new, green jobs for the most vulnerable communities through investments on land rehabilitation and sustainable land management.

Without any such action, the dangers for communities are undeniable.

Globally, 80 percent of land degradation is caused by agriculture. Since 1950, 65 percent of Africa’s cropland, which millions depend on, has been affected by land degradation by mining, poor farming practices, and illegal logging.

Meanwhile, an estimated 375 million young Africans are estimated to enter the job market within the next 15 years. Of this population, 200 million will live in rural areas.

As resource-based sectors such as agriculture account for 80 percent of employment, young people will be left without a healthy environment to survive on. According to 3S, this could lead to conflict over natural resources, instability caused by the lack of income-generating opportunities, and increased exposure to extremist groups.

Ghana, renowned for its tropical forests and cocoa farms, is already seeing this scenario play out.

Approximately 35 percent of the west African country’s land is under threat of desertification especially in the north where land degradation and climate change have exacerbated poverty.

Croplands that were once fertile in northern Ghana are now unproductive, which has led to decreased incomes while water sources are drying up due to prolonged droughts.

Such losses have forced northern residents to migrate to the southern region of the country where they live in “highly deplorable” conditions, Ghana’s deputy-minister of environment, science, technology, and innovation Patricia Appiagyei told IPS.

“It is about time that we find ways of ensuring we neutralise the high rate of degradation,” she said.

“[3S] is an initiative we are very passionate about and we believe that we need to join to address these issues because land degradation and desertification issues is not just affecting the land but it is also affecting water, energy, food baskets, and livelihoods of the people who live within those communities,” Appiagyei continued.

While Ghana has begun investing in agricultural development in the north, conflicts are beginning to escalate between farmers and herders who are losing grazing land for their cattle.

The Gambia is facing similar challenges, with almost 80 percent of its woodlands degraded in alongside a rapid decrease in the productivity of its cropland.

As 64 percent of its population are young people, Gambians have been forced to move to urban areas or abroad for greener pastures.

Many Gambians have also been returning which is proving to be an additional challenge, said minister of environment, climate change, and natural resources Lamin Dibba to IPS.

“There was a particular month that there were about 400 people returning from abroad. This is very worrying for the fact that when they stay long without any livelihood support system, this can bring a lot of social disorder,” he said.

In an effort to avoid such instability, the Gambia hopes to create 25,000 green jobs for youth in their communities as well as returning migrants in the fields of agriculture, tourism, and conservation.

To achieve this, education is a crucial component, both Appiagyei and Dibba said.

“[We need] to reach out to the communities to explain to them what is climate change, what are the causes, what are the likely impacts…this is why we call it integrated—we want to look at all aspects of people’s livelihoods,” Dibba said.

Supported by the Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative, the Gambia is implementing an education project targeting schools about GGW and land restoration methods.

Appiagyei noted the importance of including farmers, especially women, in such initiatives through education on agricultural practices and new technologies.

“They are currently suffering from the agricultural practices they are undertaking and the weather doesn’t really help…we need to ensure people have jobs within their communities and environment. We want them to stay on their farms and farm,” she said.

While Ghana is considering a lift on a ban on small-scale mining, which has impacted swathes of forests and water bodies, Appiagyei told IPS that sustainable land management comes first.

“We are thinking about lifting the ban, but not until we are able to improve on land management practices and apply the right legislation. Not until we are convinced that we have the right measures to curb the activities of small-scale illegal mining,” she said.

But no one of this will be possible without meetings and support from the international level.

“We want to ensure these projects become a reality,” said Dibba.

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A selection of the best photos from across Africa this week.

Nigeria forward Ahmed Musa leaves Leicester City for Al-Nassr for an undisclosed fee, the Saudi Arabian club announces.

Zakarie Ali was scouted in Finland after moving there with his family at the age of three.

The opposition rejects results that give Emmerson Mnangagwa the presidency with 50.8% of the vote.

Striking scenes from a trek through the Sinai desert

A picture of a former prime minister meeting ex-military ruler Mengistu spurs controversy in Ethiopia.

By Fernanda Baumhardt and Amanda Nero
Aug 2 2018 (IOM)

“I want to talk about my journey. Three years ago, I came alone all the way from Darfur, Sudan. I left my family who still live in a refugee camp in Chad.” Abas, 23, a participant from our filmmaking workshop in Geneva, Switzerland.

This year, we wanted to take the Global Migration Film Festival one step further and directly engage with migrant communities.

We held participatory video workshops in Jordan, South Sudan and Switzerland leading up to the start of the Film Festival on the 5 of December. The workshops used the art of filmmaking as a tool to foster social cohesion and empowerment.

The method of Participatory Video promotes community-to-community learning, with our team of trainers acting mostly as facilitators. After providing a few tips to start the process, they stepped back so participants could learn filmmaking at their own pace. Allowing the group to evolve with minimum interference is key to capacity and team building.

The workshop tour kicked off in Amman, Jordan, in October. Since the beginning of the Syria crisis, this small country in the Middle East with a total population of 7.6 million has been hosting over 630,000 Syrians fleeing war and dismay. Jordan has also welcomed migrants, including refugees, from other countries in the region as well as African nations.

Teaching the basics of operating a professional camera with participants in Amman, Jordan. Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

Youth participants in Jordan discussing how to film the closing scene. Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

The workshop brought together young migrants from Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea for a full week of filmmaking and discussions about the power of compassion and humanity to transform sadness into hope.

Unexpectedly, a Bedouin and his camel passed by when the participants were shooting one of their scenes, and he kindly agreed to take part in the film! Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

“I learned how to use the camera and microphone. I also learned that each person has a point of view and I have to respect it.”
Abukar, 20, from Somalia. Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

“I learned how to use the camera and microphone. I also learned that each person has a point of view and I have to respect it.”
Abukar, 20, from Somalia. Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

In November, our team went to Malakal, South Sudan, to work with communities that have fled war and violence. With all they had been through, we knew they would have a lot to share.

Along with IOM’s Psychosocial Support Team, we helped a group of 14 community members who lived in the Malakal protection of civilians (PoC) site for the last four years to come together and make a short film based on their experiences and challenging life stories.

Deborah, 21, gaining confidence operating a camera. Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

Despite the difficulties they have been through, none of the participants showed any resentment or anger in their filmmaking. Instead, they wanted to demonstrate the importance of rising with forgiveness, compassion and unity. As they repeated many times during the week: “All we want is peace.”

“If you are alone you cannot move forward. But if we are together we are stronger, we can achieve a better future, have a better community and build better relationships between the peoples of our country,” Augustino Dak, 30. Photo: Amanda Nero/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

In the first week of December, our team hosted its final workshop for this year in Geneva, Switzerland. Well known for being the world’s humanitarian capital, Geneva also hosts many migrant communities.

In such a setting, it was a must for our project to give voice to migrants who make the long journey to Geneva. Some come to reunite with their families, others come to study, but many come fleeing conflict and poverty in their homelands.

To enable migrants living in Geneva to film their stories, the Festival partnered with the Centre de la Roseraie, an institution that welcomes, trains and supports migrants to build a better future.

Group photo of the Geneva workshop participants. Photo: Fernanda Baumhard/NORCAP 2017

Group photo of the Geneva workshop participants. Photo: Fernanda Baumhard/NORCAP 2017

Photo: Fernanda Baumhard/NORCAP 2017

Photo: Fernanda Baumhard/NORCAP 2017

The second edition of the Film Festival provided a unique opportunity for global audiences to see short films on the perils of forced and voluntary migration from migrants themselves.

The participatory videos produced in Geneva and Jordan were shown during two of our screenings in Geneva. The video produced during our South Sudan workshop was screened in Juba, South Sudan, itself.

Participatory Video screening in Malakal, SouthSudan. Photo: Fernanda Baumhardt/NORCAP (2017)

The workshops were made possible through the generous support of the IOM Development Fund and NORCAP (Norwegian Refugee Council’s expert deployment capacity).

The post Social Cohesion Through Filmmaking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The Global Migration Film Festival is about more than just film screenings

The post Social Cohesion Through Filmmaking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: iHub/Kenya

By Robert Pasicko
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Aug 2 2018 (IPS)

Hardly a day goes by in the development world without hearing the term “platform”. Like in the business world, it’s becoming harder for any development organization to provide a single service or product that will make broad impact. Airbnb doesn’t build homes, it creates a network that brings together host and guests.

Likewise, it’s impossible to eradicate poverty – a complex phenomenon – without connecting different areas of expertise and partners across a wide range of thematic issues. And it’s often the case that the people we’re trying to pull out of poverty are closer to the problem and entitled to have a say about the solution.

While building platforms doesn’t happen overnight, it’s highly likely you’re already working in ways that resemble that. Take crowdfunding: it helps diversify funding, involves target groups, and mobilizes experts from all walks of life. I’ve led 35 crowdfunding campaigns at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 2015 and mobilized $1.2 million. Our field offices are working on $7 million worth of campaigns. So here’s my take-away:

• Think broad. Turning old development methods on their head, crowdfunding enables development institutions to sit at the same table with everybody else –people from poor neighborhoods, governments, startups, banks and large donors, and of course crowdfunding marketplaces. To survive in the 21st century, development organizations must diversify their contacts with partners that are ready to research, test and scale up solutions to complex problems.
• Build your ecosystem. Get a better understanding of the national context. Study the legislation and bring on board national partners who already have local connections to crowds. The more partners are able to latch on and add value, the higher the chances of success. Think of yourself as the app store: when developers come in and launch their own apps, you’ve created a virtuous circle in which the parts bring exponentially more value into the whole.
• Link up with tech platforms. Through crowdfunding we’ve supported lots of UNDP tech-based platforms, like LiveLebanon.org, GreenCrowds in Ecuador, or YemenOurHome. We’re working with them to move away from online donations, towards building communities that can deliver long-term impact. It’s not enough just putting a “donate” button on your page. These online communities can be powerful starting points for continuing to rally investors and partners.
• Partner with cities to achieve quick wins. London is creating a city for all Londoners through crowdfunding. Madrid has its own crowdsourcing platform. We’re transferring these practices to some unlikely places like Somalia, working with the diaspora to help people in Mogadishu create revenue, and withstand violence and disaster.
• Go solar: it’s the ultimate platform initiative. It’s not development if it isn’t green. Funding solar is the ultimate way to hit multiple SDG targets. We teamed up with over 30 crowdfunding platforms to deliver Citizenergy, which helped invest € 40 million into clean energy. With UNDP Moldova and Sun Exchange, we are also developing a $1 million solar plant using cryptocurrencies.
• Support small businesses – It’s hard for SMEs to get and repay their credit. But our experience in Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco and Turkey has shown that crowdfunding can be a great way to get new businesses off the ground. By the same token, development organizations should intensify their work to bring crowd-funders, businesses, third party verifiers and others together to make business more inclusive.
• Use new sources of financing. In the Muslim world, Zakat (donations) are worth 200 billion to 1 trillion. We’re now working with the Islamic Development Bank on a proposal to fund NGOs. In Indonesia, UNDP is designing a brand new platform that will – among other things – use Islamic finance to help the country achieve the SDGs.
• Build networks to help people recover from disaster. Campaigns such as GoFundMe and YouCaring are putting a face on individuals affected by disasters and mobilizing global funding. The Connecting Business Initiative is taking that approach further, mobilizing business networks so they too can get involved.

Crowdfunding is the originator of all modern development platforms. When we turn to platforms, we direct money where it is most needed. People can crowdsource the best ideas and vote for them. Governments and donors can match the funds collected, financing projects citizens actually support.

In an increasingly networked age, it’s not only capable of unleashing significant impact. It can also inspire thousands of development organizations around the world to rally partners and contribute to global causes more effectively.

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Excerpt:

Robert Pasicko works for UNDP’s Alternative Financing Lab

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The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from some EU member countries. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Aug 2 2018 (IPS)

Thousands of migrant minors placed in reception facilities upon arrival in Italy, as a first step in identification and later relocation into other structures for asylum seekers, are untraceable and feared trafficked.

A report, Tiny invisible slaves 2018, released this week by the non-governmental organisation Save the Children, states that 4,570 minors migrating through Italy are untraceable as of May.

Once they escape the facilities, their vulnerable position—having no money, not knowing the language and being often traumatised after their trip to Italy—places them at the mercy of traffickers and exploiters.

Many of these children end up in networks of sexual exploitation, forced labour and enslavement. Save the Children reported that some girls are forced to perform survival sex—to prostitute themselves in order to pay the ‘passeurs’ to cross the Italian border or to pay for food or a place to sleep.

“I left Nigeria with a friend and once we arrived to Sabha (Libya) we were arrested,” Blessing, one of the victims, told Save the Children.

“I stayed there for three months and then I moved to Tripoli. For eight interminable months I was forced to prostitute myself in exchange for food,” she added.

Blessing then reported that her nightmare continued in Italy where she was sexually exploited by a compatriot. She ultimately was able to enter a protection programme thanks to Save the Children. But her story is a rare case of rescue as many other children find themselves enslaved with no end in sight.

According to testimonies collected by the NGO, minors leave reception facilities because they judge the processes of entering the child protection system as a useless slowing down towards the economic autonomy they aspire to and usually leave the centres a few days after identification.

This has been occurring largely in the southern regions of Italy.

But according to the report, “the flow of minors in transit through Italy to northern Europe is, by its own nature, difficult to quantify.” Though it noted that minors transiting through Italy between January and March, make up between 22 percent and 31 percent out of the total transitioning migrants across the country. The minors are mostly Eritrean (14 percent), Somalis (13 percent), Afghans (10 percent), Egyptians (9 percent) and Tunisians (8 percent).

“The fact that the European Union relocation programme was blocked in September 2017, has contributed in an important way to forcing children in transit to re-entrust themselves to traffickers, or to risk their own lives to cross borders, as well as it continues to happen for those minors who transit through the Italian north frontier with the aim of reaching the countries of northern Europe,” Roberta Petrillo, from the child protection department of Save the Children, Italy, told IPS.

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from the EU member countries of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary.

The EU’s initial plan provided for the relocation of 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to other European countries within two years. As of May, 12,690 and 21,999 migrants were relocated from Italy and Greece respectively. To date, the Czech Republic has accepted only 12 refugees, Slovakia 16, with Hungary and Poland having taken no refugees.

According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), almost 10 million children and youth across the world were forced into slavery, sold and exploited, mainly for sexual and labour purposes in 2016.

They make up 25 percent of the over 40 million people who are trafficked, of which more than seven out of 10 are women and girls. According to the ILO estimates, nearly one million victims of sexual exploitation in 2016 were minors, while between 2012 and 2016, 152 million boys and girls aged between five and 17 were engaged in various forms of child labour. More than half of these activities were particularly dangerous for their own health.

“When we talk about data of this kind we must be very cautious because we are dealing with numbers that only concern the emergence of the phenomenon, without keeping track of the submerged data,” Petrillo added.

There were 30,146 registered victims of trafficking and exploitation in 2016 in the 28 EU countries with 1,000 of them minors.

However, according to 2016 figures from the ILO, 3.6 million people across Europe were reportedly modern day slaves.

According to the Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force, human trafficking is the second-largest criminal industry in the world, second only to the illegal drug trade. It is estimated to be an industry worth USD32 billion annually.

The most targeted

Nigerian and Romanian girls are amongst the most targeted by the trafficking networks.

According to Save the Children, for the journey that will take them to Italy, the Nigerian girls contract a debt between 20,000 and 50,000 euros that they can only hope to repay by undergoing forced prostitution.

Like their peers from Romania, they enter a mechanism of sexual exploitation from which they cannot get free easily.

While Nigerians escape mainly for security issues and political instability, Romanian girls flee their country because of a total lack of opportunities and economic autonomy there. Their deep economic deprivation makes them highly vulnerable and easy targets for traffickers, who deceive or coerce them to enter into networks of sexual exploitation. 

According to the Save the Children Report, in 2017 there were a total of 200 minor victims of trafficking and exploitation who were put into protection programmes. The vast majority of these, 196, were girls with about  93.5 percent Nigerian girls aged between 16 and 17 years.

In addition, almost half of the minors were sexually exploited 

Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy,  told IPS that migrant men were welcomed with open arms because they were useful for working under exploited conditions.

However, migrant women were welcome only because they were used for prostitution.

“By not guaranteeing legal and safe paths for those fleeing wars and persecution, by not organising and recognising the presence of migrant workers, we just do a favour to the criminal groups, who build real fortunes on trafficking in human beings,” Noury told IPS.

While Petrillo said that “the Italian and the EU legal framework is solid and a good one,” she cautioned that  “what is needed, instead, is a unitary intervention that closely links the issue of anti-trafficking reality with that of minors in transit. And we must be able to guarantee universal protection for the victims.”

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