A RELIGIOUS ETHICAL EVALUATION OF FEMALE TRAFFICKING IN EDO STATE, NIGERIA

 GENERAL BACKGROUND TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING Human trafficking, technically known as Trafficking in Persons (TIP), was first defined in international law through the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children also known as the Palermo Protocol or the Trafficking Protocol-which supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) 1 . This provides the most widely endorsed definition of trafficking and the essential basis for national law reform. According to the Palermo Protocol, trafficking in persons is defined as: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose 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”;2 The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in the definition have been used”3 The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered „trafficking in persons‟ even if it does not involve any of the means set forth in the definition; „Child‟ shall mean any person less than eighteen years of age. Early twentieth century conventions defined human trafficking as both internal and cross-border movement for purposes of prostitution, and recognized all sex work as trafficking, whether the women were in the profession voluntarily or not. In modern times, the definitions of human trafficking do not require that sexual exploitation be involved for it to be called trafficking as there are other purposes for trafficking outside sexual exploitation. Thus, the movement of an individual for sexual exploitation is only one of the various purposes of trafficking. Some definitions now recognize trafficking within a country, while others require crossborder movement.