ABSTRACT: The study investigated the role of media in eradicating child trafficking. Mass media are no doubt instrument for mobilization and development. The study was anchored on Agenda Setting Theory and Social Responsibility Theory. This study adopted survey method with 120 questionnaires administered to 120 respondents of which 100 were collected. The data were analysed in frequency and percentage with the aids of tables. Findings show that child trafficking campaigns are often carried out via radios, televisions and newspapers. This study recommended that government should embark on aggressive public enlightenment campaigns to educate the public on the social dangers of child trafficking and labour while government should fully make laws against the child trafficking more active.
Keywords: CHILD TRAFFICKING
Introduction
Human trafficking has long been a concern to the concern men, women, governments and agencies with various legislations been passed locally and global to address the subject matter, However, instead to see the end of such injustice, it becoming wax stronger day in day out as the traffickers employing more strategically and tactical way to gain access to the target vulnerable. Human trafficking is considered modern-day slavery because it requires the use of fraud, force, or coercion to obtain some type of labour or commercial sex act. Human trafficking is an umbrella term used for the all form of illegal migration of human being especially for illegal activities.
Anti-Slavery International (2018) defines human trafficking as recruitment, harbouring or transporting people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion and forced to work against their will. In other words, trafficking is a process of enslaving people, coercing them into a situation with no way out, and exploiting them
Also, human trafficking can be described as any form of 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 (UNODC, 2018). However, child trafficking is one of the most human trafficking according (UNICEF, 2019)
In recent times, there has been increase in reports of child trafficking, abuse and kidnapping of children in the school environment, the most popular one being the kidnapping of 276 Nigerian girls by the Boko Haram terrorist group where the girls were subjected to sexual abuse; physical and psychological abuse; forced labour; forced participation in military operations and forced marriages. Domestic workers in Nigeria are often referred to as ‘house helps’, most of which are girls who are denied education and subjected to long hours of work with little or no pay, these girls are vulnerable to physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect (Arinze, 2006).
Child trafficking and abuse takes place in most parts of the world. In Nigeria, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has identified 13 human trafficking endemic states which include Edo, Ondo, Ebonyi, Imo, Rivers, Enugu, Ogun, Kano, Cross River, Akwa-Ibom or Delta States. Research has shown that child trafficking has become an intra-cross boarder and trans-national crime. It is against this background that the study investigated the role of media in eradicating child trafficking.
Statement of the Problem
There is no gainsaying in the fact that exploiting people for money and other forms of gain is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria and world all over. Lots of people have been taken from their home to another part or country with promise that they will better their lives only to abuse them sexually, hard/force labour, using for drug trafficking, as sex workers even kill while their parts are sold. In the late 1990s and early 2000s international leaders, advocates, and the public became increasingly concerned about the risks of exploitation inherent in labor migration (child trafficking) and commercial sex work.
At least 1000 children suffer from various degree of abuse in the form trafficking in West Africa Every 6 hours, says (UNICEF, 2019). This is so because they are the most vulnerable to disease, war, kidnapping, collapsed marriage, and malnutrition. The problem of child trafficking and abuse has affected the lives of many children beyond control. Some of them had dreamt to be important figure in the society which they may find themselves, but they couldn’t pursue the dream, their aims are dying gradually and they couldn’t help themselves.
Today in the West and Central Africa, it is acknowledged that agricultural fields, gold and diamond mines, stone quarries, street hawking, child marriage, rape and domestic work are areas where the working conditions of children are often exploitative. Furthermore, changes in old cultural practices such as fostering, handing over a child to a third party have been corrupted and abused. In recognition of the challenges, child trafficking pose to the atonement of human rights, security and sustainable development and achievement of millennium development goals, the question this study seeks to answer is; how has mass media influenced the discouragement of child trafficking.