80% of Nigerian women enter Italy for prostitution — UN

The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said that about 3,600 Nigerian women arrived Italy by boat in the first half of 2016, almost double the figure in the same period last year.
More than 80% of these women, it said, were trafficked into prostitution in Italy and across Europe. Traffickers use migrant reception centres as holding pens for women who are then collected and forced into prostitution, the UK Guardian quoted the UN agency as saying.

“What we have seen this year is a crisis, it is absolutely unprecedented and is the most significant increase in the number of Nigerian women arriving in Italy for 10 years,” said Simona Moscarelli, an anti-trafficking expert at the IOM. She said majority of the women were being deliberately brought in for sexual exploitation purposes. She added that the criminal gangs and trafficking networks engaging in the sexual exploitation of younger Nigerian girls had expanded.

Although a thriving a sex trafficking industry has been operating between Nigeria and Italy for over three decades, there has been a marked increase in the numbers of unaccompanied Nigerian women arriving in Italy on migrant boats from Libya, the report said.