Anger as gardaí snub child trafficking conference
“We are very upset that nobody was available to speak on the day or to attend from Garda Immigration,” a spokesperson for the Nigerian delegation said.
“We are dismayed also at the absence of any official representative from the Irish authorities.”
According to the organisers, invitations to attend the conference in Dublin were also delivered to the Departments of Justice and Social Welfare.
The keynote speaker at the conference was Amina Titu Atiku Abubakar, wife of Nigeria’s Vice-President and leader of an anti-trafficking campaign in her own country.
A garda spokesperson said: “We decided not to send anyone there, and that’s it.”
The conference, held in the Red Cow Hotel, heard that there has been a huge increase in child trafficking to Ireland over the past five years, particularly from Third World countries.
“Trafficking of children for economic purposes is closely linked to some of the worst forms of child labour especially in Third World countries,” Mrs Abubakar told delegates.
“Children are exchanged for prostitution, begging, soliciting, working on construction sites and factories and in domestic service.”
Mrs Abubakar, who heads a project in Nigeria called Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication, said that in Europe the problem was subtler and mainly limited to the domestic environment. However, she said that children trafficked to Europe “are hidden from sight and beyond the reach of the law, often used, abused, confined to four walls of the home, denied education, basic health care, adequate nutrition and the safety of their families.”
One of the organisers of the conference, Yvonne Kinsella, said the Nigerian delegation were particularly upset that no garda representative attended and had only been told of the decision not to send a representative yesterday morning.
She said Nigerian immigration officials had come to Dublin hoping to liaise directly with Garda Immigration to try and work together to fight what has become and epidemic in child trafficking over the past few years.
A recent report from the Irish Refugee Council showed that not enough resources are in place here to deal with people bringing children, who are not related to them, into this country.
In July of this year immigration officials tipped off the East Coast Area Health Board about their fears that crime gangs may be trafficking children through Ireland.
The health board acknowledged at the time that six cases of suspected trafficking had been referred to them during 2002.
About 1.2 million children are trafficked each year for $10 billion, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Trafficking is a truly global problem, affecting all countries everywhere,” said a UNICEF spokesman.
According to a study carried out by UNICEF, more than 200,000 children are trafficked each year in western Africa, either to enter the export trade to Europe or to be sold into slavery as domestic workers.
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