Helen Gwanfogbe, Human Rights Programme Coordinator, Nkumu Fed Fed NGO, explains the phenomenon of trafficking in Cameroonian girls abroad.
What is ‘Nkumu Fed Fed’?
‘Nkumu Fed Fed’, which means a “Gathering of sisters,” is a women’s-based networking Non-governmental Organisation, NGO, which aims at protecting and improving the livelihoods of vulnerable groups, notably women and children in rural communities. Although the pioneer branch of the group was created in Limbe in 1982, the networking group was established in 1996, registered as a legal entity in 2000 and recognised in 2011 as a public utility NGO by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation.
Nkumu Fed Fed was recently registered as a public charity organisation in the USA and today has several branches in Cameroon, USA, the UK and Germany. The key intervention areas of the organisation are in Education, Health, Secure Livelihoods and Human Rights. After 20 years of existence, Nkumu Fed Fed recently organised its first international conference this July 2015 in Washington DC, with 55 women delegates from Cameroon in attendance.
Through its human rights advocacy and defence programme and activities, Nkumu Fed Fed is today known for leading the fight against human trafficking, which is considered to be one of the worst forms of slavery in the world today. Women and girls from poor communities in Cameroon are also major victims of the world’s most heinous and dehumanizing crime of national and international human trafficking.
How serious is the problem of trafficking of Cameroonian girls and women abroad as domestic workers?
Human trafficking should first be understood as the act of recruiting, moving or receiving any person through deceit/threat/violence etc…for the purpose of exploitation such as domestic servant, forced labour, prostitution/sexual exploitation, debt bondage and other practices. The problem of trafficking Cameroonian girls across the national borders is a very serious dehumanizing phenomenon that is real. At the dawn of the 20th Century, awareness was drawn to the fact that Cameroonians were being trafficked to destinations such as the USA for purpose of domestic labour; and to Europe largely for prostitution and sexual abuse. The landmark conviction in the USA confirmed this fact.
While Cameroonian NGOs have struggled to raise awareness and reduce this, an alarming situation of trafficking has today been identified with the massive recruitment of young girls for the purpose of slavery to new destinations in the Middle East. The nature of victims, the methods used and the strength of the traffickers tell of the serious nature of the crime. The victims are regrettably young girls, including unemployed university graduates. They are vulnerable and easily fall prey to deceitful promises of good and well-paying jobs in the Middle East. They accept these offers with the erroneous belief that they are going for a bright future in El Dorado destinations. It is clear that victims before departure are not well informed about what they are going to do as there is no means of verifying.
Some people are intrigued by adverts on local media in Cameroon. Beyond the young persons, even parents are deceived into believing the traffickers and give their hard-earned money to prepare travelling documents through these agents. The number of young persons moving to these destinations is increasing at an alarming rate. From a survivor’s testimony, over 45 girls arrived in Kuwait from Cameroon on the day she got there. Several others arrived from Ghana. Nkumu Fed Fed, during a period of three weeks, carried out a sensitization programme with identified parents who have sent out their daughters. There was also an advocacy campaign with government to intervene and rescue critical cases as reported in Kuwait. The result of this work was the return to Cameroon of over 25 girls from Kuwait as identified and interviewed by the organisation. The alarm has been given by survivors that many innocent persons are still going out while many Cameroonian girls are suffering out there and need rescue. A concerned official once asked: “Why are victims always girls from specific regions?” It is largely believed that young girls from poorer regions are more hardworking, serviceable for domestic chores and obedient. Their battered state renders them less violent in the face of further abuse against their persons in any form, including their use in sex markets/demands. Girls are thus most vulnerable to human trafficking and require special protection.
The main actors of this devastating act are a wide network of rich persons who appear to be untouchable. Their wealth has been derived from the trafficking business. Middlemen are located in different continents and all largely connected through modern technology systems. Middlemen in Cameroon play the role of recruiting victims through advertisements. Posters and banners are placed on streets and advertisements read in local media with no fear of action. Some pastors are also middlemen traffickers, given their vantage position in deceiving and securing the absolute confidence of their followers or the population.
In Ghana, other African countries, USA and Europe, the middlemen actually create the global link. They recruit the agents in Cameroon and link them up to the slave markets in destination countries. Principal trafficking recruiters or markets are located in the destination countries that are largely in demand of domestic servants or slaves, especially in Kuwait, Dubai, etc….. Agents in these countries have well-established recruitment businesses. Their locations are public and not hidden, their names and contacts are known, with no fear of action in their countries. Worse still, it is a known and accepted business by the entire public to buy African slave girls from these agents who even have deep-rooted connections up to the airports in their countries. This implies that government officials facilitate trafficking acts. Each actor in this chain receives a benefit from the human trafficking trade.
The methods used by traffickers speak of their criminal intent. After a successful advertisement, victims or their families pay the agent to be recruited in their international job programme. Passport preparations are facilitated by the agents. The passports are collected by the agents who only deliver these at the airport just before the victims check in to board the plane. The victims board the flight with no knowledge of who will pick them up. Human trafficking is a gross violation of human rights that needs concerted efforts to fight because of the guise under which it manifests. International trafficking in Cameroonian slaves is real and we need to act urgently.
What happens to victims when they get to their promised El Dorado?
The reality sets in and disaster begins when the victims arrive in their promised land (Kuwait, or the Middle East, in this case). Upon arrival, the airport police or agents collect all the travel documents and any money the victims came with in order to prevent them from having any means of escape. At this point, the victims become slaves and wait to be purchased by masters who need domestic workers. From the testimonies given by the girls (survivors) who have been rescued, the duty of a domestic servant is described as follows:
a) You are called ‘kadama’, which means slave.
b) You are subjected to torture and physical violence from the master and family members. You are given little or no food. Out of hunger, some live on pet food. You are considered as smelling and in some families cannot enter the same car with your master. One victim said she was always carried in the boot of the car.
c) Your duties are very dehumanizing. You work for very long hours, up till 4.00 am without rest. If you finish your job, you are taken to a relative to continue work or you are asked to scrub the wall permanently. You sleep with pets and take care of them. These include snakes, cats, dogs, etc, in the name of pets. One of the victims testified seeing snake bites on a fellow Cameroonian girl’s body and wounds she had incurred in the process of taking care of the pets. Some use the same toilet facilities as the pets and stand exposed to diseases transmitted by these animals.
d) You are an object for sexual abuse or harassment and some victims experience brutality when they resist. One was stabbed and has a scar while one victim was reported to have been shot to death.
e) You are prevented from having access to any means of communication back home, so you cannot give out any information on your situation to your family. You are locked indoors and not allowed to go out alone.
f) In most cases when you resist torture, the master sends you back to the agent who then searches for a new master to take you. If you succeed to escape from home, you end up in the streets because the hospitals and police stations will not receive you without papers.
This is very dehumanizing. Foreign embassies such as the Central African Republic have helped to repatriate some desperate cases to Cameroon. Many who succeeded to return have ended up in misery and frustration and find their way back home empty-handed, with illnesses to take care of. They have lost all their documents and are highly traumatised, with some being hospitalized. Many have little hope in life and their families remain highly indebted, with unpaid loans. All this is as a result of searching for green pastures abroad.
What is being done to assist victims who return home?
Nkumu Fed Fed’s response to human trafficking dates back to 2002 in a landmark project that built NGO capacity in Cameroon to combat the phenomenon. The adoption of an Anti-Child Trafficking law in 2005 and its repeal by the 2011 Anti-Human Trafficking Law are outcomes of this process. The 2011 Law and the UN Palermo Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, to which Cameroon is a party since 2001, provide the legal framework to sanction trafficking offenders against women and children and to have international cooperation in cracking down on offenders.
The Prime Minister has set up a National Inter-Ministerial Committee on Trafficking in Persons to provide oversight and orientation and Nkumu Fed Fed represents NGOs in this body. Yet, we recognize that the implementation of the law is very weak because few cases of sanctions exist. The Prime Minister, in partnership with the Vital Voices International NGO and Nkumu Fed Fed, has set up three maiden Trafficking Regional Task Forces. They are made up of magistrates, judicial police officers, ministry stakeholders, civil society organisations and mayors. They fight trafficking in persons in the North West, South West and Littoral Regions. Under this initiative, the members of the task forces have been trained and cases are now being reported. Concerning victims from the Middle East, particularly Kuwait, Nkumu Fed Fed as a facilitating member in the South West Task Force has identified victims, obtained their testimonies, and accompanied them to report their cases to the Task Force and the Judicial Police. Some traffickers in Cameroon and abroad are known and we now await the outcome of investigations and their sanctions.
Beyond legal action, Nkumu Fed Fed in 2003 established the first Rehabilitation Centre in Africa for victims of child trafficking (2003 ILO Report). The Gwan Multi-purpose Centre in Bali in the North West Region is today a skills training centre for withdrawn victims and vulnerable children. Nkumu Fed Fed, through its social volunteer workers, offers psycho-social counselling to get victims out of their traumatic situation. Child victims are provided vocational training and upon graduating, given installation toolkits to help them operate small businesses for livelihood.
With regard to the Kuwait victims, Nkumu Fed Fed has extensively worked with the victims to give them mental balance from their shock and assurance of safety back home. This has greatly encouraged the children to tell their story and experiences to the point where they have taken the commitment to tell this wherever necessary in order to sensitize their peers and dissuade them from falling prey to traffickers from the Middle East. They have personally disclosed the identity of traffickers so that they can be prosecuted. Unfortunately, victims from Kuwait who are university graduates are beyond the age to benefit from programmes in the rehabilitation centre. Government attention has been drawn to the need to assist the victims who have returned and even those still in captivity in Kuwait
What can be done to stop or reduce the gravity of the problem?
There are three key strategies of reducing the gravity of trafficking in persons. These are through sensitization, cracking down on the network of traffickers and prosecuting them and finally rehabilitating the victims and giving then renewed hope in their communities. The public needs to be widely sensitized to watch out. Your El Dorado abroad may be a trafficking business with a slavery job. All media must assist the public to verify information on jobs overseas before they are widely disseminated. The public is also advised to watch out for "men or women of God" with lofty promises for young people and green pastures overseas. It is a huge network. University graduates need to watch out for peer information on job opportunities abroad. Government and the Inter-ministerial Committee should take a more proactive and victim-centred approach to combat human trafficking, rescue the victims who are reported in the Middle East and provide opportunities for those who are rescued. The prosecution and sanction procedures can be expedited to deter any further trafficking actions. Cameroon cannot continue to allow its young population to be humiliated with dehumanized practices by another country in this era.
It is necessary to clarify that trafficking in persons has never been part of our culture. Culturally, the child is the responsibility of the community, with no discrimination between a biological child, the child of a relative or friend, an adopted or orphaned child, as they all lived in the same household. They all bore the name of the father of the house, wore the same clothes, ate the same food and even ate from the same plate and at the same time. They took turns in the same house chores, went to the farm together and to the same school.
In extreme situations, they never knew they had different biological parents because all were equal before the parents of the household. Traffickers today have rather taken refuge under our culture to justify their criminal act. Poverty in rural communities, the quest for money, the demands in urban towns for domestic servants, the quest for cheap labour with quick large profits and above all, diminishing community interests, have all led to the rich exploiting the poor, especially vulnerable women and the girl child. We need to all rise up and deny this in our country.
