According to InfoMigrants, Nigerian women are at growing risk from traffickers in Germany who exploit and engage them in prostitution.
Read the full report below by InfoMigrants.
The new prostitute protection law in Germany was meant to identify victims of human trafficking – most of them migrant women. More than 18 months after the law came into effect, thousands continue to be targeted for exploitation, and the risk for Nigerian women seems to be increasing.
There are campervans parked by the roadside. Some have hearts painted on them, one says “girls, girls” in red letters. It’s an easy matter for someone to stop for a quick transaction in one of these Love-Mobiles – sex with one of the “girls” in exchange for the going rate.
Prostitution is mainly legal in Germany, as are these mobile brothels. But many of the women in the business – including those working from the Love-Mobiles – are victims of illegal human trafficking. Most of the women are from Eastern Europe or Nigeria, where they often lured with false promises of well-paid work and then coerced into prostitution when they arrive in Europe.
Under the radar
No one knows exactly how many women are in prostitution in Germany or how many have been trafficked. There are some estimates that 80 to 90 percent of women in prostitution are migrants.
In cases of trafficking into prostitution that did get to the stage of a police investigation, migrants made up the majority of both traffickers and victims of trafficking (75 and 81 percent), with the largest groups being Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians and Nigerians.
While the number of Nigerian victims appearing in police statistics is relatively small, it has been increasing. In 2013, just 2.8 percent of known victims were from Nigeria. That went up to five percent in 2016 and up to eight percent the following year.
There are two ways in which the Nigerian women end up in prostitution in Germany, Tivig explains. In the first scenario, the women are trafficked from Italy to Germany without ever leaving the control of the traffickers. In the second, the women travel from Italy to Switzerland. They may even have been granted asylum in Italy, but inadequate support there forces them to move on.
In Switzerland, they sometimes apply for asylum again, but are inevitably rejected. Faced with deportation back to Italy, the women travel further north instead, ending up in Germany, where they are once again at risk of exploitation.
It is also known that the traffickers themselves use the asylum system, according to Andrea Tivig from the women’s rights organization Terre des Femmes.
“I’ve heard reports in Italy…that traffickers tell victims of human trafficking to apply for asylum and then get a status to be able to stay here in Germany, but they continue to be exploited in prostitution.”
In another apparent effort to identify criminal operators, brothel owners are now subject to police checks. Again, according to Tivig, the traffickers are able to avoid detection.