Illegal migration: ‘income gap must narrow’- Harvard Don warns

 

Siddharth Kara, a leading expert on human trafficking and modern slavery has advised the Nigerian government to allocate resources equitably in order to curb   the vulnerabilities that drives people into illegal migranttion and modern-day slavery. Kara, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government made this known at a briefing in Los Angeles, where he addressed questions on the motivation behind the movie adaptation of his award-winning book on human trafficking titled ‘Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery,”.

Kara who spent one month in Nigeria visiting Edo, Delta and Lagos to access the human trafficking burden said the country needs to start checking vulnerabilities by putting in place alternative economic opportunities that could ensure reliability and stability of income for the teeming population.

“Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, there is a lot of grinding poverty. Poverty is the strongest force that drives vulnerability and population displacement being another, it is in that moment that traffickers come up with an offer. There is a lot of people who are super wealthy, so the income gap has to narrow. So many people are literarily boiling leaves for their meals, so income has to be more equitably allocated.

Read Also: Firm to end rural-urban migration

“There is a need to work on girl education, vocational training and economic opportunities as reasonable alternatives.  The government also need to find a way to increase security because so many people live under the threat of violence and those risks might make them want to leave or migrate abroad”, he stated.

Kara, an adjunct lecturer who also teaches the only course on modern day slavery at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government argued that Nigeria is not a poor country. He likewise conceded to the fact that the country suffers from an issue suffered by most post-colonial countries which goes back to independence and how borders were drawn by colonial masters.

Kara’s film on human trafficking which features a Nigerian character by the name ‘Mali’ was recommended by the U.S department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.  The book not only provides a global perspective on sex trafficking, it also shows the analytical framework and economic analysis for understanding the functioning and persistence of slavery in the current world.

Close to 5000 Nigerians who are victims of labour and sex trafficking have been repatriated from Libya in recent times with the help of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the federal government.

 

The post Illegal migration: ‘income gap must narrow’- Harvard Don warns appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.