THE NEW YORKER — NIGERIA / The Desperate Journey of a Trafficked Girl Every year, thousands of teen-agers from one city in Nigeria risk death and endure forced labor and sex work on the long route to Europe
More than eleven thousand Nigerian women were rescued in the Mediterranean last year, according to the International Organization for Migration, eighty per cent of whom had been trafficked for sexual exploitation. “You now have girls who are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” an I.O.M. anti-trafficking agent told me. “The market is requesting younger and younger.” Italy is merely the entry point; from there, women are traded and sold to madams all over Europe.