here - Cooperazione Italiana allo Sviluppo

C H A P T E R IW a y s a n d p h a s e so f r e c r u i t m e n t i n N i g e r i a1.1 The contact: who is recruited and the type ofapproachThe traffic of women for sexual exploitation in Nigeria involves a target ofyoung women, all coming from the same geographic area.It involves women who are generally of age, but young, rarely however morethan 30 years old. If in origin one noted the arrival of women of even thirty, todaywomen of an age around 20 are predominant 15 .One cannot exclude the fact that there are minors, but according to the commonopinion of Law Enforcement officials and the NGOs (public social services, privatesocial and religious associations) one cannot say that it is a phenomenon of sexualexploitation of minors:“It is always a very young group, around 18, 20, 21; this is the obviously morecovered group. There are also younger girls but according to me not because theyare singled out as a product of the Nigerian prostitution of minors; the populationis very young and there could also be some minors, but according to me if youspeak about prostitution of minors as a subject of the criminal phenomenon we aretalking about a much younger group and these are from other countries” (Corpodei Carabinieri - Rome).It should be remembered that it is difficult to ascertain the age of women of thestreet either because of their features, or because frequently they do not tell thetruth about their age.The women we interviewed told us however that there is a notable lowering ofthe age of the women to be found on the street and that we should assume that inmany cases they are minors.“Now they are younger, before there were no girls of 18, only from 25 andabove, now there are also girls of 15 years, but they will not say so, they say theyare 18” (Interview Victim No. 9).Although minors represent more an exception than a systematically pursuedobjective, nevertheless the interest of the market and the need to respond to the15To confirm this common impression of the operators one can observe that – even if it is not significantdata – in the trial analysed the more mature women are to be found in the most noted criminalproceedings – of mid and end ‘90s – and are absent in the succeeding years.