West African vice ring arrests

Poor women are often lured into prostitution in Europe

By West Africa correspondent Mark Doyle

Police in Guinea say they have dismantled an international vice ring sending African women to Europe.

They say a large number of Nigerian nationals in Guinea have been questioned, including some 20 suspected traffickers and over 30 young women who are potential prostitutes, due to be smuggled through Europe's southern borders.

Aid workers from the UN agency, Unicef, say they've been helping the women by providing food.

Unicef officials who have interviewed the Nigerian women say they were destined to travel on to Spain and Italy on illegally-obtained Guinean passports. One girl was only sixteen years old.

Criminal gangs

Large numbers of West African women are lured into prostitution in Europe because of widespread poverty at home, and Nigeria, being by far the largest country in the region, is often the source of supply for criminal gangs.

Government officials in Guinea said some of the women were being tricked into prostitution by promises of legitimate work in Europe.

The arrests by Guinean police are certainly only the tip of a widespread trade in human beings in West Africa, the root cause of which is poverty.

Throughout the region, women are trafficked for prostitution and large numbers of children are sold into bonded labour.

West African governments are opposed to this trade but have weak and under-resourced police forces, usually incapable of effectively challenging it.