School Holidays: CSOs, Anti-Human Trafficking Team Urge Public Alertness

A group of non-governmental organizations, including the Rivers State Response Team on Violence Against Women and Children and the Rivers State Taskforce on Anti-Human Trafficking (NAPTIP), have urged parents to keep a close eye on their children and wards during the state’s extended holiday.

As they enter the wider community, the CSOs also cautioned recent graduates and school dropouts to be resourceful and hardworking rather than desperate, emphasizing that the haste to quickly achieve a new status has led to many becoming victims of sexual exploitation and abuse, human trafficking, and organ harvesting.

The joint campaign has become necessary because human trafficking is not only gender-based violence but also a crime against humanity, according to a statement signed on Saturday by Queeneth Igbara, Communication and Public Enlightenment officer, and signed by Tombari Dumka-Kote, Coordinator, Rivers State Response Team on Violence Against Women and Children, and Secretary, Rivers State Anti-Human Trafficking Taskforce.

He made a suggestion that the program is starting to commemorate the World Day Against Human Trafficking, which is observed on July 30 of each year as announced by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

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It is necessary to get the word to their places of business because, according to Dumka-Kote, market buyers and sellers are not in any way excluded from the group of people who may be influenced by traffickers’ actions.

The Centre for Justice, Empowerment & Development’s Programme Officer, Queeneth Igbara, stated that human trafficking is an organized crime that impacts families, particularly women and children who are sexually exploited and abused.

She repeatedly stressed the necessity for parents to protect their kids from abusers and those whose only goal is to take advantage of the weaker segments of society in the Oroworokwo Community Marketplace.

The women were reassured by Donwile Apenu, a representative of the OLEGH Centre for Community Development, that the Taskforce and CSOs would support their collaboration with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) in order to address all reported cases of child labor, exploitation, and trafficking in the State.

Other speakers at the Oroworokwo Community Market’s “Zero Tolerance for Human Trafficking and Gender Based Violence” awareness campaign included NAPTIP, Relief International Africa, and the Together to Win Foundation.

The theme for the 2025 World Day Against Human Trafficking is “End the Exploitation: Human Trafficking is Organized Crime.”