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Seit zwei Wochen taucht ein verzweifelter Vater in Sondrio (I) nach seiner tödlich verunglückten Tochter (†15). Der Fluss Adda hat sein Kind verschluckt – er riskiert nun täglich sein Leben, um ihre Leiche zu finden.

La directrice de l’éducation de la wilaya de Tamanrasset, Boussebiat Sektou, a confirmé, dans une déclaration accordée  à Ennaharonline, l’impossibilité de permettre aux deux sœurs de repasser l’examen  en raison de leur exclusion totale du baccalauréat 2020. La directrice a ajouté que les deux candidates habitent à seulement 20 mètres du centre de l’examen, et […]

L’article Deux candidates exclues au BAC à Tamanrasset :  » La décision est définitive » selon la DE est apparu en premier sur .

Nach der Sensations-Studie des Labors Spiez sorgt Echinaforce für Aufregung. Das Naturheilmittel tötet im Labor Coronaviren. Aber wirkt es auch beim Menschen als Corona-Heilmittel? Das sagen die Experten auf Blick TV.

France Assos Santé et ses associations membres sont historiquement mobilisées contre les pénuries de médicaments et de vaccins qui continuent de provoquer de lourdes conséquences non seulement pour les personnes malades mais également en termes de santé publique. Par communiqué en date du 08 septembre, nous avons demandé que le décret obligeant les industriels à […]

L’article Pénuries de médicaments et de vaccins  : les industriels encore protégés est apparu en premier sur Afrik.com.

Mourassiloun - Le directeur général de la SEMAF (Société d’exploitation de Manantali et de Félou) Ba Yahya Hamadi, a présenté ses excuses...

La bande de malfaiteurs, ayant agressé des agents de Police lors de leur intervention pour mettre fin à une fête de mariage organisée à Aïn Tedles, ont été interpellés et arrêtés par la Police Judiciaire de Mostaganem. Le chargé de communication et des relations publiques de la Sûreté de la wilaya de Mostaganem, Bachir Belkacem, […]

L’article Mostaganem : Arrestation des agresseurs des policiers à une fête de mariage est apparu en premier sur .

In der Schweiz und in Liechtenstein sind dem Bundesamt für Gesundheit (BAG) am Montag 257 neue Coronavirus-Ansteckungen innerhalb eines Tages gemeldet worden. Am Sonntag waren es 475 und am Samstag 465. Es gab 8 neue Spital-Einweisungen, aber keinen neuen Todesfall.

Die Schweiz soll ein Pflanzenheilmittel gegen das Coronavirus haben: Eine Studie über das Naturheilmittel Echinaforce der Firma A. Vogel zeigte, dass es im Labor Viren abtötet. Viele BLICK-Leserinnen und Leser sind jedoch skeptisch.

Le procès des frères Kouninef s’est poursuivi, hier dimanche au tribunal de Sidi M’hamed à Alger, avec les plaidoiries des avocats. Ces derniers évoquent « l’amplification des faits » et demandent l’acquittement. La défense de Réda, Abdelkader-Karim et Tarek-Noah Kouninef a avancé que les accusations portées à l’encontre de leurs clients sont « infondées ». Plus loin […]

L’article Procès des frères Kouninef : la défense évoque une « amplification des faits » est apparu en premier sur .

In der Schweiz und in Liechtenstein sind dem Bundesamt für Gesundheit (BAG) am Montag 257 neue Coronavirus-Ansteckungen innerhalb eines Tages gemeldet worden. Am Sonntag waren es 475 und am Samstag 465. Es gab keinen neuen Todesfall, aber 8 neue Spital-Einweisungen.

Nigerian migrants arrive in Lagos from Libya. Nigeria has, in the last two years, evacuated thousands of its citizens from Libya and Lebanon after they suffered several forms of abuses, including enslavement. Trafficking has resulted in at least 80,000 Nigerian women being held as sex slaves and forced labour in the Middle East. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Sep 14 2020 (IPS)

“I need help, right now I cannot walk properly,” trafficking victim Nkiru Obasi pleaded from her hospital bed in a video she posted online.

The young Nigerian woman had been injured in the Aug. 4 Beirut blast, which ripped through the Lebanese capital, killing 190 people injuring a further 6,500 and damaging 40 percent of the city. However, it’s not her injuries keeping her in Lebanon but a restrictive and abusive system of migrant laws.

Obasi is just one of thousands of young Nigerian women trafficked to Lebanon with false promises of a better life. The Lagos-based New Telegraph newspaper quoted a source in the Nigerian embassy in Lebanon as saying that some 4,541 Nigerian women were trafficked to the country last year. The chair of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, described the rate at which Nigerian women are trafficked to Lebanon as “an epidemic”.

After sustaining injuries in the blast, Obasi tried to return to Nigeria but she and four others were stopped at the airport under the exploitative Kafala system.

The system, which is widely practiced in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East, prohibits migrant workers from returning to their countries without the permission of their employer.

“Lebanon’s restrictive and exploitative kafala system traps tens of thousands of migrant domestic workers in potentially harmful situations by tying their legal status to their employer, enabling highly abusive conditions amounting at worst to modern-day slavery,” according to Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. The rights organisation called for a revised contract that recognises and protects workers’ internationally guaranteed rights.

In late May, Nigeria attempted to repatriate 60 trafficked women from Lebanon but only 50 could return home. Anti-trafficking activists in the Middle East said the remaining 10 women were held back in Lebanon under the Kafala system.

The Kafala system operates alongside a system that enslaves trafficked women. In April, a Lebanese man posted an advert under the “Buy and Sell in Lebanon” Facebook group. “Domestic worker from Nigeria for sale with new legal document, she is 30 years old, she is very active and very clean,” the advert said in Arabic. The price tag was $1,000.

An outcry from Nigeria forced Lebanese authorities to rescue the woman while a man thought to be responsible for the Facebook post was arrested. The Lebanese Ministry of Labour said the man would be tried in court for human trafficking.

But this is not an isolated case. Many Nigerian women trafficked to the Middle East have spoken out about being sold as slaves.

In January, 23-year-old Ajayi Omolola appeared in an online video saying she and a few other Nigerian women were being held under harsh conditions and that their lives were at risk.

“When we are ill, they don’t take us to the hospital, some of those I arrived in Lebanon with have died,” she said.

Omolola said on arrival in Lebanon, her passport was taken away and she was “sold”.

“I did not realise that they had sold me into slavery,” she said, adding that she only realised the gravity of her situation when her boss told her she could not return to Nigeria because he had “bought her”.

Kikelomo Olayide had a similar account. On arrival in Lebanon from Nigeria she was taken to a market. “In that market, they call us slaves,” she said.

Roland Nwoha, head of programmes/coordinator of migration and human trafficking at Idia Renaissance, a Nigerian organisation working to discourage irregular migration and human trafficking, told IPS that even though Europe is a major attraction for Nigerians in search of a better future abroad, the Middle East is proving an alternative for many.

Nwoha explained that unlike the journey to Europe, which involves a dangerous land journey through the desert and an equally dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, traffickers fly their victims to the Middle East after procuring visas for them with the promise of good jobs.

The chair of Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs Tolulope Akande-Sadipe said 80,000 Nigerian women are being held as sex slaves,and forced labour in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Nigerian women trafficked to the Middle East “almost always end in labour and sexual exploitation,” Daniel Atokolo Lagos commander of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons said.

Gloria Bright, a Nigerian teacher who was promised a teaching job with a monthly salary of $1,000 in Lebanon, was held captive and made to work as a domestic worker upon her arrival. She posted an online video in which she pleaded for help and to be rescued. She said besides being made to work under very harsh conditions, her boss sexually harassed her. “At times he will ask me to massage him, he will hug me, he will kiss me,” she said.

Bright was fortunate to be rescued by Nigerian authorities before the Aug. 4 Beirut blast.

Dabiri-Erewa said the trafficking of Nigerians to Lebanon “is becoming a big embarrassment and it has to be stopped”. In an effort to stop the crime, Nigerian authorities have arrested several people, including Lebanese residents in Nigeria. A Lebanese is being investigated in connection with the trafficking of 27 women to Lebanon, two of whom have been rescued.

The Lebanese ambassador to Nigeria, Houssam Diab, says his embassy is assisting the Nigerian government to stop the trafficking of women to his country. He said the issuance of work visas to Nigerians has been suspended following cases of the abuse of Nigerian women at the hands of their Lebanese employers.

The ambassador said the Lebanese Ministry of Labour will work out a “legal and systemic way to make domestic staff to come into Lebanon legally without the fear of inhuman treatment”.   

Nigerian activists, like Nwoha, who are working against human trafficking say the Nigerian government has to do more to curtailing the activities of the traffickers. They said the government should make conditions at home better to stop Nigerians desperately seeking a better life abroad.

 

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Related Articles

• No ‘Business as Usual’ for Children Post-COVID-19, say Laureates & Leaders
• Triple Emergencies of COVID-19, Flooding & Locusts Makes Somalia Susceptible to Human Trafficking
• Modern Day Slavery Reaches a Far Corner of the World

The post The Exploitative System that Traps Nigerian Women as Slaves in Lebanon appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Aujourd’hui, le Parlement européen devrait s’exprimer sur la proposition de réduction des émissions de CO2 dans le secteur maritime. Une première pour le navire européen, qui se fixerait ainsi des objectifs plus ambitieux que ceux de l’organisation maritime internationale (OMI).

Eigentlich müsste den Kantonen sauberes Trinkwasser wichtig sein. Wenn es aber ums Grundwasser geht, das mit Pestiziden und Gülle verschmutzt ist, sind die Fronten nicht nur im Parlament verhärtet. Auch mitten durch die Kantonsregierungen geht ein Riss.

With its Climate Law, Europe will be the first continent in the world to have a climate neutrality target for 2050. Whilst this will produce a positive environmental impact, it is expected that some sectors will suffer economically with job...

La liste des candidats à la Présidentielle 2020 au Ghana a été actualisée. Brigitte Dzogbenuku a été mandatée par le Parti Populaire Progressiste (PPP) pour le représenter à l’élection présidentielle du 7 décembre 2020. Elle est ainsi la deuxième femme en lice pour cette élection. Trois désistements ont été annoncés sur la liste des cinq […]

L’article Ghana : Brigitte Dzogbenuku en lice pour la Présidentielle est apparu en premier sur Afrik.com.

Wochenplan von Präsident Charles Michel 12.–18. September 2020

Charles Michel elnök heti munkaprogramja, 2020 szeptember 12–18.

Le ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche scientifique, Abdelbaki Benziane, a confirmé que la proposition de la date du 19 septembre comme date de reprise universitaire n’est pas définitive. En effet, et lors de son intervention en tant qu’invité de la Chaine 1 de la Radio nationale, le ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur et […]

L’article Date de la rentrée universitaire : Le ministre Abdelbaki Benziane s’exprime est apparu en premier sur .

Der Betrieb der Google-Suchmaschine und der Cloud-Anwendungen verschlingt riesige Strom-Kapazitäten. Um weniger klimaschädlich zu sein, will Google nicht nur Ausgleichszertifikate anschaffen, sondern direkt saubere Energie kaufen und fördern.

Will a Swiss natural remedy become the new wonder drug? Quite possibly! The renowned Spiez Laboratory has proven an antiviral effect in a recent study. In a petri dish, the natural remedy Echinaforce has shown itself to be a real corona killer.