Paul Stanfield, INTERPOL Director of Organised and Emerging Crime, on Operation Epervier II
Channel: INTERPOL
Date: 2019-04-25

A number of victims were also rescued from premises where they were forced into prostitution. 

With a number of investigations ongoing, police arrested 47 people and seized vehicles, cash, mobile phones and computers.

Forced labour and exploitation

Evidence in the region shows that victims of trafficking are recruited and trafficked using deception and coercion, and held in bondage in various labour intensive activities.

Many of the 157 rescued minors were moved around as ‘merchandise’ themselves across the border, and made to work in markets all day, peddling goods, fetching water, cooking, carrying heavy loads, or working as housemaids. Some were the victims of sexual exploitation. 

The children were aged between 11 and 16, with the youngest rescued at the land border between Benin and Nigeria. 

There police found a boy who had been forced to carry clandestinely between the two countries heavy goods such as bags of rice weighing up to 40 kg.

All the victims originated from Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Togo.