By Mariam Williams
The Executive Director of the National Agency Against Trafficking In Persons (NAATIP), Madam Tulai Jawara Ceesay, has lamented that the Gambia serves as a source, transit point and destination of human trafficking.
The NAATIP boss was speaking at a day-long sensitisation workshop on trafficking in persons at the Justice Ministry’s conference hall in Banjul. She said the objective of the workshop was to sensitise participants on the dangers and consequences of human trafficking and the role they could play in the fight against human trafficking in the country.
Revealing that The Gambia serves as a source, a transit point and a destination country for cases of trafficking in persons, Madam Jawara Ceesay explained that trafficking in persons comes in a different forms, and it’s the “recruitment and the transportation of exploring an individual within and across our national border”.
She informed them that the forum is the first sensitisation of travel agencies and travel airlines on trafficking in persons, even though, NAATIP had worked closely with the airspace airlines in the past.
The NAATIP head added that, the 2007 Trafficking in Persons Act of the National Assembly created the National Agency Against Trafficking in Persons (NAATIP), and is under the purview and direct supervision of the Attorney General’s Chambers (AG’s Chambers) and Ministry of Justice. She indicated that there is a functioning Board of Directors in place and an Operational Task Force.
According to her, NAATIP’s mandate is primarily to combat cases of human trafficking as a form of transnational organised crime. She stated that, The Gambia as a country has signed and ratified the Palermo Protocol, which is a protocol to prevent, suppress and punish those involved in trafficking in persons, especially women and children; and this supplement the UN Conventions Against Transnational Organised Crime.
However, Executive Director Jawara Ceesay called on all travelling agencies to work together and stamp out the menaces of modern day slave trade.
“As I said earlier, trafficking in persons comes in different forms. We have child labour, we have worse forms of child labour, we have removal of human organs, and operation to back way-which involves smuggling of migrants,” she told her audience.
On home front, she noted that the most common form of trafficking in persons in The Gambia “is the international labour migration where we have most of our Gambian girls going to the Middle East to work as house girls”; and secondly, they also have Gambian boys going to Italy through the back way.
Being a transnational organised crime and a cross border crime, Jawara Ceesay reasoned the need to work closely together, so that they could all work and eradicate this modern day slave trade. Noting that it’s a global concern, the Gambia’s NAATIP chief said they are all part of the global efforts to fight and eradicate the menace of trafficking in persons within the country and outside.
Other speakers were Ismaila Mbye, Investigator of NAATIP and Yusupha Sanyang, Data Base Officer of NAATIP. The officials disclosed that 44 human trafficking cases were reported from 2011 to 2019.
