By Ozioruva Aliu

BENIN CITY – THE Africa Youth Growth Foundation yesterday embarked on an anti-human trafficking sensitisation in major streets and markets including the Oba market, New Brnin Market in Benin City, Edo State to preach against human trafficking in any form

Leading the campaign, the Programme Manager of the Foundation, Adams Omoba, said the project, Reintegration, Empowerment and Sensitisation for Trafficking In Persons Programme (RESTIPP) is aimed to provide support for the victims of human trafficking in the state.

“This sensitisation exercise is part of the project that we call Reintegration, Empowerment and Sensitisation for Trafficking In Persons Programme. The RESTIPP project is actually about reintegrating victims of trafficking, specifically women.

“The project has highlighted 50 beneficiaries that are supposed to go through vocational skills training and also go through psycho-social support.

“We understand that people coming from that journey have a lot of traumatic experiences that they need to come out from before a proper reintegration can take place,” he said.

The programme manager said the foundation had inculcated training in vocational skills and psycho-social support through counselling on the beneficiaries.

“The last part of the project is to seek redress for some of them through the law because we understand that some of them come back with some problems that are related to legal issues.

“So we are offering them opportunities to seek to redress wherever that is needed. So basically that’s what the RESTIPP project is about so far,” he explained.

The project, which he said had a duration of six months, targeted Benin being a place with an endemic problem of trafficking in persons and that it was funded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC).

“We also joined NAPTIPP, which is our major partner in the world day against trafficking and this sensitisation today is actually the climax of the sensitisation activities.

On his part, the Benin Zonal Command, Obi Onyebuchi, said they are here to raise awareness and to sensitize the dangers against human trafficking.

He said they decided to take the sensitization exercise to Oba market to inform the women and girls about the risks of human trafficking and irregular migration.