The International Centre for Migration Policy (ICMPD) has advocated for the protection of children regardless of where they may find themselves.

The centre made this call at the School Anti-Trafficking Education and Advocacy Project (STEAP) Projects Engagement with Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) Executive Members, Strengthening Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Response and Stakeholders for the Review of Information Education Communications Materials, held in Benin yesterday.

Speaking at the programme held in collaboration with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP); Girls Power Initiatives (GPI), and the Government of the Netherlands, ICMPD Junior Project Officer in Edo State, Daniella Ige, said parents should be educated on how to identify the key components of trafficking, as well as how to protect their children.

“They (children) should be protected in the community, in the school, even in church, and anywhere they tend to go,” she added.

While urging parents to be cautious of the new tactics of human traffickers, Ige said that traffickers have devised several tactics in carrying out their acts.

She said that these traffickers tend to go to the communities and talk to the parents directly to traffic their children.

Also speaking, Benin Zonal Commander, NAPTIP, Sam Offiah, disclosed that traffickers go for very young victims, hence the need for advocacy. Represented by Joan Ojiewa, the Head of Public Enlightenment Unit, Offiah said young girls trafficked are kept in a location where young men are recruited and paid for the sole purpose of impregnating them for childbearing and subsequent selling or trafficking.

On her part, the project’s Desk Officer in the Edo State Ministry of Education, Mrs Mercy Imasuen-Irabor, said the ministry is committed to protecting children’s rights in the state.