A/HRC/41/46/Add.1 Report of the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, on her visit to Nigeria I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, visited Nigeria from 3 to 10 September 2018, at the invitation of the Government. The objectives of the visit, which included meetings in Abuja, Lagos and Benin City, were to examine the prevalent forms of trafficking in persons and to assess the effectiveness of measures taken by the Government to prevent and combat trafficking and protect the human rights of trafficked persons. 2. The Special Rapporteur expresses her sincere gratitude to the Government for its invitation and for the full cooperation extended to her prior to and during her visit. She met with representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Federal Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of the Interior, the National Emergency Management Agency and the Office of the National Security Adviser. She also held meetings with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, the National Human Rights Commission, the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons and the Office of the Inspector-General of Police. She exchanged views with the delegation of the European Union and with the United Nations country team. She also visited a shelter for victims of trafficking in Abuja run by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and other shelters run by civil society organizations, such as the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation, the Committee for the Support of the Dignity of Women and the Society for the Empowerment of Young People in Abuja, Lagos and Benin City respectively. She is grateful to the resilient survivors who courageously shared their experiences and aspirations in the hope of effectively preventing and combating trafficking in persons. II. Main findings A. Forms and manifestations of trafficking in persons 3. Nigeria remains a source, transit and destination country for victims of trafficking. Victims are trafficked to Europe through the central Mediterranean route, but also to Gulf States, the Russian Federation and West and Southern African countries for the purpose of both sexual and labour exploitation. Some are already recruited by their traffickers in the country of origin, others may start their migration journey voluntarily. However, owing to the absence of safe and regular migration channels, the vast majority of them fall prey to traffickers in transit countries, such as Libya, and are subject to all forms of human rights violations, including torture, rape, extortion, forced labour, sexual and labour exploitation amounting to trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. 4. Internal trafficking, mainly from rural to urban areas is also reportedly rampant in Nigeria, although often overlooked. It mainly affects women and girls for the purpose of domestic servitude and sexual exploitation and men and boys for the purpose of child begging, and labour exploitation in street vending, mining and stone quarrying, agriculture and textile manufacturing. 5. According to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, in 2017, 1,890 victims were rescued, of whom 23.7 per cent were men and boys and 75.3 per cent women and girls. The majority of Nigerian victims came from Edo State and, to a 2