Human trafficking for sexual exploitation from Nigeria into Western Europe: The role of voodoo rituals in the functioning of a criminal network
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370815617188 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Author | C.S. Baarda |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
2016, Vol. 13(2) 257 –273
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370815617188
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Human trafficking for sexual
exploitation from Nigeria
into Western Europe: The
role of voodoo rituals in the
functioning of a criminal
network
C.S. Baarda
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
This study is a content analysis of wiretapped conversations and police interviews concerning the
criminal case of ‘Operation Koolvis’: an investigation into a Nigerian human trafficking ring for sexual
exploitation in Western Europe. The criminal network traffics women from Nigeria, via the Netherlands
as a transit country, to become street prostitutes in Italy. The aim is to explore the role of ‘voodoo’
in the functioning of the organization, applying transaction cost economics and rational choice theory.
Four main categories of voodoo use were found. Firstly, voodoo is a coercive mechanism. Secondly,
it is used cynically in cooperation between traffickers. Thirdly, there is non-cynical mention of voodoo
as a belief system. A fourth category concerns voodoo priests as independent enforcers of contracts.
Keywords
Criminal cooperation, human trafficking, organized crime, transaction costs, voodoo
Introduction
‘No one had ever beheld the Oracle Agbala, except his priestess. But no one who had ever
crawled into his awful shrine had come out without the fear of his power.’
(Chinua Achebe, 1958)
The trafficking of human beings has proven to be a crime that is hard to eradicate, despite
the best efforts of law-enforcing agencies (Aronowitz et al., 2010). Since the 1990s, the
Corresponding author:
C.S. Baarda, University of Oxford, New College, Holywell Street, Oxford, OX1 3BN, UK.
Email: charlotte.baarda@sociology.ox.ac.uk
617188EUC0010.1177/1477370815617188European Journal of CriminologyBaarda
research-article2015
Article
258 European Journal of Criminology 13(2)
severity and magnitude of this modern form of slavery have increasingly been brought to
public attention (BNRM, 2007; UNODC, 2006). The International Labour Organization
(ILO) has estimated that 2.4 million people throughout the world were lured into forced
labour in 2004 (Andees, 2008). In industrialized economies, 55 percent of those in forced
labour are victims of sexual exploitation (Andees, 2008). Human trafficking is an urgent
social problem whose empirical evidence deserves careful scrutiny.
The number of Nigerian victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation is among
the highest of any ethnicity in Western Europe, next to victims from Eastern Europe.
Each year, hundreds of Nigerian women are being trafficked to Europe (Kamerman and
Wittenberg, 2009). Dire economic circumstances and images of a romanticized future in
Europe play Nigerian women into the hands of human traffickers. When Nigerian women
are intercepted in European asylum centres, questioning by the police is often compli-
cated by a fear of occult voodoo contracts that prevents the women from talking
(Kamerman and Wittenberg, 2009). This paper aims to contribute to the criminological
literature on human trafficking by exploring the role of voodoo as part of the functioning
of Nigerian human trafficking rings.
Voodoo in the context of the organizational features of trafficking
Prior to the empirical part of the paper, this section will provide a general discussion of
the organizational features of human trafficking networks and of Nigerian trafficking for
sexual exploitation in particular. Voodoo will be defined in the context of Nigerian cul-
tural tradition as well as in terms of its place in the modus operandi of human trafficking
networks. This is followed by a discussion of ideological barriers obstructing the expan-
sion of knowledge on trafficking. This paper responds to calls in the literature for sys-
tematic empirical studies to overcome these barriers.
Human trafficking networks are comparable to drug trafficking rings in terms of their
flexibility. When sections of trafficking rings are successfully removed through police
intervention, the remaining network can often be adjusted in order to continue business.
The remaining actors are able to find new business opportunities through weak points in
immigration procedures in other countries, or by exploiting other criminal connections
(Kleemans and Van de Bunt, 2003). Human trafficking for sexual exploitation can be
analysed as a process divided into three stages. In chronological order, the journey of a
trafficked girl will comprise a recruitment, a trafficking and an exploitation stage
(Kleemans and Smit, 2014). However, if the goal is to describe a full life cycle, a stage
that can be added to this analysis is the post-exploitation stage. In Nigerian networks,
women control women (Siegel and de Blank, 2010). The demand for new victims ulti-
mately comes from the ‘madams’, female pimps, who are former prostitutes. The
‘madam’ owns a girl until she has repaid her debt. She pays for the recruitment and trans-
portation of the girl. The possibility of earning a good income as a ‘madam’ in the future
may be one of the incentives for victims to comply in an exploitative situation. This
results in a circle of victims turning into offenders.
Voodoo or juju is a form of witchcraft in Nigeria existing alongside Christian or
Islamic belief. Voodoo in the context of Nigerian human trafficking will refer to a varia-
tion on ancient West African religious traditions, in which a priest connected to a voodoo
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