It’s just after 9pm when the first Nigerian women start to appear on the streets of Asti, a small city near Turin in northern Italy. Some stand in groups of two or three, flagging down passing cars or checking their phones. Many are alone – solitary figures backlit by the stream of headlights moving into the city. Princess Inyang Okokon slows down her car as she spots two girls standing on a corner. Even with heavy makeup they look no older than 15 or 16. “So many new faces,” she says, shaking her head as she pulls her car to the side of the road and gets out to speak to them.
Princess, a 42-year-old mother of four from Nigeria’s southern Akwa Ibom state, has spent the last 17 years working for Progetto Integrazione Accoglienza Migranti (PIAM), a migrant rights and anti-trafficking organisation in the city. According to her, most – if not all – of the Nigerian prostitutes working on Asti’s streets tonight are victims of trafficking. “This is just one street in a small city. It is happening all over Italy and Europe and the numbers are growing and growing.”
Princess knows first-hand about the horrors these women are living through. In 1999 she was trafficked herself from her home in Nigeria to the streets of Turin. “When I talk to them I tell them that I know their story because it is my story too,” she says.
For nearly three decades, a thriving sex-trafficking industry has been operating between Nigeria and Italy. Many experts believe the trade in women started in the 1980s when Nigerians travelling to Italy on work visas to pick tomatoes realised that selling sex was far easier and more profitable than harvesting fruits or vegetables.
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