Increasing numbers of Nigerian women are being trafficked into prostitution in Burkina Faso’s gold mining camps, an investigation has revealed. Lured by traffickers who promise them jobs, they end up with huge debts and no way out.
Police in northern Greece have arrested 13 people accused of migrant smuggling. The men reportedly abducted and tortured migrants as young as 16 years old.
A Vietnamese teenager wanted in connection with a people smuggling operation which led to the deaths of 39 migrants en route to England is to be extradited. Ngo Sy Tai allegedly ran a safe house in Belgium that held the migrants.
Seventy migrants who were reportedly beaten and tortured in six secret prisons in the Libyan city of Bani Walid have been released. The city is considered a hub of human trafficking in Libya.
More than 170 people are being treated in hospital after a deadly fire which broke out in a migrant detention center in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Sunday, claiming at least as many as 30 lives. The cause of the fire is not known, but it is believed that the detainees were being kept in overcrowded and inhumane conditions in the facility.
The British government says it plans to crack down on people bringing migrants across the English Channel. The Prime Minister announced that penalties for smugglers would be "stiffened".
Libyan authorities have arrested the main suspect in the murder of 30 migrants last year. The migrants, mostly Bangladeshis, were killed last May in the city of Mezdah, south of Libya's capital Tripoli.
Italian authorities have reported more cases of Afghan minors entering the country hidden inside cargo trucks coming from the Balkans. Police said they apprehended youths in two separate cases in Ravenna and in Caserta this week.
A study carried out in Italy has found that only 3.4% of human trafficking cases are connected to other transnational crimes. The analysis presented on December 11 highlighted that this result makes it hard to justify stricter controls on migration flows based on the assumption that migrant trafficking leads to an increase in drug and arms trafficking.
Italian and Slovenian police say they have foiled an international criminal organization that helped migrants travel from a center for asylum seekers in Ljubljana to European countries -- mainly Italy, France and Germany. Alleged members of the association included people in charge of security at the hosting facility, investigative sources said on November 20.
The Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Fayez al-Sarraj announced it will move migrant centers under Tripoli's control from coastal areas to the country's interior, in an effort to cope with human trafficking.
Four men are due to go on trial in Britain on Monday in connection with the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants whose bodies were found in a lorry in southeast England.