Strange deaths among trafficked children in Plateau – NHRC raises alarm

The Director of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Grace Pam says trafficked children in the state have been experiencing strange deaths.

She lamented that trafficked children in the state had become victims of organ harvest while speaking at a one-day workshop organised by the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Center (RULAAC) in Jos on Tuesday.

Pam revealed that her office found that in some local governments in the state, parents willingly offer their children to be trafficked for just peanuts.

“Our findings also showed that most of these children being trafficked end up as victims of organ harvests,” she added.

She explained that the traffickers deceive parents with claims to take innocent children for domestic work while their main intention is to harvest their organs.

She said that without knowing, the parents accept their children after harvesting their organs by the traffickers, lamenting that shortly after returning these children, they develop certain complications and later die.

She called on parents all over the state to stop the habit of trafficking their children, stressing that such practice amounts to human rights abuse.

The Director opined that child trafficking is a poverty-induced crime by poor parents, explaining that the parents should know that the child they traffic out becomes vulnerable to the inhuman crime of organ harvest.

She stressed the need for Governor Simon Lalong to set up a special task force to monitor the activities of traffickers in the state with a view to protecting the rights of citizens and bringing the menace to a logical conclusion in the state.