Nigerian Baby Farms Breed Slaves from Slaves

I wish this article were a joke, and that the term "baby farm" was an exaggeration for what is happening to teen girls and their children in Nigeria.  It's not.  Nigerian girls are being trafficked to breed children in factory farm-like conditions to then be harvested and sold.  Both the teens and their children are victims of the baby harvesting industry.

Here's how the baby farm operation works.  Poor teen girls are lured into traffickers' hands in many of the ways traffickers lure teen girls for sex- promises of jobs, money, love, or stability.  But instead of simply enslaving these girls in a traditional brothel, the traffickers bring them to an illegal clinic where they are raped until they become pregnant.  During the pregnancy, they are cared for medically.  After they give birth, the babies are sold into slavery for anywhere between $2,500 and $3,800 and the girls are paid $170 for their baby and their "work". 

These clinics operate like a factory farm- the seeds are sown via rape into the teen mothers.  The babies are then allowed to germinate, are harvested, and are sold as a commodity.  I have rarely in my years working with human trafficking systems seen a process so completely dehumanizing to all the people involved.  The girls are treated not just as objects but as factories, and the babies are treated as a product.  A disturbing addition to this already disturbing story is the fact that some of these children are adopted by well-meaning parents, who believe the clinic is a legitimate adoption agency.  They see the payment as an adoption fee and don't realize their child was created via human trafficking and rape in order to turn a profit.  Other children, however, are not sold to well-meaning parents at all.  Some are sold into slavery.

Thus far, I don't know of any confirmed cases of baby farms outside of Nigeria where the teen mothers were trafficked into the situation.  There have been reports of baby farms in other countries like India where the women were all supposedly participating of their own free will.  But I cannot help but believe that where there is a profit to be had by the sale of human beings, there will be traffickers willing to do what it takes to make that profit.  This is not a uniquely Nigerian crime- in fact, Nigeria has laws preventing the sale of children in the same way the U.S. and the UK and many other countries do.   

The photo above is a little tongue-in-cheek, but the reality of these girls' experiences is bleak.  The outlook for some of their children is no brighter.