Over 100 Burundian women have been trafficked to the Gulf nations in the past week where they are being mistreated and exploited reports Bloomberg
“They are taken there illegally,” Pacifique Nininahazwe, leader of the Forum for Conscious Awareness, known by its French acronym, Focode, said in a statement in the capital, Bujumbura.
An excess of 800 women were trafficked to the Middle East countries last year according to Burundi Women Association Confederation. Police Spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said that some of the women have become slaves and have been sold from one owner to another.
“I was bought by the first boss,” Aline Munyaneza, who was rescued from an Arabian Peninsula country, told reporters in Bujumbura on Thursday. “After six months, my boss sold me to another boss. “We were treated like animals.”
The Gulf state include the seven Arab states which border the Persian Gulf, namely Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
More than 21 million people have been trafficked in a 150 billion dollars human trafficking market with at least 4.5 million being sexually exploited according to the International Labour Organization.
