By Chris Otaigbe
While Temitope-Olamide Arowolo may be celebrating her rescue and return to Nigeria, courtesy of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), it is noteworthy that her resistance to being converted from a housemaid into sex slave was what led to her ordeal in Lebanon.
Like all Nigerian girls trafficked to countries around the world, Arowolo was lured and deceived into the country to eventually become a slave to Lebanese, who are permitted to do with her what they please. Often times, these young girls are brutally treated as sex slaves. Arowolo resisted and became a victim of further maltreatment in the hands of wicked-minded bosses who decided to put her up for sale on Facebook.
Lebanese inhumanity to a Nigerian and Arowolo’s cry for help attracted the world and luckily for her, NAPTIP responded and the rest is history.
Moved by the emotional, physical and psychological torture she must have suffered, the Nigerian anti-human trafficking Agency vowed to go after the traffickers who planned the trafficking of Temitope-Olamide Arowolo to the Republic of Lebanon.
An indigene of Oyo State, Arowolo was the Nigerian lady whose video of the ordeal of enslavement went viral on social media sometime in May and June.
Arowolo had alleged that she was been manhandled and given inhuman treatment where she worked as a slave in Lebanon by her enslaver, a situation that brought on her so many allegations by her boss.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) gathered that Arowolo’s refusal to allow the husband of her boss sleep with her inflicted some injury on him, and she (Arowolo) was charged for an attempted murder and theft by the Lebanon police.
NAN also gathered that Arowolo was in the custody of Lebanon police where she released her ordeal video, which later caught the attention of the Nigerian government.
According to NAN, the veracity of the video made Nigerian government to contact its Lebanese counterpart, and the country Ambassador to Nigeria promised to instigate the release of the young woman.
Meanwhile, while welcoming her at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, by the NAPTIP Director-General, Julie Okah-Donli and other government officials, the director-general vowed to go after the traffickers.
She also said the victim was going to be rehabilitated by the agency in its shelter and thereafter, be empowered, adding that Arowolo will first be quarantined for two weeks as the law stipulated for now, and thereafter, she will be taken to the agency shelter.
“We have to counsel her and rehabilitate her and thereafter, empower her; the job of arresting her traffickers will be done after profiling her properly. We will counsel her and get necessary information from her that will lead us to the arrest of her traffickers for prosecution, we will ensure justice for her, none of the traffickers will go scot-free. She is going to be an ambassador of NAPTIP,” the director-general said.
Arowolo, who spoke with newsmen about her ordeal in Lebanon, advised ladies to stay back in Nigeria and do whatever destiny has given them.
“Going outside there was like a hell, even not only Lebanon, but what I experienced at Lebanon, I pray for my enemy not to experience that,” she said.
She was one of the fifty Nigerian women who had been trafficked into Lebanon as undocumented workers but who had been rescued and returned home.
According to the UN, thousands of women and girls from Nigeria and other African countries are trafficked every year.
They are often lured away with promises of jobs in Europe or Asia, but usually end up being exploited as domestic maids or forced into prostitution.
An undercover BBC News Arabic investigation, in Kuwait, for instance, found that domestic workers were being illegally bought and sold online in a booming black market.
Had Arowolo agreed to her enslaver’s sexual demands, which would have come each time via rape, she would have been plunged into an eternity of sexual slavery with no remedy. If she had spoken out and seek redress in Lebanese Law court, the best that may have happened to her in that circumstance is that her rapist would have had to marry her. Even though the Law that indulges such illicit behavior had been abolished three years earlier; 2017, it is doubtful her boss would have allowed Arowolo enjoy such a union, as she would have viewed and further victimize her Nigerian slave as an opportunist crashed into her matrimony as second wife.
Blatant brutalization of women and fragrant violation of women/girl child’s rights had been an acceptable norm in Lebanon and appears to have been backed by that nation’s statutes. It is captured in Article 522 of Lebanon’s Laws.
Article 522 of Lebanese Penal code allowed men, who had been convicted of committed sexual assault, abduction, or statutory rape against a woman, to avoid penalty of no less than five years of hard labor if a valid contract of marriage could be provided. Article 522 was officially admitted to the Lebanese Penal Code in February 1948. Its original form stated, “If a valid contract of marriage is made between the perpetrator of any of the offenses mentioned in this section, and the victim, the prosecution is suspended. If judgment was already passed, the implementation of the punishment is suspended.”
Despite the intervention of United Nation (UN) via Committees set up to address the issue, the problem remained for close to a decade before it was jettisoned. In spite of the abolition of the Article, it is obvious the practice persists as many women continue to suffer under the weight of men who blatantly violate them. Arowolo’s revolted to prevent the possibility of such ugly practice becoming her reality.
In 2008, UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women came up with its report on rampant state of discrimination against Women in Lebanon.
In their concluding observations, issued on April 8, 2008, the Committee stated that it remained concerned about the persistence of violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, rape and crimes committed in the name of honour and about the lack of a comprehensive approach to address violence against women.
It also reiterateed its concern about article 562 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which allows mitigation of the penalty for crimes committed in the name of honour, which continues to be in force.
More worrisome for the Committee were other discriminatory provisions in the Lebanese Penal Code, in particular, article 503, which tolerates marital rape, article 522, which allows charges to be dropped in cases of rape.
In accordance with its general recommendation No. 19 recognizing that violence against women is a form of discrimination against women and thus constitutes a violation of their human rights under the Convention, the Committee urged the State party to place high priority on establishing and implementing comprehensive measures to address all forms of violence against women and girls.
The committee called upon the State party to enact, without delay, legislation on violence against women, including domestic violence, so as to ensure that violence against women constitutes a criminal offence, that women and girls who are victims of violence have access to immediate means of redress and protection and that perpetrators are prosecuted and punished.
“The Committee calls upon the State party to amend, without delay, applicable provisions in the Penal Code to ensure that perpetrators of honour crimes are not exonerated, that marital rape is criminalized and that marriage to the victim does not exempt a sexual offender from punishment. The Committee recommends that the State party also introduce and implement educational and awareness-raising measures aimed at law enforcement officials, the judiciary, health service providers, social workers, community leaders and the general public, in order to ensure that they understand that all forms of violence against women are unacceptable. The Committee requests the State party to provide detailed information in its next report on the laws and policies in place to deal with violence against women and the impact of such measures. (Paragraph 26 and 27),” the report stated.
While commending the State party for its efforts to host refugees from neighboring countries, the Committee expressed concern, at the time, that the State party has not enacted any laws or regulations relating to the status of asylum-seekers and refugees, thereby adversely impacting on women refugees and asylum-seekers.
The Committee further noted with concern that refugee women and girls and internally displaced women and girls remain in a vulnerable and marginalized situation, in particular with regard to access to education, employment, health and housing and protection from all forms of violence.
The Committee urged the State party to adopt laws and regulations relating to the status of asylum-seekers and refugees in Lebanon, in line with international standards, in order to ensure protection for asylum-seeking and refugee women and their children. It recommended that the State party consider accession to international instruments to address the situation of refugees and stateless persons, including the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.
It further suggested that the State party fully integrate a gender-sensitive approach throughout the process of granting asylum/refugee status. The Committee also admonished the State party to implement targeted measures for refugee women and girls and internally displaced women and girls, within specific timetables, “to improve access to education, employment, health and housing and to protect them from all forms of violence and to monitor their implementation. The Committee requests the state party to report on the results achieved in improving the situation of these groups of women and girls in its next periodic report…” stated the report.
While noting the State party’s ratification of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the Committee stated its frustration about the fact that trafficking in women and girls kept growing in Lebanon and that the State party had neither enacted legislation on trafficking nor established a comprehensive plan to prevent and eliminate trafficking in women and to protect victims.
“It is further concerned that women and girls who have been trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation and forced domestic labour may be prosecuted and penalized under immigration laws and are therefore subject to re-victimization. The Committee is also concerned at the lack of systematic data collection on this phenomenon,” the Report noted.
The committee urged the state party to intensify its efforts to combat all forms of trafficking in women and girls, including by enacting specific and comprehensive legislation and by putting programmes in place for the repatriation and reintegration of victims of trafficking.
“The Committee further calls upon the State party to increase its international, regional and bilateral cooperation with countries of origin and transit so as to address, more effectively, the causes of trafficking, and improve prevention of trafficking through information exchange.
The committee urges the State party to collect and analyze data from the national, regional and international police and other sources, prosecute and punish traffickers, and ensure the protection of the human rights of trafficked women and girls, including protective measures and legal assistance. The Committee urges the State party to ensure that trafficked women and girls are not subject to prosecution of immigration laws and have adequate support to be in a position to provide testimony against their traffickers,” the report stated.
Reprieve for victims of the punishing Article 522, came eight years later when concerned Lebanese rose to call attention for the Law to be repealed.
Officially known as “A White Dress Doesn’t Cover the Rape”, the Campaign against the Lebanese rape-marriage law Article 522 was launched by the Lebanese non-governmental organization, Abaad MENA, in December 2016.
Its aim was to abolish Article 522 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which allows a man to avoid punishment for rape if he produces a valid marriage contract with the victim. The campaign included street protests, the hashtag #Undress522 in social media and a video of a raped woman covered in bruises turned into a bride.
A month before launching the campaign, the NGO executed a countrywide plan to raise awareness on the article to which only one percent of Lebanese population were discerned of.
It was not the first time that Lebanon repealed a law considered to be against human rights. Article 562 of the penal code was amended in 1999, which legalized honour killings whenever a man found his spouse, sister, ascendants or descendants in a situation of unlawful sexual intercourse.
Furthermore, on April 1, 2014, the parliament passed a law with the aim to protect women against domestic violence. There are no accurate figures about sexual assaults on women since most women do not report due to the sensitivity of the topic.
Within the first few weeks of the campaign, influential figures expressed their support for the movement against Article 522, such as Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who did so on his Twitter account.
Despite Lebanon’s ratification of the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and other international treaties such as Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which supplements United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the country used to maintain what has been described as ‘crimes of honor.’
In December 2016, the Lebanese Parliamentary Committee for Administration and Justice announced that an agreement had been made to repeal Article 522 from the Lebanese Penal Code. For the law to be repealed, the parliament had to confirm the committee’s decision.
On August 16, 2017, Lebanon abolished Article 522 and declared re-examination of Articles 505 and 518.
Three years later, Arowolo’s ordeal in the hands of her enslavers, is a disturbing revelation of the prevalence of the practice of women-violating acts, despite the repeal of the rape-permitting Article 522 among other women-rights violating indulgent acts from the Laws of Lebanon.
