蜜芽传媒

Police in south-eastern Nigeria say they've rescued at least thirty-five teenagers from a so-called baby factory - a building disguised as a hotel where young women and teenagers were held captive in order to produce babies for sale.聽 According to the police, four of the group rescued were already pregnant. Often, these baby factories go undiscovered creating a complex trail of abuse and exploitation driven by some couples' desperation to have a child and the greed of the traffickers.聽

Osai Ojigho, the director of the human rights' group Amnesty International in Nigeria, explains that baby factories are common in the south-east of Nigeria for a variety of reasons, including the poverty of the area and the fact Catholicism is widely practised, so little access to abortions. She says there is pressure for couples to have a male child, especially for the wealthy who have land (as only males can inherit land). Bride prices are also one of the highest in Nigeria, and therefore there is pressure on women to have children to justify, in the family's eyes, the expense. Couples who cannot have children source babies as there is stigma about adoption, often taking leave from their homes for a while they pretend to be pregnant, and returning with a baby. She says there is a mix of girls and women in the baby factories - those who have been thrown out of their homes because of it, and those who are lured into the hotels and raped, and then trapped there when they become pregnant.

Photo: A small baby being hugged Credit: Getty Images