When 19-year-old Onome left Warri for what she believed was a life-changing opportunity in Russia, she was responding to limited options. We often repeat the phrase “What does not kill you makes you stronger.” Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, it celebrates endurance. For Onome, it meant unforeseen discomfort would simply be the price of lifting her family out of generational poverty. What Onome and many other girls did not anticipate before leaving their comfort zones were the factory floors of the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, where military drones are assembled.
An October 2024 investigation by the Associated Press found that roughly 200 African women were recruited under misleading job descriptions and placed in facilities assembling Shahed-type drones. Many had been promised hospitality or technical roles. Instead, they were inserted into a military production chain. Subsequent reporting by the BBC included firsthand testimonies describing chemical burns, lower pay than advertised, and working conditions that differed materially from recruitment promises.
Several other reports have also raised concerns about the awareness or involvement of diplomatic actors in facilitating recruitment or processing visas linked to the Alabuga programme. Where embassies, whether Russian or those of origin states, facilitate visa pathways or fail to act despite credible warning indicators, serious questions of institutional complicity arise.
Under the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, the Palermo Protocol supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, trafficking includes recruitment secured through deception or abuse of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation, including forced labour.
The recruitment narrative for this Alabuga “career start” programme targets young women between 18 and 22 from economically strained backgrounds, many driven by migration dreams and the popular “japa” culture – the urgent search for greener pastures abroad. Recruiters lean into vulnerability: limited local job markets, gendered unemployment gaps, and families desperate for remittances.
The documented patterns raise ethical, legal, gendered and security concerns.
Russia, as a state party that ratified the Palermo Protocol in 2004, has committed to preventing trafficking, protecting victims, and cooperating with other states under the Protocol’s prevention, protection, and prosecution framework. International human rights law more broadly expects states to take reasonable steps to prevent and respond to serious abuses affecting their citizens, including in transnational labour contexts. In practice, this means origin states should use diplomacy, consular protection, and bilateral cooperation mechanisms to identify risks and intervene where credible indicators of exploitation emerge. That has not happened at the scale required.
The pattern is also unmistakably gendered. Recruitment systems that disproportionately target young women because they are perceived as compliant or less likely to challenge conditions embed discrimination into their structure. Article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) requires states to take appropriate measures to suppress trafficking in women. The Committee’s General Recommendation No. 38 recognises trafficking as intertwined with global labour migration and structural gender inequality. At the regional level, Article 29 of the Maputo Protocol obliges African states to prevent and condemn trafficking in women and protect those most at risk. This is a binding regional law.
Some will argue these women made a choice. And yes, contracts were signed. But international law recognises that consent formed within conditions of economic desperation and structural inequality cannot automatically sanitise exploitation.
There is also the regional security dimension. West Africa already confronts trafficking networks, irregular migration routes, and fragile labour oversight systems, among others. Opaque recruitment corridors tied to geopolitically sensitive industries weaken governance and risk normalising exploitative labour pipelines. Within West Africa, the ECOWAS legal order incorporates binding human rights commitments, and the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice has demonstrated its willingness to adjudicate violations under the African Charter. What remains underdeveloped is systematic regional monitoring of gendered transnational recruitment before harm escalates.
We have seen how swiftly governments sometimes mobilise when young men are trapped in exploitative labour conditions abroad. Diplomatic engagement follows. Press briefings follow. But when young women are recruited through softer, deceptive narratives framed as empowerment, the threshold for intervention appears higher.
West African governments must therefore swiftly strengthen oversight of foreign recruitment agencies operating within their jurisdictions. Transparent licensing systems, enforceable sanctions for misrepresentation, and bilateral labour safeguards grounded in human rights and gender-responsive standards are required. Regional coordination under ECOWAS should prioritise cross-border data sharing, early-warning mechanisms, and scrutiny of recruitment channels that exhibit trafficking indicators.
Public awareness campaigns must equip young women to recognise deceptive recruitment practices. Civil society, particularly women-led organisations, must be resourced to monitor, report, and intervene before harm escalates.
In this case, what does not kill you does not automatically make you stronger, especially when institutions charged with protection fail to do their work. The investigative evidence is already in the public domain, and the legal frameworks are binding. What remains is whether governments will act before this type of gendered exploitation becomes irreversible.
Funke Adeoye is an international human rights lawyer and the Executive Director of Hope Behind Bars Africa.
