Pregnant Nigerian Italian Migrant Who Delivered At Sea Now Seeking Asylum in Italy

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Remember Stephanie, the 25-year-old Nigerian illegal migrant who delivered a baby girl, Francesca Marina, on board an Italian navy ship after she was rescued from a boat floating off the coast of Libya? If you missed it, read here.

The young mum has shared on her background, events leading to embarking on the dangerous journey, life at the refugee camp with her baby and hopes for the future in Italy, where she is now seeking asylum.

According to the Guardian UK, Stephanie, a hair stylist from Benin City in southern Nigeria, frequently drove with her employer to Libya for business, a journey of two and a half days. It was while selling hair products there that she met and married a Nigerian man, before finding domestic work in Tripoli.

Stephanie decided to flee Libya as her pregnancy progressed and the security situation worsened in the increasingly violent and chaotic country.

“After two months everything was torn upside down; what I wished for wasn’t there any more,” she said, explaining that she left her husband during the pregnancy because he was violent. A Nigerian woman described as a friend helped arrange her passage to Europe, without asking for payment.

Stephanie’s home city is the departure point for the vast majority of Nigerian victims trafficked to Europe for prostitution, according to a March report by the European Refugee Fund. But she denies knowing about the trade. “I was in the boat and I did not even know I was going to Italy, because in my condition I was so weak,” she said.

Stephanie, arrived in July with her baby girl who was born just weeks before, on board an Italian navy ship in the Mediterranean. She was the sixth baby to have been born on a rescue ship since 2013. They now reside at the hilltop Sicilian city of Ragusa, a place that has fast become a haven for women seeking sanctuary after the perilous sea journey to Europe.

While Stephanie speaks highly of the refuge, part of a government network of homes for refugees and asylum seekers (Sprar), she has less fond memories of the nearly two months she spent at a Sicilian migration centre. “It was so horrible, I didn’t like it. It was so boring, so rough,” she says.

In Ragusa, Stephanie passes her time looking after baby Francesca while she waits for her asylum claim to be assessed. “I want my papers, then I’ll start looking for a job,” she said, willing to go anywhere in Italy there is employment.

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Turning to her baby, Stephanie said she would also try to nurture any artistic talents she saw in Francesca. “I will take care of her as a mother, for education and everything,” she said.

Stephanie hopes one day the two of them will be given the opportunity to meet the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte, the baby with such a different start in life. However, she admits her dream is far-fetched, adding, “For the mother to see me and talk face to face I think would be very good. But how is it going to be possible?”

About 5,000 Nigerian women have reportedly arrived in Italy by sea this year, the largest female group by nationality and a significant increase on the 1,454 who took the same route in 2014. The young women are often promised jobs in Italy and forced into sex work, told they will be freed once they have paid a debt that can be as high as €80,000 (£57,700).