Brussels, a city in Belgium has said it will name a new street after a murdered Nigerian sex worker, as part of a wider campaign to recognise women.

Eunice Osayande was stabbed to death by one of her customers in June 2018.

Ms Osayande came to the Belgian capital in 2016 in a quest of a brighter future. She believed the men who invited her there were acting agents who were going to make her a film star.

In reality, they were human traffickers. Upon arrival in Brussels, she was immediately forced into prostitution and had to pay her pimps €45,000 for the smuggling, as well as paying rent for a filthy flat where she lived together with several other victims.

In the weeks leading up to her death, she had contacted a sex worker charity and told them she was experiencing violence and intimidation while working. She feared she couldn’t go to the police because she was an undocumented migrant.

In June 2018, 23-year-old Ms Osayande was stabbed 17 times by a 17-year-old customer in the Gare du Nord district who is currently awaiting trial.

In January this year, the four people involved in her smuggling were sentenced to between 33 months and four years in prison.

Protests led by the migrant sex worker community in Brussels soon erupted. The marchers demanded better working conditions and called on local authorities to create clear legal guidelines for the sector.

Prostitution is not illegal in Belgium but there are no unified national rules.

A year following her death, her colleagues gathered to commemorate her during a silent march and pleaded with the municipality for better working condition.

By naming a new street after Ms Osayande, the City of Brussels said it wanted to draw attention to all the “forgotten women who are victims of human trafficking, sexual violence and femicides”.