Waging war against human trafficking

By Phares Mutembei

Scenario: Tim Masafa is a 15-year-old boy, living in marginalised Tana River. His mother, Pendo, loves him a lot and is always going out of her way to cater for his many needs. But almost always, she is not able to meet his school fees’ needs, or even clothes. As much as she would love to, she is many times not able to even afford a single meal.

Anne Nyabera

Then one day, her better-off sister pays them a visit and offers to take the boy with her to Nairobi. She will take care of his every need and even enrol him in a city school. Pendo heaves a big sigh of relief. Her sister is a godsend, she thinks. So Tim finds himself in the city but instead of his aunt keeping the promise, she subjects him to doing manual work in her house to earn his keep in her house. He is mistreated and denied food. Since he cannot afford to make his way back to the village, he is stuck in a rut.

Looked at from all angles, Tim is a victim of human trafficking. Trafficking in humans is one of the fastest growing forms of crime around the world. Every year, many unsuspecting people fall prey to traffickers, who make a financial and/or other benefits from this previously unknown form of crime. The en.wikipedia.org defines human trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, harbouring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labour (including bonded labour or debt bondage), and servitude. The United Nations terms any form of acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them as human trafficking. It is a crime against humanity, and virtually every country of the world is affected by trafficking, either for sexual exploitation or forced labour. It is an increasingly worrying phenomenon, and the UN has identified it as needing stringent laws.

Anne Nyabera is a woman at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking. She is the National Project Manager at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Based at their Regional Office in Nairobi, she has been handed the mandate to run the project of arresting the human trafficking problem, a job that, as would be expected, is demanding and challenging especially in Kenya.

Kenya, says a US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, for June 2008, "is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation".

Locally

Kenyan children are trafficked within the country for domestic servitude, street vending, agricultural labour, herding, work as barmaids, and commercial sexual exploitation, including involvement in the coastal sex tourism industry. Kenyan men, women, and children are trafficked to the Middle East, other African nations, Europe, and North America for domestic servitude, enslavement in massage parlours and brothels, and forced manual labour, including in the construction industry.

But Anne’s designation goes beyond Kenya. "My work covers 11 countries and that makes sure I have a lot of travelling to do. Human trafficking being a global challenge, I deal with the international police a lot. Certainly, there is a significant, worrying figure of human trafficking victims and my duty is to help curb it," she says. According to United States State Department data, an "estimated 600,000 to 820,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 70 per cent are women and girls and up to 50 per cent are minors."

Last year saw Anne embark on a tour of seven countries as well as travelling widely within Kenya, raising public awareness on the problem. Her office aids governments in drafting laws in addition to arming them with combat strategies.

"As much as we are financially constrained, we do our best in offering resources to implement those strategies. We have built governments’ capacity at border points and shown them how co-operation brings mutual benefits in reducing human trafficking."

Her office, in conjunction with the government, civil society and other stakeholders recently conducted training for judges, magistrates and prosecutors on the best ways to handle cases of trafficking.

"We have also been training border officials and police on how to identify potential victims of trafficking. In addition to arresting traffickers, it is immensely crucial that those trafficked are treated with utmost care. In the case of children, they might be traumatised and the arresting officers need to know how to handle them, otherwise they might do the victims more harm than good,"

Human trafficking, Anne says, is fuelled by a myriad reasons. "People are lured away from their homes with a promise for better jobs, pay and living conditions. Once the victims reach their destinations, they soon realise the hope of a better life is just but a pipe dream."

Poverty

Women are particularly at risk of sex trafficking due to lack of opportunities for employment and study, which the criminals exploit. Trafficking of children often involves exploitation of the parents’ extreme poverty. The parents may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income or they may be deceived on the prospects of training and a better life for their children.

Human trafficking cartels rake in large amounts of profits from the trade. According to en.wikipedia.org, the total annual revenue for trafficking in persons is estimated to be between $5 billion (Sh385 billion) and $9 billion (Sh693 billion). According to the Council of Europe, people trafficking has reached epidemic proportions over the past decade, with a global annual market of about $42.5 billion (Sh32.5 trillion). This amount, collected in one year only, is the kind of money the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolis needs to make Nairobi a world-class modern capital by year 2030. Mind you, these figures are only in estimate as the illegal nature and differences in methodology makes it impossible to have exact figures.

The roots

Anne attended Nyeri Primary School where she performed excellently, emerging the first pupil in Kenya. She won a scholarship to the Choate Rosemary Hall in the United States. Notable past students of the school include JF Kennedy. She earned numerous academic accolades and joined the Ivy League, Yale University.

"I did Political and International Studies for eight years at Yale, then hopped onto a plane to the University of London, for my Masters in Law, graduating in 1997."

Prior to her appointment at UNODC, Anne was the Programmes Officer at the Danish Embasy, managing their Good Governance Programme.

A milestone of the UNODC has been the adoption of the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, by the United Nations General assembly in 2000. Her organisation is also responsible for the protocol’s implementation and she has gone about playing her part with gusto. "I face many challenges in my work but I have always held the view that no challenge is insurmountable. Apart from the little problem of language barriers, there are others that I have to wade through."

To shake of the rigours of her job, she revels in taking time to cook for her family and taking good care of her son. "I love cooking and can do a few nice tricks with fish. I love listening to music, especially jazz and classics. Reading newspapers is a must."