Kenyans lured with jobs but end up in forced labour and sex

Human trafficking in Kenya photo:courtesy

Corruption within law enforcement and lack of funds continue to fuel human trafficking in Kenya, a recently released report by the United States Department of Justice has said.

The Trafficking in Persons Report says despite some marginal gains made in recent years, the country is still a major transit and conduit for victims and traffickers.

“Corruption in sectors of the government perpetuated traffickers’ ability to obtain fraudulent identity documents from complicit officials, the report says.

The government reported 530 investigations of potential trafficking cases in 2016, of which 59 were for forced labour and 28 for sex trafficking; the government did not report types of trafficking for the remainder of the offences.

INVESTIGATIONS

Corruption remained endemic at all levels of government, and traffickers were able to fraudulently obtain identity documents from complicit officials. The State did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking.

In 2016, around half of Kenya’s 47 counties reported anti-trafficking law enforcement data, whereas all counties reported such data in 2015. However, conflation of smuggling and other crimes with trafficking also contributed to the significant increase in law enforcement data that was difficult to disaggregate.

The report also terms government efforts to protect children from trafficking as ‘modest,’ while protection services for adult victims remained negligible. Authorities reported identifying and referring to care 530 trafficking victims in 2016, some of whom were likely victims of smuggling. During the previous year, it reported identifying 153 victims, all of which were internal child trafficking victims.

Despite these increased numbers, the government did not allocate funding for the victim assistance fund in comparison to 2015, when the exchequer allocated Sh7 million to the fund.

“Kenya is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. Within the country, children are subjected to forced labour in domestic service, agriculture, fishing, cattle herding, street vending, and begging,” the report says adding that both boys and girls are exploited in commercial sex throughout Kenya, including in sex tourism in Nairobi, Kisumu, and on the coast, particularly in informal settlements.

“At times, their exploitation is facilitated by family members,” the report says.

Other exploitation hot spots for Kenyan minors are miraa farms, the gold mines in western Kenya, by truck drivers along major highways, and by fishermen on Lake Victoria.

For decades now, Kenyans seeking greener pastures continue to be exploited in Middle East countries where they go to through dubious employment agencies.

MIGRATE

“Kenyans voluntarily migrate to Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East —particularly Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman—in search of employment, where at times they are exploited in domestic servitude, massage parlours and brothels, or forced manual labour,” the report reads.

The report also says that Kenyan gay and bisexual men are deceptively recruited from universities with promises of overseas jobs, but are forced into prostitution in Qatar and UAE. It also fingers Ugandan and Nigerian traffickers as luring Kenyan women into prostitution in Thailand.

For close to three years now, one of the country’s biggest security concerns has been the Dadaab refugee complex. Some Kenyan officials, including the Deputy President William Ruto, have argued that the camp has been used as a recruiting ground for the Al-Shabaab terror group, and as a base for launching attacks inside the country.

The trafficking report says some children in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps may be subjected to sex trafficking, while others are taken from the camps and forced to work on tobacco farms.

“Children from East Africa and South Sudan are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking in Kenya. Domestic workers from Uganda, herders from Ethiopia, and others from Somalia, South Sudan, and Burundi are subjected to forced labour in Kenya,” says the report, adding that trucks transporting goods from Kenya to Somalia returned to Kenya with girls and women subsequently exploited in brothels in Nairobi or Mombasa.

Nepalese and Indian women recruited to work in dance clubs in Nairobi and Mombasa face debt bondage, which they are forced to pay off by dancing and forced prostitution.

Attorney General Githu Muigai, however, says the key reason for Kenya’s apparent complacency in the war against trafficking is the lack of clear laws.

“The lack of a law has led to many smugglers not being brought to justice as law enforcement officers do not have the right law to charge them,” Prof Muigai said. He also said another major challenge is the lack of coordination and cooperation between law enforcement agencies.

“Law enforcement agencies have been compounded with the challenges attendant to abuse of human rights vis a vis economic empowerment.

The escalation of deaths and sufferings being witnessed is a clarion call that more needs to be done and this requires concerted efforts by all State and non-state actors.

” Statistics indicate that more than 20 million people are trafficked globally. Sixty eight per cent of whom are trapped in forced labour.

Of those trapped in forced labour, 26 per cent are children while 55 per cent are women and girls. The AG says Kenya’s stability over the years coupled by its dominant position as a beacon for development in Africa has made it an attractive destination and transit point for human trafficking.