NAIROBI, Kenya, July 30 – In marking the World Day against Trafficking in Persons, concerns are rife that COVID-19 has worsened the situation giving traffickers a heyday to prey on willing and readily available victims reeling from the effects of economic meltdown exacerbated by massive job losses, pay cuts and interruption of normal life.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, children are particularly at higher risk of sex trafficking with an increased online presence due to closure of schools.
“Children are at heightened risk of exploitation, especially since school closures have not only precluded many from access to education but also from the main source of shelter and nourishment. Since their schools are closed, many children are increasingly online for learning and socializing. This may make them more vulnerable to online sexual predators.”
The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in March 2020 recorded a 106 percent global rise in reports of suspected child sexual exploitation – an increase from 983,734 last March to 2,027,520 cases this year.
In Kenya, frontline responders are grappling with a high number of children in need of rescue, protection and integration amidst a sharpening coronavirus curve and an unrelenting yet expanding criminal landscape of human traffickers eyeing on children for sex and labor trafficking.
Edith Murogo is a frontline respondent. She is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Centre for Domestic Training and Development (CDTD) and Talia Agler Girls’ Shelter (TAGS).
Whereas CDTD empowers local and migrant domestic workers, TAGS gives temporary home to victims of human trafficking, sexual abuse, child labor, domestic violence and forced migration.
“We are marking this day within the backdrop of another crisis which has been created by COVID-19. On one hand we have to deal with the pandemic and on the other we have to deal with the threat of human trafficking activities. As first responders, we find that our work has escalated overnight.”
Before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Kenya, Murogo was in the process of integrating seven foreign victims of trafficking living in her shelter. And now without inter-country travel restrictions, the victims cannot be reunited with their families.
According to Murogo, the upsurge in the number of new victims and the challenge of not being able to integrate those rescued before COVID-19 has strained the centres’ resources with the pandemic bringing additional obstacles to the already existing ones.
“We are receiving more cases that require to be rescued, more cases that need shelter, medical help, basic needs and those needing help to be integrated back to the community. It is a very stressful time for frontline responders,” Murogo explains citing difficulties in fundraising and getting adequate support to cater for victims when the main focus is responding to the health crisis of COVID-19.
With restrictions in movement and the growing number of COVID-19 cases in Kenya, one would expect that human traffickers would decelerate their criminal activities.
But frontline responders have instead registered a complex trend in which traffickers in their tactical approach leverage on slightest opportunities to recruit, retain and exploit their ‘catch’. With increased vulnerabilities, their work has even become easier.
The online platform has become the ideal hunting ground for unsuspecting children who following the closure of schools in March, spend most of their time online.
With schools expected to open next year, more children will unfortunately, continue to fall into the trap of online predators.
The Anti Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit (AHTCPU) has raised a red flag over infiltration of online learning space by abusers recruiting children and sharing child sexual abuse material.
Read: Danger online as traffickers target helpless children
According to research released last week (July 23) by Tech Against Trafficking and the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime, traffickers are misusing every new advancement in technology to prey on their victims.
“The flipside of the digital coin is that traffickers also deploy technology to scale up their market reach, deliver new types of illicit services, such as live streaming of sexual abuse and exploitation, to innovate their operations, to target more victims and to launder criminal proceeds anonymously.”
In Kenya, the AHTCPU is already investigating and working around the clock to pull down and block websites containing child sexual abuse material with Kibera and Mombasa marked as hotspots for live streaming of such content.
The use of technology, Murogo says, has made it easier for traffickers to target children and exploit them both online and consequently offline.
“Human traffickers are very innovative. They use different connections to grow their list of victims and are keen to monitor connections that are usually unsupervised. It is easy for them to prey on children, convince them e.g. by asking them to dance and record themselves. This then escalates into asking them to record their videos when naked. They show them how to engage in sex group activities, there is a lot of activity that is going on unnoticed.”
Regrettably, the society has either not noticed the criminal activities or is unwilling to report leaving it solely to frontline responders like AHTCPU to detect and investigate the cases straining the unit’s already limited capacity.
On Thursday, Kenya will join the rest of the globe to mark the World Day against Trafficking in Persons with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and the Counter-Trafficking in Persons advisory committee spearheading webinar discussions attended by state and non-state stakeholders in the fight against human trafficking.
The forum seeks to strengthen collaboration among stakeholders, create awareness on dangers of trafficking in persons and increased risks and new forms of recruitment especially online recruitment arising from COVID-19. It will also provide an opportunity for the public to learn about reporting and referral mechanism for cases of human trafficking.
The World Day against trafficking in Persons was set aside in 2013 to raise awareness ‘of the situation of victims of human trafficking and for the promotion and protection of their rights.’
“Committed to the Cause – Working on the frontline to end Human Trafficking” is this year’s theme developed to acknowledge the extra ordinary and harsh environment responders are working in to combat the crime, seek justice and protect victims.
Judie Kaberia is a fellow of the Resilience Fund of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime
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