Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Poverty drives the unsuspecting poor into the
hands of traffickers Published reports & articles
from 2000 to 2025 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Kenya.htm
Kenya is a source,
transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for
the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Kenyan children are
trafficked within the country for domestic servitude, forced labor in
agriculture (including on flower plantations), cattle herding, in bars, and
for commercial sexual exploitation, including involvement in the coastal sex
tourism industry. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009 Check
out a later country report here or a full TIP Report here |
|
|||||||||||
|
CAUTION: The following
links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in HOW TO USE THIS WEB-PAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of Human Trafficking are of particular
interest to you. Would you like to
write about Forced-Labor? Debt
Bondage? Prostitution? Forced Begging? Child Soldiers? Sale of Organs? etc. On the other
hand, you might choose to include precursors of trafficking such as poverty and hunger. There is a lot to
the subject of Trafficking. Scan other
countries as well. Draw comparisons
between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. HELP for Victims Central Police Station ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** A generation betrayed [access information
unavailable] Nation Newspapers
carries a story today where the German ambassador to The ambassador
states that the practice of child trafficking and prostitution is rampant due
to private villas where these activities are carried out. ***
ARCHIVES *** Closed Kenyan
markets leads to human trafficking Alex Anhalt, Mission Network News, 9 July 2020 www.mnnonline.org/news/closed-kenyan-markets-leads-to-human-trafficking/ [accessed 10 July
2020] Efforts to control the
spread of COVID-19 have closed public spaces around the world. However,
closing markets in Kenya has seen unintended and dark consequences; families
are selling their daughters into human trafficking and forced marriages. According to Ed
Weaver of Spoken Worldwide, many Kenyan locals are farmers and herdsmen. When
markets close, they can’t sell livestock. When they can’t sell livestock,
they have to find a different source of income. So, in the face of
starvation, they turn to a practice ingrained in Kenyan culture. They turn to
forced marriage. They turn to human trafficking. Kenyan culture
normalizes marriages for money, and even families of believers struggle in
the face of tradition and poverty. Although some organizations do work to
spread awareness and push back, this new wave of forced marriages has largely
flown under the radar. Human Trafficking –
It Came Disguised as the Opportunity of a Lifetime Miriam Gathigah, Inter Press Service IPS, Nairobi, 3 October
2019 reliefweb.int/report/kenya/human-trafficking-it-came-disguised-opportunity-lifetime [accessed 12 October
2019] Njambi says that back-breaking
house work, working for at least 18 hours a day and sleeping on the floor characterised the first few days of employment. It
quickly escalated to physical and sexual violence. Days spiralled
into months without a single day off and with no pay. “One day I went to the
rooftop and threatened to jump off if they did not take me back home and it
worked,” she narrates. This was in 2013,
at that time, news that hundreds of Kenyan girls
were distressed and stranded in the Middle East was spreading across the
country. “The lucky ones made it home
bruised and battered. Others came back in coffins. In 2014, the government
banned Kenyans from travelling to the Middle East for work,” says Dinah Mbula*, who runs a recruiting agency in downtown Nairobi. “There was a
crackdown by the government targeting recruiting agencies but horror stories
did not scare desperate unemployed people from going to the Middle East,” Mbula tells IPS. Who is to blame for
human trafficking, government or agencies? Victoria Nyeko,
Daily Monitor, 11 August 2019 [accessed 13 August
2019] Recently, The
EastAfrican newspaper reported that human trafficking is on the increase in
the region. Since travel between the East African countries is now easier
with passports no longer required, the neighbouring countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania are said to be the
main transit locations for trafficking. Although the most common form of
human trafficking is sexual exploitation and forced labour, there is also a
growing market for human organs ... 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Kenya U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/kenya/
[accessed 13 June
2021] PROHIBITION OF
FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR Forms of forced
labor included debt bondage, trafficking of workers, and compulsion of persons,
even family members, to work as domestic servants. Domestic workers from
Uganda, herders from Ethiopia, and others from Somalia, South Sudan, and
Burundi were subjected to forced labor in the country; however, this trend
was reportedly decreasing. PROHIBITION OF CHILD
LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT Many children
worked on family plots or in family units on tea, coffee, sugar, sisal,
tobacco, and rice plantations, as well as in the production of khat. Children worked in mining, including in artisanal
gold mines, small quarries, and sand mines. Children also worked in the
fishing industry. In urban areas businesses employed children in hawking,
scavenging, carrying loads, fetching and selling water, selling food, and
forced begging. Children often worked long hours as domestic servants in
private homes for little or no pay, and there were reports of physical and
sexual abuse of child domestic servants. Parents sometimes initiated forced
or compulsory child labor, such as in agricultural labor and domestic
service, but also including commercial sexual exploitation. Most of the
trafficking of children within the country appeared related to domestic
labor, with migrant children trafficked from rural to urban areas. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/kenya/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 30 April
2020] G4. DO INDIVIDUALS
ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION? Kenya remains an
unequal society, with wealth generally concentrated in towns and cities. The
arid and semiarid north and northeastern parts of the country have
particularly high poverty rates. Refugees and asylum
seekers from neighboring countries, particularly children, have been
vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor in Kenya, though Kenyan
children are also subject to such abuses. Kenyan workers are recruited for
employment abroad in sometimes exploitative conditions, particularly in the
Middle East. 2017 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor Office of Child
Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking, Bureau of International Labor
Affairs, US Dept of Labor, 2018 www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ilab/ChildLaborReport_Book.pdf [accessed 18 April
2019] www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/child_labor_reports/tda2017/ChildLaborReportBook.pdf [accessed 30 April
2020] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor [page 568] Kenyan children are
victims of human trafficking within and outside the country and exploited to
engage in domestic work, agricultural work, fishing, begging, and street
vending. Children also are victims of commercial sexual exploitation in
tourism sectors, such as Nairobi and Kismu, and on the coast in informal
settings. (28; 25) In rural areas, poverty drives some families to engage in
trafficking children for domestic work in urban centers. (29) Children are
also victims of commercial exploitation in drug production sites (khat), near
gold mines, along major highways, and sexually exploited by fishermen on Lake
Victoria. (25) During the year, an NGO released data showing 33,929 reported
cases of child abuse in the past 10 years, of which 3,123 were child labor
cases. (30) Children in Kenya scavenge dumpsites and streets for scrap
material, including metal and glass. (5) These children earn about $1 to $2
per day, while often risking injury and exposing themselves to infectious
diseases, such as tetanus, by sorting through waste. Evidence suggests that
such children are also exposed to mercury due to e-waste recycling and gold
mining. (5) Reports also indicate that children ages 10 to 17 mine or harvest
sand and work in Busia, Homa Bay, Kilifi, Kitui, Machakos, and Nakuru counties,
increasing their likelihood of developing aggravated asthma, lung or heart
disease, and cancer. (17; 31; 13) Most children who are engaged in child
labor, including commercial sexual exploitation, are girls, but boys are also
involved. (5; 32; 33). Tackling Human Trafficking Through a
National Plan of Action International
Organization for Migration IOM, 17 August 2007 www.iom.int/cms/en/sites/iom/home/news-and-views/press-briefing-notes/pbn-2007/pbn-listing/tackling-human-trafficking-through-a-nat.html [accessed 10 July
2013] www.iom.int/news/tackling-human-trafficking-through-national-plan-action [accessed 4 February
2018] In addition,
internal trafficking of Kenyans is considered to be widespread, particularly
from rural to urban areas such as Nairobi and Mombasa for exploitation in
domestic labour and commercial sex. The majority of Kenyan victims are either
trafficked or introduced to their traffickers by family members or friends,
with the most common method of recruitment being promises of good jobs or
education. Once in a trafficking situation, victims report overwork, physical
and sexual abuse, non-payment or under-payment, poor working conditions, and
restricted or no access to schooling. Passport forgery to
blame for trafficking Susan Anyangu, East
African Standard Page: 11 on Sat 12th May 2007, under Governance www.marsgroupkenya.org/multimedia/?StoryID=175432&page=2 [accessed 28
November 2010] Immigration Officer
Mr Alfred Omangi said human trafficking was on the increase and that the
cartels were too advanced for law enforcers.
It has emerged that the Immigration Department is not adequately
equipped to detect forgeries. This, plus the porous nature of Kenyan borders,
is fuelling human trafficking. New study shames human traffickers Patrick Mathangani,
The Standard, May 11, 2007 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7
September 2011] A new report by an
international trade unions’ umbrella organisation says International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) says Kenyans were also trafficked
to Its report,
‘Trafficking in Persons — The Eastern Africa Situation’, notes that women and
children were favourite targets for well-organised trafficking rings, which
operate freely for lack of solid laws against the vice. Dr George Gona, an
expert on trade unions at the Trafficking victim
tells her story Patrick Mayoyo,
Daily Nation ( www.afrika.no/Detailed/13575.html [accessed 16
February 2011] www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=14259 [accessed 4 February
2018] www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/1190-172066-ggoty2z/index.html [accessed 11
February 2019] Lucy Kabanya, 39,
was in high spirits at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa on July 8,
last year. And she had every reason to be, for she had just boarded a Condor
Airline plane on her way to Mombasa Hub for Human Trafficking Ngumbao Kithi, The
Nation ( At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7
September 2011] "The whole
network starts when girls leave home to come to the Coast in the guise of
looking for a job, they join prostitution - the dream of each woman is to get
a white man and be taken abroad," said Ms Akinyi. She said her organisation was involved in
rehabilitation and resettlement of women who have been married abroad and
turned into slaves. State drafting laws
to curb human trafficking 18 August 2006 --
Source: www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143956960 [accessed 10 July
2013] Lack of proper laws
and policies is hampering the fight against child trafficking,
Vice-President, Mr Moody Awori has said.
Consequently, Awori on Thursday said the Attorney General was drafting
laws to curb trafficking of persons. He said poverty, lack of education and
high number of HIV/Aids orphans exposed many people to human trafficking. Child Trafficking
in the Ambrose Musiyiwa
(amusiyiwa), OhmyNews, 2006-07-25 [accessed 23 April
2012] She was a teenage
orphan living on the streets of True to his word,
her "savior" brought her into the Three months later,
when the 16-year-old Kenyan girl became pregnant, she was forced to continue
sleeping with a succession of men until she was almost due to give birth. The
heavily pregnant teenager was then removed from the brothel, driven out of
the town where she had been held, and dumped many miles away on the streets
of The sequence of
events that has emerged during those interviews is both shocking and tragic.
It involves imprisonment, beatings, and systematic rape over a lengthy
period. Migration body to monitor human trafficking
impact Real Restoration www.realrestoration.org/uganda.html [accessed 30 April
2020] "Many girls
are taken from Iringa and brought to major cities to work as housegirls but
they end up being subjected to prostitution and other works which they did
not expect, this is internal trafficking," she said. Many young boys,
she said, are taken to work in the mining companies, something which not only
denies their rights but also are psychosocially affected. Law needed to fight
human trafficking, says Tobiko 30 April 2006 --
Source: www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143951784 [accessed 10 July
2013] The Government is
under pressure to come up with a comprehensive national policy and
legislation to counter human trafficking in the country. The Director of
Public Prosecutions, Keriako Tobiko, said yesterday that the lack of a counter
trafficking legislation posed a big problem towards the prosecution of
offenders. An African
cleansing rite that now can kill Sharon LaFraniere,
The New York Times, May 12, 2005 www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/health/11iht-malawi.html?pagewanted=all [accessed 23 April
2012] www.vivamalta.net/VMforum/index.php?topic=995.0 [accessed 4 February
2018] In Malawi and in a
number of nearby nations including Zambia and Kenya, a husband's funeral has
long concluded with a final ritual: sex between the widow and one of her
husband's relatives, to break the bond with his spirit and, it is said, save
her and the rest of the village from insanity or disease. Widows have long
tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged
tradition of rural African life. Knight Fellow accused of human trafficking Joaquín Hernández,
The Stanford Daily, February 26, 2004 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7
September 2011] “ ‘Deya Babies’ Are
Victims of Trafficking Mwangi Githahu, The
Nation, www.religionnewsblog.com/8585/deya-babies-are-victims-of-trafficking [accessed 17
February 2011] Archbishop Deya,
whose wife is being questioned, continues to maintain that he can and did
create “miracle babies” for childless couples by exorcising demons to make
them fertile, some charities have come out and said in no uncertain terms
that his actions are, in fact, a front for trafficking babies from Document - 2004 UN Commission on the Status
of Women. Violence against Women: universal but not inevitable! Amnesty International, 2004 www.ehrcweb.org/sections.php [accessed 17
February 2011] www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ior41/004/2004/en/ [accessed 4 February
2018] VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN THE
FAMILY - In
some countries, personal status laws may condone violence against women. Some
obedience and modesty laws require a wife’s submission to her husband and give
the husband an explicit or implicit right to discipline his wife, and in some
countries women are considered to be the property of their fathers or
husbands. In parts of US names Kevin J Kelley,
Daily Nation, At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7
September 2011] "Some
trafficking offences could be prosecuted under laws addressing child labour,
forced detention for prostitution and the commercial exploitation of
children, but no trafficking-related offences have been prosecuted", the
report says in its assessment of But in seeming
contradiction to these criticisms, the State Department says elsewhere in the
same assessment that Kenyan officials are increasingly engaged with the The vicious circle
of sexual exploitation Zachary
Ochieng, News from www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_854.html [accessed 17
February 2011] consolationafrica.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/the-vicious-circle-of-sexual-exploitation/ [accessed 4 February
2018] A unique feature of
child prostitution in Kenya is that people take in destitute children but
instead of caring for them, they hire the children out as prostitutes from
time to time. Some children are also kept in brothels alongside adult
prostitutes. Child marriages
have also been noted as a form of sexual exploitation. They are common among
the pastoral communities in districts including Kajiado, Transmara, Moyale,
Wajir, and Mandera. According to the report, some parents are known to marry
off their young girls to older men in order to pay the school fees of their
male siblings. -
htcp Part 1: Some
foreign household workers enslaved Stephanie Armour, www.usatoday.com/money/general/2001/11/19/cover.htm [accessed 17
February 2011] MEDIAN HOURLY WAGE:
$2.14
- But according to a June study on domestic workers by Human Rights Watch,
problems persist. A review of more than 40 cases found immigrants on special
visas received a median hourly wage of $2.14, which is 42% of the $5.15
federal minimum wage. The median workday was 14 hours. AMONG RECENT CASES - • Alice Benjo
and Mary Chumo, both from Kenya, were "kept as virtual slaves" at
the home of their employer, an employee at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington,
according to legal documents. They worked for Elizabeth Belsoi, a citizen of Child Labour
Persists Around The World: More Than 13 Percent Of Children 10-14 Are
Employed International Labour
Organisation (ILO) News, www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/news/WCMS_008058/lang--en/index.htm [accessed 7
September 2011] www.scribd.com/document/367525279/Child-Labour-Persists-Around-the-World-docx [accessed 4 February
2018] "Today's child
worker will be tomorrow's uneducated and untrained adult, forever trapped in
grinding poverty. No effort should be spared to break that vicious
circle", says ILO Director-General Michel Hansenne. Among the countries
with a high percentage of their children from 10-14 years in the work force
are: Mali, 54.5 percent; Burkina Faso, 51; Niger and Uganda, both 45; Kenya, 41.3; Senegal, 31.4; Bangladesh, 30.1; Nigeria, 25.8; Haiti, 25;
Turkey, 24; Côte d'Ivoire, 20.5; Pakistan, 17.7; Brazil, 16.1; India, 14.4;
China, 11.6; and Egypt, 11.2. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 12 October 2001 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/kenya2001.html [accessed 16 February
2011] [59] The Committee
notes with appreciation that the State party has signed a memorandum of
understanding with ILO and that various ILO/International Program on the
Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) programs to prevent and combat child labor are
being carried out. The Committee also welcomes the establishment of a
National Steering Committee on child labor. Nevertheless, and in the light of
the current economic situation, the increasing number of school drop-outs and
the increasing number of street children, the Committee is concerned about
the large number of children engaged in labor and the lack of information and
adequate data on the situation of child labor and economic exploitation in
the State party. The Committee notes also with concern that notwithstanding
various legal provisions there is no firm minimum age for admission to
employment and that child labor is still prevalent in the State party. The Protection
Project - The www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/kenya.doc [accessed 2009] FORMS OF TRAFFICKING
-
Young Kenyan women and children are commonly lured with false promises of
employment abroad, but they end up in the sex industry instead. Parents often pay significant sums to send
their children to the The most common
forms of trafficking in children from and within ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61575.htm [accessed 9 February
2020] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS
– Victims were trafficked from South and East Asian countries and the The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/kenya.htm [accessed 16
February 2011] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Kenya is a source, transit and destination country
for trafficked children. Kenyan
children are reportedly trafficked to All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
||||||||||||
