Why a World Day on Human Trafficking?  To grasp the significance of a Day set aside by the United Nations (UN) on Human Trafficking (HT), we face the most gigantic, pervasive and lucrative business in our world.   Human Trafficking is a multi-billion dollar trade with major profits.  It is second only to the arms trafficking which also makes it the most violent industry on earth.  The root causes of Human Trafficking thrive best in an environment of corruption and greed, ineffective legal institutions, poverty and the demand for purchased sex.  READ MORE  

Human Trafficking is the ultimate slavery and a crime of horrendous proportions.  Who thinks they know of Human Trafficking?  Most of us can only guess but never get more than a tiny hint of the level of abuse, degradation and torture experienced by its victims on a daily basis.  I have met hundreds of victims and I am very familiar with the scars and burns (including trafficked men) some of them so horrific that they remain unprintable.   Human Trafficking is much more than facts, it is a modern form of slavery not previously experienced in our world.  With internet and modern communications on our doorstep the recruitment is swift and efficient.  Then the cargo (read human) is dispatched. Trafficked persons are among the most dehumanized and discarded of all people on planet earth

A GLOBAL ISSUE

Human Trafficking is found in every country of the world and even the most remote areas are not immune to the presence of recruiters who then direct them to agents.  The agents are the ones who receive a lion’s share of the ‘kill’.  In an African country the wife of an MP can be the director of such an agency/company.  We have learned from the CID that once the victim has reached the other side, all these records are destroyed so there is never a paper-trail to track down and prosecute such an agent. For one victim the sums accrued by his/her agent would take care of a typical Kenyan family for a whole year.  We speak of what we know and have experienced first-hand.  We in CHTEA must daily face these complexities of Human Trafficking with honesty and courage.  We do so willingly and speak on every occasion to create Awareness on the machinations of traffickers.  The numbers of people we have reached speak volumes and we could do much more if we were not crippled by scarce resources.  This is particularly true when we rescue, provide shelter, rehabilitate, sometimes educate and/or livelihood, counseling, medical and sometimes legal services.  But victims rarely agree to follow the legal route as they know it will most likely jeopardize the lives of close family members.

FACTS & STATISTICS

CONCLUSION

In our modern world, Human Trafficking is the size of a global pandemic virus and in order for our efforts to succeed, our mobilization must be comparable in size to that of the phenomenon itself.  Slavery officially ended in 1807 but today it thrives on such a scale that the ‘dizzying’ heights and depths of its penetration and perpetration leaves none of us in doubt as to the task which lies ahead of us.  Therefore we all need a big dose of courage to move forward because we will be judged if we do nothing.  To recollect the words of the British anti-slavery champion, William Wilberforce (the leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade: 1759 – 1833), “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know”