By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
In Commemoration of International Human Trafficking Day, 30th July, the Media Officer for Anti-Trafficking in Persons Task Force Secretariat, John-John Whitfield told Politico that they have increased human trafficking prevention mechanisms in the country.
The yearly commemoration is to raise awareness, and for the government to make commitments toward combating trafficking.
According to Whitfield, they have initiated public education outreach programmes by engaging the media, schools, communities and regional bodies as well. He stated that the UN notes that every day people especially women and children are being trafficked into modern day slavery, exploited as sex slaves, or in extreme cases have their organs removed.
He noted that human trafficking in Sierra Leone is a cause for concern as many of those trafficked are women and children. He said that people hide under the guise of informal child fostering (men pekin) which is just one of the many forms of trafficking in persons in Sierra Leone.
The Anti-trafficking Task force Media Officer recalled that there has been report of cross border activities taking place, and that the U.S report on trafficking in persons identifies Sierra Leone as a country of origin, destination and transit for the practice.
He also recalled that in 2003, their administrative figures showed that they intercepted 51 presumed cases of human trafficking where 5 involved cross border, 15 male and 26 female children. He said that in 2024 alone with the vigilance of the front line workers like the Sierra Leone Police through the Transnational Organized Crime Unit, intercepted over 100 presumed cases of human trafficking.
He added that 57 were intercepted in March at Kabala, 31 in May -Kambia, 16 in June-Bo, 17 in Kailahun and 5 in Kono in the month of July.
Whitfield said everyone should put hands on deck to curb human trafficking, be vigilant and to be aware of perpetrators and report suspected cases and take ownership of the fight.
Head of International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Sierra Leone, Christos Christodoulides in a media interview to mark the International Human Trafficking Day said that there are two differences in human trafficking: the process of recruiting someone with a purpose of exploiting the person, and human/migrant smuggling where someone pays a smuggler to take them to another country.
He stated that human trafficking is a big problem in the world as it is being celebrated on the 30th July every year which is key to reminding everyone that it is a horrific crime that affects women, children as well as men and it is important to support the fight against the most vulnerable.
“Once someone got out from trafficking, the complexities with regards to reintegration should not be neglected due to the traumatic experiences they went through and they all have impacts on the society and the community at large,” he said.
He spoke of people being taken with fraudulent documents or sometimes, having to pass through borders without documents where they use loopholes in the system to traffic or smuggle them to another country. In other cases they might have real documents but they belong to someone else and they take advantage of the facial similarities. He said the smuggler operates not just within a given country, but also more at the regional or International level that affect the most vulnerable.
“With support from the security apparatus we need to tackle these networks,” he states.
The IOM boss pointed out that a lot of money is involved in human trafficking, the reasons why criminal networks are interested in smuggling people out from one country to another. He said most of the time the traffickers at the beginning do not know that they are being trafficked, only for them to know later that they have been trapped.
Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (05/08/24)
