From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012
Recently Uganda’s parliament established a committee to investigate security companies suspected of involvement in human trafficking of at least 600 Ugandan girls who have been forced into Malaysia’s sex trade in what has become a human trafficking epidemic, according to a foreign diplomat. The parliamentary committee report is expected by mid-March.
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Uganda is not alone in this epidemic. A recent Interpol report has also implicated some Tanzanians in human trafficking, a diabolical trade that mainly involves the selling of unsuspecting people, mostly children and young women, into slavery and servitude. It also involves immigrants.
Like Uganda, the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Shamsi Vuai Nahodha, has formed a 19-strong committee which has been instructed to study the situation closely and advise the government on how best to confront the growing social menace.
In Tanzania the problem is already a serious matter. In the last three months 300 suspected traffickers (locals and foreigners) have been apprehended. Accusing fingers have also been pointed at unscrupulous immigration officers who collude with criminals in the heinous business at border crossings.
Illegal immigrants are shunted into Tanzania mainly through border posts in Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Mara and Kagera regions. Most of the people who are trafficked into Tanzania originate from Somalia and Ethiopia. Some claim to be in transit to South Africa.
In Kenya, it is estimated that more than 20,000 children are trafficked annually. Kenyan children are reportedly trafficked to South Africa, and there are reports of internal trafficking of children into involuntary servitude, including for work as street vendors, day labourers, and as prostitutes.
Kenya is at risk, not only for human trafficking but also hundreds of Kenyan youth who have been recruited into Al Shabaab over the last six years in a process that has complicated efforts to tackle extremism in the region.
Despite the call by Internal Security PS Francis Kimemia on recruits to turn themselves over to the government and request amnesty so that they could be put under a rehabilitation programme is not yielding any fruit-instead more young Kenyans have been converted into Islam and recruited including school children. “Idle, unemployed youth are at particular risk.
In Sierra Leone and Liberia, while the countries have some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with 15-24 year olds, UNHCR reports that Liberia and Sierra Leone are a source, transit, and destination countries principally for young women and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution.
Out of an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked annually internationally according to AOL News network website, 70 per cent are women and 50 per cent children. The business generates about $32 billion profits annually and it is second to drug trafficking.
The website indicates that up to 1.2 million children are trafficked annually as sex slaves with United States alone recording up to 14, 000-17,000 human beings being trafficked into the country annually as Asia is leading with three human trafficking victims for every 1,000 people – three times the rates elsewhere. The victims, especially children end up as sex slaves in brothels and massage parlors.
The report found that girls as young as eight were selling sex for items such as food, beer, clothing, perfume or mobile phones. Others were reported as having sex with adults in return for good school grades, video screenings or rides in cars.
Pastors have also been implicated in human trafficking like a recent case in Gucha where a pastor was arrested for allegedly facilitating child trafficking of an 11-year-old girl from Tanzania. The child was reportedly trafficked from Ukeleni District, Tanzania into Kenya on August 30 last year and taken to the pastor’s home in Kenyenya District.
In 2004 Kenyan born United Kingdom based evangelical pastor Archbishop Gilbert Deya hit the news headlines. While claimed to be able to make postmenopausal or infertile women pregnant by exorcising their demons to beget children, some children’s charities said his actions were a front for baby trafficking to acquire wealth in God’s name.
The person behind the racket had been identifying childless mothers and arranging for them to acquire babies from pregnant mothers who do not want them according to the children’s officer. The UK, alongside other countries in Europe, is a major destination for Africans from a number of countries, including Kenya as trafficking of children is concerned.
Strip clubs are another growing concern, especially within Nairobi. Due to competition, an increasing number of restaurants are introducing strippers in order to gain clientele. Many of the girls are highly educated college graduates who turn to stripping for lack of employment. As a consequence, all across Nairobi will be found women renting expensive apartments, living big and buying the latest mobile phones.
Some of the massage parlours and strip clubs in Nairobi are providing women from as far as India, Phillippines, South America and Eastern Europe.
The Catholic Church has condemned human trafficking and has developed social service programs to serve and protect its survivors. During Vatican II the Catholic Church reaffirmed its historic concern about forced labor, stating that “slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children and disgraceful working conditions where people are treated as instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons” are “infamies” and “an affront to fundamental values…values rooted in the very nature of the human person”.
In the 2006 annual statement on Migration, entitled “Migrations: A Sign of the Times,” Pope Benedict XVI deplored the “trafficking of human beings — especially women – which flourishes where opportunities to improve their standard of living or even to survive are limited”. Similarly the Holy See’ emphasized related concerns in a recent address at the United Nations, stating, “(The treatment of woman), not as a human person with rights on an equal basis with others, but as an object to be exploited, very often underlies violence against women”… (a context in which) an increasing scourge is trafficking of women and girls, as well as various forms of prostitution.”
Pope John Paul II, in a letter on the occasion of the International Conference on “21st Century Slavery—the Human Rights Dimension to Trafficking in Human Beings,” stated that human trafficking “constitutes a shocking offense against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights. In particular, the sexual exploitation of women and children is a particularly repugnant aspect of this trade, and must be recognized as an intrinsic violation of human dignity and human rights.”
The Catholic bishops of the United States and Mexico have also spoken out on the issue, calling upon the governments of the United States and Mexico to work together to apprehend traffickers and destroy trafficking networks: “Both governments must vigilantly seek to end trafficking in human persons. Together, both governments should more effectively share information on trafficking operations and should engage in joint action to apprehend and prosecute traffickers.”
In Philippines for example, a serious trafficking problem of women and children illegally recruited into the tourist industry for sexual exploitation is a big concern. Destinations within the country are Metro Manila, Angels City,Olongapo City, towns in Bulacan, Batangas, Cebu City, Davao and Cagayan de Oro City and other sex tourist resorts such as Puerto Galero, which is notorious, Pagsanjan, Laguna, San Fernando Pampanga, and many beach resorts throughout the country.
The promise of recruiters offers women and children attractive jobs in the country or abroad, and instead they are coerced and forced and controlled into the sex industry for tourists. They go to the Middle East, South Africa, America, Korea, Japan, Europe, and North America. The mail-order bride business is another form of tourist destination trafficking. Fake marriages are a common form of trafficking with legitimate papers.
There are an estimated 60,000 children in tourist related prostitution, and this is increasing with the growth of poverty and the greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. The majority of tourist arrivals in the Philippines are single males, approximately 1.5 million annually.
People for Peace in Africa (PPA)
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