A BBC investigation exposes Kenya’s child-trafficking nightmare and asks why the government and media have turned a blind eye
The BBC uncovers widespread and unreported child abduction in Kenya, organizations mark 20 years of the UN Trafficking Protocol, and Embode reports on the regulatory and systemic factors that lead to the abuse of Malaysian migrant workers.
Vulnerable women are being preyed upon in Nairobi to supply a secretive but thriving illegal Kenyan market for babies and young children. Over the course of a year-long investigation, BBC Africa Eye found evidence of children being snatched from homeless mothers to be sold for as little as US $390. The team uncovered illegal child trafficking taking place in street clinics and the theft of babies at a major government-run hospital. The abductors range from vulnerable opportunists to organized criminals — or often both working together — and target mothers with infants under the age of three. The driving force behind this black market is a persistent cultural stigma around infertility.
As highlighted by the Eastern Africa Child Rights Network (EACRN) in our recent report, there are no reliable statistics on child trafficking in Kenya — no government reports and no comprehensive national surveys. The agencies responsible for finding missing children and tracking black market activity are under-resourced and under-staffed. One of the few recourses for mothers whose children are taken is Missing Child Kenya, a community-led initiative that leverages technology and crowd sourcing in the search for and the tracing and reunification of missing and displaced children. In its four years in operation, the organization has worked on about 600 cases.
Maryana Munyendo, the founder of Missing Child Kenya, points out that child trafficking is a huge issue in the country, yet it remains under-reported. The issue has ‘not been prioritized in action response plans for social welfare’, she told the BBC. That is partly because this is a crime whose victims tend to be vulnerable women who do not have the resources or social capital to attract media attention or drive action from the authorities. The under-reporting has a strong correlation to the economic status of the victims, who lack the resources, networks and information which would enable them to demand action.
According to Africa Eye’s research, child-trafficking rings are operating within the walls of some of Nairobi’s biggest government-run hospitals, but also in illegal street clinics in the city’s slums. The clinics have delivery rooms for expectant mothers and have been identified as a location for the black-market trade in babies.
While mothers may turn to the local police station, they often do not get any help. Missing Child Kenya points out that, ‘Many of the street mothers are children themselves, and they are taken advantage of in their vulnerability.’ Too often, they are not seen as victims of crime who deserve sympathy, ‘but nobody should assume that people on the street do not have feelings, that they do not deserve justice.’
BBC Africa Eye presented its allegations to the hospital, and to those individuals whom their evidence suggests are involved in child trafficking, but they declined to comment.
The full BBC documentary can be found here.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
As we mark two decades of the UN Trafficking Protocol, a new Open Democracy series asks whether anti-trafficking advocates should aim for gradual reform or radical revolution and queries how the Protocol’s criminal justice focus shapes the way we define exploitation. As part of the series, Open Democracy’s Beyond Trafficking and Slavery project spoke with Freedom United about its use of the term ‘modern slavery’.
Also to mark the anniversary, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime has released a publication – The Promise of Palermo: A Political History of the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Embode’s new report, The Road to Worthy Work and Valuable Labour, provides an overview of the situation of migrant workers in Malaysia in a regulatory and industry context, as well as an in-depth presentation of the recruitment processes and agent dynamics across the Nepal-Malaysia labour migration corridor. Notably, the report also provides important insights into the political and systemic dynamics that drive actors to behave in ways that put workers at risk of exploitation and labour abuse.
On 10 November 2020, Delta 8.7 convened a virtual panel to continue and deepen the conversation of its recent written Symposium, which focused on lessons learnt from efforts to combat child labour. In this virtual convening, panelists discussed ‘what works’ to combat child labour from the perspective of programme implementation, how programme effectiveness is gauged, and how programming on the ground has adapted to the realities brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Produced by the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) and IWRAW Asia Pacific, a new series of infographics aims to raise public awareness of the deeply negative impact of ‘End Demand’ laws on the human rights of sex workers, and to encourage collective action to demand state accountability for violations of these rights.
The Freedom Fund is recruiting for a Senior Program Officer who has experience of grant management in Ethiopia and expertise in the reintegration of returnee migrant workers and survivors of trafficking, and their children, as well as experience in mental health, psychosocial support and/or livelihood reintegration programming.
WePROTECT Global Alliance is seeking a research and analysis consultant with whom to partner on delivery of the 2021 Global Threat Assessment. WePROTECT Global Alliance (WPGA) is a global movement dedicated to putting online child sexual exploitation and abuse (online CSEA) on the global agenda and mobilizing a worldwide campaign to end it.
Prior to the launch of its project ‘Combatting Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery through Ecosystem Support’ in Colombia, Thailand, Malaysia, and India, the Thomson Reuters Foundation is seeking a consultant to draft a country background analysis on modern slavery, human trafficking and the ‘S’ (social) aspect of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) compliance mechanisms in each country.
Love Justice International (LJI) currently seeks a Anti-Trafficking Training Specialist or the Crime and Intelligence Data Analyst to join their team in Asia.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 18 November, the U.S. State Department is hosting an interactive virtual gathering on ‘Accountability for Forced Labor in Supply Chains’. Panelists include U.S. and foreign government officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.K. Home Office, as well as a business leader from civil society.
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