{"id":204047,"date":"2025-08-05T21:45:53","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T19:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/sierra-leone\/sierra-leones-youth-migrants-at-the-mercy-of-smugglers\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T21:45:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T19:45:53","slug":"sierra-leones-youth-migrants-at-the-mercy-of-smugglers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/sierra-leone\/sierra-leones-youth-migrants-at-the-mercy-of-smugglers\/","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Leone&#8217;s Youth Migrants At the Mercy of Smugglers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"20\">Implementing Sierra Leone&#8217;s new law against human trafficking would protect desperate youth and women from exploitation in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"55\">Sierra Leonean migrants seeking better lives abroad are increasingly caught in a web of forced labour under the guise of work programmes in the Middle East. Two-thirds of the country&#8217;s youth, who make up 74.5% of the population, have no meaningful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iom.int\/project\/combatting-irregular-migration-through-youth-empowerment-and-community-engagement-sierra-leone#:~:text=74.5%20per%20cent%20of%20Sierra,to%20secure%20and%20sustainable%20jobs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">employment<\/a> &#8211; making them an easy target for fake recruitment agents and trafficking networks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"45\">Women are&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202508050072.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa <a title=\"Sierra Leone\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/west-africa\/sierra-leone\/\">Sierra Leone<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Implementing Sierra Leone&#8217;s new law against human trafficking would protect desperate youth and women from exploitation in the Middle East. Sierra Leonean migrants seeking better lives abroad are increasingly caught in a web of forced labour under the guise of work programmes in the Middle East. Two-thirds of the country&#8217;s youth, who make up 74.5% [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":204048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1109],"tags":[258,256,7271,9493,6928,257,6571,1135,4094,254,6276],"class_list":["post-204047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sierra-leone","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-leones","tag-mercy","tag-migrants","tag-news","tag-sierra","tag-sierra-leone-news","tag-smugglers","tag-south-africa-today","tag-youth"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}