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Sierra Leone is a source, transit, and destination country for thousands of children and women trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation every year. Although no official database exists to\u00a0accurately measure the scope of the phenomenon in the country, it is believed to be affecting mostly children who are taken from their homes and forced to beg on the streets, or work in homes as houseboys, in mines or in plantations.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Human trafficking also affects young Sierra Leonean women and girls who are\u00a0scammed into paying hefty sums<\/a>\u00a0of money for fake employment offers in foreign countries \u2013 in the Gulf for instance\u00a0\u2013\u00a0only to be coerced into modern slavery or sexual exploitation.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2005, three years after the end of a civil war which cost more than 50,000 lives and set the ground to human trafficking networks, Sierra Leone passed the\u00a0Anti-Human Trafficking Act<\/a>,\u00a0thus recognizing the phenomenon as a major national issue.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n A National Task Force on Human Trafficking was established with the responsibility to coordinate the implementation of this Act, especially with\u00a0regard to\u00a0the enforcement of the law against trafficking.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n However, in 2017, only 9\u00a0per cent\u00a0of the victims of trafficking identified by the Sierra Leone Ministry for Social Welfare, Gender and Children Affairs (MSWGCA) came from the Western Urban District where Freetown is located.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCriminal cases rely on victim testimonies, but this can be difficult to access since the Task Force is located in Freetown and most victims come from far away provinces,\u201d explained\u00a0Marian Harding-Tommy, Senior Social Welfare Officer for Human Trafficking at the MSWGCA.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBecause victims of trafficking often cannot afford the expensive trip from their district to the capital to testify or present evidence, their cases are closed,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n But this will soon change. Last week, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) supported the MSWGCA in the decentralisation of the National Task Force in 14 of Sierra Leone\u2019s districts to increase victims\u2019 and potential victims\u2019 access to information, protection and justice mechanisms, and avoid procedural delays related to prosecuting traffickers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new district task forces will be co-chaired by the MSWGCA and the Office of National Security (ONS), and composed of traditional and religious authorities, the police\u2019s Family Support Unit, youth committees, motor bikers\u2019 union, teachers\u2019 guild and radio journalists.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur aim is to bring the lifesaving services of the Task Force closer to the populations by bringing together key community members,\u201d said\u00a0Mangeh\u00a0Sesay, National Project Officer for IOM Sierra Leone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Through monthly meetings, it is expected that these new district task forces will contribute to collecting more data and testimonies to assess the scope of human trafficking in the country. In the future, task force members will also be trained in identifying, referring and providing immediate assistance to victims of trafficking.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n IOM\u2019s counter-trafficking activities in Sierra Leone are implemented in the framework of the Africa Regional Migration\u00a0Programme\u00a0funded by the United States Department of State\u2019s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Distributed by APO Group on behalf of International Organization for Migration (IOM).<\/i> Sierra Leone is a source, transit, and destination country for thousands of children and women trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation every year. Although no official database exists to\u00a0accurately measure the scope of the phenomenon in the country, it is believed to be affecting mostly children who are taken from their homes and forced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[655],"tags":[258,256,8139,16876,8614,5097,3575,6572,257,6571,254,6433,11780,6615],"class_list":["post-40199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-algeria","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-algeria-news","tag-counter","tag-district","tag-forces","tag-human","tag-leone","tag-news","tag-sierra","tag-south-africa-today","tag-strengthen","tag-task","tag-trafficking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40199","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Source<\/a>
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South Africa Today Africa \u2013 North Africa Algeria<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"