SIERRA LEONE ANTI-TRAFFICKING NETWORK
HELPS 9 CHILD SURVIVORS REACH PROTECTIVE SERVICES
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The recent checkpoint detention of child traffickers in northwest Sierra Leone underscores how anti-trafficking stakeholder networks are essential to supporting survivors and combatting exploitation in all its forms.
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Sierra Leone police officials recently informed an African Programming & Research Initiative to End Slavery (APRIES) team member of a likely child trafficking situation in Kambia, a northern province that borders Guinea.
Early morning Monday, Sept. 20, police apprehended three adults travelling with nine children at a checkpoint near the international crossing at Gbalamuya.
APRIES Sierra Leone Country Coordinator Umaru Fofanah learned from an officer with the Family Support Unit (FSU), a specialized division attached to police units that investigates all forms of child abuse, including commercial exploitation and trafficking, that the children—four girls and five boys—ranged in age from 7 to 11, and came from Kenema, a district in eastern Sierra Leone bordering Liberia.
Fofanah connected Kambia FSU officers with APRIES’ partner World Hope International (WHI) to assess the case and, if necessary, provide protective services. Authorities moved all nine children to WHI’s Recovery Centre in Freetown. The Recovery Centre is an undisclosed residential facility where trafficking survivors receive trauma-informed care and support. APRIES works closely with WHI to ensure survivors receive high-quality protective services at the Centre. Because the Centre serves girls and boys under 5, the male survivors will eventually be moved to another shelter.
“Due to the complexity of combating child trafficking, the cooperation among anti-trafficking stakeholders at national, regional and international level is integral in identifying, referring and providing the required protective and legal services to child trafficking victims,” said Fofanah. “We are pleased that our partnership with WHI is providing such services to child trafficking victims.”
The adults are currently being held in Freetown, where FSU and the Transnational Organized Crime Unit (TOCU) are investigating the case.
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KAMBIA, TRAFFICKING, AND MENPIKIN
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APRIES works to reduce the prevalence of modern slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by transforming the capacity of community-engaged agencies, like World Hope International and FSUs, to implement prevention, prosecution, and protection strategies. APRIES is an initiative of the Center on Human Trafficking Research & Outreach (CenHTRO), based in the University of Georgia School of Social Work.
APRIES work in SSA is supported by the U.S. Department of State Program to End Modern Slavery.
APRIES recognizes the Kambia district as a Trafficking in Persons (TIP) hotspot. Child traffickers often mask their activities under the cultural custom of menpikin, an informal child fostering practice in which extended family members or trusted acquaintances remove a child from their home and community to a new location, often for educational opportunities.
Under the guise of menpikin, traffickers draw children into forced labor in agriculture, mining, domestic work, and sometimes early marriage or sex trafficking both within and outside the Sierra Leone border.
“The fact that these nine children were intercepted in Kambia re-affirms our decision to work in this border region,” said APRIES Sierra Leone Program Manager Claire Bolton. “We are so glad that the children will now receive care.”
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