A report by the US State Department has exposed how Kenyan women and girls have been trafficked to work in brothels and servitude in the Middle East and Asia.
In the 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, the US also found traffickers are recruiting foreigners for sex work in Kenya, painting the country as a hotbed for human trafficking.
Recruitment agencies were found to facilitate the exploitation of Kenyans in the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, Europe, Northern Africa and North America.
“Employment agencies, both legal and fraudulent, recruit Kenyans to work in the Middle East … where traffickers exploit them in massage parlours, brothels, domestic servitude, or manual labour; Kenyans who voluntarily migrate in search of employment opportunities are often vulnerable to exploitative conditions,” the report states.
It has singled out nine Middle East giants, among them Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, as countries where the practice is prevalent.
Others are Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq and Oman.
The new report may shine a fresh spotlight on frenzied bid to travel to the Gulf at a time when the government has also ramped up its labour migration efforts.
The New York Times on Sunday reported that 274 Kenyan workers, most of them women, had died in Saudi Arabia alone over the past five years.
The new report shows Nairobi-based labour recruiters have networks spread in Uganda and Ethiopia, where they recruit Burundian, Ethiopian, Rwandan, Zambian and Ugandan workers through fraudulent offers for jobs in the Middle East and Asia.
In an all too familiar story, these vulnerable Kenyans find themselves in massage parlours, brothels, domestic servitude, or manual labour, often after being duped with mouth-watering job deals.
Just a week ago, a Kenyan named Nancy King’ori, alias Alian, was arrested by Indian police on allegations of running an international human trafficking racket.
According to The Times of India, King’ori was arrested following a complaint by a Kenyan survivor.
The complainant told the police King’ori recruited her on November 18, 2024, and forced her into prostitution.
“The accused was found living off the earnings of the complainant,” the police said.
King’ori was detained by Indian courts for a week.
Ugandan and Nigerian traffickers have also been accused of exploiting Kenyan women in sex trafficking in Thailand.
TRAFFICKING TO KENYA
There is also a syndicate of recruiters who traffic women and girls into the country from the region and from Asia.
The report found cross-border trafficking rings exploit porous borders to ferry women and underage girls from the Karamoja region of Uganda to Nairobi, where they are exploited in domestic servitude and commercial sex.
Additionally, the report said, Kenya continues to serve as a transit point for migrants seeking work in South Africa.
“Traffickers exploit transiting Ethiopians in labour trafficking, and Burundian and Rwandan women in domestic servitude,” the department said.
Among the dirty tricks the recruiters use is debt-based coercion or debt bondage.
This is where, according to the UN Human Rights Council, labour is demanded as repayment of a loan or advance pay.
This is often money offered by recruiters to facilitate the recruitment.
The workers are often trapped into working for little remuneration, or in some cases none, to repay the loan or advance.
The State Department said South Asian women, primarily from Nepal, India, and Pakistan, are among the most affected by the debt-based coercion.
These women are brought to Kenya to work in mujra dance clubs in Nairobi and Mombasa, where traffickers force them to pay off debts by engaging in commercial sex.
These clubs are owned and patronised by the rich and powerful.
In November 2021, businessman Asif Amirali Alibhai Jetha was jailed for 60 years by a court in Mombasa after finding him guilty of trafficking 12 girls into the country.
Somali women and girls have also ended up in brothels in Nairobi and Mombasa.
Based on various study reports, there were between 35,000 and 40,000 victims of sex trafficking, including extraterritorial child sexual exploitation and abuse, in Kenya.
From these, approximately 19,000 were children.
Most perpetrators were found to include government officials, police officers and local authorities, and, to a lesser extent, foreign tourists.
A former minister, for instance, was in 2019 on the spot over the alleged trafficking of eight belly dancing girls from Pakistan.
Family members, peers, taxi drivers and intermediary recruiters were mentioned as among those who have facilitated and/or exploited more than 2,000 children in child sex trafficking in Kilifi and Kwale counties.
Private villas and vacation homes are among the facilities used for this exploitation to avoid law enforcement detection in hotels.
Workers in khat cultivation areas and near gold mines in western Kenya, truck drivers along major highways, and fishermen on Lake Victoria also exploit children in sex trafficking.
TRAFFICKED TO MYANMAR
The report also captures a new trend of trafficking to South East Asia, where Kenyans and other Africans are promised fake high-paying jobs in Thailand, only to end up in rebel-controlled areas of Myanmar.
Early March, 64 Kenyans were rescued from the country.
Kenya Ambassador to Thailand Lindsay Kiptiness, who is handling the case, said those targeted are aged between 19-35 years, “most of them qualified and graduates”.
“Once they arrive in the compounds, they are received by armed men and are ushered into the compounds then given five mobile phones and one laptop. They are taken through scamming training for 10 days and once training is done, they are told to do the work of scamming and other online crimes such as cryptocurrency scamming,” Kiptiness said in a video released by MFA.
DOMESTIC WORKERS SLAVERY
The envoy said most of the victims in Myanmar are from the North Rift, Western Kenya, Nyanza, Nakuru, Nyandarua, Murang’a, Mombasa and Nairobi.
The US department said traffickers in Southeast Asia use social media, smartphone applications and fraudulent job postings with false promises of high-paying jobs in the technology, education, or hospitality sectors to recruit Kenyans for work in Thailand.
Upon arrival in Thailand, traffickers transport victims to Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia and Laos where they are exploited in labour trafficking, online scam operations and sex trafficking.
Additionally, reports continue to document how traffickers in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, exploit Kenyan women working in domestic servitude.
They are often subjected to severe physical and emotional abuse.
“Observers report foreign employers often hold migrant workers’ salaries until the completion of their contract period to coerce them to stay longer, and in some cases, employers sell or “trade” migrant workers to another employer without a legal change in the employment contract, increasing their vulnerability to trafficking,” the report said.
Saudi Arabia remains a primary destination for economic migrants and the Kenyan government estimates indicate more than 200,000 Kenyans are working in Saudi, of which more than half are domestic workers.
The infamous visa sponsorship kafala system that is common in the Gulf — Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — was also highlighted as a modern-slavery tool.
The system, whereby the employer retains the employee’s passport, binds domestic workers to one employer and prevents their freedom of movement.
NGO studies estimate more than 98 per cent of Kenyans returning from work in the Middle East experience conditions indicative of forced labour, including non-payment of wages, physical abuse, passport confiscation and excessive working hours.
Another 2021 study by the University of Chicago found that “practically everyone heading to Gulf Cooperation Council member states (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE) would become a victim of forced labour at some point”.
In terrorism, Kenyan adults and children are increasingly being radicalised and recruited into al Shabaab, “sometimes with fraudulent promises of lucrative employment”.
In a familiar case on the streets of Nairobi and other towns in Kenya, the State Department found traffickers were bringing children and persons with physical disabilities from Tanzania and other neighbouring countries to exploit them in forced begging.
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