Kenya cannot afford to treat child trafficking as an occasional crime involving a few bad individuals. It is a serious failure of protection that requires sustained action from the state, families and communities.
The National Crime Research Centre study reported in today’s paper should be a wake-up call. Children are being exploited because traffickers know where protection is weak and where poverty and instability leave families vulnerable.
The answer cannot be limited to rescuing children after they have been trafficked. By then, a child may already have suffered abuse, exploitation or lasting trauma.
Kenya must put greater emphasis on preventing trafficking in the first place. This means strengthening families struggling with poverty, keeping vulnerable children in school and ensuring communities know how traffickers recruit and groom children.
It also means making the institutions responsible for protecting children work better together. Police, children’s services, schools, immigration officials and communities should not operate in isolation when a child is at risk.
The growing use of social media makes this even more urgent. Children can now be targeted by traffickers without leaving their homes. Parents, teachers and children themselves need to understand these risks without turning the internet into something to fear.
Kenya has laws against trafficking. What is needed now is stronger enforcement and a prevention system that reaches children before traffickers do.
Quote of the Day:
"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."—Francis of Assisi, Italian founder of the Franciscan Order, died on October 3, 1226
