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Modern Day Slavery in Kenya Recent TV reports have shown prostitution, child labor on Nairobi streets at night and

pornographic production involving dogs. These items of news on Kenyan TV seem to lie on the side of moral dilapidation, which is true. However, a recent US State Department report on slavery categorized Kenya on the second last level. The report groups countries on their efforts to prevent violation of human rights, especially on slavery issues or its effort to prosecute and stop modern day slavery. Kenya is in the Second Tier watch list. The report details various issues affecting Kenyans and exposes redundant systems in the Kenya government that fail to prevent modern day slavery or simply arent implemented. The report starts by stating: Kenya is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. It mentions various aspects of Kenyan society that are obvious to most Kenyans as morally and legally wrong and others that seem to just pass us by. Some of the common issues include child prostitution, especially in coastal Kenya. It reiterates that the beach boys acting as pimps force children, especially girls, into prostitution. It also mentions the voluntary exodus of Kenyans to Saudi Arabia, only to occasionally occur on the evening news to have been enslaved and tortured. The interesting aspect though, are the features that we miss to recognize as Kenyans; children working in the fields instead of being in school, young girls working as house helps instead of moving on to high school and Gay guys getting lured to the rich Middle East and enslaved for sex. The report goes on to mention other issues we often ignore such as Miraa vehicles carrying Somali women and children after dropping off their loads of Khat. These people end up in the sex tourism rings. Perhaps the most interesting part of this report was the sections that indicated the existence of laws and even committees that are supposed to curb human slavery in Kenya. While recognizing that the Kenyan government put effort into drawing up the bill and passing it into law, the report indicates that the law is rarely used to prosecute criminals in this area. The laws include section 14 of the Sexual Offenses Act which provides for the prosecution of child sex tourists and concerned parties; the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2010 which outlines laws on prosecution of human traffickers. I was shocked by a part that read: The National Steering Committee to Combat Human Trafficking, chaired by the Minister of Gender, only met once during the reporting period. This is astonishing, considering the significant problem of human rights violation in Kenya. It might be partly because there is no direct allocation of funds towards this course, or the fact that it does not attract enough political traction. I am not aware of such an allocation in the 2013 budget just presented by the National Treasury Secretary of Cabinet.

This report exposes significant failures in Kenya. The issue of modern day slavery cannot be fully blamed on the government. Most of us live in apartment buildings where the house helps are under 18 years and say nothing of it. We ignore the tens of children begging for money in the evenings in Nairobi streets. The issue is dreadful and is eating into our moral fabric. So, the next time you see on the news that girls in their twenties are dbuting in a porn film in the coast, dont judge, they are the small girls we ignored a few years ago in the streets. As always, I think that educating people on this issue is the best approach. Most people are not aware that keeping their 10 year old son home to herd the cattle instead of go to school is considered child labor. Educating people in rural Kenya will reduce the number of primary school finalists being sent to cities to work for their relatives without further education. The government can also not escape blame on this. This report was based on the last year of the Kibaki-Raila government. I hope that the Jubilee government will do better to protect Kenyans from Modern Day Slavery.

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