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Celebrating ten years of the counter-trafficking in persons act in Kenya
Last month, colleagues in the Politics and International Relations subject group participated in an event in Nairobi to mark the 2023 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. As part of the event, a joint publication by Leeds Beckett and Haart Kenya was launched. Find out more in this post by Dr Robin Redhead.
The theme of the 2023 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is “reach every victim of trafficking, leave no one behind”. The challenges of protecting people from exploitation are growing instead of improving. Detection rates are falling and conviction rates are down globally. More than ever, we need to increase efforts to stop the trafficking in persons #endhumantrafficking.
Kenya is a source, transit, and destination country for victims of trafficking. To mark the UN World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, Florence Bore launched the Government of Kenya’s Plan of Action to stop trafficking in persons in Kenya. As part of this event, myself and Prof. Rachel Julian launched a joint publication with partners Haart Kenya, 10 Years of Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act in Kenya 2010-2022: Achievements, Challenges and Opportunities. This project was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)/Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Urgency Grant (AH-T011769-1) and internal funding from our Centre for Applied Social Research (CeASR).
Partnerships are the fourth Pillar of anti-trafficking action. Without the ability to gather data on the locations of survivors, the routes of exploitation and the networks of exploiters, stopping human trafficking is impossible. Leeds Beckett’s partnership with Haart Kenya enables this research to be gathered, analysed and disseminated. Creating an invaluable evidence-base for policy advocacy.
The event, pictured above, was held in Nairobi and attended by prominent dignitaries in the anti-trafficking in persons movement in Kenya.
Dr Robin Redhead
Dr Robin Redhead researches the politics of human rights, focusing on how people empower themselves through discourses of human rights. She looks at the practices of political activism of minority groups and investigates how the visual media represent their grievances.