Kenyan Chief Justice Evan Gicheru has said that east Africa is rife with human trafficking, with woman and children being sold into prostitution, forced labour and pornography. A demand for services, work in the sex industry and wars have caused an increase in trafficking. He also claimed that open border policies in the region have made it a perfect area for human traffickers to operate.
“Recent reports have indicated increased trafficking in human beings in Kenya which has dubious distinction of being the source, transit and recipient country in the human trafficking trade,”
”Tanzania is categorised as a source country for women and children trafficking both internally and externally for sexual exploitation and forced labour in domestic market,” he said.
Speaking to 20 judges from eastern Africa, the Chief Justice urged governments to take action against the problem and recommended that the training of police and judges to deal with the problem of human trafficking.  

Kyrgyz security forces have removed more than 60 women from a plane due to fly from the city of Osh to the United Arab Emirates. The Kyrgyz authorities claim that they have evidence that the women were being trafficked into forced prostitution in Dubai and other cities in the UAE. The women were mainly from Uzbekistan and it is believed that stringent checks carried out when women fly from that country to the Gulf have lead to traffickers taking them to Kyrgystan first. Osh may have become a hub city for women being trafficked to the UAE. Many of the women aged between 17 and 38 had been promised jobs as waitresses, but others knew they were going to the sex trade. One woman said “I knew that I would be making money there, perhaps through sex work, but I don’t have any choice. I am an orphan, with no job and no means to survive.” Sadly she may have found herself in conditions of slavery and earning little or no money for herself.
Despite clear evidence that women and children are being trafficked into the UAE, the authorities there continue to deny the problem and refuse to take further action. In reply to an ongoing campaign from Business Travellers against Human Trafficking, the Dubai authorities decided to make no changes to protect the victims of human trafficking or to break the link between trafficked women and children and local hotels. The campaign continues.

The government of Cote D’Ivoire has tried to deny the existence of trafficking of children into forced labour within its cocoa industry. NGOs have long claimed that thousands of children are trafficked, abused, enslaved and work in dangerous conditions within the trade. The American NGO International Labour Rights Fund last week pressed a case in a US court against international food companies claiming that they have a responsibility for the the trafficking, torture and forced labour of children who cultivate cocoa in Cote D’Ivoire. Lucien Tape Doh, the president of Cote D’Ivoire’s Coffee and Cocoa Bourse (BCC), said however, “Child slaves don’t exist here. A child on a farm isn’t necessarily a slave,”, stressing cultural differences which make it acceptable for a child to work on a farm to learn skills.
Despite this, a 2002 survey by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture said some 284,000 children were working in dangerous conditions on West African cocoa farms, mainly in Cote D’Ivoire. The 2005 US State Department Trafficking in Persons report also states that children from Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana and Togo were trafficked into agricultural work and domestic labour. It is often the case that in periods of extreme political instability, such as Cote d’Ivoire has experienced recently, trafficking will flourish.
Fulgence N’Guessan, director of the Kavokiva cocoa exporting cooperative admitted that the country does have a problem with child slavery “It’s true that this problem does exist but we’re fighting it,” he said.
There is clearly a need for an up to date survey on child trafficking and child exploitation within the Ivorian Cocoa industry and a strong commitment from all concerned to end this kind of exploitation.

In the US, the FBI has arrested a man on suspicion of trafficking two Mexican women aged 14 and 24 and selling them into forced prostitution in Fort Myers. They were told that they would have to work as prostitutes in order to pay off a debt of $2,700 each for being brought into the US. It is a common strategy for traffickers to bring women to a country and then remove their travel documents and tell them that they must pay off a huge debt. Eliseo Escalante Santizo, 30, of Fort Myers was taken into custody on unrelated charges of battery and resisting an officer with violence. He has now been indicted on human trafficking and forced prostitution charges. Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy said that Santizo allegedly brought the women from Mexico through Arizona and sold them in Florida. The women managed to escape when they were left unguarded in an Immokalee motel.