Sierra Leone’s Minister of Social Welfare Melrose Kaminty has called on world leaders, sporting franchise to unite and take tangible and robust steps including but not limited to; Developing Policies and legislative framework that will be implemented and monitored to tackling child sports trafficking.
The minister was speaking as a keynote speaker at a high level panel session on technological solutions to tackling sports trafficking among youths held on the sidelines of the United Nations 78th General Assembly in New York, United States recently. The event raised awareness of the magnitude of the problem and the impact of the growth of digital technologies as well as a commitment to implementing technology solutions to tackle exploitation and trafficking in sports.
Speaking at the event Melrose Kaminty said that the economies of many of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), including Sierra Leone, have been affected by Covid-19 and the war between Russia and Ukraine.
As a result, she said most of our people are facing vulnerabilities including lack of employment, loss of income, hike in commodity prices, economic hardship and loss of livelihood which are all drivers of human trafficking.
“With the advent of COVID-19, many people around the world shifted their everyday lives to online platforms, and that unfortunately, these internet and digital platforms are now being used by traffickers as tools to recruit, manipulate, exploit and control victims in various countries of origin, transit and destination” she added.
She said that traffickers can hide their real identities from investigators, as well as launder their profits through online crypto currencies. “The Palermo Protocol makes clear that sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and illicit removal of organs are the purposes for which people are being trafficked” she confirmed. She also informed that according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 49.6 million people were trapped in some form of “human slavery” in 2021.
Adding that out of that number, 27.6 million were in forced labour and/or sexual exploitation and 22 million in forced marriage.
Informing the gathering about Sierra Leone’s progress in the fight to combat human trafficking the minister stated that her ministry supervises the Anti- Trafficking in Persons Task Force; and that through her ministry and the Secretariat the government has put in place series of measures to prevent trafficking, protect victims, investigate cases, prosecute and punish offenders.
She also informed that: “There is now in place the New Anti-trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Acts of 2022, that established the National Task Force on Human Trafficking; a new regional road Map launched in SL that will strengthen counter trafficking in West Africa and mobilise other ECOWAS Member States and critical stakeholders to build Consensus and enhance regional collaboration on information sharing, victim identification and providing services to survivors”.
In addition she notified the gathering that President Dr. Julius Maada Bio in his Manifesto for his second term of office introduced his priority as the ‘big Five Game Changers’ which includes; Feed Sierra Leone- Food Security and inclusive growth; Human capital Development; improved Public Service; and Technology and Infrastructure. These she said will all help in consolidating the gains made in the last five years and accelerate transformation.
Speaking on the effect of trafficking in sports, the Minister stated that such has received limited attention from national Governments and sport organisations.
She furthered that experts are now saying that the internet provides easy access to a much larger group of potential victims not only in football but in other sports as well.
The Minister ended by calling on world leaders and sports franchises to see the need to nurture partnerships with technology companies and online platforms to detect and curb their inadvertent facilitation of trafficking.
She said that they need to undertake joint efforts to develop algorithms and digital tools capable of identifying and flagging suspicious online behavior linked to human trafficking. “Tackling sports trafficking is not insurmountable, almost every major sporting franchise in the world currently has an anti-modern slavery statement” she stated.
She also called for a global cooperation mechanism to exist that helps take the knee off the choking economies of least developed countries such as Sierra Leone and assist in our efforts to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the majority of the citizens and make them less vulnerable to trafficking.
Key dignitaries and stakeholders were present at the even such as Mission 89; High-Level Panelists from FIFA Safeguarding, Confederation of African Football (CAF), Generation Amazing, MTN, SMART AFRICA and MICROSOFT NIGERIA AND GHANA.
