The US State Department just released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which describes the state of modern slavery in 188 countries and territories around the world. Strides have been made by governments to combat modern slavery in recent years, yet there is still a shocking estimated 27 million people who are victims of trafficking at any given time. UNICEF estimates that half of all trafficking victims are children.

Human trafficking is defined in the TIP report as “the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion.” Trafficking has many faces: sex trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, involuntary domestic servitude and the recruitment/use of child soldiers.The majority of trafficking victims are women and girls, who are forced or coerced into sexual slavery, prostitution or domestic labor. However, there are also significant numbers of men and boys who are victims, especially of forced labor.Victims are nearly always from marginalized and vulnerable groups – ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, undocumented immigrants and the poor. Traffickers prey on victims’ aspirations for a better life and dreams of rising out of poverty, and operate with impunity in areas where victims have little legal protection and prosecuting perpetrators is not prioritized. Most trafficking victims are voiceless, their plight hidden. Indeed, the TIP report names victim identification as the current most significant challenge in the global fight to end trafficking.Children who are poor and have no or little education are most vulnerable. Poverty reduction and providing the opportunity to receive a quality education are therefore key strategies to prevent the horrific abuse of child trafficking.

Poverty, lack of robust child labor policies and laws, and poor educational facilities contribute to exploitative and forced child labor that endangers children’s physical and psychological health. Child labor, in turn, continues the cycle of poverty, where uneducated children continue to lack access to skilled and profitable employment as adults. For that reason, improving children’s access to quality education prevents human trafficking. Global Freedom Center

The TIP report places countries and territories into one of four tiers as a reflection of the extent to which governments have come into compliance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards for ending human trafficking. Kenya is named a Tier 2 Watch List country, which means that Kenya is not in full compliance with the TVPA standards and the number of trafficking victims is increasing and/or the government has failed to increase efforts to combat trafficking. In other words, trafficking is a major problem in Kenya and impoverished children are at great risk of victimization.The importance of education for children living in poverty is inarguable. However, the current reality of child trafficking in Kenya establishes yet another reason that investing in children’s education is essential. Providing children born into poverty with the opportunity to receive a quality education offers protection from child trafficking. Indeed, it is the primary preventative strategy.There are many wonderful individuals and organizations working in coordination with governments to identify and free victims, prosecute perpetrators and provide services for healing from the physical and emotional trauma of trafficking. We are deeply grateful for these groups. For eduKenya, the horror of child trafficking in Kenya reminds us that our work in educating children born into abject poverty is as much about breaking the cycle of poverty as it is protecting vulnerable children from the injustice of trafficking, which strips children of dreams, hope and freedom.We know that the Lord defends and upholds the cause of the oppressed, and wants to use all of us to both prevent and end trafficking, setting the prisoners free (Psalm 10, 146).