By Sorie Ibarahim Foafanh
Three Sierra Leonean children who were trafficked to Mali have been repatriated, Minister of Social Welfare, Melrose Karminty confirmed in Freetown on Tuesday 7th November 2023 during the Government’s weekly press conference hosted by the Ministry of Information and Civic Education.
“They have been brought home from Mali today, aged between three and fifteen,” she added.
Trafficking, she said, should be part of the “Hands off Our Girls” campaign, and called on the First Lady to take trafficking into account in fighting against rape. “Trafficking is the driver of rape,” Karminty emphasized.
“It was said to me that the three children all have the same surname and that they went to a wedding,” a matter she said they would have to investigate.
Speaking about rape in the country, she noted that it is “endemic,” but that the campaign of the First Lady has helped to break the “silence.”
On mechanisms to prevent sexual-based violence, she said there should be “prevention, protection and prosecution”, noting the intervention of the law enforcement body.
Speaking on human trafficking, the Minister of Information and Civic Education, Chernor Bah said over twenty-five Sierra Leonean women were trafficked to Senegal, whose ECOWAS ID cards were taken from them by their traffickers upon their arrival in Senegal.
“They took their IDs from them and began selling them to men as prostitutes,” Bah said, adding that they are between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. “Over twenty of them I met them at the Sierra Leone Embassy in Senegal during my visit there,” he emphasized.
He confirmed that the chief of International Organization Migration (IOM) visited his office and that they spoke “a lot “about the issue human of trafficking.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (08/11/23)
