A BBC Africa Eye investigation has revealed a hidden trafficking ring that abducts disabled children from Tanzania’s impoverished rural areas and sells them into servitude by making them beg on Nairobi’s streets.
The network was infiltrated for over a year by a team of undercover investigators led by reporter Njeri Mwangi, who revealed how the traffickers prey on Tanzanian families’ hopes by promising them a better life for both them and their crippled children.
Once smuggled into Kenya, the children are forced into begging and contact cut off between them and their families back at home.
The children do not receive a penny of the money they make from begging, and are subjected to physical and psychological abuse by their captors.
The BBC Africa Eye investigation highlights the case of one young victim.
Fara was lured from his parents, trafficked to Kenya and forced to beg on the streets of Nairobi at the age of just 14. Unable to escape his traffickers, he has been held captive for almost half of his life.
Children with disabilities from low-income homes act as a potential source of income for the notorious traffickers.
This illuminating piece of investigation documentary has played a huge role in eye opening of the two countries named.
Following a BBC Africa Eye programme that exposed the organized smuggling of crippled children from Tanzania to Kenya for profit, Kenya’s director of public prosecutions has committed to take action.
_“I am actually ashamed and not trying to give an excuse, I promise to pick it up myself but the best thing is for us to have a conversation as East Africans“_ ,
Noordin Haji said on Tuesday.
Tanzania has also expressed “disappointment” with the BBC’s findings, it also claims to be “working closely” with Kenya to combat the epidemic of child trafficking.
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