by Hilary Leong | Jul 21, 2021 | Child Abuse, Child Labour, Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Human Trafficking
GBVF and Human Trafficking has been steadily increasing over the past 5 years but more so since Covid-19 Pandemic. The consequence of lockdown being a major economic downturn, which resultantly impacted very negatively on Socio-Economic conditions plundering many into poverty making people vulnerable to the evils of Human Trafficking and GBVF and thus the statistics of these atrocities have spiked since.
GBVF is South Africa’s second Pandemic and in fact, the rest of the world is not far off from this. Domestic Violence has especially increased during the Covid-19 lockdown as frustration and depression levels have maximised. Forced Labour and sex trafficking have increased as Traffickers thrive in situations like the world is experiencing with Covid-19 by preying on peoples vulnerabilities.
In the past month alone, to mention a few amongst many cases of human trafficking. Three weeks ago in Sandton 3 girls were rescued from sex trafficking. They were being held in an apartment after being lured from Upington to Sandton and used for prostitution. Last week a 13-year-old was rescued from sex trafficking too in the Vaal area. She was allegedly kidnapped and about to be sold to a human trafficking syndicate by her step-mother and step-grandmother for R40 million. In East London, 3 weeks ago, a 13-year-old down syndrome girl and a 15-year-old boy was rescued from sex trafficking after their mother sold them to two shop owners in Keiskammahoek. In all these cases perpetrators have been arrested.
Gender-Based Violence cases in the past month to mention a few. Last week, ACT Africa received two calls for help against extreme domestic violence in less than 5 days. In both cases, alcohol was a huge driver and the men after being intoxicated became very abusive towards their wives, threatening to kill them. Last week Thursday a woman was beaten and burnt to death in Walkerville. Two weeks ago in Kwazulu Natal an 11-year-old was allegedly raped by her teacher in the toilet and threatened to be killed if she reported the matter to anyone. Lerato Nkadimeng was brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend, her funeral was on 6 June 2021.
The Press Conference held at The Maslow Hotel in Sandton on 24 June, highlighted programmes to help men, offered by some of the organisations participating at the International Men’s Gender-Based Violence Conference on 14 August, which aims to address these atrocities by together with the men attending to find tangible solutions to break these cycles and to provide at the conference help for perpetrators and abused to receive the needed help from the various organisations present like NICDAM, SADAG, SANCA, FAN, MADA and Come Back Mission for continued assistance to break the cycle of abuse in their lives.
#endgenderbasedviolence ❌
#endhumantrafficking ❌
by Hilary Leong | Jan 6, 2021 | Child Abuse, Child Safety, Gender-Based Violence, Happy New Year 2021, Human Trafficking
Awareness for Child Trafficking Africa ACT Africa our New Years Eve preparing Food Relief Packs, masks and sanitisers for delivery to the needy on New Years Day. We give God All the Glory and Thank Him that we are able to Bless many families going through the most and provide them with some relief.🙏🏾💖 Thank You to our sponsor AIDS Healthcare Foundation for your assistance, much appreciated 🌟🌟💟
#beautifulendto2020🎉✅🎆
#covid_19relief ✅
#endpoverty ❌
#endhumantrafficking ❌
#endgenderbasedviolence ❌
#newyearseve2020🌟🎆
#newyearsday2021🌟💞
Should you wish to assist us please click on the link below to donate
https://www.payfast.co.za/donate/go/awarenessforchildtraffickingafricaactafrica
Your support is appreciated🙏🏾💟
by Hilary Leong | Dec 15, 2020 | Child Abuse, Child Safety, Gender-Based Violence, Human Trafficking
If you are travelling this holiday season, be observant of those around you. Be alert to children or young adults appearing to be alone and individuals that are unable to speak for themselves or under someone else’s control.
Common Victim Behaviours and Indicators:
- Frightened, ashamed or nervous
- Anxious around uniformed security and police
- Under the control of a companion
- Unable to move freely without being watched closely
- Avoiding eye contact
- Appearing drugged or malnourished
- With few or no personal belongings
- Inappropriately dressed for travel
- Unsure of their destination, or who will be meeting them
- Have scripted or inconsistent stories
- Visible scars, wounds, or bruises
- Without control of passport or travel documents
DON’T DO THE FOLLOWING:
- Do NOT confront anyone you suspect of engaging in human trafficking•
- Do NOT try to rescue any possible victim•
- Do NOT display any unusual concern or alarm•
- Do NOT endanger yourself or others
DO THE FOLLOWING:
- Be observant of surroundings•
- Note details of suspicious incidents•
- Report suspected human trafficking incidents to SAPS and the TIPLINE numbers below•
- Alert police, airport police If you suspect human trafficking or observe any harmful behaviour, report it as soon as possible.
- If you are on an aeroplane, tell a flight attendant. If at the airport, alert the airport police or an employee.
- If needed, write down a description of the situation.
- Don’t stop there! You should also report incidents by calling the numbers below,
SAPS: 10111
CHILDLINE:0800 055 555
National Human Trafficking Hotline: 0800 222 777
Please help us in this war against Gender-Based Violence and Human Trafficking by donating. Please click on the link below to donate..
https://www.payfast.co.za/donate/go/awarenessforchildtraffickingafricaactafrica
Your much needed support is appreciated🙏🏾💟
by Hilary Leong | Aug 17, 2020 | Child Abuse, Child Safety, Gender-Based Violence, Human Trafficking
#DRASTIC INCREASE IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING BETWEEN 2016 AND 2019 WORLDWIDE 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾
Statistics by OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) :
It is estimated that more than 40 million people around the world were victims of forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, slavery and slavery-like practices, and trafficking in 2016. Between 2017 and 2018, a total of 74,514 victims of trafficking were detected in over 110 countries.
The US Department of State reports 105,7876 VoTs were identified worldwide in 2019. THB disproportionately affects women and girls; 72 percent of all victims detected worldwide are female. Moreover, sexual exploitation is the predominant form of trafficking,
Moreover, sexual exploitation is the predominant form of trafficking with women and girls representing 94 percent of total detected victims.💔💔😱😱😡😡
https://www.osce.org/odihr/458179
#breakthesilenence 🤐✊🏿‼️
#breakthechain⛓⛏ ✊🏿‼️
#savinglivesthroughawarenessandeducation ‼️💟
#HumanTrafficking
#Statistics
#UnitedNations
#Unicef
#UNWomen
Please help us in this war against Gender-Based Violence and Human Trafficking by donating. Please click on the link below to donate..
https://www.payfast.co.za/donate/go/awarenessforchildtraffickingafricaactafrica
Your much needed support is appreciated🙏🏾💟
by Hilary Leong | Jun 9, 2020 | Child Abuse, Child Safety, Gender-Based Violence, Human Trafficking
Our team at Awareness for Child Trafficking Africa have been doing Humanitarian work, specifically focussing on children for over 10 years individually and across Africa even prior to the birth of this organization.
The reason, children are our future and they are vulnerable. Yet they are being abused daily, sexually, physically, mentally and emotionally. So, often I hear or see articles, speakers and in general conversation, people differentiating between sexual, physical abuse and mental, emotional abuse.
The fact is once someone is sexually and or physically abused, they have automatically experienced all the other forms of abuse because these violent vicious acts encompass all and therefore we cannot differentiate.
However, a person can be physically, emotionally and mentally abused without being sexually abused, yet all those acts are just as traumatic for the victim. As per statistics provided by the World Health Organization, it is estimated up to 1 billion children aged 2 to 17 years have experienced one or more forms of abuse.
Children undergoing one form or the other of abuse, often do not speak out about the abuse experienced for fear of not being believed by their parents or caregivers, embarrassment as well as being threatened by the perpetrator not to tell anyone. In lots of cases they bribe the children with gifts and tell them very convincingly not to tell and the famous words “It’s our secret”.
Children often block these violent acts out mentally as a protective mechanism to avoid reality and to shut off the emotions and hurt they feel. This is dormant and in later years as teenagers, these children start acting out and are sadly misunderstood as being rebellious and delinquent often turning to drink, drugs, prostitution and crime in one form or the other.
There is the other side of this too, where the children become extremely introvert and bury themselves in books, overstudy and don’t socialise much and do well at school in spite and despite their experiences.
I am close to quite a few people who have been abused as children and in one instance as supposed to be “rebellious and or delinquent” the teenager known to me was indeed the opposite. She was very studious, didn’t socialise much and books were her everything.
This was her crutch. Unfortunately, her parents and neither any of us around her daily thought of this as being out of the ordinary but that it was her personality. How wrong we were…
As an adult, this quiet, intelligent, studious person got involved in very toxic abusive relationships, one after the other and we could not understand why, until one fine fateful day everything surfaced, over fifty years later whilst undergoing counselling. We discovered that this beautiful lady was sexually molested by someone known to the family as a toddler and further on into her childhood.
She kept this as a secret for fear of family relationships being severed and thought her dad would end up in prison for probably killing the perpetrator if he found out and did not want that and instead blocked out these horrific atrocities experienced. Later on, just at the end of her teens, she was raped by three brothers, again going through hell.
Needless to say, the effects of the abuse endured during her childhood has had major negative ramifications right into her adulthood, where she constantly felt insecure and unworthy leading to bad decisions regarding relationships almost costing her life.
A few weeks ago in the community where I live, within a period of 48 hours 5 babies were badly abused by their Mum’s caught up in drugs. These Mums are victims of abuse and this evil cycle of abuse has continued. We can continue to provide more examples of cases past and present which our organization has assisted and still assisting with, however what already has been mentioned more than shows that we are beyond crisis point with regards to Child Abuse.
The Shelter for girls which our NPO Awareness for Child Trafficking Africa supports, houses 35 teen girls which have been through abuse in their childhood and again all of the above emotions, reactions as a result of the abuse as previously mentioned are evident.
We see too that their concentration spans are adversely affected thus affecting their learning.
We have a moral and civic duty to love, protect, nurture, provide for and help children grow into healthy, productive adults adding positivity in this world in every sphere of life and not abuse them.
Instead, a blind eye is being turned…How much longer must our children suffer and endure these atrocities??? We don’t have the answer to that but we do know we will fight hard to be part of the solutions and hopefully, that will down the road help provide one or more answers to this evil.
Written by: Hilary Leong and Matthew Mensah for and on behalf of Awareness for Child Trafficking Africa.
4th Issue – March 2020
Please help us in this war against Gender-Based Violence and Human Trafficking by donating. Please click on the link below to donate..
https://www.payfast.co.za/donate/go/awarenessforchildtraffickingafricaactafrica
Your much needed support is appreciated🙏🏾💟
by Hilary Leong | Jun 5, 2020 | Child Abuse, Child Safety, Gender-Based Violence, Human Trafficking
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52773344
Police forces across the world are warning that criminals and paedophiles are using the coronavirus lockdown to target children.💔💔
Data gathered by the BBC reveals demand for abuse imagery has shot up.😡💔 Reports of obscene online material more than doubled globally to more than four million between March and April.😭😭 The internet traffic is so heavy that we’ve been finding that dark web systems are crashing.”😱😱😡😡 #childprotectionweek 31 May to 7 June 2020🇿🇦
#STOPONLINECHILDSEXUALEXPLOITATION!!!⁹
Please help us in this war against Gender-Based Violence and Human Trafficking by donating. Please click on the link below to donate..
https://www.payfast.co.za/donate/go/awarenessforchildtraffickingafricaactafrica
Your much needed support is appreciated🙏🏾💟
