OPINION: Why Kenyans must remain vigilant this festive season

December is often a time of joy, travel, and reunion for most Kenyan families. Yet beneath the celebrations, the festive season is one of the most dangerous periods for human trafficking. Increased movement, financial pressure, and lowered vigilance create the perfect conditions for traffickers to exploit vulnerable people.

Financial strain is one of the most immediate pressures. As families spend during the holidays and brace for January school fees, desperation can set in. In these moments, job offers promising quick income, overseas travel, or minimal qualifications become especially tempting. Traffickers prey on this urgency, disguising exploitation as opportunity.

At the same time, the festive season brings heightened mobility. Families travel between cities and rural homes, while others migrate in search of work. This movement weakens community oversight, allowing traffickers to transport children and young adults with little scrutiny. What feels like harmless travel can quickly become a pathway to exploitation.

Over the year trafficking has been evolving. One of the most alarming trends we see at HAART Kenya is online recruitment into forced cybercrime. Young people are targeted through social media with fake job offers such as data entry, customer service, or digital marketing.

They are trafficked to Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, where their passports are confiscated and they are forced to run online scams under threats of violence. This digital form of trafficking shows how exploitation is adapting to technology and youth unemployment.

Closer to home, internal trafficking remains widespread and largely unseen. Domestic servitude continues to affect children recruited often by people known to their families with promises of schooling or city jobs. Instead, they endure long hours of unpaid labour, isolation, and denied education.

While trafficking to the Gulf States dominates headlines, trafficking within Kenya is quietly growing.

Despite existing laws, including the Counter Trafficking in Persons Act of 2010, legislation alone has not been enough. Convictions remain few compared to reported cases, and structural challenges such as poverty, unemployment, porous borders, and corruption allow trafficking networks to persist. Yet within these gaps, survivor leadership offers a powerful response.

At HAART Kenya, survivors are not just beneficiaries of support, they are leaders in prevention. By sharing their stories in schools, churches, media, and public forums, survivors expose grooming tactics that statistics cannot capture. Survivor storytelling breaks stigma, challenges misinformation, and transforms personal pain into collective action. Their lived experience strengthens policy conversations and guides civil society toward trauma-informed, humane solutions.

Still, vulnerability to trafficking is not evenly distributed. Residents of informal settlements face intense economic pressure that makes deceptive offers harder to resist. In drought-affected regions, survival migration increases exposure to exploitation. Coastal communities remain vulnerable due to sex tourism, while refugees and undocumented migrants often fear reporting abuse. Meanwhile, young people active online but lacking digital safety awareness are increasingly targeted through personalized grooming.

As Kenyans celebrate this festive season, vigilance is essential. Traffickers are rarely strangers; they may appear as helpful relatives, friends, or online contacts offering shortcuts to success. Before accepting any job or travel offer, verify it, consult trusted sources, and inform someone you trust. No opportunity is worth the loss of freedom or dignity.

Trafficking thrives in silence, but it weakens when communities speak up and protect one another. If a child is overworked, isolated, or denied education, it is everyone’s concern. Collective vigilance is the only way to ensure that this season of celebration does not become a season of exploitation.

How to Report and Seek Help

If you notice red flags of trafficking do not confront the trafficker yourself as this can put the victim at greater risk. Instead, use these official channels to report:

• National Child Helpline: Call 116 (Toll-free, 24/7) – primary line for reporting any form of child abuse or trafficking.
• Police Hotline: 999 or 112 for immediate emergencies.
• Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Counter-Trafficking in Persons Secretariat: 0733 721 566
• HAART Kenya: 0780 211 113

Miriam Mang'oka, HAART Kenya