Project Location: London and the South East
Project Contact: Cherifa Atoussi, Anti-Child Trafficking Officer
Project Funders: Comic Relief (UK)

"The dedicated and enthusiatic team of AFRUCA are a credit to their cause. Their knowledge within the field is second to none here in the United Kingdom"

(Andrew Desmond, Metropolitan Police, Specialist Crime Directorate)

AFRUCA is the only African-led charity in the UK working on counter trafficking issues and providing direct support to victims. Our work on trafficking imbibes a holistic approach, working closely with others to sensitize the community – both in the UK, other countries in Europe and in Africa, support child victims of trafficking and influence relevant governments’ policies and regulatory action.

Project Background:

• AFRUCA’s response to the issue of child trafficking is premised on the fact that the trafficking of children is first and foremost a child safeguarding, child protection issue, rather than an immigration issue. For this reason, we are firmly of the opinion that efforts to tackle the trafficking of children and provide support for individual victims must abide by and correlate with UK child protection laws, regulation, rules and practices.

• Over the past years, there has been a consistent growth in the number of separated African children arriving in the UK correlating with the increasing population of Africans in the country. Children and young people come in unaccompanied, or as unaccompanied asylum seeking young people or with others who are not their parents or immediate family members as privately fostered children. It is our firm belief that a significant proportion of such young people are victims of trafficking and that without appropriate intervention, most of them will end up as victims of abuse and exploitation at the hand of their "carers" and other people.

• During Christmas of 2006, AFRUCA ran a media campaign on child trafficking on 3 African TV Satellite stations with a total viewing audience of over 3 million people – mostly in London. As a direct result, between January and July 2007 over 20 young victims who had been able to escape their ordeals contacted AFRUCA for help. This Project has been developed as a direct result of our experiences in providing support as well as the input of these survivors.

• Feedback from our 2006 Body Shop Foundation funded workshops identified the ongoing importance of continued awareness raising within different African community and faith groups to challenge and change attitudes.

With new grant from Comic Relief in 2009, AFRUCA has been working on a more robust process of intervention as part of its Anti-Trafficking Programme guided by the 4 Ps as laid down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:

Our Current Work Against the Trafficking of Children:

Protection and provision of assistance to child victims of trafficking. This is a referral service aimed at helping trafficked children and young people access specialist legal advice, health, education and social care services

Child Participation through our Survivors Forum. A peer support group for victims to enable young people to provide each other with mutual support and assistance.

AFRUCA has established a Theatre for Development Project that offers Drama/Dance/Music as a creative and culturally appropriate alternative to available psychological and therapeutical services. This project seeks to address some of the psychological and emotional needs of the young people using our services while helping them to gain new skills

Prosecution: We work closely with the crime prevention agencies in the investigation of cases, often acting as expert witnesses in immigration and criminal cases.

Very recently, a pastor linked to the trafficking of exploitation of one of our users was successfully prosecuted and convicted. Also, four of our service users successfully brought a civil case against the Metropolitan Police Service for professional negligence in failing to deal with their reports of trafficking and exploitation. The court ordered them to be paid some compensation for their ordeal. 

AFRUCA sits on various national and international advisory boards to influence policies and practices on counter trafficking issues. We have presented papers to various national and international conferences to help raise awareness and inform about trends and developments in child trafficking.

Prevention: Community engagement is a core element of our project.  We run regular educational and sensitisation programmes to help improve knowledge and understanding of the issues and how to help protect victims. An example is our landmark community event at the House of Commons in February 2010 which has helped to initiate on-going dialogue between stakeholders.

Our "1 Million Africans Against Human Trafficking" campaign on FACEBOOK has been launched to raise awareness of the scourge of human trafficking and to encourage Africans to take a stand so that there will be no place for traffickers to operate and hide. 

Click to sign up: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=314714899242&ref=ts

We continue to hold educational activities for practitioners to help improve their knowledge and skills about this issue so they can better safeguard victims. An example is our series of International Seminars: "Breaking the Cycle of Fear: Witchcraft, Juju and Safeguarding Victims of Human Trafficking"  held in November 2009, January and June 2010. Read the report here

AFRUCA in Nigeria: The best long term solution to end human trafficking is to tackle the "supply" problem at its source. Nigeria is the chief source of children trafficked into the UK for various forms of exploitation. Our newly established sister charity AFRUCA Foundation for the Protection of the Rights of Vulnerable Children in Nigeria will work on the ground to "denounce the better life syndrome" and help combat some of the factors that lead to children being trafficked.

To read the independent evaluation report of our Anti Trafficking project, click here

For further information about our Trafficking of African Children and Young People in London Project, click here.

To read our "Trafficking of African Children in the UK: Addressing the Demand and Supply Nexus" report, click here

To read our "Breaking the Cycle of Fear: Witchcraft, Juju and Safeguarding Victims of Human Trafficking" report, click here

You can also download and read our new 2012-2013 Training Brochure. click here

Last Updated february 2012