Global Issues

Kenya

• Source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.

• Kenyan children are forced into sex trafficking – including involvement in the coastal sex tourism industry.

• Kenyan men, women, and children voluntarily migrate to other East African nations, Europe, and the Middle East – particularly Saudi Arabia – in search of employment, where they are trafficked into domestic servitude, massage parlors and brothels.

• Children from Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda are subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking in Kenya.

• Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani women reportedly transit Nairobi en route to exploitation in Europe’s sex trade.

• Police statistics indicated 627 rapes in 2008, but human rights groups estimated that more than 21,000 rapes were perpetrated annually.

• 37% of women in Kenya report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 17.2% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 38.5% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 20.6% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

• 12.3% report forced first sex.

 

Advocacy:

• Ministry of Gender and a local NGO continued to jointly operate a 24-hour toll-free hotline for reporting cases of child trafficking, labor, and abuse.

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011