MOMBASA – Seven East African nations signed a landmark pact on Thursday to establish a regional intelligence-sharing hub and a joint strike force to combat a “rapidly evolving” human trafficking crisis fueled by cyber-scam operations.
The agreement, finalized during a three-day summit in Mombasa organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), brings together Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Rwanda. The initiative targets the sophisticated networks that have increasingly moved from traditional domestic servitude to “cyber-enabled trafficking.”
“Traffickers are now operating at the speed of the internet, using digital recruitment to lure victims into online fraud factories,” Kenyan Interior Ministry spokesperson Alice Njeri said at the closing ceremony. “Our legal systems have been too fragmented to keep up. That ends today.”
A key provision of the “Mombasa Declaration” is the decriminalization of victims. Historically, many trafficked persons in East Africa—particularly those forced into sex work or online scams—have been treated as criminals by local law enforcement. The new framework mandates a “survivor-first” approach, focusing on repatriation and trauma-informed care rather than prosecution.
The summit’s location, just steps from the historic Fort Jesus—a site once central to the 16th-century slave trade—was chosen to highlight the historical weight of the issue. “Modern slavery is just as brutal as its predecessor, only more hidden,” said John Richmond, a former U.S. Ambassador to Combat Trafficking.
The regional strike force is expected to begin joint patrols and cross-border operations by June 2026, supported by technical expertise from the U.S. and the European Union.
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