Forty to hit the road to raise human trafficking awareness

OPEN Door Crisis Centre, in partnership with the South African Police Service, launched a Human Trafficking Awareness campaign on Saturday.

Forty people will walk 695 kilometres from Durban to Johannesburg to raise awareness about trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation on Saturday, 2 May.

Human trafficking is the practice of buying and selling people for labour, organs or sexual exploitation, and is believed to be the fastest growing crime in the world, according to Advocate Val Daffel.

Director of Open Door, Thora Mansfield, says that statistics are shocking, as 27 million people have been victims of human trafficking: “One point two million children are trafficked annually, half of which are children from Africa.

“The purpose of the walk is not only to raise much-needed funds but also to create awareness of human trafficking.

“Should we prevent one child from being trafficked we believe our walk would have been a success – one child is one too many,” said Mansfield.

At the launch there were guest speakers from different organisations, Advocate Val Daffel (senior public prosecutor of the NPA), Brigadier Gwala (Chairman of Men for Change) and Major General Kabelo Mekute (chairman of the women’s network and KZN head of legal services).

Mekute said they are very honoured to be part of this project.

“We really need to raise awareness of human trafficking: children are our future, and we all need to work together to protect them.

“As the SAPS we really appreciate projects like this,” she said.

Gwala applauded this initiative: “This is the first time that I have heard of an NGO take such drastic measures.

“We know that, in most cases, the perpetrators are usually men and we are against that – real men should protect children and women,” said Gwala.