Arnold Chanel Amanda just turned 12 and is at an age where she should be in school learning new things and

playing with friends. But Amanda cannot experience the safety of a normal childhood because she was forcibly taken from her home to satisfy the sexual desires of older men. All her future plans and aspirations now seem like a distant memory as she, like many other people, is forced into this life of constant exploitation and abuse. But not only girls who have their childhood abruptly taken away from them with human traffickers targeting boys as well. Every year, thousands of people around the world fall prey to deception and are trafficked both within their country and internationally to be exploited as sex workers or cheap labour. According to the United Nations office on drugs and crime (UNODOC), human trafficking is the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them. The United Nations global initiative to fight human trafficking (UN.gift) estimates that about 2.5 million people are forced into labour at any given time. This includes sexual exploitation. Even more astounding is that 1.4 million of these are in Asia-Pacific region. UN.gift figures indicate that 43% of people are trafficked for sexual exploitation with the rest being used as cheap labour on farms, factories or as domestic servants. Of those trafficked for sexual exploitation, 95% of these are abused physically or sexually, the figures indicate. The estimated annual profits earned by traffickers via forced labor are around US$31.6 billion. According to Zubnah Khan of Save the Children Fiji, there is a need for awareness so that children and adults can protect themselves from human trafficking. Save the Children Fiji has been involved in a project on Combating Trafficking and Other Forms of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Fiji, Khan says. This project took place after a situational analysis took place which showed that the issue is prevalent in Fiji. She stated that people in vulnerable communities lacked the knowledge to identify human trafficking and act against it. It is a national issue and therefore awareness is very essential so people are able to protect themselves once aware of issues and the indicators, Khan added.

Save the children Fiji was part of the 2010 United States Department for Global Trafficking in Persons Grant whereby we worked with ten various communities and held workshops with other agencies involved in this issue like the Immigrations Department and the Police to raise awareness. Khan says that government is working with other agencies to look at this issue, apart from the Human Trafficking Unit, with border police, Immigration Department and other NGOs working together to prevent human trafficking spreading to Fiji. However, according to Salote Wati Baka, an investigator for the Human Trafficking Unit of the Fiji Police Force, there is a lack of investigators to deal with the rising number of trafficking cases. We have five members in the unit which look after the entire nation, Baka says. If we get a case in the west, we have to travel all the way from Suva to deal with it, she added. She admitted that there was a need for more resources to be diverted into combatting human trafficking to prevent it from escalating locally. We have had 12 official reports of human trafficking since 2010 with two prosecutions and two cases still pending, Baka says. There is a huge lack of awareness in Fiji about human trafficking and this is what we are trying to change , She added. At the moment we are trying to raise awareness amongst people and t he police to help them identify the signs of human trafficking. Baka says that many times they were called by the police for cases that turned out to be something other than human trafficking. In 2010, Indian national Kadali Murthi was sentenced to six years in prison for human trafficking thanks to the work of the Human Trafficking Unit. Murthi took over FJ$6,000 each from three of the seven Indian nationals as well as money from the rest and promised to take them to New Zealand. Upon reaching Nadi, he convinced them that they were in New Zealand and intended to use them as cheap labour. This, according to Baka, is just one of many incidents occurring around Fiji. There are reports of girls as young as twelve being trafficked within Fiji for sexual exploitation, said Baka says.

However, she also added that young boys, men and older women were also very popular in the human trafficking industry. Anyone can fall victim to trafficking, it could be your mother, sister or brother , she says. She added that most victims of human trafficking were abused in various ways. We dealt with a case where fishermen were forced to work without pay for a whole year on a Chinese fishing boat and made to survive on biscuits and rice. They were deported before we could press charges on the owner of the boat. Interestingly the human trafficking unit has a Chinese language translator and this was attributed to the high number of reports of trafficking from the Chinese community in Fiji. We work very closely with other stakeholders such as immigration, social welfare and save the children Fiji, Baka says. Given the high number of people trafficked throughout the world, Fiji can no longer consider itself safe from human traffickers who prey on the young, the innocent and desperate, promising a better life, but delivering instead a lifetime of abuse and exploitation through force and deception that can never be erased from their lifetime memories.