Eastern Sudanese parties monitor human trafficking

Five parties in eastern Sudan's Red Sea State have joined hands and formed a committee to monitor crimes of human trafficking and their root causes.

Idris Sheidli, the chairman of El Tawasul party, told Radio Dabanga yesterday that his party and the Communist and the Umma parties, along with the Beja Congress agreed to jointly conduct an in-depth study of human trafficking in eastern Sudan.

Youth groups educate young people about the dangers of illegal immigration through social media

“The committee will complete its work soon,” he said, adding that they will hold a seminar in Port Sudan, in order to raise awareness about the dangers of human trafficking and illegal immigration.

Activist Omar El Sheikh told this station that Sudanese youth groups, via social media, are educating young people about the dangers of illegal immigration in an attempt to protect them from trafficking. They write messages in Facebook groups of cities or reach out through groups with the chatservice Whatsapp for mobile phones. “The youth groups work to raise awareness about the danger of the phenomenon, too.”

A member of one of the groups, Malik Mohamed Saleh pointed to the danger of illegal immigration from Libya to Europe across the sea. He expressed the readiness of the youth in Libya to return to Sudan in order to do vocational jobs.

Smuggling in eastern Sudan

The kidnapping and trafficking of refugees and Sudanese in the eastern parts of the country increased significantly in 2015. In an attempt to curb the human trafficking in the state, a delegation of the US Embassy in Khartoum and the National Committee for Combating Human Trafficking visited Kassala in December. Kassala locality is widely known as a crossing point for refugees from Eritrea and Ethiopia and as a hotspot for human trafficking.

The national Beja Congress party expressed its concern about the spread of human trafficking from Kassala and El Gedaref to Red Sea State at the end of December. 'The government lacks control over the rampant security situation and corruption in the border states of eastern Sudan.'