Rwandan learners warned of human traffickers using social media

The initiative brought learners’ attention to how social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are used by predators to lure girls just like them.

CAPE TOWN, June 10 (ANA) – On Wednesday, the mayor of Bugesera District, Rwanda, and the deputy secretary-general of the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) met with learners to warn them of the dangers of social media.

The initiative was undertaken in preparation for the school holidays and involved an open discussion with learners of Maranyundo Girls School about sexual abuse, drugs and human trafficking, RIB stated on Twitter.

RIB deputy secretary-general Isabelle Kalihangabo drew the learners’ attention to how social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are used by predators to lure girls just like them.

Kalihangabo added that those predators will blind them with friendship and material items in order to achieve their malicious goals.

Rwanda’s Bugesera District is located just south of the East African country’s capital city, Kigali.

Using the hashtag #CrimeFreeVillage, district mayor Richard Mutabazi took to social media to state that children like those at Maranyundo Girls School need to be taught to avoid crime and to learn the rules that protect them.

According to Rwanda’s largest private media organisation, The New Times, school holidays will commence when the third term ends on July 9.

Perpetrators of human trafficking use unemployment, gender inequalities and homelessness in Rwanda to their advantage in order to lure victims, according to the Borgen Project, a non-profit organisation that addresses poverty and hunger.

In its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for 2020, the US Department of State placed Rwanda on tier 2 since “the Government of Rwanda does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so”.

The tier system, which consists of four tiers, is a ranking system that assesses what the governments of each country listed in the report are actively doing to combat human trafficking, rather than how severe human trafficking is within each country.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher