Shaping Epistemic Alliances: Trafficking in Persons and Forced Displacement in Africa

The 21^st Century has ushered in a time of unprecedented global wealth and extraordinary opportunities; but Africa is mired in human trafficking, a crime against humanity, where thousands of men, women and children fall victims to. While many proposals for remedial action have been formulated, real commitment to collaborative processes at all levels has always been limited. Hence, the need for collective learning about our responses and the responsibility to those whose suffering provided the basis for that learning will never be more urgent than it is now.

It requires novel partnership policies, strategies and tools, multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary institutional framework in tandem with stakeholder-driven multi-track advocacy, as a means of self-determination of epistemic communities. Strengthening synergies between international and national efforts would inform to prime the international partnership under a code of practice, mainstreaming responses and coordinated action. Africa already possesses most of the “tools” needed to change the course of human trafficking and displacement. Epistemic African communities have pioneered, developed and tested many adaptive strategies, with an impressive range of best practices, long before states came into the scene. Africans are not powerless against these ailments, but the magnitude of the disaster-triggering agents has become so cruel and trafficking agents so cunning, these systems are being outgunned. Advances in human thought towards justice and universalization of human rights guarantees are gathering momentum with the motive energy backed by demand for accountability of states. While this will set profound feat against human vulnerability, legalism shades mutual aid and sagacity of civic duty that rightly makes human beings unique.

          Key words: human displacement, human trafficking, international partnership, human rights, legalism,

See lecture here or https://www.academia.edu/16828894/Shaping_Epistemic_Alliances_-_Trafficking_in_Persons_and_Forced_Displacement_in_Africa