Awards-Laura Tufon: Cameroon’s First Trafficking-In-Persons Hero

Being the first Cameroonian to receive this honor, Ms. Anyola Tufon who is the Regional Coordinator for the Justice and Peace Commission in the Northwest region, participated in a ten-day program in the United States as a 2013 TIP Hero.

Ms. Anyola Tufon has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to fighting child trafficking and forced labor. Her organization has established community-based protection mechanisms to identify trafficking victims, prevent them from being re-trafficked, and other vulnerable people from leaving their communities.

Through the mechanisms, Ms. Anyola and her organization have provided assistance to hundreds of victims, including shelter, legal assistance, school fees, placing them in foster families, as well as helping recover the money traffickers promised in order to lure their victims. Many of the returnees have resumed formal education and are being used as peer educators.

Each year, the U.S. Department of State honors individuals around the world who have devoted their lives to the fight against human trafficking.

Referred to as trafficking heroes, these individuals are NGO workers, lawmakers, police officers, and concerned citizens who are committed to ending modern slavery.

In the recent past, the ill-treatment of persons, exploitation and abuses plaguing domestic labourers (Janitors, Gatekeepers, Cooks, Baby sitters etc.) in Cameroon skyrocketed. But with efforts like that of Laura Anyola Tufon, the situation has been abated since 2012.

Since the beginning of 2000, Cameroon was regularly implicated in reports concerning countries pruned to ill-treatment of persons especially women and Children. In 2001 a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) placed Cameroon among countries most pruned to domestic and sexual exploitation of children.

Aware of this problem, Cameroon voted a law relative to the treatment and trafficking of persons on December 14, 2011. The law defines traffic of a person as the act of favouring or ensuring the displacement of a person in or out of Cameroon with the motive of gaining directly or indirectly material advantage irrespective of the nature.

In Cameroon, this phenomenon is mostly linked to domestic Labour. A 2010 study by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) and the Cameroon government shows that domestic Labour in Cameroon is dominated by women and children often exploited and abused in diverse ways: meager salaries, over Labour, excessive working hours and so on. It is noticed that the legislation and internal punitive mechanism is little known and applied.

It is for these reasons that stakeholders in the fight against TIP such as the United Nations Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Central Africa has been striving to assist the government in getting rid of those who on daily basis continue to violate and abuse the rights of persons and domestic labourers in Cameroon.

Originally posted here:
Awards-Laura Tufon: Cameroon’s First Trafficking-In-Persons Hero