The US government has said that Kenya does not fully meet the minimum standards set for the elimination of human trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.
The ‘2025 Trafficking in Persons Report’ (TIP Report) released by the US State Department on Monday, says the country is trying to address the menace.
The report defines “Trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” as umbrella terms—often used interchangeably—to refer to a crime whereby traffickers exploit and profit at the expense of adults or children by compelling them to perform labour or engage in commercial sex.
“The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period; therefore, Kenya remained on Tier 2,” the report reads in part.
"Human trafficking tier 2" refers to countries listed in the US State Department's TIP Report that do not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking but are making significant efforts to do so.
These efforts included investigating, prosecuting, and convicting more traffickers; government identified more potential trafficking victims and partnered with various NGOs to offer assistance to more victims.
“The government partially opened its first government-run shelter dedicated to trafficking victims, including renovating a building and hiring and training staff. The government regularly sought input from survivors, particularly those exploited in Gulf states, on its anti-trafficking activities,” the report states.
However, the report states that the Kenyan government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas, including protection services for victims, particularly adults, which remained limited.
“Despite ongoing concerns of official complicity in trafficking crimes, which hindered both law enforcement efforts and victim identification, the government did not report any law enforcement action against allegedly complicit officials,” the report says.
Efforts to protect Kenyan trafficking victims abroad, particularly migrant workers in Gulf countries, and hold fraudulent labour recruitment agencies accountable, remained inadequate according to the American government.
“The government did not report any prosecutions or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes; however, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action,” the report states.
In 2024, the government reported investigating 42 cases – 17 for sex trafficking, seven for labour trafficking, and 18 for unspecified forms of trafficking.
This compared with the government investigating 22 cases in 2023. It reported 83 ongoing investigations, 18 for sex trafficking, eight for forced labour, and 57 for unspecified forms of trafficking.
Kenya reported prosecuting 44 trafficking cases, including an unknown number of suspects – 38 sex trafficking cases, three labour trafficking cases, and three cases of unspecified forms of trafficking in 2024.
The report adds that employment agencies, both legal and fraudulent, recruit Kenyans to work in the Middle East (particularly Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, and Oman).
Others are shipped to Central and Southeast Asia, Europe, Northern Africa, and North America, where traffickers exploit them in massage parlours, brothels, domestic servitude, or manual labour.
Kenyans who voluntarily migrate in search of employment opportunities are often vulnerable to exploitative conditions.
“Reports continue to document traffickers in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, exploiting Kenyan women working in domestic servitude, often subjecting them to severe physical and emotional abuse.”
In 2025, the media reported that at least 274 Kenyan migrant workers, mostly women, died in Saudi Arabia in the past five years; at least 55 Kenyan workers died in 2024, twice as many as the previous year.
Increasingly, traffickers in Southeast Asia use social media, smartphone applications, and fraudulent job postings with false promises of high-paying jobs in the technology, education, or hospitality sectors to recruit Kenyans with university degrees, ages 18 to 38, for work in Thailand.
However, upon arrival in Thailand, traffickers transport victims to neighbouring countries, primarily Burma, Malaysia, and Laos, force them into deplorable living and working conditions, and exploit them in labour trafficking, including in online scam operations, and sex trafficking.
“Ugandan and Nigerian traffickers exploit Kenyan women in sex trafficking in Thailand. Criminals involved in terrorist networks lure and recruit Kenyan adults and children to join non-state armed groups, primarily al-Shabaab in Somalia, sometimes with fraudulent promises of lucrative employment,” the report states.
