US government fetes Kenyan Woman for Fighting Human Trafficking
A Kenyan national has earned recognition from the US government following her work against human trafficking.
Ms Edith Murogo, the founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Domestic Training and Development, is among the recipients of 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report Heroes award.
Ms Murogo was honoured during the 20th anniversary of the TIP Report Heroes awards programme at a ceremony presided over by the Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
“I am very excited and humbled to have received this award. It’s a very high recognition because it’s a global recognition,” said Ms Murogo in an interview with the Nation.
“After many years of work in the past two decades, working on the front-lines of supporting survivors of human trafficking, I feel rewarded. I feel humbled by this recognition because it validates the work I am doing, the work that my team is doing and the networks and consortium’s that I work in,” she said.
For the past 20 years, the Department of State has honoured more than 170 such champions of human dignity and decency from over 90 countries – survivors, government leaders, law enforcement officials, lawyers, social workers.
This year, the US State Department honoured 10 heroes for their extraordinary work, including Ms Murogo and Ms Oumou Elkairu Niare Samake from Mali, the only two from Africa to have been honoured this year.
“We have been working with domestic workers, especially those who are migrant domestic workers from rural areas. But now we are also working with migrant and domestic workers who are heading to the Gulf,” she explained.
“The TIP report Hero award is very important to us as an organisation and to me as a person. This work needs everybody. You cannot fight human trafficking alone,” she added.
Ms Murogo has been on the front-lines of the fight against human trafficking and labor exploitation.
