By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Kenya, 2 December 2025 - Martin Macharia Mburu did not die on a battlefield, he believed in. He died in a foreign war he never chose.
When he boarded a plane out of Nairobi in late October 2025, the 28-year-old from Kiambu, Kenya, carried nothing but hope, the promise of a simple driving job in Russia, a chance to earn steady income, maybe even send something home to his mother who had prayed for this opportunity.
Recruiters had assured him everything was legitimate: travel fully catered for, quick placement, good pay. To a young man navigating Kenya’s unforgiving job market, the offer felt like a lifeline.
But the moment he arrived in Moscow, the truth closed in on him like a trap. His passport was seized.
The “job” he had been promised evaporated. Within days, Martin found himself undergoing three days of rushed basic military drills, handed a rifle, and pushed, without choice, into Russia’s frontlines in the war against Ukraine. The man who left home believing he would sit behind a steering wheel was instead thrust into a conflict he did not understand, drafted into a uniform he never agreed to wear.
He died in Donetsk Lyman, one of the war’s most violent hotspots.
News of his death, confirmed after his body was returned, has rippled through Kiambu with a grief so heavy it is hard to put into words. Families who knew Martin speak of a humble, determined young man who simply wanted a chance to work. Now they mourn him while fearing for the hundreds of other Kenyans who may have been similarly deceived. His story is no longer just a statistic; it is a face, a life, a son, and a tragedy that should never have happened.
For Kenya, Martin’s death is a painful wake-up call.
For the world, it is a reminder that modern slavery is not always chains and captivity, sometimes it is hidden inside a promise of opportunity, carried quietly in a plane ticket, and sealed by a contract no one ever gets to read.
Every year on 2nd December the world marks the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. The date remembers the 1949 UN convention against trafficking and sexual exploitation, but the day’s purpose now stretches beyond memory, to expose and fight the many faces of modern slavery that trap tens of millions of people around the world. The United Nations and expert agencies say the crisis is deepening, changing shape, and calling for urgent, coordinated action.
Shocking Number of Victims, and what they endure
Recent global estimates put the number of people living in modern-slavery conditions at roughly 50 million, people forced to work, trapped in forced marriages, compelled into sexual exploitation, or coerced into criminality.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), Walk Free and partner agencies report a dramatic increase since previous counts: forced labour and forced marriage together remain a persistent global blight. The illicit profits tied to that exploitation are staggering, hundreds of billions of dollars each year, a brutal industry that preys on the vulnerable.
Those figures hide a brutal human reality: girls and boys trafficked into domestic servitude; farmworkers paid nothing while their labour is sold on; migrants lured with false promises and then trapped by debt and document confiscation; victims forced to work in scam factories or in illegal supply-chain niches.
New forms of exploitation now include forced criminality in scam centres and online coercion. UN experts warn that these evolving tactics are making victims harder to identify and harder to help.
“The pledge of eradicating slavery in all its forms remains unfinished,” a joint statement from UN human-rights experts said on the eve of 2 December, calling for survivor-led responses, stronger protections, and coordinated global action. The experts highlighted emerging threats, like forced labour in cyber-scam rings, and urged states and businesses to act now.
In his 2 December 2025 statement, UN Secretary‑General António Guterres quoted, “Slavery is a horror from the history books, and a relentless contemporary crisis.”
He also called for unity among governments, businesses, civil society, and trade unions to provide remedy and redress, “real access to justice, fair compensation, rehabilitation, restitution, and guarantees that victims and their families will not suffer again.”
The ILO has been equally candid, modern slavery is a major global labour-market failure and a severe abuse of human dignity. Its data and leaders repeatedly call for expanded labour inspection, better protection of migrants, and stronger supply-chain accountability. “It is shocking that the situation of modern slavery is not improving,” the ILO and other global experts have warned in recent years.
How the Day is Observed, From Global Halls to Grassroots Streets
Around the world the day is marked by statements, campaigns and events. The UN Secretary-General issues an annual message; UN human-rights experts and agencies launch thematic campaigns; NGOs and survivor networks hold public education events, survivor testimonies and policy roundtables. This year, ahead of the 2026 centenary of the 1926 Slavery Convention, UN experts announced a global campaign to amplify survivor leadership and to press for stronger accountability.
Civil-society groups such as the Freedom Fund continue to publish impact reports and spotlight local programmes that reunite survivors with services, register births, enable schooling, and support livelihoods, evidence that practical interventions can work when they combine prevention, rescue, and long-term support.
Why Africa and Kenya Cannot Be an Afterthought
More from Kenya
Africa is both a source and a destination for modern-slavery flows.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons and other regional studies show trafficking patterns within and across African borders, from forced labour in agriculture and mining to cross-border sex-trafficking and exploitation of migrants. Children now make up a growing share of detected trafficking victims; many face hazardous work or sexual exploitation.
Kenya has not been idle. The government and partners produced a national Kenya Alliance 8.7 Roadmap (2025–2030) that commits to coordinated action against forced labour, trafficking and the worst forms of child labour, aligning with international standards to prevent exploitation and strengthen victim services. The roadmap recognises migration risks both domestic and international, the need for stronger labour inspections, and the role of social protection in preventing vulnerability.
On 19 November 2025, MP Gachoki Gitari raised Martin’s case in Parliament, sounding the alarm over “deceptive overseas recruitment networks that are preying on desperate Kenyan jobseekers and sending them into warzones.” Rights groups have echoed the same concern, describing these operations as modern-day enslavement disguised as employment, where economic vulnerability becomes the weapon recruiters use to funnel young Africans into foreign wars.
Government and ministry officials from Kenya, including representatives from the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, have acknowledged that over 200 Kenyans may have been recruited to fight for Russia, describing many of them as victims of deception. There has been previous rescue operations, such as one in September, during which more than 20 Kenyans were reportedly saved from trafficking attempts to Russia through fraudulent job offers.
Yet frontline realities in Kenya mirror global vulnerabilities: recruitment abuses for migrant domestic work, irregular migration that leaves people exposed to traffickers, and pockets of exploitative informal work. Experts stress that good laws alone are not enough, implementation, funding, and survivor-centred services matter.
What Makes this Moment Different, Modern Slavery?
A series of overlapping crises has widened the pool of people at risk. Climate shocks, conflict, and economic strain push households into debt, migration surges expose people to unscrupulous recruiters, and the digital economy has created new channels for exploitation — for example, online scam factories that coerce victims into fraud. UN experts and NGOs note that traffickers adapt quickly, and that governments and businesses must keep pace.
At a systems level, modern slavery is increasingly understood not just as a human-rights issue, but also as a supply-chain problem. That recognition has prompted corporate due-diligence laws in some jurisdictions, calls for stronger cross-border policing cooperation, and renewed advocacy for victim compensation and reparations. Yet, implementation remains uneven, and funding for prevention and survivor rehabilitation is far too limited.
Many experts now warn that modern slavery is more than a human-rights problem — it is a crisis compounded by global shocks. As the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) explains, “environmental degradation and climate-related disasters force people from their homes … making them especially vulnerable to trafficking, forced labour, and modern slavery.”
This understanding has pushed activists and NGOs to call for comprehensive measures: improved labour inspections, safe migration pathways, corporate supply-chain due diligence, expanded victim services, and placing survivors at the heart of policy design.
Practical Steps That Experts Keep Repeating
Policy experts and international agencies repeatedly emphasise the same prescriptions for tackling modern slavery. They call for stronger labour inspections, rigorous prosecution of traffickers, the creation of safe and legal migration pathways, and social protection measures that prevent families from resorting to desperate survival strategies. Corporate due diligence across supply chains, expanded victim services, and survivor-centred policy design are also critical. These are not abstract recommendations, several pilot programmes around the world show measurable impact when these elements are combined.
António Guterres also underlined the urgency on the eve of the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, stating, “Contemporary forms of slavery … are perpetuated by crime rings that prey on people struggling to cope with extreme poverty, discrimination or environmental degradation.”
He emphasised that survivor voices must guide rescue, reintegration, and legal redress efforts, both for ethical reasons and because survivors can identify hidden risks that bureaucracies often miss.
What Ordinary Citizens, Businesses and Journalists Can Do
For citizens, learn the signs of trafficking, support local NGOs, check labour conditions for goods and services you buy, and press elected officials for stronger protections and transparency.
For businesses, map supply chains, require credible third-party audits, and adopt survivor-friendly reparations and reporting procedures.
For journalists, keep pressure on institutions. Investigations that expose recruitment scams, abusive employers, or opaque supply chains save lives by forcing action.
The UN and ILO provide public toolkits, and local NGOs publish hotlines and resources for survivors; links are provided at the end of this article.
This International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is meant to be more than ceremony. With nearly 50 million people still trapped in modern-slavery conditions and new forms of exploitation emerging, global leaders and ordinary citizens alike must move beyond statements to measurable action: fund prevention and survivors’ services, close legal gaps, and demand accountability from businesses that profit from opaque supply chains. The UN experts’ message is plain: survivors must lead, and the world must deliver.
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