The Sports Journalists Association of The Gambia SJAG and Mission89, a research, education, and advocacy organisation based in Switzerland that fights the exploitation of young athletes through social and economic transformation, will stage a an awareness event on Saturday.
The event, which will take the form of a run or walk will also feature speeches on the subject of trafficking of sports athletes and footballers.
According to research, every year, hundreds of thousands of children are smuggled across borders and sold as commodities, including promising young athletes/footballers trafficked by sham agents.
”As the national body responsible for sport journalists, this collaboration with Mission 89 is intended to further empower the media with information on trafficking in sport and position them as key stakeholders in the quest to enlighten the public and curb the phenomena,” said Musa Sise president of SJAG. He revealed that the joint collaboration will this Saturday organise a training workshop for sports journalists, a national Walk/run against trafficking in sport, and a stakeholder roundtable in the Gambia.
The objective of the exercise, he added, is to kick-start a national dialogue about trafficking in and through sport, including discussion of the ambiguities in definition of trafficking.
The event will also highlight the responsibilities of the different stakeholders in the protection as well as support of victims and potential victims of sport trafficking and
assess the role that the media can play in identifying and telling the stories of those affected while drawing in stakeholders to take preventative and remedial action.
The Run/Walk is schedule to commence and end at Traffic light on Saturday January 16th from 0800 am. and is open to everyone. On Thursday Jan 21 a roundtable will be convened at Nana on the same topic at 5pm.
The event is also supported as well as partnered by the International organization for Migration, IOM, National Agency Against Trafficking in Person (NAATIP), Immigration Department, National Youth Council, NYC, National Sports Council, NSC, Gambia Football Federation, GFF, and Walk4Health.
