“They Just Disappeared”: Sierra Leone’s Fragile Fight Against Child Trafficking

By Brima Sannoh (ATJLF/MRCG Fellow 2025)

In the quiet town of Pujehun, near Sierra Leone’s southern border with Liberia, whispers of missing children have become far too common. Behind each whisper is a grieving parent, a broken promise, and a child who may never come home. Detective Inspector Momoh Musa Gbah knows this pain all too well. As head of the Family Support Unit in the Pujehun Police Division, he has spent the better part of his career chasing shadows, traffickers who slip through porous borders, taking with them the futures of Sierra Leone’s most vulnerable. “This is something we started working on a while back,” he said. “But it all stopped because of funding. Without the necessary resources, community sensitisation efforts have slowed down. Yet the problem hasn’t.”