He has been celebrated internationally as British Olympic medallist Mo Farah, but his real name was Hussein Abdi Kahin. And it was a secret he felt he had to keep for most of his life.
In a new BBC documentary, The Real Mo Farah, the 39-year-old father of four revealed the way he came to the UK from Somaliland — with a woman who was not his mother, under a fake name, to a situation of domestic servitude.
He says his father was killed when he was just four years old. In the aftermath, Farah’s mother explained she had sent him, and his twin brother, to neighbouring Djibouti and had no idea that Farah had been moved on to the UK. For me, her account spoke to the chaos of war and poverty, and a desperation for safety that can be seen even today in many situations globally. This continues even despite there being mobile phones and other means of communication that Farah’s mother, Aisha, points out were not available at the time.
“Never in my life did I think I would see you or your children alive,” she tells Farah, when he visits Somaliland and the village she lives in. “We were living in a place with nothing, no cattle and destroyed land. We all thought we were dying… I sent you away because of the war. I sent you off to your uncle in Djibouti so you could have something.”
It can be hard for us in the developed world to imagine this sort of perilous sacrifice: the willingness to leave your child to an unknown fate in the hope that their new surroundings will be better than what you can see around you. But that is what Farah’s mother, Aisha, appeared to articulate. And it is that lack of opportunities and total desperation that make children — and adults too — vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation.
Last year, more than 10,000 victims of trafficking were identified in the UK. That label includes a myriad of different types of abuse, including domestic servitude, forced labour on farms and sexual exploitation. In Ireland, the numbers are far lower, with 38 victims identified in 2020, down from 75 in 2017 — though others are certainly going unreported.
Undoubtedly, many current or former trafficking victims will hear Farah’s story and realise that they’re not alone. Some may even be granted the ability to put a name on what has happened to them for the first time ever.
Will it do away with the fear victims feel when it comes to speaking out? That is unlikely. The UK Home Office has said that it will not take action against Farah, or scrap his citizenship, as a result of his disclosure. But not everyone is that lucky. Between April 2017 and the end of 2018, a Buzzfeed News investigation found that the Home Office rejected 310 applications for discretionary leave to remain and 65 asylum claims made by child victims of modern slavery.
The more hostile a country’s immigration policies are, the harder it is for victims of trafficking to come forward, as they fear deportation to a country where their lives may be in danger; the possibility that they could be re-trafficked; or even the wrath of a family who were fiercely hoping that they may be able to send back support once they are established in a safe, prosperous country.
In many ways, that hostility seems counterintuitive. More support for victims would make it easier for law enforcement to get information about who is leading trafficking rings, enabling them to go after those who are making big profits from this, rather than punishing the vulnerable.
Smuggling and trafficking are legally different things. People smuggling means moving people across borders, and can be seen more as a service, where someone pays money to be transported while fully consenting to it. People trafficking means transportation for exploitative purposes. But smuggling can quickly turn into trafficking, when a person who is desperate to escape agrees to travel for a certain fee, only to be told the terms have changed once they are under the control of the individual or group who offered to move them. That means victims are usually worried they have done something wrong.
Advocates are sceptical as to whether Farah’s disclosure could impact broader policy. The UK Home Office has repeatedly been accused of prioritising cases that get a lot of media attention, while others suffer in silence.
“What really saved me, what made me different, was that I could run,” Farah makes clear. He was rescued by his PE teacher Alan Watkinson, who filled out Farah’s application for British citizenship under his adopted name, when Farah was ready to represent England at international competitions.
“I… worry about narratives that say we should support refugees and trafficking victims by pointing towards exceptional individuals, because that plays into the values underpinning the hugely unjust system we currently have,” tweeted Emily Kenway, a former policy adviser to the UK’s first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and author of The Truth about Modern Slavery. “We are all messy humans who deserve to live in safety and with opportunities to flourish regardless of our flaws or excellence.”