ACC Statement on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 2026
By Eldred SUNJU-ABBEY
Today the world confronts a new face of modern slavery: “Trapped Behind the Scam.”
Transnational criminal networks now traffic young people to commit industrial-scale financial fraud. Victims are deceived with promises of jobs, lured across borders, and forced into cybercrime, money laundering, and corruption.
In football, we know this trap by another name. We call it the false agent. The fake trial. The visa scam. The “pay-to-play” contract.
Every year, thousands of African boys and girls are trafficked — not in containers, but in WhatsApp messages. Trafficked by unscrupulous agents who promise Europe, but deliver exploitation. Trafficked by academies that sell dreams, but harvest dignity. Trafficked by systems that value transfer fees over human beings.
They leave home chasing a jersey. They end up trapped: without papers, without pay, without protection, and often without a way back.
This is not a migration problem. This is a football integrity problem.
At African Coaches Connect (ACC), we say this clearly: When we fail to regulate agents, we open the door to traffickers. When we fail to educate players, we deliver them to scammers. When we fail to protect the pathway, we become complicit in the crime.
THE ACC IMPERATIVE: 4 PILLARS TO END FOOTBALL TRAFFICKING
1. INFRASTRUCTURE FOR PROTECTION Mandate licensed, accountable agents. Create national player welfare desks in every FA. No player crosses a border without verified contracts, education, and safeguarding.
2. PROFESSIONALS FOR INTEGRITY Train coaches to be first responders. If a player disappears for a “trial”, we must ask questions. Teach players: If you must pay to play, it is not football. It is a scam.
3. IDENTITY + PATIENCE Build careers at home first. Our identity must be development, not export. A real career is built over years, not sold in 48 hours on Instagram.
4. INCLUSION: MEN AND WOMEN Girls are targeted with the same false promises. Their exploitation is often silent. We must ring-fence protection for every player, regardless of gender.
ACC’S 3 NON-NEGOTIABLES
A. Verify before you trust. Check the agent. Check the club. Check the contract.
B. Education before export. No player leaves without understanding rights, risks, and recourse.
C. Report before you regret. See something suspicious? Say something. Silence feeds the scam.
THE FINAL WORD Trafficking thrives where desperation meets deception. In football, that desperation is our failure to build credible pathways at home. That deception is the agent who promises paradise and delivers a prison.
Talent is evenly distributed. Protection is not.
Let us fix the pathway.
On this World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, African Coaches Connect stands with every player “Trapped Behind the Scam”. We will not rest until every African player moves with dignity, not deception. With contracts, not coercion. With opportunity, not exploitation.
One Continent. One System. Our One Duty.
Eldred SUNJU-ABBEY, Convener, African Football Convention, Founder & President of Africa Coaches Connect (ACC) – Architect, Engineer and Solutionist of Africa’s Football Renaissance. Championing the Excellence, Autonomy and Actualization of African Football. Developing Africans through football, and developing football through Africans.