When people think about human trafficking in Lesotho, they usually picture a woman. That picture isn’t wrong, but it isn’t complete. The gap in it has a cost, because trafficking prevention only works if it accounts for how exploitation actually happens, not just the version of it that’s easiest to imagine.
For the past five years, our shelter has served men, not as an occasional exception, but as a steady, quiet part of our anti-trafficking work in Lesotho. We haven’t talked about it much publicly, partly because the cases are sensitive and partly because, frankly, the men themselves are often the ones asking us not to. There’s a particular kind of shame that keeps male survivors of human trafficking silent. Somewhere along the way, a lot of men absorbed the idea that being trafficked means you weren’t strong enough to stop it. So they carry it alone, or they tell no one at all.
We want to start changing that, carefully, and without putting anyone’s safety at risk.
How human trafficking in Lesotho reaches men
The men we’ve supported come from different backgrounds, different ages, different parts of the country. What connects them isn’t a type. It’s a pattern of trust, which is also what connects most human trafficking cases we see in Lesotho, regardless of who the victim is.
One young man was recruited by someone he had every reason to trust, a religious leader, who offered him a place to stay while helping him find work in the capital. What was framed as help became forced labor.
Another young man responded to what appeared to be a legitimate opportunity abroad, tied to sport. He was pressured into opening bank accounts and assuming fraudulent identities as part of a scam operation he had no part in choosing. Forced shepherding and forced labor remain the most common threads in the cases we see.
None of these stories fit the mental image most people have of trafficking. That’s exactly the point. Traffickers don’t need a victim to look vulnerable on the outside. They need someone who trusts the person standing in front of them. A pastor. A recruiter. A friend of a friend with a job offer. That’s the door that opens, and it’s a door that poverty and limited local opportunity make easier to walk through.
This is also why we’ve started paying closer attention to how trafficking and scam operations overlap. A man forced to run fraudulent accounts on someone else’s behalf looks, from the outside, like a criminal. He isn’t. He’s being used, sometimes literally trapped, by people who understand that the fraud itself becomes another layer of control. If he speaks up, he risks being blamed for the very crimes he was forced to commit.
Why trafficking prevention has to include everyone
Every part of BDS’s trafficking prevention work in Lesotho has been shaped around this same insight, whether we’re talking about women, children, or men: exploitation moves fastest through relationships people already trust.
That’s why family strengthening matters as a prevention tool, not just a support service. That’s why community education matters. A community that understands how recruitment happens, quietly, personally, through someone familiar, is a community that’s harder to exploit.
It also means our support side has to flex. A shelter built primarily to serve women needed to figure out, in real time, how to also serve a man in crisis without turning anyone away or compromising anyone’s safety or dignity. That’s not a policy problem you solve once. It’s one you keep solving, case by case, as it comes.
What survivor support looks like for male survivors
We won’t share details of cases still moving through the courts, and we’ve changed enough details in what we can share to protect the men involved. But the throughline is one of restoration, not just rescue. Survivor support here means stability, counseling, a path back into work and family life, not a single moment of intervention and then silence.
Some of the men we’ve worked with have gone on to help others understand what happened to them, in their own way and their own time. That’s the growth we hope for across every case, whatever someone’s story looks like going in.
How you can make an impact
If public awareness of trafficking in Lesotho only ever includes half the picture, prevention will always miss the other half, too. Men who’ve experienced exploitation deserve the same dignity, the same discretion, and the same path toward healing that we extend to every survivor of human trafficking who comes through our doors.
That kind of care, the counseling, the shelter, the slow work of rebuilding a life, doesn’t happen without support behind it. If this is the first time you’re learning that men are part of this picture in Lesotho, that’s exactly why we’re telling you now. Partner with us, and you help make sure no survivor, regardless of who they are, has to rebuild alone.