Trafficked Olympic champion Mo Farah joins UN migration agency

GENEVA – Four-time Olympic gold medal winner Mo Farah, who was born in Somalia and trafficked to Britain as a child, joined the United Nations (UN) migration agency on Nov 28 as its first global goodwill ambassador.

The athletics great, who retired in September aged 40, said that he wanted to help people in similar circumstances to overcome their experiences.

Farah won the 5,000m and 10,000m races at both the London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics in a stellar long-distance running career.

But in July 2022,

he revealed that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin

and that he had been illegally trafficked into Britain as a child.

Rather than moving to the United Kingdom as a refugee from Somalia with his parents, as he previously claimed, Farah revealed that he came via Djibouti aged eight or nine with a woman he had never met.

He was given a false identity, and then made to look after another family’s children.

“No child should ever go through what I did; victims of child trafficking are just children. They deserve to be children. They deserve to play and to be kids,” Farah said.

The Briton was appointed by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) at the IOM Council, the UN agency’s annual main gathering, in Geneva.

“Becoming a global goodwill ambassador for IOM gives me a chance to help people – people like me – and make changes,” added Farah, who wants to use his new platform to raise awareness of issues affecting migrants, including trafficking, and advocate for the power of sport to change lives.

“I was able to take the opportunity sport offered me to overcome my experiences as a young boy and show that no matter what we look like or what we sound like, we can achieve and overcome great things,” he said.

When asked to share his bad experience as a child, he elaborated that he was forced to do housework and childcare in return for food after being trafficked to London and, estranged from his true family, would often lock himself in the bathroom in tears.

“A champion on and off the track, and a survivor of human trafficking, he brings true dedication, commitment and drive to IOM’s work, helping millions of people on the move and inspiring us all,” said the agency’s chief Amy Pope.

The IOM has two other goodwill ambassadors – Ghanaian musician Kofi Kinaata (national) and Egyptian actor Asser Yassin (regional). AFP