Malaika Oringo
Malaika Oringo is the founder and CEO of Footprint to Freedom (2019), a survivor-led organization. A talented advocate, she speaks up against human trafficking and stands up for victims’ rights while working to strengthen survivor inclusion and engagement. She has spoken on various stages throughout Europe (i.e. Paris, Geneva, Athens, London, Belgium, and Luxembourg) and presented at the United Nations in New York.
Raised in Uganda in harsh conditions and exploited in the Netherlands, Malaika has devoted her life to fighting against human trafficking. For the past 17 years, she has been intensively involved in the fight against human trafficking as a representative of the Salvation Army. Malaika believes that survivors are the most significant stakeholders in the fight against human trafficking, and thus, they should sit at every decision-making table from the community level to the national level and the international level.
Malaika Oringo has lobbied at the European Commission and has spoken at the European Parliament about the gaps in the current approach to human trafficking. She also advised on best practices that can provide trauma-informed and survivor-centered approaches to improve the response to survivors’ needs.
As CEO of Footprint to Freedom, Malaika speaks up for the victims of human trafficking and creates awareness of the exploitive situations in which many women find themselves. She has special interest in her home country of Uganda and the neighboring countries of Kenya and Tanzania. She sees a large number of women from these countries who are exploited in the Middle East and who return to their homeland in absolute devastation. Without the right alternatives, these women are easily targeted by traffickers who give them false hopes that Europe is the answer to their hopelessness; instead, they end up being re-trafficked and re-victimized.