12 Jan 2017

Human trafficking is such a worldwide scourge it requires urgent attention particularly by nations from where people are trafficked.

One thing clear about human trafficking is that it mostly affects desperate and vulnerable groups such as children, women and young people depriving them of their utmost human rights.

In Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) nations are some of the hardest hit as the main sources and transit points of trafficked persons.

With the SADC Gender Unit having realised that women and children made up the majority of the people most vulnerable to trafficking, the war against human trafficking has been waged in earnest.

At its planning meeting held in South Africa in 2013 the unit also noted that men sometimes were also targeted by trafficking syndicates for forced labour in mines and farms around the world.

In response, the unit has formulated a Strategic Indicative Plan of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation (SIPO), the Protocol on Gender and Development, and the 10-Year SADC Strategic Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2009-2019).

The Gender Unit has noted with gratitude that member states have also shown their commitment towards addressing the challenge by developing Trafficking in Persons (TIP) specific-legislations and action plans.

One country that can be singled out in that respect is Mozambique, which is one of the first SADC member states to enact a legislation to criminalize TIP through the trafficking in persons law No. 6 of 2008.

The law makes the crime of TIP punishable by imprisonment between 16 and 20 years.

A report by the High Commissioner of Mozambique to Botswana says, in 2001, Mozambique passed a law on extradition which makes it possible for TIP to be extradited to requesting countries.

The report says Mozambique has implemented awareness campaigns, capacity development, and training programmes in collaboration with a number of national, regional and international stakeholders that include SADC secretariat, Southern Africa Regional Network IOM against Trafficking and Abuse of Children (SANTAC) and UNODC.

“Mozambique has established a cross-boarder coordinating initiatives particularly with South Africa and Zimbabwe, allowing the pooling of efforts in fighting TIP among these three countries,” says the report.

Statistics on Mozambique’s TIP victims for the year 2014 shows that approximately 53 victims of TIP were identified in 2014, with 89 percent of them being children.

The data implies that children are amongst the most vulnerable groups in Mozambique, though the data provided was not sex aggregated.

More importantly, Mozambique’s proximity to South Africa and the relatively ease of entering South Africa from Mozambique were highlighted as possible factors making Mozambique a transit country for victims tricked into South Africa, the report has hinted.

The data also indicates that a total of 114 cases of TIP were reported between 2011 and 2014 with 49 of the cases being prosecuted and 39 convictions obtained translating into 76.6 conviction rate.

“This is evidence of the capacity of the country in conducting effective investigations and prosecutions of reported TIP cases; it is also indicative of the national priority placed on preventing and combating the crime,” says the report.   
Poverty and unemployment in Mozambique mentioned as the factors driving TIP.

The report specifies that these factors, combined with declining social protection nets, were believed to have contributed to some people’s desperation to migrate to earn an income elsewhere.

HIV/AIDS was also a push factor resulting in large numbers of children becoming orphans and vulnerable after the death of their parents or care givers, the report added.         

The magnitude of the trafficking scourge - that seeks the specific number of victims - has passionately been debated without any sound method available to determine its enormousness.

 It has to be noted however that creating methods to come up with trafficking estimates is a commendable objectives.

Trafficking often occurs from less developed countries to more developed countries either nationally or regionally, where people are rendered at risk to trafficking by virtue of poverty, war or other conditions.

One continent that has been singled out as a destination for victims of Trafficking in Persons is Europe with sexual exploitation being the most documented type of trafficking, according to The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s Global Report on trafficking in persons says.

In comparison, other forms of exploitation are under-reported such as: forced or bonded labour, domestic servitude, and forced marriage, organ removal, and the exploitation of children in begging, the sex trade, and warfare, says the report.
In Angola, there are claims that some Angolan women and children were subjected to domestic servitude and sex trafficking.

 José Carlos daio da Silva, who is Counsellor at the Angolan Embassy in Botswana confirmed to BOPA that there were cases of women from Brazil, China, Vietnam, and DRC being engaged in prostitution in Angola with some of them suspected to be victims of sex trafficking in South Africa, Namibia, and European countries, like Portugal and the Netherlands.

He said some Chinese women were recruited by Chinese gangs and construction companies with promises of work, but later were deprived of their passports, kept in walled compounds with armed guards, and forced into prostitution to pay back the costs of their travel.

He said in other cases, some children were used for forced labour by some Chines construction companies and that investigations for verification of facts were usually undertaken.

The counsellor said he was not in position to state the prevalence of the said situations, explaining however that trafficking in person, as described by the United Nations Convention against Organized Transnational Crimes - UNODC, was characterised by the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons through threats or use of force, or other forms of coercion such as abduction or fraud to have control over another person for the purpose of any kind of exploitation.

Angola is making significant efforts to enforce the rule of law against acts of human trafficking, he said noting that the president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, was so concerned that he had created an Inter-ministerial Commission to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

The commission began by standardising the collection of data on anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts and establishing five ad hoc provincial commissions in Benguela, Huila, Namibe, Uige, and Zaire provinces, he said.

“The government has trained approximately 350 officials on the 2014 money laundering law that includes provisions prohibiting trafficking,” he said.

Additionally, the Commission has raised awareness of its anti-trafficking efforts to more than 1 000 private citizen and NGO leaders.”

Meanwhile, research has depicted the World Bank and other organizations as working to reduce trafficking in persons by, among others, improving the health care for vulnerable groups, education on HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, and increasing the access to justice for the poor to empower them to stand for their rights.

Research has established that by providing job training and creating more jobs, people will not have to leave their countries and cities to find jobs because labour safeguards are a way of tackling trafficking in fisheries, agriculture, mining, logging and construction.
Trafficking is a sensitive issue which is not often discussed publicly or politically, the research has alluded.

It verified and described trafficking as a taboo that has the status of implicating difficult results for researchers to study it and also for local groups to openly work to prevent it.

International organizations, development and aid groups, and national governments must work together to reduce the risks of trafficking for vulnerable people and also to make trafficking less lucrative through legislation and prosecution, the research has added.

Similar to the situation in Angola, investigations have recovered a 2014 report on trafficking in person which reveals Zambia as a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. ENDS