14 Feb 2018

Regional capacity building officer with United Nations on Drug and Crime (UNODC) has lamented that every year untold numbers of vulnerable men, women and children are exploited by criminals, forced into working in factories, fields, brothels and even begging in streets.

Delivering a message of support during Botswana On-Site Data Collection workshop organised by the Ministry of Justice, Defence and Security in conjunction with UNODC, US Embassy and SADC on Tuesday, Mr Greenwell Lyempe said he had been involved in the organisation’s efforts to support governments in the SADC region to train law enforcement officers on how to deal with human trafficking issues.

He said he had seen first-hand both the plight of the victims of the crime and efforts by law enforcement officers to fight it adding that Botswana in the recent past had doubled its effort to fight the crime.

Mr Lyempe regretted that human trafficking was a parasitic crime that fed on vulnerability, thrived in times of uncertainty and profited from inaction.  

“Young women and children are forced into this sickening business every day. Women and children living in poverty do not know the meaning of human trafficking due to lack of education,” he said.

He said not many women and children knew the risk they were taking when they had no choice but to sell their bodies and that governments all over the world should be providing information on human trafficking because no nation was immune from the crime.

The regional UNODC chief therefore encouraged participants to have a heart for the victims of trafficking in persons and support the law enforcement officers in fighting the crime in any way they could because working together was the only way of bringing an end to the crime.

He said UNODC together with cooperating partners will continue assisting in any possible way to ensure that human trafficking was completely eradicated in Botswana.

Meanwhile, Mr Lyempe said as with any illegal industry, human trafficking had become big business for organised criminals, to the detriment not only of the people trafficked but to wider a society as well.

It is estimated that trafficking nets around US$36 billion a year, the second most lucrative organised criminal activity worldwide, and the money feeds into other transnational criminal issues such as drugs trade, trade in small arms and providing funding for terrorism.

In the meantime, Mr Lyempe praised the government of Botswana for its commitment to combating human trafficking, noting that was why they launched their first training in Swakopmund to train trainers deal with the problem in August 2015.

On a positive note, he said they were working with IOM to provide physical, emotional and practical support to victims of trafficking based on their individual needs.

In addition, he said, they were enhancing their ability to act early and help other countries deal with the issue at source before it reached Botswana.

He said the events could genuinely help to increase the pressure on governments across SADC to improve national and international anti-trafficking efforts.

In additio,n he called for better cooperation between law enforcement agencies, better sharing of intelligence, closer working between border agencies and business, governments and NGOs working as equal partners to tackle the scourge. Ends