SANF 13 No 44 – by Joseph Ngwawi
Trafficking in persons is a major international issue but poor documentation in southern Africa is masking the extent of this modern-day slavery.
Despite its rising profile in many parts of the world, and periodic efforts to raise public awareness in southern Africa, the region remains a fertile ground for traffickers who prey on the vulnerabilities created by a number of factors.
These factors include conflict, poverty, limited access to healthcare and education, gender inequalities, high unemployment, and a general lack of opportunities, especially for women.
Poverty and inequality are the major challenges facing SADC in this regard, with negative impacts on many aspects of human and social development.
The SADC International Conference on Poverty and Development noted in 2008 that poverty affects as much as 45 percent of the population in the region and is particularly acute among vulnerable groups such as rural and peri-urban households, and families headed by older persons and children due to the impact of the AIDS pandemic.
The region is hardest hit by AIDS whose impact is leaving many widows and child-headed households, often teenagers who must provide for a number of younger siblings.
Such conditions have forced some women and girls to turn to prostitution or begging for survival, thereby exposing them to criminal syndicates that traffic in persons.
Just what is trafficking in persons?
According to a United Nations Protocol (2000) popularly known as the Palermo Protocol, this refers to the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of threats or use of force for purposes of exploitation.
A distinction is made between Trafficking in Persons (TIP) and smuggling, although there are linkages between the two.
Human smuggling refers to the illegal movement of an individual into a country in which she/he is not a national or a permanent resident. The smuggled individual is assisted for a fee by criminal syndicates to cross into another country.
Smuggling ends with the arrival of the migrants in the country of destination whereas trafficking involves the ongoing exploitation of the victims to generate illicit profit for the traffickers.
Smuggling is always cross-border whereas trafficking need not be. TIP can occur regardless of whether victims are taken to another country or if only removed from one place to another within the same country.
In the case of trafficking, the victims are moved from one area to another for exploitation, while those smuggled willingly participate in the vice and may or may not be exploited.
Exploitation of TIP victims takes several forms.
Victims, mostly women and children, are often enticed to leave their homes with false promises of jobs but are later subjected to sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery or even the removal of body organs.
The modus operandi used by syndicates includes false newspaper advertisements for jobs in towns or other countries.
In other cases, young children are kidnapped and sold to work in factories, plantations or sweat shops; young men are forced to work in labour markets such as agriculture and textile industries for little or no pay; and babies or very young children are stolen or bought for illegal adoption.
Representatives of 12 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) met in Johannesburg, South Africa, in early December to take stock of these challenges and develop strategies to end trafficking.
The head of the SADC Gender Unit, Magdeline Mathiba-Madibela, said this is “no longer just a security issue but a human rights issue that is affecting our society,” and she urged southern African countries to “break the silence”.
While older women and men as well as children as young as five are forced to beg and steal, work as domestic slaves or forced into pornography and sex work, young women are at greater risk because traffickers can make a lot of money by forcing them into prostitution.
Abandoned children are also vulnerable. Without parents, guardians or anyone to take care of them, abandoned children seek refuge in orphanages and shelters, or on the streets where they try to find a way of supporting their families.
In a recent case in Malawi, a man was convicted of trafficking another 52-year-old man for purposes of slavery.
The suspect, a 41-year-old from Mangochi district, was arrested in December 2012 after he offered to sell the victim for K2 million (about US$4,800). The buyer alerted members of community policing who arrested the offender.
Various initiatives have been introduced by SADC member states, including drafting legislation to curb the vice.
Eight of the 15 SADC member states have specific legislation that addresses the issue of human trafficking. These are Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia.
Mozambique has been one of the champions in this area, enacting a comprehensive law against human trafficking which prescribes penalties of 16 to 20 years imprisonment for those convicted.
Five other countries have draft laws at various stages of development – Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Seychelles and Zimbabwe.
Together with Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, these five currently use several pieces of legislation to address human trafficking
Despite these positive developments, the region still faces a myriad of challenges in this regard, including the evolving nature of tactics used by the traffickers.
“Trafficking in human beings is a sophisticated crime that requires international law enforcement cooperation,” observed Kuda Seretse, Regional Specialized Officer at the Trafficking in Human Beings Desk in the regional bureau of the International Police Organization (Interpol) in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“Solutions are not simple because of its unique ability to masquerade as anything but trafficking,” Seretse said.
Also daunting is the challenge posed by the absence of accurate statistics and documentation to provide a holistic picture of the extent of human trafficking in southern Africa.
Most countries in the region have no reliable statistics in this regard and rely on “anecdotal evidence” from unofficial sources.
The exact magnitude of the problem is often masked by other vices that are common in the region such as illegal migration.
To address the issue of sparse and unreliable data, the SADC Secretariat is preparing to engage a consultant to undertake research on the extent of the problem.
Representatives of SADC member states shared ideas and presented national action plans for the period 2014 – 2017 during the Johannesburg conference, the “SADC Regional Information Exchange Conference on Trafficking in Persons”, under a regional programme supported by the European Union.
The national action plans, which include measures to improve data collection and sharing, and greater cross-border cooperation, are to be incorporated into a regional five-year implementation plan to be developed by the SADC Secretariat.
The five-year implementation matrix is expected to inform the 10-Year SADC Strategic Plan of Action on Combating Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The regional strategic plan runs from 2009 to 2019. sardc.net
