United States human rights officer at the American embassy in Harare, Amanda Porter, said there were no laws in Zimbabwe that specifically addressed trafficking in persons and the country was a source, transit and destination for trafficking. The US congress and the Obama administration are serious about human trafficking and unless this is addressed the country could lose some of the aid it receives, she said recently. Zimbabwe gets about US$330 million in annual American aid, mostly for humanitarian programmes.
Porter said trafficking was a serious problem and NGOs, international organisations and governments in neighbouring countries reported that Zimbabwean emigrants continued to face exploitation. Rural children were also trafficked domestically and regionally into farms and cities for agricultural labour, domestic servitude and commercial sex exploitation under false pretences of job or marriage proposals. Reports suggested that those children in desperate economic circumstances, especially those in families headed by children were at risk. Women and children were reportedly trafficked for sexual exploitation in towns and across borders with the four neighbouring countries, she said.
Porter said in recent years women and girls were lured to South Africa, China, Egypt and the United Kingdom, Canada and Zambia with false employment offers that resulted in involuntary domestic servitude or commercial sexual exploitation. Women and children from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia were also trafficked through Zimbabwe to South Africa, while small numbers of South African girls were trafficked to the country for forced domestic labour. She said men were also not spared as they were trafficked in the region after being lured by the promise of employment, with a recent example of at least one group of six Zimbabwean men who were lured to Angola with the promise of employment in the construction industry.
She said on arrival they were not paid and were subjected to forced labour and had to be rescued by the Zimbabwean embassy after one of them succeeded in making a phone call to expose their predicament. According to the United States human rights report on Zimbabwe for 2009, traffickers are said to be typically independent businesspersons who are part of small networks of local criminal groups that facilitate trafficking within the country, as well as into South Africa or other neighbouring countries.
Post published in: News