Image via WikipediaFrom New Era
30 August 2010
WINDHOEK – Well-known social researcher in the southern African region, Merab Kiremire, said human trafficking ought to be redefined for perpetrators to be more successfully prosecuted.
Currently, human trafficking is taking a person from one place to another for purposes other than stated or agreed upon through coaxing, deception, convincing, fraud, abuse of power, outright abduction, or coercion.
Human trafficking is also described as the recruitment, transportation, harbouring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labour (including bonded labour or debt bondage, and servitude).
Exploitation includes forcing people into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery and servitude.
“If we continue with complex definitions, the system won’t be able to prosecute traffickers; there must be a way to simplify terms,” said Kiremire, who was part of a team that travelled throughout the country and had gone to all border posts during May to July to raise awareness about human trafficking among border-post personnel, truck drivers and church and political leaders in preparation for the 2010 Fifa World Cup that took place in South Africa.
The group, under the auspices of the Churches United Against HIV/AIDS in Eastern and Southern Africa, in partnership with the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), did a baseline study of what a likely scenario would be during the soccer event.
What the group found, said Karimire, and was that girls and women were streaming into South Africa, which is considered as the best sex trade market in the region.
In a 2008 study entitled Southern African Network Against Abuse and Trafficking, Kiremire found 110 girls – usually between the ages of 14 to 24, considered the ‘prime’ years for prostitutes – were found to have moved from Lusaka in Zambia to Johannesburg “to be located in the most appropriate places”.
The more recent study showed that girls and women moved to South Africa, especially from Mozambique and Zambia. Those who went from Namibia left mainly from Windhoek and Walvis Bay, often armed only with the knowledge that they have to “following B1” to South Africa.
“What we found was not so much what can be considered human trafficking, but prostitutes moving,” said Karimire.
However, she said, what became clear was that the girls were taken by older prostitutes and truck drivers.
“Often these girls would not know where they are going. The risk young people take is horrendous, and yet they say they often have no alternative but to,” said Kiremire. A shocking discovery, said Kiremire, was the symbiotic relationship between prostitutes, truck drivers and border-post personnel that become familiar with the drivers passing through regularly.
At one police checkpoint at Grünau, it was recorded that over a period of four days, as many as 50 trucks passed by with women on board.
Police in this instance are often helpless bystanders because the women have valid travel documents.
“The biggest discovery was the fact that there is a very thin line between consensual movement and trafficking. We did not find, for example, syndicates that intentionally recruit and move people without consent. Many of the girls are happy to jump onto a truck thinking they are going to Windhoek, but then they find themselves taken to Oshikango, where they are dumped,” explained Kiremire.
In other cases, young girls go onto fishing vessels at Walvis Bay “for a good time”, and without their knowledge or consent end up in places such as Argentine.
Kiremire said a new law is required that would clearly identify and prosecute the traffickers, and that gives law enforcers the power to use their discretionary powers to incarcerate suspicious elements until proven wrong.
“I think that way more people can be protected,” said Kiremire.
http://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=12732
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