Human Trafficking in [South Africa Street Children in [South Africa] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [South Africa] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Republic of South Africa [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The South Africa is
a source, transit, and destination country for trafficked men, women, and
children. South African girls are trafficked within their country for the
purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic servitude, while boys
are trafficked internally for use in street vending, food service, and
agriculture. Anecdotal evidence suggests that South African children are
forced to provide unpaid labor for landowners in return for their family occupying
land or accommodation, or maintaining labor tenancy rights. Child sex tourism
is prevalent in a number of South Africa’s cities. South African women are
trafficked transnationally to Ireland, the Middle
East, and the United States for domestic servitude. Women and girls from
other African countries are trafficked to South Africa for commercial sexual
exploitation, domestic servitude, and other jobs in the service sector;
occasionally, these women are trafficked onward to Europe for sexual
exploitation. Thai, Chinese, and Eastern European women are trafficked to
South Africa for debt-bonded commercial sexual exploitation. Young men and
boys from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi are trafficked to South Africa for
farm work, often laboring for months in South Africa without pay before
“employers” have them arrested and deported as illegal immigrants. Organized
criminal groups—including Nigerian, Chinese, and Eastern European syndicates—
and local gangs facilitate trafficking into and within South Africa, particularly
for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008
[full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in *** FEATURED
ARTICLE *** Every month thousands of children are smuggled by greedy opportunists and syndicates across our international and provincial borders. Once on the other side, they are sold as domestic workers, for criminal activities, or for hard labour on farms. And many of the young girls are forced into prostitution. ***
ARCHIVES *** IOM's national 24-hour toll-free
telephone helpline 0800 555 999 was
set up in August 2004 to encourage members of the public to report known or
suspected cases of sex-trafficking and to inform victims in South Africa that
they can seek help. U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - There are reports that child prostitution is increasing. There have been reports that some cities
are becoming destinations for tourists seeking sex with minors. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The
country was a destination, transit, and point of origin for the trafficking
of persons, including children, from other countries in Africa, Asia, and The extent of trafficking
operations was unknown, but the International Organization for Migration
(IOM) reported there were 12 major routes for trafficking operations,
including Southern Africa, Asia, and Trafficked women and children who
worked in the sex industry often lived with other trafficked victims in
segregated areas; were frequently under constant surveillance; usually had no
money or identifying documents; were often indebted to the agents who
arranged their travel; often worked long hours, in some cases up to 18 hours
each day, on weekends, and when ill; and sometimes were fined by their
trafficker for infractions of strict rules. Young men trafficked for forced
agricultural labor often were subjected to violence and food rationing. In most cases traffickers lured
women with promises of employment, marriage, or educational opportunities
abroad. Traffickers often lured the children of poor families with promises
of jobs, education, or a better way of life. Victims, who could be kidnapped
or forced to follow their traffickers, were subjected to threats of violence,
withholding of documents, and debt bondage to ensure compliance. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2000 [26] While the Committee notes
that the Child Care Act (1996) provides for the regulation of adoptions, it
is concerned at the lack of monitoring with respect to both domestic and
inter-country adoptions as well as the widespread practice of informal
adoptions within the State party. The Committee is also concerned at the
inadequate legislation, policies and institutions to regulate inter-country
adoptions. [40] The Committee notes the
efforts of the State party to address the situation of the sale, trafficking
and abduction of children, including the adoption of the Hague Convention on
Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, into domestic legislation.
However, the Committee is concerned about the increasing incidence of sale
and trafficking of children, particularly girls, and the lack of adequate
measures to enforce legislative guarantees and to prevent and combat this
phenomenon. Human
trafficking expands in KZN www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20080915105033971C236617
BELIEF - The Daily News has learned of
several cases in this province of girls from other countries - Mozambique and
Thailand - some enticed here by the mistaken belief they would be working in
restaurants. Thai girls have been
"partially deceived" about what life in KwaZulu-Natal
and the country holds in store for them.
Already sex workers, they have been told they will earn more money in
South Africa. But when they get here,
they find they can only work for themselves after they have paid back the
trafficker. The workshop heard about one case
where a girl had almost paid back her trafficker, only to find she was then
sold to another trafficker. "They
are regarded as property," said Mia Immelback,
of the International Organisation for Migration
(IOM), who is helping the Southern African Counter-Trafficking Assistance Programme. War against
trafficking - SA must enact laws to nail perpetrators Despite the best efforts of South
African courts to clamp down on practices related to human trafficking, they
are limited by current legislation, so it is important to promulgate
comprehensive trafficking legislation. Legalise prostitution for 2010 Prostitution needs to be legalised in South Africa ahead of the several hundred
thousand football fans expected to arrive for the 2010 Fifa
World Cup. Child and human rights organisations have warned that human trafficking could
worsen in the country ahead of the World Cup, with "trafficked"
women and children being forced into the sex industry. The experts say that the only way to
prevent this is to decriminalise prostitution and
promulgate trafficking laws. Alleged
child trafficker walks free Lured by promises of work and a
new life in the big city, children as young as 13 are being brought to Cape
Town from rural towns to work on fruit and flower stalls. When they are not working, these children
are prisoners in a Wendy house in the back garden of their employer. They are
fed, but rarely paid. Many run away
and, alone in a strange city, take to the streets to join Cape Town's brigade
of street children. - htsc Judges
asked to clamp down on trafficking "Malawian women are sold by
Nigerian syndicates... to Germany, Italy and Belgium, and this all happens
via South Africa." She said South
Africans themselves were being trafficked to Hong Kong and Macau. Chinese traffickers were using Johannesburg
as a transit point for Swaziland, Lesotho and Mozambique, Majokweni
said. Russian and Bulgarian women were exploited in private clubs and venues
in Johannesburg. Human
trafficking as terrible as slavery Langa also said about 1 000
Mozambican girls and women were trafficked annually in SA. He said they were lured with promises of
lucrative jobs or picked up at taxi ranks while searching for a lift. "After crossing the border, many women
are subjected to an 'initiation' rape at transit houses near the border. "The girls are then sold as 'wives' to
men on the mines in the West Rand for around R650 or to SA brothels for
R1 000." Women
and children trafficked at SA border EXTENSIVE - "It is not uncommon in SA
for women and children to be trafficked within the borders and sold to
brothels in different cities," she said.
She described the trafficking chain as "extensive and highly organised".
Victims, said Toughey, are passed from
person to person. "In the case of cross border
trafficking, girls are kept in appalling conditions, smuggled into the
country in the backs of trucks, in taxis, cars and in some cases even on foot
or in containers as stowaways on ships. They are beaten and abused and often
do not speak any South African language". Tara, a former prostitute, said
more and more young girls under the age of 10 were arriving in the city from
rural areas. The South African Law
Reform commission is currently drafting legislation criminalising
the trafficking of humans. UN urges action on 'scary' levels of trafficking in
southern Africa www.haaba.com/news-story/un-urges-action-scary-levels-trafficking-southern-africa ‘None of the countries in southern
Africa has specific anti-human trafficking legislation in place,' Thomas Zindl-Cronin of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told reporters in Johannesburg. Specific legislation to tackle the issue
was needed to help the law enforcement agencies get to grips with the
situation. 'South Africa and Mozambique are more advanced than the rest of
the region, but the capacity of the police and the judiciary to deal with the
problem is low.’ Human
trafficking in the sex industry Preliminary research suggests that
human trafficking in the sex industry in Cape Town might not be as prevalent
as first thought, a seminar on trafficking and "sexploitation"
heard on Tuesday. "The numbers
probably aren't as high as we initially assessed them to be but we still need
to do something about it," said Chandre Gould,
senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS)
at a seminar at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Gould was speaking on the early
indications of research by the ISS and the Sex
Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) to determine the nature and
extent of human trafficking in Cape Town's sex industry. The number of victims of trafficking who
required assistance from the state were suggested to be "relatively
few" and to form a "small percentage" of the population of the
sex work industry. SA
hotbed of human trafficking For 15-year-old Faith,
the impact was devastating. Struggling to make ends meet in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, she was approached by a man offering waitressing at a Johannesburg restaurant. But the promise
was false. There was no restaurant job. Once in Johannesburg, Faith was
beaten, abused, locked in a Hillbrow flat and
forced into prostitution to earn profits for her traffickers. New study shames human traffickers www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143968455 International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) says Kenyans were also
trafficked to Germany, Italy and South
Africa for domestic labour and prostitution. Its report, ‘Trafficking in
Persons — The Eastern Africa Situation’, notes that women and children were favourite targets for well-organised
trafficking rings, which operate freely for lack of solid laws against the
vice. Human,
drug trafficking at border on the rise "We are currently not
pre-occupied with people who enter illegally into South Africa or Swaziland
to buy two or three kilograms of rice, but those who use the illegal points
for criminal activities," she said.
Apart from facilitating human trafficking, she said these points also
assisted criminals to traffic drugs and illegal arms between the countries. Organisations working with trafficked women say
more than 1000 Mozambican women are trafficked each year, mostly to South
Africa. Every month thousands of children
are smuggled by greedy opportunists and syndicates across our international
and provincial borders. Once on the other side, they are sold as domestic workers,
for criminal activities, or for hard labour on
farms. And many of the young girls are
forced into prostitution. Cops
probed in human trafficking case Police are investigating the role
of fellow officers in an alleged human trafficking case involving 26 Thai
women who were arrested in a dramatic raid on Durban's After Dark
"gentlemen's club" last weekend. The probe has also been widened to
include the murder of a young Thai woman, whose battered body was found near
the N3 at Camperdown last month. The woman had been in the country illegally
and was believed to have been working as a prostitute in a brothel in the
Midlands. They are promised a better life in
South Africa, but instead they are kidnapped, branded and sold into sexual
slavery for as little as R380. Women
and children, some as young as 13, are falling prey to syndicates operating
in Mozambique and Swaziland, trafficking and smuggling them to South Africa
on an unprecedented scale. The report said women and children
were brought into the county by syndicates, individual agents, Nigerian drug
lords, Congolese businesspeople, Angolan crime groups, South African farmers,
and Chinese triads. Women trafficked from Port
Elizabeth to a Cape Town agency said they had ended up in sex work after
responding to advertisements in newspapers. Upon arrival in Cape Town, the
women were informed that their work involved sex and that they were now
debt-bonded to the agency for the costs of their travel, accommodation and
food. Human trafficking a grave concern in SA "But certainly women and
children are being trafficked from Zimbabwe into South Africa for sexual
exploitation through syndicates that are being run by taxi drivers who do the
recruiting and transporting. Also involved are brothel owners who force the
trafficked women to work as prostitutes for little or no pay,"said
Blackman. She explained that most women were
lured by false promises to work in restaurants or with promises of
scholarship, school and study. She expressed concern at the lack of legisaltion that dealt with trafficking as a crime but
indicated that there was now progress in redressing this problem area. Human
trafficking: 4 Asians held A Bangladeshi man allegedly posing
as a department of home affairs official was among four people arrested on Thursday
as part of a police investigation into a human-trafficking gang. The arrests once again highlighted
the plight of thousands of people trafficked into South Africa every year,
for among others, sexual exploitation. The victims - including women and
children - are known to come from as far afield as
Eastern Europe, Thailand and Africa, according to International Organisation of Migration (IOM). Women
sold into prostitution by gamblers Women married to compulsive gamblers are being raped or forced into prostitution by loan sharks after being used as collateral by their addicted husbands. And the lack of action by the KZN Gambling Board, among others, is exacerbating the problem. City a 'human trafficking centre' www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=49&fArticleId=2852753 Cape Town and its surrounding
regions have been identified as a centre for one of the fastest-growing and
most lucrative enterprises in the world - human trafficking. Speaking at the launch, at the
Slave Lodge in the city, Jonathan Lucas of the UN office said South Africa's
legislation and law enforcement was inefficient in dealing with the
trafficking of people, which he described as one of the fastest growing
industries worldwide. Community Safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane said
the city remained a "targeted port of entry" by child traffickers,
creating "a major problem".
He said the Western Cape had experienced growing concern over children
who went missing. Women
Must Expose Sex-Trafficking Cartels The 18 women, according to police,
had been locked in a house by the home owner and not allowed to leave the
premises. The women are now receiving counseling before they face being
deported. But the extent of human
trafficking is not limited to women, with children often being the
victims. Edwards said that in South
Africa, they had found that families were selling off younger children. She
said sometimes parents believed traffickers would give them a better future. It costs R50 000 a head to move people between
certain countries, a witness said in a Johannesburg High Court murder trial
that involved allegations of "human trafficking". This was said by Ali Tarssawari,
who turned State witness after having been in the dock for allegedly trying
to cover up the execution-style murder of Mozambican immigrant Fatima Momade and her daughter, Nazia,
11. He said this fee related to two
Pakistanis who were "moved" from Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Tutu
calls for child registration In South Asia alone, there are no
records for six out of every 10 babies, campaign organisers
Plan say. The agency fears around half
a billion children worldwide may be unregistered. Archbishop Tutu said a birth document was
important because it "proves who you are". Without it children are
often barred from education, health care and citizenship. "It is, in a very real sense, a matter
of life and death," the Nobel Peace Prize laureate told a news conference
at the UN headquarters in New York.
"The unregistered child is a nonentity. The unregistered child
does not exist. How can we live with the knowledge that we could have made a
difference?" South Africa Linked in the Global Human Trafficking Human trafficking, particularly of
women and children, in South Africa is not slowing down while the country’s
government has not yet implemented legislation recognising
this vicious flesh trade as a crime.
With legislation, activists like Vanessa Anthony, a researcher and counsellor with child rights non-governmental organisation, Molo Songololo, can see justice for the victims she deals
with. Anthony says it recently ‘’took
eight years to jail a man who kidnapped, gang-raped and exploited girls as
young as 13’’. Counter-Trafficking
Information Campaign in South Africa As part of its Southern African
Counter-Trafficking Programme (SACTAP),
the IOM office for Southern Africa will launch on 25 April three information
posters, which will feature prominently in the on-going information campaign
"Seduced, Imported, Sold" All posters feature IOM's national
24-hour toll-free telephone helpline 0800
555 999, which was set up in August 2004 to encourage members of the
public to report known or suspected cases of sex-trafficking and to inform
victims in South Africa that they can seek help. FORGOTTEN
SCHOOLS: Right to Basic Education for Children on Farms in South Africa The government faces enormous
challenges in attempting to protect the rights of those living in remote
rural areas, particularly the right of children living on commercial farms to
education. The present government has inherited a situation where a
child may have to endure long journeys on foot, be unable to meet schools
fees or pay for a school uniform. All these needs create a burden on
the child and parent(s). The South African government has
inherited an education system in rural areas based on racial, social and
economic inequalities. Through the 1996 constitution and the
ratification of international human rights law pertaining to children’s
rights to education, the government is obliged to protect the right to an
education. Children living on farms have the right to receive an
education freely and in an environment conducive to learning. South Africa:
Caution urged over new human trafficking laws EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM NOT KNOWN - According to the Geneva-based
International Organisation for Migration (IOM),
South Africa is the regional centre of an intricate trafficking network that
recruits women and children from Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, Eastern Europe,
Thailand and China. However, Ted Leggett, a researcher
with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS),
recently questioned the benefit of promulgating new anti-trafficking
legislation. In an ISS
article titled, 'The Risks of Human Trafficking Legislation', Leggett argued
that the extent of trafficking in South Africa was unclear. The South African
Law Reform Commission (SALRC), which is
investigating the proposed legislation, "draws its ideas about the
extent and nature of the local [trafficking] problem almost entirely from two
pieces of primary research ... [which] are hinged on the direct experiences
of less than 35 people", Leggett pointed out. Although both pieces of work "profess
to be preliminary investigations, in the absence of other research they are
being taken as authoritative". Commenting on the unverified need
for additional legislation, Leggett noted that "the bottom line is that
virtually everything that is part of trafficking is already illegal, and
simply generating more legislation is unlikely to revolutionise
the situation". He suggested that "no policy decision should be
taken in this area without further research". Sexual
abuse of young children in southern Africa In this chapter the authors argue
that both commercial sexual exploitation if children and trafficking in
children are significant and growing problems in southern Africa. Although
sex tourism is one aspect of this problem, the underlying causes of the
sexual exploitation of children are firmly embedded in social inequalities,
corruption, gender discrimination, cheap labour
practices and poor educational opportunities. Worsening poverty among
especially vulnerable families and communities affected by HIV/AIDS, and the
increasing adult mortality associated with AIDS-illness, are creating,
potentially very dangerous situation for children. Under these conditions,
children prematurely engage in livelihood activities, most in demand and
lucrative if which is sex. 38
000 child prostitutes in SA South Africa is a major
destination and source for international trafficking of children, a
conference on human trafficking heard in Pretoria on Tuesday. Susan Kreston of
the Council of the National Centre for Justice and the Rule of Law in the USA
told the conference - arranged by the Institute for Security Studies - that
between 28 000 and 38 000 children were currently being prostituted
in South Africa. "Up to 25% of
prostitutes in South Africa are children, and up to 25% of street children
(are prostitutes)," she told the conference. Human
Trafficking Stretches Across the Region IOM official Jonathan Martens told
a three-day conference which opened in Benoni, near
South Africa's main commercial city of Johannesburg, this week (Jun. 22) that
the women are promised employment, luxury accommodation, and a payment of
between 10,000 and 20,000 dollars. Their passports are confiscated once they
arrive in Macau. Martens said South African
traffickers earn around 500 dollars for every woman recruited for
prostitution in Macau, which has been labeled the "Las Vegas of
Asia" for its numerous casinos and nightclubs. Drugs play a "very
big role" in recruitment, he added. A 23-year-old woman identified as
Nicola reported to the IOM that she had met nine other black, white and mixed
race South Africans aged 18 to 21 in Macau, who were forcibly prostituted in
the former colony. South Africa
regional centre for human trafficking Mozambican women are recruited
either through a "passive" or an "active" method by organised groups or minibus-taxi operators. The passive
method targets female passengers already en route to South Africa. In the
active method, traffickers offer women jobs as waitresses or sex workers in
Johannesburg and charge R500 ($80) to smuggle them from the Mozambican
capital, Maputo, through the Komatipoort or Ponta do Ouro border posts to
South Africa. "The women stay in transit
houses along South Africa's border with Mozambique and Swaziland for a night,
where they are sexually assaulted as an initiation. They are then smuggled
into Johannesburg and are kept in safe houses in Soweto and Lenasia until they are sold to brothels in Gauteng or KwaZulu-Natal for
R1,000 (about $160)," Martens said. The women are also sold as wives to
South African men for R650 (about $104). Initiative to fight human trafficking to be launched An initiative to build
collaboration between government and NGOs to fight human trafficking will be
launched at a conference in South Africa next week, according to the activist
body, War Against Trafficking Alliance. The Johannesburg conference
beginning on 22 June will help put together a newly constituted national task
team's agenda on combating human trafficking and is the fifth follow-up of a
world summit held in Washington last year. The global coalition will also
release video footage documenting sex tourism in South Africa. "Leaders
in the anti-trafficking movement must strive for balance in their efforts to
provide long-term service provision and successful prosecution, conviction
and sentencing for those who prey on the vulnerable," said founder of
the coalition, Linda Smith. "I believe this video will shock
participants and sustain the good efforts being made to put these predators
behind bars." SOUTHERN AFRICA: Major destination for traffickers in women and children The women and children are either
sexually exploited, used as labour or their organs
are harvested. While poverty has been recognised as the most "visible cause for
trafficking human beings ... another strong determinant is the particular
vulnerability of women and children, which makes them an easy target for
traffickers". Patterns of oppression, discrimination, social and
cultural prejudices, and the prevalence of gender violence put children and
women at greater risk and ensures the flourishing of the trafficking trade. Southern Africa: Conference On Human Trafficking Opens "I am young - but up here is
old," says an 11-year-old girl working as a prostitute in Cape Town,
pointing to her head - one of many images in hard-hitting footage on the sex
industry, screened at the opening of a conference on human trafficking in
South Africa on Tuesday. A pimp in Cape Town, South
Africa's tourism capital, who supplies eight- to 11-year-olds to sex tourists
mainly from the US, Britain and Japan, commented in the film that children
are sometimes tied with barbed wire and told to perform sexual acts on
adults. The footage was shot by the global
coalition of NGOs. According to the South Africa-based child rights' activist
organisation, Molo Songololo, 25 percent of prostitutes in Cape Town are
children. While the film alleged that child
prostitution in Cape Town was run predominantly by a Nigerian syndicate,
Smith said Russian, Bulgarian and Chinese crime groups were other major
players in the human trafficking business in South Africa. The country's attractive First
World conditions - "clean water, good schools for their children" -
were luring trafficking traders to the country, said Smith. 40
000 child prostitutes - Street children vulnerable to sex trade About 40 000 children in South
Africa are involved in child prostitution and the figures are rising as more
and more children are driven from their homes because of poverty, neglect and
abuse. The child prostitutes - all
under the age of 18 - are among 400 000 child labourers
in the country, according to the Network Against Child Labour. Once on the streets, children are
vulnerable to a booming sex trade and trafficking. www.iom.org.za/Reports/TraffickingReport3rdEd.pdf EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - The major findings may be
summarized as follows: Refugees are both victims and
perpetrators of trafficking to South Africa. As male refugees encounter
unemployment and xenophobia in South Africa, some choose to recruit female
relatives from their countries of origin to South Africa. These women are
usually 25 years and older, married and have children. Individual refugee
traffickers are assisted by ethnically-based syndicates in delivering a
recruiting letter to the victim in her country of origin, escorting her to
South Africa, and sexually assaulting her as an initiation to sex work should
she resist upon arrival. The refugee trafficker takes the earnings the woman
receives as a sex worker and, to protect his investment, he assists her in
applying for refugee status to prevent deportation if police detain her. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [South Africa Street Children in [South Africa] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [South Africa] [other countries]