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Basotho at risk of being trafficked for sexual exploitation
and forced labour
A Rapid Assessment of Trafficking
in Persons in Lesotho, supported by UNDP and the Ministry of Home
Affairs, Public Safety & Parliamentary Affairs has revealed that
people from Lesotho are at a high risk of being trafficked to both
the neighbouring Southern African countries and internationally.
The trafficking of persons, which is
often referred to as modern day slavery, has been described as one
of the world’s most reprehensible crimes and was
defined in 2000 by the UN Palermo protocol as “the recruitment,
transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or
use of force or other forms of coercion”.
In July 2009 the Ministry of Home
Affairs, as a result of anecdotal evidence and limited quantitative
data, identified the trafficking of persons as a threat to the
people of Lesotho. The Ministry subsequently formed a multi-sectoral
Task Team to collaborate with other partners to design and implement
strategies to curb this crime. Due to the hidden nature of the crime
and lack of official systems for recording, the scale of the problem
was very unclear. As a result of this inadequate evidence a joint
initiative was undertaken between the Ministry of Home Affairs,
Public Safety & Parliamentary Affairs and the UNDP who jointly
engaged Health and Development Africa and local consultants from
Women in Law in Southern Africa (WLSA) to carry out a rapid research
to understand and be able to respond to the magnitude of trafficking
in persons in Lesotho.
The report, finalised in June,
exposes that the trafficking of
persons is a real threat to Lesotho and reveals a number of specific
cases of the crime, amongst which most cases of trafficking are
related to sexual exploitation. However it further revealed that,
contrary to other African countries where women are the most
vulnerable, Lesotho men are at a higher risk, and have been
trafficked for forced labour in the mines.
Having
established the existence of trafficking, the report identifies a
number of areas that make Lesotho a target for this type of crime,
which include; Socio-economic factors including its relative
position in Southern Africa and the country’s porous borders. In
particular the report highlights Lesotho’s history of migration
arguing that due to high unemployment rates and poverty, people are
easily lured to move / migrate that they do not question a false
offer of transportation or employment in another community or
country.
An example of the
porous borders which exist between Lesotho and South Africa
Following the report’s validation by
national stakeholders, the Ministry of Home Affairs with other
development partners facilitated the development of Lesotho’s first
ever legislation on Trafficking in Persons, which has been reviewed
by stakeholders and awaiting Parliamentary approval. This is a great
milestone for the country and from UNDP for having been able to
support efforts to overcome the lack of concrete data on the
trafficking of persons in Lesotho in order for evidence-informed
policy-making and programming.
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