Ndelu Tables Anti-Human Trafficking Bill

Gothataone Moeng | Monday July 7, 2014 06:59

The bill, read by Minister Ramadeluka Seretse for the first time on Wednesday, aims to domesticate the United Nations (UN) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children.

The bill intends to do this by instituting measures for the implementation of the protocol, prohibiting the promotion, facilitation or any others means which allow exploitation through trafficking of humans and ensuring the just and effective punishment of traffickers by providing for effective investigation and prosecution of smugglers. It will also lay down a legislative framework within which the prevention and elimination of human trafficking is to be effected in Botswana. The bill also aspires to provide for a mechanism to cater for the safe repatriation of victims and their protection, rehabilitation, care and assistance as well as to establish a specialised committee, which can advise on the programmes to be used in the assistance and protection of victims as well as manage the Victims of Trafficking Fund. 

Under the bill, any person found guilty could be fined an amount not exceeding P500,000 or be imprisoned for a term not exceeding 25 years or both. “Any person who during the commission of the offence removes an organ from a person’s body, forces a woman to fall pregnant and takes the child away, subjects a person to slavery or forced labour or commits a sexual offence against a person commits an offence and is liable to a fine not exceeding P1,000,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 30 years or both,” the draft bill stated.

The bill also provides for the imprisonment or fining of people who knowingly lease premises for the purpose of promoting trafficking in persons, as well as a person who facilitates, aids or abets the exit or entry of persons from or to the country at international and local airports, territorial boundaries and seaports for the purpose of promoting trafficking in persons.  According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), although human trafficking affects every country of the world, it often occurs from less developed countries to more developed countries, where people are rendered vulnerable to trafficking by virtue of poverty, conflict or other conditions. A disproportionate number of women are involved in human trafficking both as victims and as culprits, according to the UNODC.