Botswana Applauded For Fighting Human Trafficking

Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday February 1, 2016 15:42

“I have met with the government officials including prosecutors,” she said. “I realised that Botswana is doing very well in bringing offenders to book. It is also quicker than in the US to prosecute offenders.”

She said she was worried that in most cases people being trafficked and forced to do illegal things ended up being prosecuted.

She said victims should be set free because they would be doing all the bad things unwillingly.

Coppedge said her office assesses global trends, provides strategic foreign assistance funding, and engages foreign governments, civil society, other federal agencies and key stakeholders in the fight against modern slavery.

She previously served for 15 years as an assistant attorney in the northern district of Georgia where she prosecuted more than 45 human traffickers in federal cases involving transnational and domestic sex, trafficking of adults and children, and labour trafficking.

These prosecutions brought perpetrators to justice and assisted more than 90 victims of trafficking. She carries with her the stories of these survivors, many of whom thought the system would never stand up for them.

Coppedge arrived while there was an ongoing human trafficking court case in which a Jamaican man was accused of smuggling an Ethiopian man into Botswana. She said she hoped and trusted that justice would take its cause.