Batswana Need To Wise Up To Human Trafficking

Monitor Editor | Monday September 17, 2018 10:50

Well, over the years, we have heard about a number of cases where young men and women were coerced into travelling to other countries particularly, in the first world, with the promise of better opportunities, only to reach their destination and be thrown into slavery or prostitution.

While Botswana might still be experiencing fewer cases, there is need for all stakeholders to come together and address the issue before it reaches uncontrollable proportions.

Trafficking in Persons Protocol defines human trafficking as: “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs”. Botswana in the 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report was listed in the Tier 2 Watch List, which basically comprises countries whose governments do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum requirements, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards and:

a) The absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing;

b) There is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year; or

c) The determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.

In May this year, international media carried an article on a young woman Motswana, Tebby Kaisara who was trafficked to the United States of America (USA). Kaisara who thought she was going to the USA for an opportunity to work and study, shockingly ended up being turned into a slave. The Monitor has yet another article on two babies who may be victims of human trafficking.

Perpetrators of human trafficking should get harsher sentences, and the government should go around the country educating citizenry on human trafficking, and the tactics often used by traffickers.