Human Traffic

[Arao Valoi]

The SA 2010 Football world Cup, first in Africa, is a dream and a hope for better days for the continent and also a good financial injection for the economic sectors of SADC countries.

But are we looking at the consequences of this? Experiences and recent studies indicate that the traffickers in human beings act in a situation of unrest and large events, such as the world Cup, an event that moves money and people.
Are we attentive to what will happen with the girls in SADC region? Who will feed the sex industry in guest houses in Cape Town, Kwazulu Natal, Durban and other places? Our borders are prepared? Let's debate this issue, please?

[Vincent Harris]

You flying in at an interesting angle.

[migrante]

Human Trafficking

Exerpt: Long Road by Bruce Cerew

On our arrival in Goa, we saw countless other migrants and refugees from all over Africa, desperate to cross the arid desert. There were also pregnant women, newly delivered babies on the sands. All on the run. It was an emotional sight. In other to remain positive and focus on the journey, I wandered around the beautiful, endless sea of sand that looked like the end of the world. It also appeared as a symbol of the end of our trail, although that was hard to admit. In my wanderings I suddenly came across another group of people that seemed very content, relaxed, and they were all wearing expensive sunglasses. They seemed very much prepared and competent for the journey. I had to approach them. Before I even spoke two words, they already knew where I was coming from.
“You are from Liberia, aren’t you?” one of them asked arrogantly.
“Yes, I am. Is that a problem?” I bit back.
“No! It’s just your accent.” He explained. It was clear the men had nothing against me. They were open and friendly.
“Do you have enough food to eat for the entire journey?’’ another asked.
“I think so.” I responded. The man who introduced himself by the name of Face immediately opened his bag to show me how prepared they were. “This is a journey of life and death.” he explained.
His bag contained various kinds of tinned food, energy drinks, chewing gum, a Swiss knife, dried roasted meat, caps, torchlights, shoes, thick blankets, and umbrellas. They were fully prepared, and, after seeing that, I was in full panic. I realized how ill-equipped I was. The sun had slipped away and we were to continue our journey. I had to say goodbye to my Nigerian friends but doubted whether I would stand any chance of survival in the desert.

During nightfall in Goa, we were loaded back into the truck. After hours of driving into the desert, with temperatures rising above forty degrees Celsius, suffocation and heat besieged both men and women on board. Children were coughing, crying, and gasping for air. It was sad and infuriating to listen to those cries of innocent children exposed to a journey that might likely take days, weeks, months—perhaps years. It might even mean their death. From this point, I questioned myself about why a continent so filled with myriad natural resources would have to suffer and why its people would have to live in such dire circumstances.
Why did our leaders refuse to listen to the cries and see the pains of their citizens?
Why would the riches of Africa not be shared for the benefit of all? These thoughts made me incredibly sad.
This wretched truck carried around one hundred men, women, and children on the road to near-certain self-destruction, with no hope of ever returning to our homeland, family, or love ones. We were loaded into the truck like animals and could hardly breathe. We didn’t have any space to move or sleep.
It was our first night in the Sahara and we could only hope to survive another night there. We had traveled the whole night, covering over 500 kilometers, when we were let out of the truck to rest and take something to drink and eat whatever we had.
I watched the children playing on the hot sand and enduring the hostile temperature without any idea of what was lying ahead. I was too sad to turn my eyes to the parents, who had exposed their children to this situation. Perhaps, the parents had wanted the best for their children.
I stopped being angry now or feeling sorry for myself. After all, we each had our own stories. So I let my putrid anger slowly die away. Shortly after, I was playing and cheering with the kids.
As the day slowly turned into darkness we were ready again to continue our journey to civilization. A journey that only the strong would survive. The engine was steaming once again, indicating it was time to rally up. One by one, we stepped into the truck and the driver drove off.

Somewhere in the range of 500 kilometers to Tindouf, Algeria, we heard a loud noise coming from the engine. That was the end of the journey. The truck had developed an engine problem and we had to continue our journey on foot. Those with children, pregnant women, and others too weak to walk were left behind, only to wait for the mechanics. Unfortunately there would be no guarantees for the safety of those left behind or for those continuing on foot. “The fully armed smugglers do not respect the meaning of life.’’ During our seven-day journey, many of us had become friends. Saying goodbye to them was one of my hardest goodbyes ever. Many of us were forced to flee from abject poverty, others in fear of persecution. Dejected and forsaken by their societies and now shattered. Yet, every one of us was determined to succeed. The cries of those innocent babies and children, women and men left behind kept me from leaving immediately. I had to turn around and never look back again. I wished they would do the same.

For more infomation go to our website: http://www.warchildnet.com
Availabble on the following: Other books from Bruce Cerew on Amazon.com and in Shops
http://www.bol.com/nl/p/boeken-engels/long-road/1001004006283484/in...

[Arao Valoi]

This is really a sad episode.

I also visited your the site you sent and i found some interesting things you are currently doing in fovour of those need help.

Go ahead with your initiative and if you need any kind of support in terms of informations about my country, dont hesitate to get in touch with me or using this way or also by [e-mail]

Waitinh to hear something from you

Arao Valoi
Maputo
Mozambique

[Arao Valoi]

The black page the world Cup will open to SADC Countries

By Arão Valoi

“The Rainbow Nation”, South Africa, will host the World Championship in Football in 2010, a competition to be held for the first time in Africa. Thousand reasons for all SADC countries smile, as the tourism industry can achieve its peak, which is good from the viewpoint of financial revenues. Mozambique, for example, expects to receive over 100 thousand tourists. And it began to organize the hotel industry and the financial plugins. Estimates indicate that the SADC countries without South Africa, will receive about 500 thousand tourists. But not everything will be a “bed of roses”, as it’s expected that with the tourism, trafficking of children and women will also increase, in order to feed sexual tourism, in areas such as KwaZulu Natal, Durban and Cape Town, or the cheap labor on farms, bars, restaurants, guest houses and hotels there, what will happen as a “natural” response to the 2010 event.

More than two thousand children, most of them female, and women are trafficked each year in Mozambique. According to the United Nations Fund for Childhood (UNICEF) in the SADC region, the number reached about two hundred thousand a year. The destinations are varied, but South Africa, the “magnet of the region”, occupies the first place. For example, data from Child Helpline International (CHI) show that over 50% of children trafficked in the SADC region, aimed at RSA. In the case of Mozambique, the consensus on this destination is widespread.

It is hoped that with the advent of the Football World Cup 2010, these numbers increase so overwhelming, since the tricks of traffickers took them to act in situations of great excitement and bustle, or in cases of natural disasters, risks or in Emergency situation.

"We can not predict how many children and women are going to be trafficked, but the reality tells us that the numbers will increase, so we must be more careful and vigilant," says the Program Manager for the CHI Africa, the Kenyan Alice Mapenzi Kubo.

According to Kubo, the trafficking of children and women is a global business, driven by demand, with a huge market for labor-cost and commercial sex, confronted often insufficient legislative frameworks and regulatory policies or not experienced, without properly trained personnel to tackle it.

Revelations of Alice Kubo are not occurring randomly. Research of the United Nations (UN) revealed that "the today’s slavery" thrives because of the high level of profits. According to the Report of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), “Seduction, Sale and Slavery: Trafficking in Women and Children for Sexual Exploitation in Southern Africa”, published in 2003, this industry produces between 7 to 10 billion US dollars per year, placing it third in terms of profits after the arms trade and drug trafficking.

But at the same time, the SADC countries, at a national level, has done little to combat human trafficking. For example, the eleven member countries of the Southern African Network Against Trafficking and Abuse of Children (Santac), a Regional Network against Trafficking and Abuse of Children, more than half do not have regulatory instruments of this matter and when there are obvious cases of trafficking, are confronted with the lack of legal framework and eventually leave the traffickers unpunished. The lack of a “criminal” definition for cases of trafficking, moreover, is one of the major constraints in the region.

In this issue, Mozambique had made good progress since it has already approved by parliamentary consensus, a specific law against trafficking. For the crime of trafficking in persons, the Mozambican Executive believes that this Act shall permit the prosecutor or any person having knowledge of that fact to denounce the criminal action against the perpetrators of it. This Act and the Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, is to establish the legal regime applicable to the prevention and combating trafficking in persons, especially women and children, including the criminalization of trafficking and related activities and protection of victims, complainants and witnesses.

The possible reasons and the routes of trafficking

An evaluation of "FAIR", associated with studies and other empirical evidence showed that two separate operations of trafficking in persons are making use of three different routes to transport the victims from Mozambique to South Africa. According to a report entitled "Trafficking in Persons in Mozambique: Main Causes and Recommendations” published by UNESCO in 2006, the first route used is to Gauteng through Ressano Garcia (border). Based on research conducted from January to February 2006, in a total of 2,560 trafficked persons, 1282 women and 563 children were smuggled to South Africa through the border of Libombos, Ressano Garcia.

The second route which introduces trafficked women, both for the provinces of Gauteng and the KwaZulu-Natal, cross the border at Ponta de Ouro in the South Africa. Transport continues then to the south of Swaziland and directly to Johannesburg and Pretoria, or towards the south for Durban and Pitermaritzburg. It is believed that the ease of access by the traffickers of these routes is the result of their connection with organized criminal groups dealing other goods such as stolen cars.

Thirdly, the routes within Mozambique typically include the entrance to the north of the country through Tanzania and / or Malawi by people coming from the African Great Lakes Region and West Africa.

Others, who may travel by sea, may land in the Mozambican ports before continuing the journey by land. Even inside the country, emphasis goes to the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe, particularly in Manica and Gaza provinces.
The border of Chicualacuala in Gaza is described as being the most vulnerable. On each Wednesday, a passenger’s train linking the two countries crosses the border and transporting thousands of people, generally poorly controlled.

There are evidences that some of them are victims of trafficking. The illustrative example is of the three lost girls found in the Region of Chókwè in the same province, after they had escaped of the train at Central station in Chokwe, where the carriage stops for a long time during the night. The destination was uncertain, but there were serious indications that it was South Africa.


The regional “magnetic”

Mozambique is only one of an estimated of 10 countries, including Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (compounded by political and economic crisis) that supply the market of trafficking in persons, which provides South Africa, the regional magnet. A report on child trafficking in South Africa, presented by the organization Molo Songololo in 2000, suggests that there are more than 20 thousand working children, many of them Mozambican refugees, working on farms where payments are miserable and work for food and accommodation.

Molo Songololo is an South African organization that, since the years of apartheid, has publications on trafficking of children in the RSA. It is now eight years after the publication of this report, which suggests that the numbers may be much higher now days. According to the IOM in Pretoria, 25% of prostitutes in Cape Town are children and come from different countries of the region. IOM adds that "South Africa can offer accommodation and facilities of the first world, and it draws the attention of western tourism and, unfortunately, also of sexual tourism."

The greater evil

But what have these children and women done to be trafficked or to deserve such a fate? This is a recurrent issue. But never found a satisfactory answer, or at least, justify of such barbarity. For months, we wondered, in Mozambique, what have made the girls who were trafficked by the famous Diana, also Mozambican, to South Africa, where they were sexually enslaved in a luxurious villa in Sapton. Nothing! Discovered by a Mozambican resident in the same region, the case ended up being popular and Diana, who had to be arrested by South African police, is now on trial.

But surveys published, all of them, have the same findings: that poverty is the main driving force of this business, pushing the marginalized people into the hands of traffickers. HIV/AIDS and natural disasters are also other causes, as well as discrimination based on gender, cultural practices and the phenomenon of emigration to the “Land of Rand”, mainly in the southern region of Mozambique.

Cutting the evil by the root

To cut the evil by the root is to create conditions, so that people do not feel affected by poverty, is to create the women "empowerment", to allow that all children's rights are respected, since the right to education, to the right to play, is to create conditions that orphans of relatives who were victims of HIV / AIDS are being considered and had the correct treatment.

But that hardly happens, mainly because government policies do not take these issues as priorities. Even knowing the difficulties they will face, in particular concerning the question of law, many civil society organizations, in partnership with Santac, are already working to sensitize their respective governments to include the issue of trafficking as a "cross-cutting issue", in the current preparation for the 2010 World Cup

“They should not look only to gains related to tourism, but also to look at this social issue”, said Tonniete Marrengula, a social activist. Penalty is that it is an action that only involves civil society organizations, whose decisions do not become binding, serving only as pressure groups.
The regional governments, which have all the mechanisms, including legal and high pressure operation of the parliaments to pass laws more quickly, has been the great absent in these debates.
“And even if there is interest by the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), this will not be easy because the criminals remain unpunished, as no laws for this purpose. And the world is already at the door”, adds our source.

Was to discuss this issue and prepare possible scenarios to prevent trafficking during the 2010 World Cup, that Santac, the African region was held in Maputo in early December, having taken the time to appeal to the whole SADC society to be cautious during 2010 world cup. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), for example, is developing programs to combat human trafficking in Mozambique.

The IOM Counter trafficking Program Assistance in Southern Africa (SACTAP aims to prevent trafficking in persons and provide necessary assistance to trafficked persons in the SADC. At the same time, the program supports the government and non-governmental actors to develop their capacity to effectively combat human trafficking. Nelly Chimendza, Project Coordinator of the IOM has been organizing training workshops throughout the regions of the country, involving the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) and the social educators. Very recently, the IOM organized two training and was one in Maputo and another in Gaza, two southern provinces of Mozambique. It is expected that a third is held in the central region of the country in Maputo. IOM has been giving all the tracking of victims of trafficking in the region.

“Child Help Line” for the 2010 World Cup Preparation

The subject of the World 2010 is so serious and worrying that led to a number of Mozambican civil society organizations, in partnership with the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs and CHI, to develop a concept for the formulation of Child Assistance Line. Called "Child Help Line," the initiative has been developed since 2005, involving organizations such as Rede Came, the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, Save the Children Sweden, Save the Children Mozambique, the Rede da Criança, the Plan Mozambique and the Child Help Line RSA..

Moreover, it is a line that will provide a free service for receiving complaints of human rights violations, particularly of children's rights, provide advice on measures to be taken, as well as providing services recommended for the mitigation of the problem.

Internationally, this is an idea that arose from a recommendation by the UNVAC, a UN organization against Children’s Violence, which says, in paragraph 8 that "I recommend that States must provide the available and advertised services, which are confidential and accessible to children and their representatives and others to report cases of violence against children. All children, including those in custody of justice, should be aware of the existence of mechanisms for participation of complaints. Mechanisms such as the Telephone Help (helpline) by which children can report cases of violence, talk with counselors and get help, should be created including the use of new communication technologies."

According to Carlos Manjate, Coordinator of Rede Came in Mozambique, a network of organizations against the abuse of children in Mozambique, established in light of the recommendations in Stockholm in 1996, "this initiative will also provide an opportunity to record statistical data that can reflect the typology of cases, place of occurrence, data from perpetrator as well as the victim.

Manjate indicated that the system being introduced is equipped with software that will allow these operations take place with some ease. For now, have been trained operators of the system, which includes a vast network of psycho-social counselors. This is a result of a strong partnership with the Child Helpline International, an organization which operates in this system for several years, implementing it in different countries and also using different technologies, ranging from the phone, as in Mozambique, Internet, case of Thailand, Community Radio, in case of Namibia, Websites, cases of the Netherlands and Denmark and then encompassing all of these components into a single Child Help Line.
The Coordinator of Rede Came praised the importance that this initiative could take in Mozambique, a country that needs detailed studies on the phenomenon of trafficking in minors, including statistics on the subject. The number to access the services of the “Linha Fala Criança” as it is called in Mozambique should be easy, on recommendation of the CHI and the agreement with the International Union for telecommunications. Thus, the 116 is used in many countries that have joined the initiative and should be followed in Mozambique.