The Sunday News
Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. The United Nations says every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Almost every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as guardian of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) and the Protocols, assists countries in their efforts to implement the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons.
Article three , paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines Trafficking in Persons 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.
Over the years, a lot of people have been leaving the country in search of the so called greener pastures and one such destination has been Kuwait, where hordes of women were lured under the pretext of high paying jobs. What was to emerge later on was that the women were made to do menial jobs where they were kept like slaves, paid very little or not paid at all, and some forced into prostitution.
Media reports said as much as 200 women could have been victims of human trafficking and are now stranded in Kuwait. And recently, Government officials travelled to Kuwait where they managed to rescue 32 women who were stranded in that country. Harare businessman Wicknell Chivayo chipped in with $58, 900 to purchase air tickets for the women.
While many were of the view that the worst was over, it emerged that 16 more women who ended up being abused as sex slaves in Kuwait have escaped from captivity and were now under the care of Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Kuwait Mark Marongwe.
This prompted legislators to lobby for a ban of locals from travelling to Kuwait, through banning all visa applications to Kuwait under Section 20, which “commits into slavery anyone who enters that country under section,” according to chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, Kindness Paradza.
“President Mugabe as the father of the nation must use his Presidential powers and direct the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to effect the ban. Other African countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana have since banned their citizens from travelling under that section.”
We also urge community leaders, churches and families to dissuade anyone from responding to calls for applications for jobs in foreign lands without getting into contact with relevant government departments to authenticate such offers to avoid falling into a similar trap as our sisters and mothers in Kuwait.
We also believe there are many people in other parts of the world, including African countries, who are living as slaves after being lured out of the country under the pretext of going for high sounding jobs, while others left as economic and political refugees. All those people require help to return home, and the honours is on families to try to keep in touch with their relatives who are out of the country and if they have reason to suspect that all is not well, they have to let the police know so that Government can chip in.
