Sunday, July 4, 2010

How Indian girls, Tanzanian women and children are sold in black market for sex, domestic work in Dar

Booming human trade
By Polycarp Machira
4th July 2010

How Indian girls, Tanzanian women and children are sold in black market for sex, domestic work in Dar

The gate’s bell rang, stirring Suzan from her dream. She ran to open the gate for her boss as usual, noticing the twinkling stars poking through the canopy of light clouds like tiny daggers.

For Suzan, who had been a domestic servant for about five years, interruptions to her sleep were part of the job description, in addition to taking care of the children, washing clothes and generally keeping the house tidy, in order to earn a living in Dar es Salaam.

It seemed a night like any other, and Suzan never anticipated that her boss had other, more hostile plans for her than just opening the gate.

“It didn’t click in my mind that one day, I would ever sleep with my boss until that night — the night that changed my life,” Suzan said during our interview at Ohio Street in downtown Dar es Salaam recently.

“After entering the house, I gave him food but he refused to eat…a few minutes later he called me to his bedroom to fix a small problem,” she said.

There was no problem, and instead Suzan’s employer propositioned her for sex when she entered the room.

“He gave me Sh50,000 and ordered me not to tell anyone,” she said. “He also told me how his wife had become very busy with office work and that their marriage was falling apart.”

“This is how it all started about three years ago,” said Suzan, one of thousands of domestic workers who are lured into sexual relationship with their employers. “We became regular lovers and I actually began to enjoy this life — but I didn’t know I was digging my own grave.”

Thousands of girls like Suzana mainly from rural areas are trafficked in Tanzania annually to work as domestic servants as well as prostitution, according to a new report released by the US government about the human trafficking business in Tanzania.

The report titled ‘2010 Trafficking in Persons’ states that incidences of internal trafficking is higher than that of transnational trafficking, and is usually facilitated by family members, friends, and brokers’ offers of assistance with education or finding lucrative employment in urban areas. The new report by the United States of America has named Tanzania as one of the leading countries in human trafficking in the world.

It says the government does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.

According to the report made available to The Guardian on Sunday yesterday the country was a source, transit, and destination for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons.

It singled out forced labour and forced prostitution as specific cases in the country which the government has failed to contain.

It says the use of young girls for forced domestic labour continues to be Tanzania’s largest human trafficking problem.

“Girls from rural areas of Iringa, Singida, Dodoma, Mbeya, Morogoro, and Bukoba regions are taken to urban centres and Zanzibar for domestic servitude; some domestic workers fleeing abusive employers fall prey to forced prostitution.” reads the report.

Tourist hotels, according to the report reportedly coerce some Tanzanian and Indian girls employed as cleaning staff into prostitution.

Boys are subjected primarily to forced labour on farms, but also in mines, in the informal sector, and possibly on small fishing boats, according to the report.

Smaller numbers of Tanzanian children and adults are subjected to conditions of involuntary domestic servitude and commercial sexual exploitation in surrounding countries like South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and possibly other European countries, says the report

During the year, trafficking victims, primarily children, from Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda were identified in Tanzania, particularly in the agricultural, mining, and domestic service sectors.

According to the report, Malawian men are subjected to forced labour as fishermen on Tanzania’s lakes while Indian women legally migrate to Tanzania for work as entertainers in restaurants and nightclubs; some are reportedly forced into prostitution after their arrival.

Small numbers of Somali and Chinese women, according to the report, are also subjected to conditions of commercial sexual exploitation in Tanzania.

Citizens of neighbouring countries, the report says may voluntarily migrate through Tanzania before being forced into domestic servitude and prostitution in South Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

“The government made little progress in implementing its 2008 anti-trafficking law, in part due to poor inter-ministerial coordination and lack of understanding of what constitutes human trafficking; most government officials remain unfamiliar with the act’s provisions or their responsibility to address trafficking. “says the report in part.

It blames the ministries involved in anti-trafficking efforts failure to communicate or cooperate with each other and had no budgetary resources allocated to combating the crime.

The government, which has never convicted a trafficking offender, charged only one suspected trafficker during the reporting period and achieved no convictions.

Therefore, Tanzania is placed on Tier 2 Watch List, countries whose governments do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA)’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

The US in its recommendations for Tanzania urged the government to enforce the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act by prosecuting and punishing trafficking offenders since it formed the Anti-Trafficking Secretariat by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the presidential naming of a Secretary to coordinate inter-ministerial efforts.

The government should also establish policies and procedures for its officials to proactively identify and interview potential trafficking victims and transfer them to the care of local organizations when appropriate.

On the other hand it should also establish an anti-trafficking fund to support victims, as required under the law and begin compiling trafficking-specific law enforcement and victim protection data at the national level.

It also urges the government to provide additional training to law enforcement authorities on anti-trafficking detection and investigative methods. However the report says government made negligible anti-human trafficking law enforcement efforts during the reporting period.

As in previous years, it says the government failed to convict trafficking offenses during the reporting period, and was unable to provide information on cases reported in previous periods.

The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2008, which came into effect in February 2009, outlaws all forms of trafficking and prescribes punishments of one to 20 years’ imprisonment, punishments that are sufficiently stringent, but not commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes.

It says in November 2009, Parliament passed the Child Act which prohibits but does not prescribe punishment for forced child labour.

The government, according to the report investigated cases of human trafficking, but did not secure any convictions.

In December 2009, for example, police in Tarime District investigated the case of two men who allegedly abducted two children from Isebania, Kenya and attempted to sell them at a mining site in the Nyamongo area.

The investigators referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecution’s Office in Mwanza for prosecution and it will proceed to trial following the completion of preliminary hearings.

These men were the first individuals to be charged with a crime under the anti-trafficking law. In December 2009, Tanzanian police assisted British investigators in locating and accessing witnesses in southern Tanzania, following the arrest of two Tanzanians in Birmingham on charges of perpetrating forced labour offenses against their Tanzanian domestic worker.

Although the Tanzanian Ministry of Labour, Employment and Youth Development reportedly conducted inspections and issued warnings to violators of child labour statutes, the report says there were no forced child labor cases brought to court in 2009.

Likewise, Zanzibar’s Ministry of Labour, Youth, Women, and Child Development did not take legal action against any cases of forced child labour. The Tanzanian government’s efforts to protect victims of trafficking during the reporting period were modest and suffered from a lack of resources.

It continued to rely on NGOs to provide care for victims of trafficking; NGO facilities for shelter and specialised services were limited to urban areas.

While the government lacked systematic victim referral procedures, NGOs reported that police, social welfare officers, and community development officers identified and referred approximately 47 trafficking victims to their organisations for protective services in 2009; these government officials also occasionally provided food, counseling, and assistance with family reunification.

In the previous reporting period, the government had engaged in partnerships with IOM and NGOs to draft a plan for the referral of trafficking victims for care; it is unclear whether this mechanism was officially instituted or used nationwide in 2009.

In December 2009, Tanzanian police worked in partnership with Kenyan authorities to repatriate two Kenyan child trafficking victims to their home country.

A 24-hour crime hotline staffed by police officers was available for citizens to make reports about suspected trafficking victims; the hotline received no trafficking tips in 2009.

The government did not provide information on the participation of Tanzanian victims in anti-trafficking investigations and prosecutions, the lack of national procedures for victim identification likely led to the deportation of foreign victims before they were identified or able to give evidence in court.

But the report also says the government usually treated foreign victims as illegal migrants and housed them in prisons until deportation.

The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act provides foreign victims legal alternatives to their removal to countries where their safety or the safety of their families may be endangered; the government did not encounter a case that necessitated utilising these provisions during the reporting period.

The government made moderate efforts to prevent human trafficking during the year.

Understanding of what constitutes trafficking remained low among government officials and no government ministries launched formal anti-trafficking outreach or awareness raising activities

The report say that, the Ministry of Labour’s Child Labour Unit could not provide data on the number of child labour complaints it received in 2009 or the number of exploited child laborers identified and withdrawn by its 90 Labour Officers; inspectors continued to face myriad challenges, including chronic understaffing and lack of transportation to inspection sites.

Some local governments allocated funds to respond to child labour and trafficking; Iguna District Council, for example, committed $5,200 for child labour-related activities in 2009.

Local officials also continued partnerships with ILO-IPEC and various NGOs to identify and withdraw an unknown number of children from various forms of forced labor and provide them with educational opportunities.

In past reporting periods, some districts incorporated prohibitions against child labour into their by-laws. While there were no reports of local governments taking legal action against parents whose children were absent from school, the resulting fear of penalties is believed to have reduced child labour.

Some social welfare officers used IOM-provided materials to informally educate members of the communities in which they work. The government did not make any efforts to reduce the demand for forced labour or commercial sex acts during the reporting period.


SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY