Trafficking-Florida, Uganda, Malawi

 Florida

This article talks about visa fraud that leads to trafficking of foreign women in the US and  mentions how neither adoption  trafficking nor organ trafficking are considered crimes in the US. A very interesting scope of the problem is outlined in Anna Rodriguez, champion against human trafficking [Voxxi 10/9/12 by Silvia Casabianca]

Uganda

http://reliefweb.int/report/uganda/iom-returns-ugandan-child-domestic-trafficking-victims-families

“IOM Returns Ugandan Child Domestic Trafficking Victims to Families
Report
—
International Organization for Migration

Press Briefing Notes
Tuesday 16th October 2012
Spokesperson: Chris Lom

IOM Uganda yesterday (15/10) returned a total of 51 trafficked children to their extended families in Karamoja sub-region in northern Uganda. The children are among hundreds of minors who are trafficked every year from rural Uganda to urban areas, particularly the capital, Kampala.

The children that IOM is returning were forced to beg on the streets, but other trafficked children also end up as domestic servants, scrap metal collectors or engaged in petty thievery. All are at risk and many endure beatings, rape and other types of violence. Almost all of them are denied a chance at education.

“I am excited to go back home to live with my parents again and feel their warmth. The lady who brought me to Kampala said she was my aunt, but she did not love me. She took me out to beg even on rainy days and did not take me to school as she promised my parents,” said a 14 year old girl returnee.

The children come from Karamoja – one of the poorest regions in the country, prone to prolonged droughts, cattle rustling, extreme poverty and a population highly dependent on food aid.

IOM and its local NGO implementing partners – Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) and Dwelling Places – provided the children with food, shelter, medical, education, counselling and legal assistance in Kampala, following their rescue by the authorities.

In Karamoja, in coordination with local partners Community Livestock and Integrated Development Consultancy (CLIDE), Institute for International Cooperation and Development (C&D) and Action for Poverty Reduction and Livestock Modernisation in Karamoja (ARELIMOK), IOM traced the children’s families ahead of their return to Karamoja.

IOM has also carried out an assessment of family needs, accommodation, schools, health and counselling services to ensure the smooth reintegration of the children and minimize the risk of re-trafficking.

“This is a complex process which needs coordination from all sides by the government, NGOs, the media, civil society and individual citizens to protect these children,” says IOM Uganda Chief of Mission Gerard Waite. “Identifying the root causes of the problem is essential if we are to stop these children from re-appearing on the streets, and to prevent the problem occurring in the first place.”

The return of the children comes a year after IOM launched its Coordinated Response to Human Trafficking in Uganda (CRTU) programme, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which aims to protect child victims of domestic trafficking.

IOM works closely with the Ugandan government, national and international organizations to rescue and return home victims of trafficking and to prevent the trafficking of minors from rural areas to urban centres for domestic labour, begging and sexual exploitation.

Over the past seven months, IOM has conducted research into the history and patterns of trafficking in the Kampala-Karamoja corridor through interactions with community leaders, organisations and communities in Karamoja, Mbale, Jinja and Kampala.”

Malawi

“Patrick Martin, 14, and his brother Mayeso, 15, are safely home for the moment with their mother and other siblings in Kasonya village, Phalombe District in southern Malawi, after they and 12 other children were rescued from being trafficked to neighbouring Mozambique last month by their father.

Every farming season, people from Phalombe District are taken to the southern African country of Mozambique to earn their families enough money to buy a bicycle – which is considered a luxury in a country were 65 percent of its 16 million people live below the poverty line.

The story of these children is one of many familiar occurrences in Malawi at the moment, as government statistics indicate that at least 1.4 million children are involved in child labour and 20 percent of them are being trafficked domestically and internationally for the sex industry and illegal adoption.

But the future safety of these boys remains uncertain, and they may be forced into child labour again, as out of date laws in the country mean that their father will get off with merely a slap on the wrist for his crime. The country has no human trafficking law, and while there is a provision against child trafficking in Section 79 of the Child Care Protection and Justice Act, it is not being correctly implemented.

Their father, James Martin, 31, will be released from Mulanje prison after a mere 18 months. He, together with James Banda, 23; Daniel Thumpwa, 21; and Dickson Kambewa, 37, was charged for engaging children under the age of 18 in child labour.

The were charged under the Employment Act, and not on child trafficking according to Section 79 of the Child Care Protection and Justice Act.

The Child Care Protection and Justice Act, which became a law in December 2011, stipulates that a trafficker should serve a maximum sentence of life imprisonment when they are caught trafficking children under the age of 16.

Maxwell Matewere, the executive director of the non-governmental organisation Eye of the Child, which prioritises the fight against child trafficking, told IPS that the country’s laws are making it difficult for organisations and the police to work to their fullest in the fight against the practice.

“The problem now is that magistrates are not using the Child Care and Protection Justice Act to pass sentences mainly because it is not mandatory and also depends on mitigating factors such as at what level of engagement was a child rescued and his age.

“Furthermore, in Malawi we do not have a law on human trafficking so when offenders are caught by the police and charged with human trafficking the charge is changed in court because there is no such law,” he said.

“A Zambian man who was arrested for trafficking children from Dedza (in Malawi’s Central Region) to work in maize farms in Zambia, was released after he paid a fine,” he said.

Matewere added that the current Child Protection and Justice Act is quite limited in a number of ways.

“The law only provides for the definition of child trafficking as an offence punishable by life imprisonment; however, it does not give any mechanism as to how victims could be identified and cared for. It also is silent on other pressing factors like the definition of recruitment, and on what would happen to an NGO (for example an orphanage that engages in illegal adoption) or a bus company that is involved in transferring of children,” he said.

Matewere said unless the government has the political will to deal with the root factors of the problem, which he identifies as poverty, unemployment, lack of education and lack of national identification, more children will continue to be trafficked.

Deputy national police spokesman Kelvin Maigwa told IPS that between January and August this year, 43 cases of child trafficking were reported, of which the numbers were equal between male and female children.

“The reason why these children are being taken away from their homes is because their masters are looking for cheap labour so they get the children to work in tea and tobacco estates and pay them peanuts because they know they can’t complain. The girls are mainly brought to work in prostitution in bars and taverns where they are used to woo customers and sometimes to cut beer packets, they are also employed in domestic work as nannies or housekeepers in cities and towns,” he said.

Herbert Bimphi, chairman of the parliamentary social welfare committee and Democratic Progressive Party member of parliament for Ntchisi North, told IPS that in the absence of a law on human trafficking the courts will continue passing sentences that are not in line with what is actually happening.

“But the information that I have is that the Law Commission has drafted the Trafficking Persons’ Bill and that now it is at the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs. The minister responsible will then bring it to the House so that we can scrutinise it then call on other experts to look at it again if it is well-written, then we will debate on it and then formally adopt it,” he said.

Minister of Gender and Child Welfare Anita Kalinde told IPS that the Trafficking Persons Bill is being finalised, but that there are other laws on protection of children, which have adequate provisions.

“What needs to be done however is the popularisation of the laws through community education of the legal provisions; and translating of the Act into local languages so that people can demand their rights,” she said.

Kalinde did acknowledge, however, that the sentences being passed on offenders are not satisfactory “considering the fact that the trafficked child’s future has been ruined. I would have preferred stiffer penalties.”

She further said the government has put in place several mechanisms to help reduce poverty among families who are at risk of engaging in trafficking and child labour.

Kalinde singled out the agriculture subsidy, where the poorest families buy farm inputs at reduced prices, thereby enabling them to produce enough for their families.

However, Maigwa told IPS that the country’s laws could be luring the offenders to commit the crime again.

“In general, some of our laws are outdated and weak…they are not in line with the current situation. At the time when they were being formulated they were strong but now for example if you ask an offender to pay a K200 fine (equivalent to a dollar) for assaulting someone for example, no one can fail to do that so they go and offend again.”

Phalombe District police spokesman Augustus Nkhwazi told IPS that traffickers are illegally crossing into Mozambique easily because no Malawian police officers are stationed at the border post.

“When these people are entering that country they are perceived to be the children’s parents or guardians because people from the two countries have established trade relationships as well as intermarriages. As such there is movement on these borders every day,” said Nkhwazi.

Nkhwazi further said the practice is more common now in his district due to poverty and lack of enough farmland and also the willingness by parents to engage in the practice.

Maigwa is however optimistic that the times are changing with the engagement of the Police Force’s Child Protection Officer in every district over five years ago.

“Each police station has a Community Policing Unit where we have the Child Protection Officer who basically engages the masses in civic education, teaching them on the tricks that child traffickers may use when they come to their homes, such as a promise of a better paying job or drastic economic changes for the children…so we believe people are becoming more knowledgeable of this crime than before,” he said.”

Malawi: Law Fails to Protect Children

[All Africa 10/16/12 by Charity Chimungu]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

And for more reflection, please read our Mopping With the Tap Open Uganda/Ethiopia post here with one correction. I asserted that street children don’t make it to the international adoption docket and some definitely do under the guise that the child has been abandoned. From the Uganda article in this current post, you can see that these children on the streets were really victims of child trafficking from rural villages…they are not there due to “poverty” nor do they need adoption.  Given what we know today, we should *always* assume that street children and abandoned  children have been trafficked from families unless researched by people NOT associated with adoption agencies. It is a conflict of interest to have adoption agencies participating in any kind of street children program.