A CHILD rights lawyer and anti-human trafficking expert says the current anti-trafficking legal regime is too weak to deter child labour trafficking, which has become an emerging serious human rights issue in southern Africa.
Zororai Nkomo told NewsDay recently that Zimbabwe’s Trafficking in Persons Act is not a comprehensive piece of legislation in combating the growing scourge of child labour trafficking.
“Although Zimbabwe tried to domesticate the Palermo Protocol, which is an agreed international legal and human right instrument to combat trafficking, the law still has numerous gaps which makes it an ineffective law in addressing child trafficking,” Nkomo said.
“The law itself fails to define a child as defined in the UN Protocol that aims to prevent, suppress and punish human trafficking, especially of women and children.
“Failure by our law to define child trafficking leaves young people vulnerable to various forms of trafficking such as labour trafficking and sexual exploitation.”
Nkomo said the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Act created a legal problem because it viewed trafficking as a movement-based crime thereby failing to understand that trafficking can happen also even if a person is not moving from one point to the other.
“Our law views trafficking as a movement-based crime. It’s not always the case. Even when a person is not moved from point A to point B, he or she can be trafficked,” he said.
“I understand people might think of trafficking as a movement based on our women who experienced it in the Gulf States a few years ago. But trafficking can happen even in our community because it’s a crime of forcing, misleading or using undue influence to exploit another person. Our law fails to understand that.”
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Nkomo said the Trafficking in Persons Act failed to comprehensively address child labour trafficking which is rampant in the mining, farming and fishing sectors.
“If you go around our farming and mining areas, especially where illegal mining thrives, you will notice a lot of young people who are working there,” he said.
“They are being subjected to various inhuman practices including forced labour and sexual exploitation. The reason why there are young people is because children are a source of cheap labour. That’s child labour trafficking.”
He said the law should be crafted with an understanding that a lot of child labour trafficking is happening in the informal sector.
Nkomo said there was a need for the realignment of trafficking legislation to protect children from child labour trafficking which has become rampant globally.
According to the 2024 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons published today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Child Trafficking, trafficking for forced labour and forced criminality are rising as poverty leaves more children vulnerable to exploitation.
According to the United Nations, a 25% increase in the number of trafficking victims was recorded in 2022 compared to 2019 pre-pandemic figures.
The most common forms of exploitation are forced labour, sexual exploitation and forced criminality.
The Palermo Protocol, which is the global human rights instrument meant to combat human trafficking defines child labour trafficking as the recruitment, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons below the age of 18 for exploitation.
Child labour trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery is no longer characterised by legal ownership of another human being for long-term enslavement, it is now through temporary ownership, forced labour, exploitative contracts and debt bondage.
Human trafficking in general and child labour trafficking, in particular, is a lucrative thriving billion-dollar industry with an estimated profit of over US$10 billion per annum.
Globally, it is estimated that over 12 million children are facing modern-day slavery, with 3 000 000 facing forced labour and 9 000 000 facing forced marriages and sexual exploitation.
