Capacity Building

A key aim of SACTAP is to enhance the capacity of Southern Africa to prevent and respond to human trafficking. The programme aims to make the region less attractive to human traffickers by empowering governments, civil society groups and other stakeholders to better identify, protect and assist victims, and prosecute traffickers.

SACTAP’s capacity building activities range from training sessions held with law enforcement officials and civil society, to high-level technical advice given to legislators on the development of effective legislation against human trafficking.

Government

Palermo Protocol

Since SACTAP’s inception the number of SADC member states to ratify the United Nations Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, rose from two to ten, to include, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia.

In most countries, government officials have identified IOM’s counter-trafficking work as a key motivator either to their country’s ratification or to the development of domestic legislation.

Anti-trafficking legislation

IOM is assisting SADC governments to develop comprehensive counter-trafficking legislation. IOM has contributed to the South African Law Reform Commission’s process to draft national anti-trafficking legislation and is one of ten organisations represented on South Africa’s National Task Team on Human Trafficking. IOM has also provided technical support to law commissions in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia as they develop legislation to combat human trafficking.

MIDSA

IOM’s Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA) process is the main forum in which SADC member states can discuss migration issues of common concern. In May 2007, SACTAP will host a MIDSA workshop addressing the issue of ‘Human Trafficking and Legislative Responses’.

The agenda will include a briefing on the findings of legal research conducted by IOM and UNODC. Several countries that have criminalized or are in the process of criminalizing human trafficking, including Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, and Tanzania, will be invited to share their experience of developing anti-trafficking legislation. The South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC), in particular, will be invited to present some of the challenges it has encountered and solutions devised in developing comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation.

IOM will also hold a MIDSA workshop focusing on Investigations of Human Trafficking in 2008 and, in the final year of the Programme, IOM will hold a MIDSA workshop relating to the ‘Effective Prosecution of Human Trafficking Offences’.

Law enforcement

SACTAP has trained more than 1200 law enforcement officials in South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola and Malawi.

Training sessions with law enforcers encompass victim identification and assistance, definitions of human trafficking, how to gather the evidence needed to prosecute human traffickers under existing laws, and the implications for law enforcement of new laws on human trafficking being considered.

IOM has conducted trainings of law enforcement personnel at most of South Africa’s larger land and air border posts, and for NGO service providers in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, and East London.

IOM has also conducted law enforcement trainings in Zambia at Lusaka International Airport, Chirundu, Livingstone, Kazungula Ferry, Sesheke, and Kasumbulesa. In Zimbabwe, IOM trained law enforcement officials at Harare International Airport, Plumtree, and Beitbridge. This activity aimed to improve the capacity of law enforcement personnel to distinguish trafficking victims from other categories of irregular migrants.

Civil Society

Civil society workshops

SACTAP has trained more than 500 civil society representatives in South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi in victim identification and assistance. Participants include shelter managers, counsellors, medical personnel, advocacy groups, refugee assistance organisations, hotline operators, and other caregivers.

As with the law enforcement training workshops, the training offered to NGOs and civil society organisations includes definitions of human trafficking, distinctions between trafficking and smuggling, and the techniques which can be used to identify trafficked persons. However an additional emphasis is placed on the provision of assistance to trafficked persons; the kinds of assistance that should be offered, and the characteristics that make provision of assistance to trafficked persons different to the provision of assistance to other kinds of abused persons.

Building the Capacity of South African Civil Society to Combat Human Trafficking

To further empower South Africa’s civil society to recognise trafficking as a significant human rights violation and become active in combating the crime, SACTAP has launched a USAID funded project to train and certify 75 civil society counter-trafficking trainers. These trainers will in turn train more than 500 civil society participants at community level and will be actively involved in setting up and raising awareness of counter-trafficking coordination meetings in each of South Africa’s nine provinces. The coordination meetings will be attended by key stakeholders, including local government officials, and aim to establish a foundation from which to develop plans of action to counter-trafficking at the provincial level.

The trainers will be trained on the following counter-trafficking themes:

To maintain momentum at provincial level and encourage civil society to implement counter-trafficking activities following the coordination meetings, IOM will support trainers and local organizations in launching public counter-trafficking awareness campaigns in each province.

It is anticipated that certified trainers will be repeatedly called upon by civil society, government and NGO partners with requests for counter trafficking training.

Private Sector

IOM is also building the capacity of the private sector in South Africa to combat human trafficking – specifically airline companies and airport authorities, and the media.

Airline companies & Airport Authorities

Many trafficked victims either arrive in South Africa by air or are transferred to destination countries via South African airports. Airline and airport staff could play an important role in victim identification during the transit stage.

Focusing on the major international airline carriers and the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA), IOM will offer concise one-day training workshops for ticketing agents, air and ground crew. The content of the workshops will include issues such as the definition of human trafficking and the identification of trafficked persons, as well as the needs of trafficked persons and where to go to receive assistance in dealing with such cases.

IOM will hold six of these workshops for airline personnel, with one occurring at each of South Africa’s three main international airports in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, and a follow up workshop occurring at each international airport in the following year.

Media

The media play an important role in the fight against human trafficking. Journalists and broadcasters can highlight the extent and complexity of the problem, help change public perceptions about trafficking and victims of trafficking, and inform the public on how to identify victims of trafficking and what they can do to help.

IOM will be conducting short one-day counter-trafficking seminars for media personnel across the region. These seminars will include discussion of the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime and its optional protocols, as well as related issues such as the difference between human trafficking and migrant smuggling, the significance of trafficking as a process, xenophobia, and other relevant migration concepts. The sessions will also include presentation of the findings of IOM and other research on trafficking in the SADC region, and the role of the media in counter-trafficking.