CORRUPTION

Human Trafficking Around the World: Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa
Factors that lead to many people falling victim to human trafficking, the so-called push and pull
factors, include poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, abuse, and coercion. These factors need to
be addressed urgently and decisively. In addressing these factors, raising necessary and appropriate
public awareness about human trafficking and its implications will go a long way towards successfully
combating this phenomenon. The most important factor in this regard, however, is the effective
implementation of antitrafficking laws and the successful prosecution of human traffickers. Securing
national borders without unduly affecting the movement of people and goods in the region would
also be important, as would the establishment of a Sub-Saharan African Trust Fund for Victims of
Trafficking, which would address some of the resource constraints challenges.
At the international level, the various UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies should prioritize this
matter, and the universal periodic review mechanism (UPRM) of the UN Human Rights Council,
which looks into the human rights record of UN members states, should be used to look into how
all governments, particularly Sub-Saharan states, address this phenomenon. The UPRM should
put states on the spot that are merely paying lip service to the challenge of trafficking in persons.
Governments of countries in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East—
recipients and beneficiaries of trafficked people from the Sub-Saharan region—should do a lot more
to curb this flow. They should make a clear distinction between undocumented migrants and victims
of trafficking and should create a legislative and policy environment that is more conducive to the
detection and support of victims of trafficking in their territories. Many of the factors that lead to
human trafficking and that render African women and children vulnerable and susceptible to human
trafficking have a lot to do with socioeconomic and political factors and circumstances that these
governments cannot, for historical and contemporary reasons, absolve themselves from.
Sub-Saharan governments and their people should also do more to address the push and pull factors
behind the high levels of trafficking in persons in the region. The trafficking in persons, including those
trafficked out of the African continent, has a major impact on the economic development of the region
and continent as a whole. It should be fought at all levels and in all its forms. This phenomenon and
its causes constitute a threat to regional and global security.
International Affairs Forum
Adv. Tseliso Thipanyane, B.Sc, LL.B, and LL.M, currently serves as
the Chief Executive Officer of the Safer South Africa Foundation and is
the former Chief Executive Officer of the South African Human Rights
Commission. He has been a law lecturer at the University of the Western
Cape and Columbia University School of Law. Mr. Thipanyane is also an
advocate of the High Court of Lesotho and South Africa.
98