Tsungai Chekerwa-Machokoto
The human trafficking phenomenon has taken our country by storm.
While most Zimbabweans were not at all familiar with human trafficking, they suddenly find that their sisters, mothers, cousins, or nieces, were being trafficked to Kuwait in the name of job prospects.
Now I have heard some people asking how they failed to realise that the adverts were not genuine or how some friend or relative misled them, ending in their being trapped in the human trafficking quagmire.
I’m saying playing the blame game at this point is uncalled for.
We need to work out ways of putting an end to this and ensure such sorry experiences are never repeated in future.
But first we need to all understand what human tracking is before we go into details.
Human trafficking is a serious crime that is not quite easy to identify and causes a lot of harm and trauma.
It is a grave violation of human rights. Human trafficking is defined in the Palermo Protocol as “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
‘‘Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery and servitude.”
Human trafficking may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal .
The nature of the crime is such that deception is part of it. If there was no deception involved there would be no trafficking because no one willingly signs up to be enslaved.
The duty of the traffickers is to prey on people’s vulnerabilities and take advantage of them while making money out of them.
Here are women who would have celebrated upon learning that they got these jobs, thanked their lucky stars for such an opportunity.
Their families probably helped them pack and thought about all the things they would finally be able to buy, debts they would be able to pay off, trips children’s that could finally partake in … only to find that they had been tricked.
Other people were also asking why it is that mostly it was only women who were tricked and trafficked.
The answer is quite simple – the adverts were case specific. The advertisement the women answered to was for “waitresses” those are female waitrons.
In this case, women were required. Men and children are trafficked into sex slavery, servitude, forced labour and organ removal or tissue harvesting as well everyday.
Just because there has not been a big story on it does not mean that it is not happening. Women were historically disadvantaged and are only trying to come out of it now.
The feminisation of poverty and thus feminisation of migration also means women are more likely to be looking for money making opportunities that seem secure.
The boy child was the one given educational preference over the girl child some decades back.
When a girl got pregnant while still in school by a boy also at school, it is the girl that would get expelled and the boy would continue with his studies.
There is a cultural stereotype that says girl children should not get educated because they will get married and enrich the in-laws so if there are financial difficulties, the boy child was given priority.
This means the unskilled labour force is predominantly female, and since there are limited opportunities within our own borders, the
Kuwait advertisements looked very attractive to women.
It is important to note that trafficking does not only happen overseas.
Women, men and children are trafficked to neighbouring countries, within our borders, within the provinces, sometimes within neighbourhoods.
The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) repatriates girls that turn into women over years while in the clutches of traffickers.
It might not be news in the media daily but it is happening frequently. I have a cousin that works for the IOM and the stories she shares with me are gut-wrenching.
Human trafficking is a crime against humanity and it has become more and more problematic over the years in Zimbabwe with the escalating statistics of job scarcity.
Rindai Chekerwa, my sister came to Zimbabwe as guest speaker at the Women’s University in Africa Public Lecture Series that was organised by the United States Embassy on human trafficking.
She works with an organisation called In Human Trade and she gave eye opening information about the crime of human trafficking and how it needs to be legislated because the laws in place do not adequately address all the facets of the crime.
It is sad to watch how some people are making the return of Zimbabwean women that were stuck in Kuwait a basis for holding workshop and events to enrich themselves.
This treatment of victims, parading their pain, putting them out as circus freaks to share stories of their deepest, most personal pain is inhuman.
In effect, they are being re-victimised. They are being used by people who do not understand the nature of the beast to further their own agendas and “raise funds”.
What will these funds be used for? Have the therapists working with these women determined that being pushed into the public eye this way is going to be beneficial for their recovery?
Yes their return had to be celebrated but it is premature to do that because there is still a lot of work to be done with them.
Also, there are a lot of other women that have to be repatriated from Kuwait.
We need to be sensitive to their plight and realise that sharing their stories in public is not the best way to help these women.
They have been through enough torture and pain. Do we really want to take these women through a process where they are being forced to “raise funds”?
Could their traffickers not argue that they were just trying to “raise funds” for their lavish lifestyles? Are we not re-exploiting the victims of this horrendous crime?
Can we just give them time and space to reunite with their families and deal with the emotional aftermath of their ordeal before we start making money off them?
This would show the compassion that they need lest we turn them into another social media sensation that goes drastically wrong.
Remember, the women’s experiences in foreign lands was nightmarish and traumatising.
This, therefore, calls for every Zimbabwean to offer the women support and allow them time for their emotional scars to heal.
You can contact the writer on email:tsungimachokoto@gmail.com <mailto:tsungimachokoto@gmail.com> blog: tsungimachokoto.tumblr.com