Human trafficking in Zambia

Zambia is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation . Child prostitution exists in Zambia's urban centers, often encouraged or facilitated by relatives or acquaintances of the victim. Many Zambian child laborers, particularly those in the agriculture, domestic service, and fishing sectors, are also victims of human trafficking. Zambian women, lured by false employment or marriage offers, are trafficked to South Africa via Zimbabwe for sexual exploitation, and to Europe via Malawi. Zambia is a transit point for regional trafficking of women and children, particularly from Angola to Namibia for agricultural labor and from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to South Africa. Malawian and Mozambican adults and children are occasionally trafficked to Zambia for forced agricultural labor.

Prosecution

The Government of Zambia's anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts have not achieved concrete results; prosecutions of trafficking crimes have not occurred, as police and immigration officials remained stymied by the lack of a functional human trafficking statute. Unlike the previous year, there were no new prosecutions or convictions of alleged traffickers in 2007. Zambia prohibits human trafficking through a 2005 amendment to its penal code, which prescribes penalties of 20 years' to life imprisonment—penalties that are commensurate with those prescribed for other grave crimes. The statute does not, however, define trafficking or set out the elements of the offense, and has been interpreted thus far as applying narrowly to only the explicit sale of a person. In 2007, the government's interagency committee on trafficking finalized a draft comprehensive anti-trafficking law and national policy before transferring the documents to the Zambian Law Development Commission for review. During the reporting period, police and immigration authorities investigated at least 38 suspected cases of trafficking, the majority of which were detected at border crossings and, thus, were difficult to distinguish from smuggling. Relevant diplomatic missions, particularly the Congolese Embassy, assisted with the investigations. When violations of child labor laws were discovered, labor inspectors resolved these cases through mediation and counseling with the employers and families, rather than pursuing criminal charges against the exploiters. In the absence of a usable law against human trafficking, the majority of the suspected victims and traffickers were summarily deported to their country of origin. None of the cases investigated during 2007 resulted in prosecutions. The trial of two men accused of selling an eight-year-old boy in June 2006 continued as of early 2008; the defendants remained in prison pending the outcome. The government seconded two officers, one from the National Police Service and one from the Department of Immigration, to IOM for four months in 2007 to receive training as Master Trainers. These officers then provided anti-trafficking training to 400 police, immigration officials, prosecutors, and judges.