THE government is concerned with increased cases of human trafficking in the country involving mainly women and children, with last year alone seeing the repatriation of more than 130 trafficked citizens mainly from Oman.
This was said by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga whilst officiating at the launch of the 2023 to 2028 Zimbabwe anti-trafficking in persons national plan of action in the capital last week.
He challenged all Zimbabweans domiciled in different parts of the world to return home and rebuild their lives from abundant resources found in the country, instead of withstanding humiliation in foreign lands.
“We have a beautiful God-given country full of riches, all we need is to be united and use the resources we have, use the education we have and develop ourselves,” said Chiwenga.
Trafficking in persons, he said, is a reality which presents danger which, calls for clear and robust institutional arrangements to deal with the scourge as part or regional and global family. Chiwenga said that the country’s traffic in persons national action plan that he launched, had therefore been crafted to guide on how to tackle the challenge, adding that the Government appreciates the assistance it is getting from cooperating partners such as the United Nations office on drugs and crime and the International Organisation on Migration towards its development.
He said to show its commitment towards fighting human trafficking, Zimbabwe signed the Protocol to prevent, supress, and punish trafficking in persons, particularly in women and children on December 13, 2013, supplementing the United Nations convention against transnational organised crime.
Chiwenga also said that Zimbabwe also committed itself to work with financial action taskforce and Southern African anti money laundering group to address gaps in the antimoney laundering and combating the financing of terrorism responses.
“I wish to inform the nation that under the international and regional anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering arrangements, to which Zimbabwe is a part, trafficking in persons, is one of the 21 mandatory predicate offences to money laundering, hence the need for Zimbabwe to have such law,” he said.
Following Zimbabwe’s ratification of the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish human traffickers, the vice president said there was an urgent need for the country to have a national law criminalising the act of human trafficking.
He said without such a law, Zimbabwe would have been put under economic pressure by the financial action taskforce for lack of compliance to a system it had subscribed to.
Speaking at the same event, Home Affairs and Cultural heritage minister, Kazembe Kazembe said last year alone, 69 cases involving 139 victims were recorded and investigated in Zimbabwe with seven of them being arrested. Four of the arrested people involved the Oman cases, whilst three were domestic trafficking cases. — New Ziana