Human traffickers thrive in Mozambique

MAPUTO – Daring human traffickers are taking advantage of Mozambique’s weak adoption laws in order to traffic children out of the country for the purposes of prostitution or cheap labour, Vista News reported on Tuesday.

This was said by Lurdes Mabunda, head of the Department of Women and Children in the Ministry of Interior, in a report in the latest issue of the International Organisation on Migration newsletter, Eye of Human Trafficking released this week.

She said the use of the adoption laws was the latest form of child trafficking to hit the impoverished southern African nation.

“Adoption cases have arisen over the past couple of years, in which people applied to adopt a child, went through the procedures, and then abused the child placed in their care.'

“We view these as instances of child trafficking, an activity we are trying to eradicate in Mozambique,” she told the newsletter.

Increases in cases of foreign nationals applying to adopt Mozambican orphans had prompted the government to reconsider granting the applications.

Mabunda told the newsletter of two cases of orphans who were adopted by foreign nationals who took them to United States of America, where they were abused and later abandoned on the streets.

A girl disappeared after she was adopted and taken to Germany.

The government recently stopped the adoption of a child by a Spanish-based faith organisation after “suspicious behaviour” was observed.

“We do not have the capacity to monitor the welfare of Mozambican children who have been adopted by foreign nationals living outside of the country, and this is a cause for concern,” Mabunda said.

A 2003 study on trafficking in the region by the International Organization on Migration (IOM) estimated that 1000 Mozambican women and children were being trafficked to South Africa every year for sexual exploitation.

Mabunda maintained that although cases of cross-border human trafficking received most attention in the media, trafficking by local crime syndicates was by far the most prominent form of the crime.

The main reason for the practice was the extreme poverty besetting most people, and a culture that allowed girls to be married off at an extremely young age.

Mozambican law makes no provision for prosecuting alleged human traffickers; consequently, no suspected trafficker has ever been tried for the crime, even though the practice is illegal under international law.

In a recent interview Nelly Simbine Chimedza, Mozambique’s IOM counter Trafficking Programme Assistant, said most victims of trafficking in Mozambique came from poor rural areas.

“They are easily deceived because of their poverty and they think their children will be given jobs and then take them out of poverty,” she said.

Apart from being a source of trafficked people, Mozambique also acts as a transit point for trafficked people from the African continent into South Africa.

Human traffickers operated in networks through which women and children were recruited and then trafficked to their destinations, said Chimedza. –Sapa