PRETORIA INPUTS TO THE 2009 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 08 PRETORIA 000298 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT FOR AF/S, AF/RSA; G/TIP FOR STEPHANIE KRONENBURG; G-ACBLANK, INL, DRL, PRM E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL SA KTIP KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD ASEC, PREF, ELAB SUBJECT: PRETORIA INPUTS TO THE 2009 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS (TIP) REPORT -- PART 1 OF 2 REF: A. STATE 05577 ¶B. 08 STATE 132759 ¶C. 08 PRETORIA 2249 ¶D. 08 PRETORIA 2454 ¶E. 08 PRETORIA 1926 -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. Post hereby submits responses to the Department's action request (Refs A,B) for the ninth annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, covering the period from March 2008 through mid-February 2009. Following an overview of South Africa's counter-trafficking efforts, and of its unique capacity challenges as a 14-year-old emerging democracy, responses in paragraphs 7-13 correspond to the Department's paragraphs 23-29 of specific questions. Paragraphs 14-17 below then list sources, Post contributors, time spent, and TIP contact. End Summary. -------------- Overview: Steady Progress Against TIP -------------- ¶2. Per Post's reporting through the year (Refs C, D, E),the South African government (SAG) is committed to combating the scourge of human trafficking. The key hurdle remains comprehensive anti-TIP legislation, which is now drafted and due for passage in late 2009 after mid-year parliamentary elections. A tough, focused law is necessary to grant mandates and resources to law enforcement, the judiciary, and social services to punish perpetrators and protect victims. ¶3. In the meantime, however, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA)'s Sexual Offences and Community Affairs (SOCA) unit is mobilizing affected SAG agencies, civil society groups, and the public through task teams, training, and awareness campaigns. Extensive workshops by NPA/SOCA, the International Organization for Migration (IOM),NGOs, and academic experts educated over 3,000 attendees in 2008, across a spectrum of SAG officials, NGO workers, and the media, to ready these stakeholders for the law's passage. Police are noticeably shifting paradigms, from punishing victims to protecting them, and prosecutors have taken at least 16 traffickers to trial during the reporting period. Social workers continue their longstanding assistance to victims, coordinated by the SAG's Victims' Empowerment directorate. ¶4. Public awareness campaigns continue to expand, including �00A;during the annual Human Trafficking Awareness Week, the '16 Days of Activism' to end the abuse of women and children, and new targeted anti-TIP efforts in advance of South Africa's hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Like the other annual campaigns, the 2010 initiatives aim to alert the traveling public about trafficking and especially to safeguard children who will flock to fan parks. Efforts include awareness talks to educate vulnerable communities (potential victims), distribution of in-hotel leaflets and stadium signage to inform fans (prospective clients),and marshaling of NGO volunteers to provide on-site assistance booths. The tourism sector, anxious to showcase South Africa as a wholesome destination, is fully on board, even convening a private industry forum next month seeking ways to confront sex Qindustry forum next month seeking ways to confront sex tourism. -------------- Context: Great Need, But Fledgling Capacity -------------- ¶5. Classed as a 'middle income' economy, South Africa is often mistaken for a uniformly first-world, developed nation, without a full appreciation of the magnitude of its PRETORIA 00000298 002 OF 008 challenges and constraints in combating crime and social ills. Income distribution is highly skewed, with a very small segment of concentrated affluence amid a wider population of which more than half live below the poverty line. Its very status as a world-class tourism destination, with extensive transport links serving as a regional hub, combine with its wide income disparities to create especially fertile ground for TIP. ¶6. As a 14-year-old democracy, the SAG is still in its infancy, struggling to extend governance and protections to the majority of its citizens who were woefully neglected under apartheid. Legislative frameworks on rights and justice are in the process of fundamental overhaul, yet the shortfall in implementation capacity is estimated on the order of several hundred thousand mid-level workers. The SAG particularly lacks the skilled workers it needs to implement programs. Members of Parliament have no professionally trained staff; SAG departments are massively overstretched; police are expanding but still strained; and social workers are in desperately short supply. A very dynamic civil society sector helps to bridge some of the gaps, creating a vibrant and vocal but often patchy advocacy community. It is in this context of transitional democracy -- wholly committed but nascent and still largely underdeveloped -- that South Africa's efforts should be judged. -------------- TIP Situation -------------- ¶7. (Responses to paragraph 23 of Ref B.) -- A. Sources of information on TIP are dispersed, since many groups address the issue. With a range of SAG agencies, IOs, NGOs, faith based organizations (FBOs),and community groups (CBOs) confronting different aspects of the problem, there is no central repository of qualitative information and no source of statistical data. While a wide array of anti-TIP efforts are underway in South Africa, the majority of those are not publicized in published documents, and information must be gathered primarily through in-person meetings. The 20 counterparts interviewed by post for this year's TIP Report are listed in paragraph 14 below. Post believes these sources are reliable, in the sense of being truthful, but their information is likely to be incomplete, given the underground nature of TIP and the many diverse groups fighting it. Documentation of TIP will improve after this year with the pending passage of TIP legislation, generating formal requirements for parliamentary reporting and statutes for compiling crime statistics. -- B. South Africa is a country of origin, transit, and destination for women, children, and men trafficked internally (domestically) and internationally across its borders. (The country has no ungoverned territory or civil war.) Domestically, victims are largely trafficked from poor rural areas to urban centers like Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and Bloemfontein. For a detailed list of primary locations and a map of main domestic trafficking routes, see Qlocations and a map of main domestic trafficking routes, see pages 32-33 of the IOM's October 2008 report, "No Experience Necessary: The Internal Trafficking of Persons in South Africa" of research funded by USAID (Ref C; http://iom.org.za under "publications"). Among international victims, countries of origin can be partly inferred from the 262 victims directly assisted by IOM from January 2004 to January 2009. These were a mix of persons from Asia and neighboring countries of Southern Africa -- most of them Thai (147),as well as Congolese (35), Indian (12),Chinese (11),Mozambican (10),and Zimbabwean (9). According to the NPA, Chinese traffickers make Johannesburg a regional hub for collecting victims from Lesotho, Mozambique, and Swaziland, for exploitation locally PRETORIA 00000298 003 OF 008 and in other cities. South African women are trafficked abroad mainly to Europe and the Far East (albeit in relatively small numbers compared to the internal trade),for commercial sexual exploitation at clubs in the U.K. or Ireland, or domestic work then followed by sexual exploitation. Nigerian syndicates have reportedly begun moving trafficked women to the U.S. as well, targeting African migrant clients there. Inside South Africa, Thai women are exploited in large numbers in humble brothels, while Russian and Ukranian women are trafficked for sex work in exclusive private men's clubs. The IOM study catalogued five main purposes of internal TIP: commercial sexual exploitation (both male and female), domestic servitude (girls),agricultural labor (boys),street work (vending, begging, and crime),and "muti" (organ removal for traditional medicine). Both internally and internationally, commercial sexual exploitation is the primary purpose, to which the sources and destinations described above refer. According to the South African Department of Labor (SADOL),ethnic Chinese (from PRC or ROC) laborers are trafficked to sweatshop factories in Chinese urban enclaves in South Africa. These operations are highly organized and mobile to evade labor inspectors, even moving in and out of neighboring Lesotho and Swaziland to avoid arrest. While SADOL acknowledges that Mozambican or Zimbabwean men and children are exploited by labor brokers in South Africa for farm work, SADOL characterizes this as a localized abuse of migrants already seeking work in the area, rather than TIP per se as was reported last year. The South African Police Service (SAPS)' TIP officer also described exploitative farm labor in border areas as smuggling more than TIP. There are no available estimates of the numbers of TIP victims in South Africa, but numbers are believed to be high. Patterns of TIP destinations and purposes in 2008 were consistent with those reported in prior years. New venues for the sex trade are said to be proliferating near football stadiums in advance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup -- accompanied by expanded efforts by traffickers to groom new groups of victims for commercial sexual exploitation. -- C. Victims faced conditions of confinement, intimidation, and abuse. For example, in the domestic servitude TIP trade, the IOM study recounts that girls in the Western Cape are bused to big cities, then corralled into small holding rooms of 20-30 girls, and paraded before prospective employers until "purchased." Once brought to work in a private home, many were subject to abuse (including sexual) by employers, and too frightened or ashamed to escape. Those who fled could easily fall prey to sexual traffickers. On farms, trafficked laborers were often paid little or nothing to work long hours and live in substandard conditions. Across all categories of TIP, traffickers controlled victims through intimidation and threats, use of force, confiscation of Qintimidation and threats, use of force, confiscation of identity documents to discourage escape, demands to pay job "debts," and even forced use of drugs and alcohol. -- D. South Africans most at risk of becoming trafficking victims are mainly poor blacks, from rural areas suffering high rates of unemployment and from where wage earners have traditionally migrated to cities in search of work. With half the population below the poverty line, and roughly a fourth unemployed, many who are desperate for work will travel long distances to where the economy is more robust. Economic disparities among racial groups and between rural vs. urban communities create trafficking opportunities. The AIDS epidemic in South Africa has also increased mobility, and hence vulnerability, not just of young men but of women and children heads of household. NGOs such as Khulisa estimate that children make up 60 percent of TIP victims in South Africa, although kept on farms and in PRETORIA 00000298 004 OF 008 private homes these are harder for law enforcement to locate and rescue compared to the more easily identifiable foreign women in brothels. A growing population of orphans are vulnerable to predatory traffickers for exploitation in crime, labor, or the growing demand for younger virgins in a sex trade more fearful of HIV/AIDS. In a culture with some of the world's highest rates of rape and gender violence, victims fleeing forced marriages or abuse at home may fall prey to TIP. -- E. Organized criminal groups including Nigerian, Chinese, Thai, Ukranian, and Russian syndicates and local gangs facilitate trafficking into, through and within South Africa for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Some of these syndicates may even have spawned offshoot operations in neighboring countries. International mafias initially recruit victims of their own nationalities, but there is also secondary "swapping" of victims. The IOM study documents very organized regional networks trading in teens and young women for domestic servitude, particularly in the Western Cape. Smaller, more amateur groups typically operate in other labor-related TIP such as farm work or street begging. Trafficking victims are mostly lured by promises of lucrative (and legal) jobs enabling them to better their own lives and send money home to their families. Whereas typical victims used to be runaways who fell prey to city pimps, nowadays syndicates proactively send recruiters to rural towns. Recruiters for the sex trade are just as likely to be women as men, and often trusted family members, acquaintances, or neighbors. Posing as employment agencies, traffickers for domestic labor used job ads in local newspapers to lure victims. -------------- SAG Anti-TIP Efforts -------------- ¶8. (Responses to paragraph 24 of Ref B.) -- A. The SAG acknowledges the TIP problem and has drafted comprehensive legislation to combat it. In the meantime, it is using existing and interim legislation to arrest and punish perpetrators, commissioning training of officials to recognize and address TIP situations, and expanding shelters and services to attend to victims. -- B. NPA/SOCA has the lead in coordinating SAG countertrafficking efforts, both within government and with external partners from civil society. NPA/SOCA chairs a Trafficking in Persons Inter-sectoral Task Team whose members include the Departments of Justice and Constitutional Development (DoJ),Home Affairs (DHA),Labor (SADOL),Social Development (DSD),as well as the Organized Crime Unit and Ports of Entry Division of the South African Police Service (SAPS),the IOM, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),and local NGO Molo Songololo. As only a two-person team, however, the NPA/SOCA's capacity for outreach and coordination is limited. Our sources described South Africa's anti-TIP activity as mainly independent, operating-level 'silos' of action among many public and Qoperating-level 'silos' of action among many public and private actors. The Task Team's primary focus in 2008 was laying groundwork to implement the pending law -- promoting interagency dialogue and joint planning; formulating standards, protocols, and interagency operating procedures for the TIP law's implementation; and undertaking extensive trainings of TIP concepts, identification, and agency roles. With EU funding, NPA/SOCA has also in recent weeks awarded contracts for a set of five anti-TIP initiatives due to run through the end of 2010. These are: curriculum development (continuing work by IOM); research into TIP trends and support to victims (to be managed by the Human Sciences Research Council, and parceled to experts in criminology, psycho-sociology, and PRETORIA 00000298 005 OF 008 law); legislation and regulations (ongoing with the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC)); awareness raising (given to the International Organization of Labor's International Training Center); and technology connectivity with neighboring countries to promote more effective monitoring, law enforcement, and victim protection. -- C. The key hurdle to SAG's anti-TIP efforts hurdle remains comprehensive anti-TIP legislation, which is in the late stages of the drafting process. The SALRC released a first draft was released in mid-2008, which underwent consultations and revisions. A second draft was submitted on November 25 to the Minister of Justice (MoJ) and the Parliamentary committee. MoJ Enver Surty has declared passage of this TIP legislation as a personal priority for 2009, despite the year's disruptions to legislative schedules due to national elections in the second quarter. A tough, focused law is necessary to grant resources and authorities to law enforcement, the judiciary, and social services for prosecution, protection, and prevention. Other important limitations include capacity of SAPS, NPA, and Social Development to pursue all cases and attend to all victims, given insufficient police and prosecutors, and chronic shortfalls in the ranks of social workers. The problem is less one of funding, and more one of these services struggling to build sufficient staff with adequate skills for their dramatically expanded responsibilities in the post-1994 aftermath of apartheid. Awareness of TIP-related law, ability to apply it in identifying cases, and confident knowledge in appropriate measures to take are also still lacking, hampering the responses of police and immigration officers, since only a minority have yet been exposed to counter-TIP training. Police officers may receive bribes from crime syndicates, or fail to pursue them out of fear of reprisals, or they may prefer to deport victims as a shortcut compared to opening a TIP investigation, particularly given language barriers. There is no evidence of large-scale corruption or official collaboration with traffickers, but the large sums of money generated by the trade is believed to fund localized corruption. -- D. The SAG does not yet have a systematic mechanism for monitoring and reporting the anti-trafficking efforts of its own agencies and external partners. Work has been suspended on the "Trafficking in Information Management System" (TIMS) mentioned in last year's report, replaced by plans to incorporate TIP tracking into a larger data base of justice and crime prevention called "e-justice." The latter will track investigations, prosecutions, and victims, across SAPS, NPA, DHA, SADOL, and DSD. E-justice is expected to be two to three years in development. -------------- Investigation and Prosecution -------------- ¶9. (Responses to paragraph 25 of Ref B.) -- A. South Africa's Prevention and Combating of Trafficking Q-- A. South Africa's Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill is drafted and awaiting a vote date on the 2009 Parliamentary calendar. The Bill is comprehensive and specifically targeted to TIP, for both sexual exploitation and labor, in both domestic and cross-border cases. (Note: full text of the bill, aka "Project 131," is at http://salawreform.justice.gov.za/reports.htm , the PDF report next to Project 131 -- Annexure D, pages 188-269.) Pending the TIP Bill's passage, prosecutors continue to rely on elements of common law (e.g. rape, assault, kidnapping, and extortion) and acts against racketeering, sexual abuse, forced labor and child labor, and pornography. This body of PRETORIA 00000298 006 OF 008 legislation includes the Prevention of Organized Crime Act 121 of 1998 (POCA); the Sexual Offenses Act 23 of 1957, as amended in December 2007; the Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997; the Children's Act 38 of 2005, as amended in November 2007; the Immigration Act 13 of 2002; the Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996; the Corruption Act 94 of 1992; the Extradition Act 67 of 1962; and the International Cooperation in Criminal Matters Act 75 of 1996. (Note: these are unchanged since last year's report, hence they are not reproduced here. End Note.) Given the strong ties of TIP to criminal networks, the Prevention of Organized Crime Act 121 of 1998 (POCA) is the law most used to date to punish traffickers, usually those related to the sex trade. SAPS noted that POCA also has the most extensive list of charges, hence highest probability that some will "stick" and yield convictions. The Sexual Offences Act (SOA) also now criminalizes trafficking for sexual exploitation and does not allow victims to be prosecuted for related offenses like immigration laws or prostitution. (Note: full text of the latter provisions is at http://www.info.gov.za/gazette/bills/2003/b50 b-03.pdf, pages 40-41, sections 70-71(1)-71(2).) The Children's Act of 2005 prohibits "the recruitment, sale, supply, transportation, transportation, harboring or receipt of children, within or across the borders of the Republic." The law also prohibits the commercial sexual exploitation of children, sexual intercourse with children under 16, or permitting a female under 16 to stay in a brothel for the purpose of prostitution. The Children's Amendment Act of 2007, signed into law in March 2008, creates an advanced regulatory framework for prevention and prosecution of child labor, explicitly outlaws child trafficking. Section 141 of the Act defines and criminalizes the worst forms of child labor, including TIP, in accordance with ILO Convention 182. This Act further includes a requirement for planning at a national and provincial level along with an effective roll out of services. Although the provisions of the Children's Amendment Act cannot officially take effect until the completion of regulations governing its implementation, children's legal advocates say the SAG is already taking action as if the Act were fully in force, and they strongly believe those implementing regulations will be put in place in 2009. -- B. The maximum penalty for violations of the Sexual Offences or Children's Acts is 20 years in prison. In the past, application of common law has obtained sentences nearly that long, as in the case of trafficker Amien Andrews, sentenced in 1996 and still serving 17 years for charges including kidnapping, indecent assault, and rape. -- C. Labor related TIP offenses are punishable under a variety of existing laws. The Basic Conditions of Employment Act removes cases of forced and child labor from the Labor Court and assigns them to the Criminal Court, where QCourt and assigns them to the Criminal Court, where sentencing is based on precedent and case law. Post is not aware of any case prosecuted to a close to set a precedent. -- D. Penalties for rape and sexual assault are difficult to estimate. The Sexual Offences Act makes mention of penalties from three to seven years, depending on offenses and their severity, leaving the sentence to the discretion of the court. Penalties for these crimes against children are markedly more severe, up to a maximum life imprisonment, with even first time offenders receiving on the order of 15 or more years. -- E. The SAG opened at least five new prosecutions of trafficking cases during the reporting period, including two with charges under the newly expanded SOA. In May, a Mozambican woman Aldina dos Santos was charged with child trafficking and forced labor for subjecting three girls to PRETORIA 00000298 007 OF 008 sexual exploitation (under the SOA) and domestic servitude (under labor law). Also in May, a female club owner and her adult daughter were arrested for luring eight South African women into forced prostitution. In June, a Sierra Leone national was arrested for selling girls aged eight to 12 into prostitution. In November, five Nigerian men were arrested for trafficking Nigerians through South Africa. They were charged with TIP offenses under the SOA as well as for drug-related crimes. In late January, six Nigerians and one Tanzanian were arrested, and 17 South African victims rescued, in North West province. Charges in the latter case include drug trafficking and prostitution, with TIP charges to be determined. Aside from these cases highlighted in the press and confirmed by NPA, no complete figures on SAPS investigations or NPA prosecutions were available. Of the five cases listed here, all concerned commercial sexual exploitation (and one forced labor as well); in four of the five cases the traffickers were non-nationals, although in three of the five cases their victims were local; and the cases were split between children and adult victims. All five cases were ongoing at year-end. No convictions were reached or sentences handed down during the reporting period. While there were no prosecutions in the reporting period specifically targeting fraudulent labor recruitment, the alleged traffickers charged above may have made deceptive offers or imposed debt bondage on their victims as part of their TIP activity. As mentioned earlier, SADOL labor inspectors did pursue unscrupulous labor brokers in the rural agricultural sectors, and they have pledged to reform or ban labor brokering after the 2009 national election. On the destination end of trafficking, the above five cases apply to "employers" who tricked, intimidated, and abused victims. Past examples of convictions of both recruiters and employers of TIP victims include recruiter Amien Andrews, sentenced to 17 years in 1996, and still in jail; and brothel boss Elizabeth Maswanganye, who lured women and exploited them, sentenced to 5 years in 2006, and still in jail. -- F. On behalf of NPA/SOCA, the IOM and other experts from the academic and NGO communities are providing extensive specialized counter-trafficking training to officials from an array of government agencies, from law enforcement to immigration officers to social workers, plus representatives of NGOs, advocacy organizations, and the media. Training material encompasses the definition of trafficking, as distinct from smuggling; identification criteria; legal frameworks; and roles of various government departments and community actors. The table below summarizes the more than 1,000 SAG attendees of EU-funded IOM anti-TIP workshops in just the latter half of last year: -------------- --- IOM Counter-Trafficking Training Attendees July - December 2008 QJuly - December 2008 -------------- --- - Dept. of Home Affairs / Border Officers: 339 - Department of Social Development: 155 - South African Police Service (SAPS): 139 - Department of Health: 135 - Department of Labor: 100 - National Prosecuting Authority: 71 - Dept. of Home Affairs / Law Enforcement: 44 - Other law enforcement agencies: 33 - Media professionals: 32 -------------- --- Total: 1,048 persons trained against TIP -------------- --- IOM/SAG workshops will continue through 2009, emphasizing coordinated responses across government agencies, NGOs, and the public. After an intensive five-day IOM course, 68 PRETORIA 00000298 008 OF 008 representatives of NGOs and church charities were certified as TIP trainers by conducting onward two-day courses in their provinces. A total of 30 awareness-raising workshops across all nine provinces drew 573 community participants. IOM's curriculum is being reviewed for SAG accreditation and institutionalized roll-out across the SAG within the next year. Susan Kreston, children's rights advocate and guest lecturer at the University of the Free State, estimates she gave anti-TIP training to 1,535 workshop attendees during the year, encompassing police, prosecutors, social workers, medical and mental health professionals, NGO officers, and others. Of that audience, over 500 were participants in NPA training workshops on the SOA, within which Ms. Kreston taught the TIP module. Over 200 others were prosecutors, in training at regional Justice Colleges. An estimated 265 were attendees of the May annual meeting of the South African Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (SAPSAC),where TIP was one segment in 2008 but will be the primary theme of the upcoming 2009 conference. A mixed community audience of about 225 attended Ms. Kreston's sessions in Durban in March, covering a range of topics from TIP basics and the SOA, to forensic interviewing, to preparing children to testify in court. The Durban series was underwritten by the NPA, a local NGO, and the U.S. Consulate. In January 2009, Ms. Kreston will contribute to anti-TIP presentations run by Save the Children-UK. The USG is also contributing directly to the training effort. State/INL's Women's Justice and Empowerment Initiative (WJEI) team, currently training police and prosecutors on gender-based violence and the amended Sexual Offences Act, is contractually committed to expanding the program to address TIP, and to include seminars for judges. WJEI's law enforcement advisor is currently exploring training opportunities with the SAPS addressing TIP, in preparation for imminent passage of the TIP law. In this endeavor, WJEI is looking to leverage the expertise of a DHS/ICE officer who has personally delivered anti-TIP training to over 2,500 members of the police force in his previous role with IOM. (Text of paragraph 9 continues in the "Part 2" cable.) LA LIME