| Domestic worker collecting water |
LAST year, an Interpol report implicated some Tanzanians in human trafficking, a diabolical trade that mainly involved the selling of unsuspecting people, mostly children and young women, into slavery and servitude.
It also involved unsuspecting immigrants. Girls as young as 14 are lured
with promises of money and good life overseas, but once they get there,
their passports are confiscated and the unfortunate girls are sold to
brothel owners and forced to engage in prostitution.
The government has advised young Tanzanian girls to think twice and even
seek advice from relatives before accepting offers to travel abroad on
promises of a good life. It is imperative to point out here that this is
not the first time Tanzanian girls are sold abroad. Victims of human
trafficking face atrocities you might never imagine.
After being promised good jobs abroad most victims end up in slavery. As
mentioned before, upon arrival abroad the victims’ passports and money
are confiscated. In most cases they are given new names.
The victims, most of whom are naïve, vulnerable children, also lose
birth certificates, identity cards and any other documents of
citizenship. They are often kept closely guarded and locked in a room
when not accompanied. Some of these poor souls are delivered to buyers
who need cheap domestic workers in homes in China, Thailand, the Arab
World or elsewhere.
Others, especially the girls, who may have been promised greener life,
are sold to brothels -- much to their astonishment. So, parents in this
country should be aware that children sold into slavery can also be
turned over to brothel owners for sexual exploitation, forced labour,
slavery, servitude or removal of organs. Now, the last item here should
shock even the hardest hearts.
But this is not the end of the story. Some victims of human trafficking
have been killed in so-called human sacrifices to placate angry gods by
superstitious elements whose activities are akin to those of demons.
Some poor parents, at home and abroad, are easily hoodwinked by child
traffickers into handing over their children to the morons.
Never hand your son or daughter to strangers who tell tall stories about
good living abroad. Equally astonishing is the predicament of young
girls and boys who slog it out for a living in so-called rich homes in
Tanzania. Yes, there is domestic servitude in Tanzania.
These children are domestic workers who are also disparagingly known as
domestic hands. Despite the high level of abuse that prevails in
domestic service in urban centres, the occupation remains one of the
most common jobs for children, particularly girls.
Indeed, across the globe more girls under the age of 16 are employed in
domestic service. Poverty, domestic servitude, the breakdown of the
families and parents not seeing the importance of education contribute
to the supply of child domestic workers. In yesteryears, Dar es Salaam
got most of its domestic hands from Iringa Region.
The most exploited and demeaned children, however, are commercial sex
workers. The majority of sexually exploited children come to Dar es
Salaam from Mwanza, Singida, Kilimanjaro, Iringa, Mbeya, Mara,
Shinyanga, and Kagera regions. Other heavily exploited children hail
from Dodoma, Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Arusha.
The majority of the recruitment into domestic servitude or prostitution
occurs with the support of the parents and other family members. Village
leaders are said to be giving the girls false identity cards.
Teachers give them false primary education completion certificates. The
groups of people who support migrating girls include teachers, police,
nurses, doctors, and social welfare workers.
Local business owners used their business areas like bars, saloons and
clubs to benefit from the fact that having young girls in their
businesses guarantees cheap earnings from customers. Education levels of
sexually exploited children ranges from illiteracy to secondary
education.
Many of the girls drop out or never attend school, or complete only
primary education because they live with former prostitutes. Some come
from broken families in which the parents are either alcoholic,
separated, divorced, or hail from families with cultural values that do
not allow schooling. Girls also attribute their low levels of education
to orphan backgrounds, ignorance, and simple carelessness.
Indeed, moving children from their homes or elsewhere and dumping them
into domestic servitude or commercial sex work amounts to human
trafficking. Human trafficking, which means illegally marketing people
for commercial purposes, appears in the forms of subjecting people to
begging, sexual abuse, prostitution, forced marriage and forced labour
in return for low wage and under unhealthy conditions.
In Tanzania, there is a great number of trafficking victims about whom
there is no data. Girls and women make the highest number of victims.
They are either forced into prostitution or subjected to sexual
exploitation.
Invariably, girls and women who are forced into prostitution are
infected with deadly HIV viruses in the prostitution market. Human
trafficking has been carried out through ages as a consequence of
attempts by the strong to rule and impose sanctions on the weak.
When it was agreed at the international level that human trafficking was
a shame to the human dignity and should be banned, the vice started to
be carried out in the underground. Victims of human trafficking can also
be called “modern slaves” since the action aims at making use of them
forcefully.
People who are taken captive through physical force, fraud, deception
and other forceful ways are secretly transferred to other regions.
On the global level, trafficking appears in the forms of subjecting
people to begging, sexual abuse, prostitution, forced marriage,
kidnapping and forced labor in return for low wage and under unhealthy
conditions. In the past, human trafficking acted as a substantial income
source for the West and was widely practiced.
This practice became a source of capital for imperial powers and little
changed after it was banned by international law. Marketing human beings
like a commodity was banned by law but it was still practiced behind
closed doors.
Human trafficking has now become an irresolvable problem since it is now
carried out by the underground and organized gangs. In Tanzania the
problem is minimal but more and more youths stow away in a quest for
greener pasture and there are no data to indicate departures.
Developing Countries take the lead in population growth are among factors that cause a rise in human trafficking.
