HUMAN TRAFFICKING
HON. NYAMUPINGA: Mr. Speaker, I move the motion standing in my name;
That this House –
- DISTURBED by the increase in cases of human trafficking of persons in Zimbabwe, particularly girls and young women;
- ALARMED by the recent case of over 150 women who were reportedly stranded in Kuwait after they were lured to that country by a syndicate of human traffickers, on the pretext that they would get lucrative jobs;
NOW, THEREFORE, this House resolves that:
- Government expedites investigations by the Inter-Ministerial Committee and ensure urgent repatriation of all the women who are currently stranded in Kuwait under slavery conditions;
- perpetrators of these heinous acts must face the full wrath of the law;
- the Ministry of Home Affairs must urgently conduct awareness programmes on human trafficking and educate the unsuspecting public, especially the youth about the dangers of human trafficking;
- that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should urgently write to the Kuwait Foreign Affairs Ministry requesting Kuwait authorities to ban the issue of Article 20 Visas which allows Kuwait employers to hire Zimbabwean citizens under slave conditions;
- that the Zimbabwean Embassy in Kuwait be allocated urgently sufficient financial resources to take care of the safe house, feeding and repatriation of the affected young ladies.
HON. NYANHONGO: I second.
HON. NYAMUPINGA: Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir. It is with a heavy heart that I rise to move a motion on human trafficking following the repatriation of around 53 out of 1000 women believed to have been trafficked to Kuwait. Not only Kuwait but to other countries like China, other Arab countries and including South Africa of all countries.
Mr. Speaker Sir, trafficking in persons is a form of modern slavery, threat of human security and a crime of humanity which must be condemned in all its forms. Human trafficking is generally understood as the recruitment and transportation of people by means of deception or force for the purpose of exploitation.
Article 3, Paragraph (a) of the Protocol on trafficking, Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons defines punishing in persons as recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
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