SOUTHERN AND EASTERN AFRICA – Research On Trafficking of Men For Labour Exploitation – New research to be carried out by IOM in Africa will shed some light on the trafficking of men for labour exploitation, an area long overlooked and consequently, little known about.

To date, counter-trafficking research and interventions have largely focused on the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation across the world.

However, there is growing evidence of the trafficking of men globally for labour, including in Africa. With little to no research available on this phenomenon, relevant stakeholders have found it difficult to design or implement counter-trafficking interventions targeting men.

The new IOM research, the first to comprehensively address the trafficking of men in Africa in general, and in Eastern and Southern Africa in particular, will establish the extent to which human trafficking is occurring between the East and Horn of Africa to the continent’s main economic hub, South Africa; information on how the men are trafficked and what their and their traffickers profiles are; what kind of abuses they suffer and what are the specific characteristics and vulnerabilities of source communities.  

The study, funded by the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP) and which kicks off in January 2008, will focus on significant male migration flows between these regions. According to early reports from Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities, much of this movement may be irregular and facilitated by agents operating illicitly across several land borders.

A 2003 IOM report found links between the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation and the smuggling of men in Southern Africa, with both activities facilitated by the same criminal networks along common migration corridors. Little, however, is known about male trafficking in Southern Africa and, to the extent it exists, the exploitative purposes for which its victims are trafficked.

The research will cover key transit points along the routes that include Mozambique and Tanzania as well as destination and exploitation sites. Qualitative information identifying cases of male human trafficking will also be gathered.

Some anecdotal evidence already exists. IOM in Ethiopia, for example, is increasingly aware of stories of men who are promised lucrative contracts in the construction industry in South Africa as the country prepares for the football World Cup in 2010. In Tanzania, IOM has indentified individual cases where men have been trafficked from the East African country to South Africa and forced into criminal activity. In Kenya, a 2006 report by The CRADLE-Children’s Foundation on human trafficking found that 43 per cent of the trafficking victims it interviewed for the report were men.

South Africa, meanwhile, has a lengthy history as a destination for economic migrants. The Department of Home Affairs estimated in 2006 that there were more than seven million undocumented migrants in South Africa. Preparations for 2010 World Cup have contributed to an even greater migration pull into the country.

The project, which will also update IOM data on human smuggling and trafficking between these two regions, is expected to culminate in September 2008 with the publication of a report.