HUMAN TRAFFICKING

By Dickson Jere

IT appears, from wide media coverage, that cases of human trafficking are on upswing. The Immigration department is daily dealing with the scourge especially involving the Ethiopia and Somali nationals. Children have reportedly been rescued in a number of operations in which they were about to be “trafficked” overseas. However, not every case qualifies to be termed “human trafficking”.

You see, some months ago, four Congolese nationals were arrested and charged with “human trafficking” in Zambia. They were accused of trying to traffic 14 children who were held in a room at a Guest House in Sesheke. It was alleged that they were about to be “crossed” into Namibia without documentation.

However, It was the testimony of the quartet that they were in Zambia “illegally” after running away from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and looking for refugee camp in Western Province.

Anyway, they were found guilty and sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment with hard labour by the High Court. The convicted persons then appealed to the Court of Appeal, which determined the matter with a three-man panel headed by deputy Judge-President Chalwe Mchenga, SC.

In that case, the Court laid-down certain ingredients that ought to be proved for one to be convicted of “human trafficking” based on the Anti-Human Trafficking Act No. 11 of 2018. The Court held that the mere fact that children were brought into Zambia without documentation did not itself amount to trafficking. There must be evidence to show that the children were brought into Zambia for purposes of being trafficked.

“Evidence pointing at their transportation into, and across the country, through either use of threats or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud or deception and so forth, should have been led,” the three-man panel of Judges said.

The Judges observed that the fact that the children and the alleged ‘abductors’ entered Zambia without documentation should have been viewed in context.

“It is common cause, and we take judicial notice of the fact that at the time, there was civil strife in Congo, and a number of Congolese nationals fled into this country, through undesignated entry points,” the Judges noted.

The Court added that coming into the country with undocumented children, cannot, on its own, lead to a conclusion that the offence of trafficking had been committed.

The four were set free by the Court of Appeal.

See the case of Nyasa Mulumbilwa and Others V The People (Appeal No 154 of 2018)