Speeches

Opening Remarks by the Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Hon JH Jeffery, MP, at the National Policy Framework against Trafficking in Persons in South Africa Validation Workshop held at the Burgers Park Hotel, Pretoria, 29 October 2018

Programme Director,
Representatives from the UNODC, IOM and other international organisations,
Partners from Civil Society Organisations,
Officials from National Departments and Provinces

I am pleased to see such a large gathering of stakeholders from the different sectors involved in anti-trafficking initiatives, as well as stakeholders from different parts of the world, converged here today to assist us with the important task of putting the final touches to the National Policy Framework against Trafficking in Persons.
I welcome you and look forward to further engagements with you as we move forwards in this process.

Before I deal with the issues at hand I would like to take a step back and reflect briefly on the path traversed regarding South Africa’s efforts in combatting and preventing trafficking in persons.

The Prevention and Combatting of Trafficking in Persons Act came into operation in August 2015.
With this legislation we now have a comprehensive legal tool to combat trafficking in persons in all its forms. 
The Act employs a wider definition of trafficking than that of the UN.

South Africa’s efforts are therefore directed to all forms of TIP – in other words, not only sex trafficking, but ALL forms of trafficking in persons, thereby creating a comprehensive legal tool to combat trafficking in persons in all its forms.

The Act creates the offence of trafficking in persons which included labour trafficking and broadened the scope of offences.

According to the Act, a person is guilty of trafficking if he or she “delivers, recruits, transports, transfers, harbours, sells, exchanges, leases or receives” another person within or across the borders of the Republic for the purposes of exploitation.

• This may be done through the threat of harm, the threat or use of force or coercion, the abuse of a person’s vulnerability, through fraud or deception, abduction, kidnapping or an abuse of power.
• It can also be through, directly or indirectly, giving or receiving payments or benefits to obtain the consent of a person having control or authority over another; or directly or indirectly giving or receiving payments, compensation, rewards, benefits or any other advantage.

• It expressly provides that these actions may be aimed at the trafficked person him- or herself, an immediate family member or any other person in a close relationship to the victim. The Act further stipulates that a person is guilty of human trafficking if he or she adopts a child or enters into a forced marriage with another person for the purpose of exploiting that child or other person in any form or manner.

Prior to the passing of the Act, a National Action Plan had already been developed which enabled the coordination of preventative initiatives, criminal justice responses, training, public education and improvement of services to victims of human trafficking.

In December 2012, the National Prosecuting Authority’s Sexual Offences and Community Affairs Unit (SOCA) also established a Trafficking in Persons Task Team. The Task Team developed comprehensive policy directives, as well as annexures to charge sheets, training manuals and data collection tools.

Training of government officials is a crucial element in our efforts to combat TIP.

The Department of Social Development has conducted national training in preparation for the formal accreditation of organisations and shelters that provide services for victims of human trafficking as well as rolling out training on the trafficking of children Training has also been undertaken with immigration officials of the Department of Home Affairs, whilst the National Prosecuting Authority has conducted training sessions for prosecutors on trafficking in persons.

The South African Police Services has developed a Standard Operating Procedure on TIP matters which will be rolled out at SAPS service points.

To strengthen our training initiatives and harness a common understanding of the intent and spirit of the TIP Act, we have just recently appointed a South African expert to assist with the development of a generic integrated training manual on the TIP Act.

It is envisaged that we will have the first draft ready by end January 2019, where after a roll-out of the training is envisaged for all 9 provinces in the coming year.

The aims of the TIP Act can only be achieved through proper coordination. This cannot be overemphasised, in particular because the Act can only be effectively implemented in an integrated and multi-disciplinary manner.

A National Inter-sectoral Committee on Trafficking in Persons which comprises of national departmental representatives from, amongst others, Justice and Constitutional Development, Health, Home Affairs, International Relations and  Cooperation, Labour, Social Development, Women, the SAPS, the NPA as well as civil society organizations was established.
The Committee leads the implementation and administration of the Act at a national government level.

Provincial Task Teams of Trafficking in Persons were also established as well as Provincial Rapid Response Teams to attend to operational matters relating to suspected complaints and pending cases of trafficking in persons and providing
support to the victims.  

Of course the challenge is to ensure that these committees at national and provincial level work effectively.

We have been receiving reports that some of these provincial committees are not as effective as they should be as they are not meeting regularly and communication amongst the law enforcement agencies remains poor. We will be attending to these problems to enhance communication and collaboration in order to improve the management of TIP cases.

Other measures taken include –

• The combating of trafficking and the smuggling of persons has been made a priority in the Government’s National Development Plan;
• General awareness campaigns to sensitise communities on these issues were dealt with by governmental departments in partnership with civil society;
• An integrated and holistic Immigration Policy is receiving attention; and
• The Justice Crime Prevention and Security Cluster Departments have made the combating of trafficking of persons a priority in the Cluster’s priority activities to ensure all persons in South Africa Are and Feel safe.

Despite these and other efforts, the United States’ State Department’s Trafficking in Person’s (TIP) Global Report which was released earlier this year downgraded South Africa’s Trafficking in Persons rating from Tier 2 to the Tier 2 Watch List.

The Global Report flows from the USA’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (“TVPA”). In the TIP Report, the Department of State places each country onto one of three tiers based on the extent of their governments’ efforts to comply with the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” found in Section 108 of the TVPA.

The report states that the rating is based not on the size of the country’s problem but on the extent of governments’ efforts for the elimination of human trafficking.

Tier 2 is for governments of countries that do not fully meet certain minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

The criteria for the Tier 2 Watch List entail three further conditions, namely that the number of victims of severe forms of trafficking must be very significant or significantly increasing, secondly, that there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in persons; or thirdly that a country is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards, based on commitments by the country to take additional steps over the next year.

To place South Africa on the Watch List is unwarranted and the report’s findings appear to be rather myopic, putting South Africa the same category as countries who do not have similar anti-trafficking initiatives in place.

In addition, I am advised that the drafters of the Report relied on certain NGOs for information – NGOs whose own information is not reliable, and who are not even registered by our Department of Social Development. These facts were pointed out to the US State Department by the IOM, but the ship has sailed – and the damage is done.

Add to this the context of inaccurate trafficking data and it makes the findings of the Report all the more circumspect. 

Furthermore, there is also something disquieting about a state department of one country – particularly one which doesn’t have an exactly exemplary human rights record of its own - critiquing or rating other countries’ human rights performance.  Such assessments are usually undertaken by United Nations’ treaty bodies or by objective multinational experts or NGOs in the field. Not surprisingly the US places itself on Tier 1.

Finally, after the US State Department has done its initial interviews and findings to be submitted in the global report, surely it should give the country in question an opportunity to respond, or at to least correct factual errors – in the same way as the UN system gathers information and directs issues or questions to States by way of Lists of Issues. But we are not afforded this opportunity by the US State Department.

In view of these concerns, we look forward to further engagements on this with the US government.

An area that warrants further investigation and research is the discrepancy in human trafficking figures. I have often spoken about the problem of the huge discrepancy between the anecdotal figures and accounts of TIP in South Africa coming from some of the NGOs and the official figures of cases reported to the SAPS.  The point is simple – persons or organisations with information regarding human trafficking in South Africa must report this to the SAPS or any other law enforcement agency so that the information can be investigated.  We will end human trafficking in South Africa by convicting the perpetrators not by spreading what may often be false news.  

As I have said earlier, civil society organisations are on our national task team and at this stage I would like to thank those involved for their time and constructive engagement.  We can only eliminate this scourge by working together.

The TIP Act calls for an integrated information management system and to this end work has commenced. However to be able to comply with this legislative provision we need to impress upon the departments to submit information when requested. This is crucial in the task and design of an integrated information system.

Much work has already been done on our National Policy Framework on TIP.

We believe that our NPF’s strategy and action plan should be informed by internationally recognized anti-trafficking guiding principles such as a human rights/victim-centered approach, a multi-disciplinary approach, government ownership, civil society participation, a gender-sensitive approach and overall sustainability.

In addition, the strategy should address the 4 pillars of anti-trafficking interventions or components, namely Prevention, Protection, Prosecution, and Partnership.

The NPF has undergone such a review and we had hoped to conclude the process by the end of August.

Due to commitments of the JCPS cluster departments in August, and the availability of international experts and stakeholders we moved the validation process to October to enable us to come together to validate the draft we have before us today.

This Validation Workshop takes place within the context of the Global Action against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants (GLO.ACT) to assist our Government to strengthen its response in addressing trafficking in persons in the area of policy development and coordination.

This area was identified as a high priority during the 2016 assessment process conducted within GLO.ACT, whose results have been summarized in the report Responding to Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants, South Africa.

In this context, GLO.ACT has been requested to provide targeted technical assistance to the National Inter-sectoral Committee against Trafficking in Persons (NIC: TIP) to support the finalization of the National Policy Framework in line with international best practices.

This activity is a follow up to the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Coordination Workshop that took place in Pretoria in March this year.

During the workshop, over 70 participants including representatives from all TIP coordination structures, discussed pillars of counter-trafficking to improve coordination of responses, exchanged information on anti-trafficking interventions in the nine provinces, and mapped priorities to finalise the National Policy Framework on the basis of a shared vision.

An expert team has been working with the recommendations of the March workshop to revise the NPF draft in line with international best practices.

The objective of the validation workshop is to present the revised version of the NPF and allow participants to discuss it in detail and validate it before it is finalized.

In terms of section 40(1) of the TIP Act, the Minister of Justice must – after consultation with the Minister in the Presidency responsible for performance monitoring and evaluation, the Ministers of Finance, Home Affairs, Health, International Relations and Cooperation, Labour, Police, Social Development, State Security, and Women, Children and People with Disabilities, and also with the National Director of Public Prosecutions – approve the National Policy Framework. The Minister must approve and table the NPF in Parliament.

As we are nearing the end of the current administration, I am of the view that it is of critical importance that we conclude this process as a matter of exigency.

I therefore wish you well in your deliberations over the next two days and look forward to receiving the final product.

As the UN Secretary-General recently said –

“Human trafficking takes many forms and knows no borders.
Human traffickers too often operate with impunity, with their crimes receiving not nearly enough attention.  This must change.”

Today and tomorrow’s deliberations will be an important step towards this change.

I thank you,