“Local and international media often overstate the prevalence of human
trafficking in South and Southern Africa, relying on claims that are not based on adequate research or substantive evidence. This factsheet provides an overview of the reality of human trafficking in Southern Africa and endeavours to separate myth from fact. The United Nations (UN) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN General Assembly Resolution 55/25) defines human trafficking or trafficking in persons as “the recruitment,transportation,transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the 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”. Human trafficking usually relates to the movement of people, against
their will, for purposes of exploitation that is often of a sexual nature, but does not have to be.”
