Chairperson, one of the most celebrated heroes in English history is William Wilberforce. Largely through his efforts, the British Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, which cumulatively ended the slave trade in Britain and its colonies.
Despite William Wilberforce's deservedly heroic status in England, these Acts did not stop slavery or the slave trade. It persisted in the southern American states until the conclusion of the American Civil War. It flourished in the Middle East, Arabic Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America well into the 20th century.
Slavery was only abolished in law in Nepal in 1924, in Northern Nigeria in 1936, and in Ethiopia in 1942. As recently as the mid-1950s, Saudi Arabia had an estimated slave population of 450 000, while slavery was only criminalised in Mauritania in 2007.
Even those countries that had formally outlawed slavery, reintroduced it during wars and dictatorships. Much of the military capacity of Nazi Germany was built on slave labour. The Soviet Gulags provided slave labour for mines and factories. During World War II, an estimated 200 000 women from Korea and China were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese.
In its traditional form, slavery involves the capture, usually through conquest, and the involuntary abduction and sale of human beings into involuntary and uncompensated labour. But there are other, and equally insidious, forms of modern slavery. Here I refer to human trafficking, and especially the trafficking of women and children.
With globalisation, and as international travel has become cheaper and less regulated, so the number of people who fall prey to trafficking increases. According to the US state department, between 600 000 and 820 000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year. It has been described as the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.
Approximately half of this number are children, and 70% are women or girls. The most common countries of origin of the trafficking of people are Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and the Ukraine. The most common destination countries are Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States.
Women and children are particularly at risk of trafficking. Parents may sell off their children to pay off debts or to gain income, especially in areas ravaged by conflict or devastated by climate change. Other forms of trafficking include forced marriage or domestic servitude, but the most important cause of the trafficking of women and girls is commercial sexual exploitation - in other words, they are sold into prostitution.
Trafficking is also fuelled by the growing global demand for sex tourism, in which individuals combine a holiday or business trip to a foreign destination with commercial sex. This has obvious and very serious consequences for South Africa in relation to the Fifa World Cup next year, as women are frequently trafficked around the world to cater precisely for these sorts of events.
To counteract the menace of trafficking, the UN adopted the Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, which entered into force in September 2003. This convention is supplemented by the Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. South Africa is a signatory to, and has ratified, both the convention and the protocol.
The protocol obliges all signatory countries, at the very least, to criminalise all forms of trafficking, including both trafficking and attempted trafficking of persons. The protocol further calls on signatory states to recognise in their criminal law that trafficking is as serious an offence as the smuggling of drugs and weapons, and to provide for similar penalties. The Philippines and the Dominican Republic, for example, both provide for 20-year sentences for trafficking plus substantial fines.
But it is not enough simply to outlaw and criminalise human trafficking. Victims of trafficking are often traumatised, displaced, undereducated and vulnerable to further exploitation. They frequently don't speak the language of the country in which they find themselves. Many have sexually transmitted diseases and many are drug addicts. For this reason, each signatory state to the protocol undertakes to provide protection, care and repatriation of victims.
In addition, most trafficking is committed by sophisticated, well-resourced and ruthless criminal syndicates. Successful prosecution of perpetrators of trafficking requires states to provide effective witness protection programmes for all those that will testify in their trials.
This is what is contained in the protocol to which South Africa is a signatory. The question that needs to be asked is how well we are countering this crime and how we are dealing with its victims. In answering these questions, there is both good news and bad news.
There is still much to be done before South Africa can live up to its obligations under the protocol. The key to stopping human trafficking is effective border control and successful detection and prosecution of offenders. We all know that our borders are unacceptably porous, and that every day thousands of illegal immigrants enter our country in search of work, food and a better life. Most are desperate refugees fleeing oppression and starvation, but this influx makes it easier to conceal the trafficking of humans.
Last year, South Africa was placed on the Tier 2 Watch List by the United States state department for the fourth year in a row, for what the state department regards as the failure to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The state department cites difficulties with prosecutions, inadequate witness protection programmes and lack of improvement in prevention as reasons for this.
We must turn this around. We must, in the first instance, radically improve border security so as to ensure that those who enter the country are here legally. In South Africa, border control is a multidepartmental responsibility, and the main role-players are represented on the Border Control Co-ordinating Committee.
But in the eight years of its existence, the committee still has no overall strategic plan relating to borderline policing and operations. In addition, there is a huge shortage of staff allocated to borderline security - as many as 71% of the SAPS posts are vacant in this crucial area. Sea borderline operations have a 96% undercapacity rate, while air borderline operations have no permanent staff at all.
Moreover, Adv Amanda Ledwaba, the Director of Investigations in the Department of Home Affairs, last year revealed that 90% of illegal border crossings into South Africa took place with the connivance of officials or police.
Because of our porous borders, South Africa has become a transit country for trafficked women and children, and a destination in its own right. We must reverse this situation, and reverse it rapidly.
There is a degree of good news. This Parliament has passed the Children's Act and the Sexual Offences and Related Matters Amendment Act which specifically address the trafficking of women. But these are interim measures. The SA Law Reform Commission has proposed comprehensive legislation to address all aspects of the trafficking of persons. We must, as a matter of urgency, process the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill through Parliament.
Moreover, the International Office for Migration has established the Southern African Counter-Trafficking Assistance Programme, which supports and develops the capacity of SADC governments to deal with the problem of trafficking. It also assists with victim support and awareness-raising and had, by 2006, established 12 shelters in South Africa for trafficked women and children. The Organised Crime Unit of the SAPS has established a trafficking desk, and the National Prosecuting Authority has established a specialised unit to deal with this crime.
So, we are making progress, but I can't help feeling that not enough is being done. Only a handful of trafficked persons are detected, and no prosecutions have taken place against traffickers. We need to raise awareness of the incidence of this crime, we need to put resources behind improving border control, and we must prosecute offenders ruthlessly. If we don't, we will be letting down the thousands of victims of modern slavery in our own country. I thank you. [Applause.]