Human trafficking in Mozambique

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (July 2018)

In 2009 Mozambique was a source and, to a much lesser extent, a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. The use of forced and bonded child laborers was common in rural areas of the country, often with the complicity of family members. Women and girls from these rural areas were also lured to cities with promises of employment or education, as well as to South Africa for involuntary domestic servitude and forced prostitution. NGO's reported that Mozambican victims of sex traffickers were taken by traffickers to "training centers" in Eswatini and South Africa in preparation for an expected increase in demand for prostitution during the 2010 World Cup. Young Mozambican men and boys were subjected to conditions of forced labor in South African farms and mines; they often labored for months in South Africa without pay and under coercive conditions before being turned over to police for deportation as illegal migrants. Mozambican adults were subjected to forced labor and forced prostitution in Portugal. Women and girls from Rhodesia and Malawi who voluntarily migrate to Mozambique continued to be manipulated by traffickers into forced prostitution and domestic servitude subsequent to their arrival. There were an estimated 145,600 people living in slavery in Mozambique and countless more being taken unwillingly into South Africa.

Traffickers were typically part of loose, informal networks of Mozambican or South African citizens; however, larger Chinese and reportedly Nigerian trafficking syndicates were also active in Mozambique. Human traffickers' internal and cross-border routes were also used to smuggle illicit drugs; often, the same facilitators transported both drugs and trafficked victims. In addition, South Asian smugglers who moved South Asian undocumented migrants throughout Africa reportedly also transported trafficking victims through Mozambique. Internal and transnational trafficking in persons for the purposes of forcible organ removal to support an offshoot of the traditional healing industry in South Africa and Mozambique was significant. Witch doctors in Mozambique and other countries forcibly removed various body parts from children and adults, either while the victims are still alive or immediately following violent death, for use in "traditional" medical concoctions intended to heal illness, foster economic advancement, or hurt enemies.^[1]

In 2009 the Government of Mozambique did not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Despite these efforts, including work on the development of implementing regulations for its new anti-trafficking law, the government did not show evidence of increasing efforts to address human trafficking, particularly efforts to prosecute or convict trafficking offenders as it has done in the past, or to investigate continuing reports of government officials' complicity in trafficking crimes.^[1]

The country ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol in September 2006.^[2]

The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2 Watchlist" in 2017^[3] and 2023.^[4]

In 2023, the Organised Crime Index gave Mozambique a score of 4.5 out of 10 for human trafficking.^[5]