The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says it has uncovered widespread trafficking of men, women and children in refugee camps in central Malawi.

The UN agency, which disclosed this in a statement, said measures were underway to dismantle the human trafficking networks operating within Dzaleka refugee camp with support from the Malawian Police Service.

Dzaleka is a protracted camp with a monthly average of 300 new arrivals (62 percent are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 19 percent from Burundi, seven percent from Rwanda, and two percent nationalities), according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR).

The camp was initially established to host between 10,000 and 12,000 persons of concern but now hosts over 50,000 individuals under critical conditions.

In 2021, the UNODC disclosed that criminal networks where operating within the Dzaleka refugee camp.

‘The situation was much worse than we first envisaged’, UNODC’s National Project Officer, Maxwell Matewere, who first visited the camp in October 2020, said.

‘I even witnessed a kind of Sunday market, where people come to buy children who were then exploited in situations of forced labour and prostitution’.

To mitigate this ugly development, UNODC coached and mentored 28 camp officials and law enforcement officials who are now involved in the identification of victims and the investigation of trafficking cases.

Since their training and the implementation of new anti-trafficking procedures, over 90 victims of human trafficking have been identified and rescued.

‘UNHCR together with all its partners will never give up on its efforts to stop the scourge of human trafficking and smuggling among refugees in Malawi’, UNHCR’s Field Protection Associate, Owen Nyasulu, said.

Source: United Nations

Photo source: Imagens Evangélicas