The United States Department of State in its “2018 Trafficking in Persons Report-Country Narratives” report has criticized the Afghan government for an insufficient campaign against human trafficking in the country.
“The Government of Afghanistan does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so,” the report says.
The report adds that the Afghan government demonstrated increasing efforts by enacting a revised penal code that raised the penalties for human trafficking crimes and criminalized additional activities relating to bacha bazi, a practice in which men exploit boys for social and sexual entertainment.
“The government identified more trafficking victims and partnered with an international organization to draft and finalize a training manual for combating trafficking, including procedures on victim identification and referral,” the report says.
The report states that the Afghan government enacted a policy for the Afghan National Army that prohibited child recruitment and established procedures for the demobilization and care of children involved in armed conflict.
The Afghan government also opened an additional child protection unit to prevent the recruitment of children into the security forces and proactively prevented the recruitment of 79 children from April through June 2017, the report says.
The report says district and provincial level officials continued to conflate trafficking and smuggling, and many officials were unable to identify trafficking victims, which resulted in the government’s arrest and prosecution of some trafficking victims as criminals.
The report also says that victim protection efforts were overall insufficient, as the government did not employ standard victim identification protocols during the reporting period, and the one government-owned short-term trafficking shelter closed when donor funding was not renewed.
In this report, the US Department of State recommends the Afghan government to cease the unlawful recruitment and use of children by Afghan security forces and demobilize children from state and nonstate groups with adequate victim protection and reintegration support.
Meanwhile it asks the Afghan government that while respecting due process, it should increase investigations and prosecutions, including of law enforcement and members of the military suspected of being complicit in trafficking such as bacha bazi, and convict and appropriately sentence the perpetrators.
The report recommends the Afghan government to cease the penalization of victims for offenses committed as a direct result of being subjected to trafficking, including stopping prosecutions for moral crimes and the placement of child trafficking victims in juvenile detention centers and formally adopt and disseminate standard operating procedures for victim identification and referral to rehabilitation services and train officials on their use.
It also calls on Afghan government to amend Chapter 5 of the penal code to increase the penalties for bacha bazi in line with penalties prescribed for other forms of trafficking and strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Interior (MOI)’s anti-trafficking/smuggling units, including increasing the number of staff in each region and ensuring their ability to differentiate between smuggling and trafficking.
The department also calls on Kabul government to continue to increase the capacity of the High Commission for Combating Crimes of Abduction and Human Trafficking/Smuggling and dedicate resources to support long-term victim rehabilitation programs.
It also calls for proactively informing government officials, especially at the MOI and Ministry of Defense (MOD), of the law prohibiting the recruitment and enlistment of minors, and enforce these provisions with criminal prosecutions.
Click HERE for full report.