Towards a Solution to Tackle Human Trafficking in Africa:

By Sodfa Daaji

ABSTRACT

The freedom of movement of people, capital, goods, and services is at the core of the African continental and regional integration agendas. This is enshrined in several protocols and legal frameworks such as the Niamey convention on cross-border cooperation and the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community. While there exists a foundation for a borderless Africa, its implementation is still a work in progress due to concerns by African governments around various issues, including security threats. With the free movement of persons being at the core to boost intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), this paper seeks to assess how the implementation of the AfCFTA could be meaningful without going hand-in-hand with the African Union (AU) Protocol on Free Movement of Persons. It also further deepens the analysis by integrating the potential of the AfCFTA in either mitigating or further increasing the phenomenon of human trafficking in Africa, and the expedients that could be adopted to shift it towards bringing about a ground-breaking transformation for the continent. To conduct this analysis, the paper relies solely on the review of existing literature. It is argued, in this paper, that a feminist lens is necessary not only to shift the gender-blindness of the AfCFTA Agreement but also to ensure that crosscutting thematics affecting women and other vulnerable groups are taken into consideration. This specific paper does so by bringing into light the phenomenon of human trafficking and its intersections with the AU Protocol on Freedom of Movement of Persons and the AfCFTA at large. Human trafficking, defined as ‘the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour and sexual slavery’, is a frequent phenomenon occurring within the African borders which largely affects men, women and children. With forced labour being among the most frequent forms of human trafficking, the AfCFTA has the potential to address one of the main factors exacerbating the vulnerability of the victims of human trafficking through economic empowerment. However, without the necessary provisions, there may be the risk that human trafficking could further increase. Within this context, through a feminist analysis, this paper proposes the integration of a human rights-based approach and the introduction of provisions within the AU Protocol on Free Movement of Persons against the danger of human trafficking.