New research to be carried out by IOM in Africa will shed some
light on the trafficking of men for labour exploitation, an area
long overlooked and consequently, little known about.

To date, counter-trafficking research and interventions have
largely focused on the trafficking of women and girls for sexual
exploitation across the world.

However, there is growing evidence of the trafficking of men
globally for labour, including in Africa. With little to no
research available on this phenomenon, relevant stakeholders have
found it difficult to design or implement counter-trafficking
interventions targeting men.

The new IOM research, the first to comprehensively address the
trafficking of men in Africa in general, and in Eastern and
Southern Africa in particular, will establish the extent to which
human trafficking is occurring between the East and Horn of Africa
to the continent's main economic hub, South Africa; information on
how the men are trafficked and what their and their traffickers'
profiles are; what kind of abuses they suffer and what the specific
characteristics and vulnerabilities of source communities are.

The study, funded by the US State Department's Office to Monitor
and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP) and which kicks off in
January 2008, will focus on significant male migration flows
between these regions. According to early reports from Kenyan and
Tanzanian authorities, much of this movement may be irregular and
facilitated by agents operating illicitly across several land
borders.

A 2003 IOM report found links between the trafficking of women
and children for sexual exploitation and the smuggling of men in
Southern Africa, with both activities facilitated by the same
criminal networks along common migration corridors. Little,
however, is known about male trafficking in Southern Africa and, to
the extent it exists, the exploitative purposes for which its
victims are trafficked.

The research will cover key transit points along the routes that
include Mozambique and Tanzania as well as destination and
exploitation sites. Qualitative information identifying cases of
male human trafficking will also be gathered.

Some anecdotal evidence already exists. IOM in Ethiopia, for
example, is increasingly aware of stories of men who are promised
lucrative contracts in the construction industry in South Africa as
the country prepares for the football World Cup in 2010. In
Tanzania, IOM has indentified individual cases where men have been
trafficked from the East African country to South Africa and forced
into criminal activity. In Kenya, a 2006 report by The
CRADLE-Children's Foundation on human trafficking found that 43 per
cent of the trafficking victims it interviewed for the report were
men.

South Africa, meanwhile, has a lengthy history as a destination
for economic migrants. The Department of Home Affairs estimated in
2006 that there were more than seven million undocumented migrants
in South Africa. Preparations for the 2010 World Cup have
contributed to an even greater migration pull into the country.

The project, which will also update IOM data on human smuggling
and trafficking between these two regions, is expected to culminate
in September 2008 with the publication of a report.

For more information, please contact:

Yitna Getachew

IOM Pretoria

Tel: +27 12 342 2789

E-mail:  "mailto:ygetachew@iom.int" target="_blank" title=
"">ygetachew@iom.int

or

Tal Raviv

IOM Nairobi

Tel: + 254 20 4444167 Ext: 217

E-mail: "mailto:traviv@iom.int" target="_blank" title=
"">traviv@iom.int