The 2024 Trafficking in Person Report shows that human traffickers exploit
domestic and foreign victims in Lesotho.
Traffickers exploit victims from Lesotho abroad due to
limited economic opportunities, exacerbated by the pandemics and inflation which in turn result in
vulnerable populations, continues the report.
The report further indicates that women and orphaned children are enticed by traffickers with false
promises of legitimate employment or educational opportunities, to migrate from rural into urban
areas and to South Africa or the Middle East.
Traffickers, including some which masquerade as religious institutions, fraudulently advertise scholarships or lucrative jobs in hospitality on social media to recruit victims into forced labor and sex trafficking, increasingly in the Middle East.
Furthermore, it reports that in Lesotho, traffickers exploit Basotho children, especially orphans, through
forced labor in domestic servitude, animal herding and in sex trafficking, while young girls
employed in domestic work in exchange for room and board are vulnerable to forced labor and
abuse.
Basotho women and girls seeking work, migrate to South Africa, where traffickers detain some in
prison-like conditions and exploit others in sex trafficking, notably in Welkom and Klerksdorp. Some parents send children to South Africa to work as domestic workers, and they are exploited in
forced labor.
It says traffickers target factory workers in Maseru, with offers of lucrative employment in
South Africa, and force them to work in factories in Newcastle and Mandeni, South Africa.
“Traffickers exploit some Basotho men who migrate voluntarily, although unauthorized and often
without identity documents, to South Africa for work in agriculture or force them into illegal mining.
Many of these men work for weeks or months before their employers report them to South African
authorities for deportation on immigration violations to avoid paying earned wages” reads the
report.
Traffickers connected to organized crime syndicates operating in South Africa allegedly exploit
Basotho men in derelict and unregulated gold mines. Some of these miners, known as “zama
zamas,” recruit young girls in Lesotho to exploit in sex trafficking in South Africa.
Traffickers also compel Basotho to commit crimes in South Africa, including theft, drug trafficking, and smuggling under threat of violence.
