2. PROHIBITION OF SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE [Section 6 (1) of the Constitution protects all persons living in Botswana from slavery or servitude. Furthermore in August 2002, the Government ratified the Protocol on the Suppression and Punishment of Trafficking in Persons especially Women and Children and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Sale of Children and Children Prostitution in September 2003.] In 2014, Botswana enacted the Anti-Human Trafficking Act which forbids all forms of human trafficking in and through Botswana. The objective of the Act is to give effect to the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children. The Act provides for the prohibition, prevention and combating of human trafficking19 and exploitation20 as well as measures to protect and assist victims of trafficking in persons and other matters incidental thereto. Under the Act, the Minister has an obligation to establish and operate Centres for victims of human trafficking, composed of Centres for child21 and adult22 victims. The expenses arising out of assistance to the victims of trafficking in person should 19 Human trafficking is widely defined in Section 9 of the Act as the recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring or reception of another person “by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation of that person.” It also includes the removal of an organ from a person’s body, forcing a woman to fall pregnant and take the child away, subjecting a person to slavery or forced labour, instigating person to commit an act of prostitution, instigating person to take part in an obscene publication or obscene display or committing a sexual offence against a person.[Section 9(2)] According to Section 2 of the Act, the term “exploitation” includes but is not limited to “keeping a person in a state of slavery, subjecting a person to practices similar to slavery, involuntary servitude, forcible or fraudulent use of any human being for removal of organs or body parts, forcible or fraudulent use of any human being to take part in armed conflict, force labour, child labour, sexual exploitation, child marriage, or force marriage.” 20 21 The role of the Centre for Child victims is, according to section 18 of the Act, to secure physical safety of the child, provide him/her with temporary basic material support, offer a programme for education, counselling and rehabilitation services to the child 22 A Centre for Adult secures the safety to adults at risk of retaliation, offers services aimed at educating, counselling, rehabilitating, re-integrating an adult into his/her family, provides accommodation to an adult who has a child in his/her care. (Section 19) 35 | P a g e