A total of 780 human trafficking victims were reported in Tunisia in 2018, up from the 742 registered the previous year, the National Committee for the Fight Against Human Trafficking (INLCTP) has said. The majority of cases were 'domestic slavery' and 'forced labor.'
These statistics were presented during a press conference held last Tuesday in Sfax, in partnership with the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT).
Local media reported that about 74.1% of these cases involve women and that 48% of cases are related to child trafficking.
According to the INLCTP representative, Hamida Chaïeb, 79.2% of the cases filed with the authority in 2018 concern Sub-Saharan citizens and, more specifically, citizens of Côte d'Ivoire who do not need a visa to enter Tunisia.
During the press conference, Hamida Chaïeb explained that the number of cases filed with the Tunisian courts on cases of human trafficking against foreigners is very low despite the fact that the Mechanism also received several alerts on this subject. And to add that despite the efforts made by the Mechanism since its creation in 2016, the law against trafficking in human beings number 61 of the year 2016 has still not activated since its ordinal texts n ' have not been issued. The complainant also explained that the Instance suffers from a major shortfall in its budget which complicates the handling of the cases it receives.
In this context, Hamida Chaïeb has called for the application of the law number 61 of the year 2016 on the fight against trafficking in human beings and that an adequate budget be granted to the authority so that it can to carry out its mission, including the organization of a series of training courses for the security sector so that they can differentiate between crimes of human trafficking and fraud.
It is worth noting that the Tunisian Parliament in 2016 approved legislation on the prevention and fight against human trafficking. Then, in February 2017, it established the Committee for the Fight Against Human Trafficking.
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