| Disputes - international | South Africa has placed military units to assist police operations along the border of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique to control smuggling, poaching, and illegal migration |
| Trafficking in persons | current situation: Lesotho is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking and for men subjected to forced labor; Basotho women and children are subjected to domestic servitude and children, to a lesser extent, commercial sexual exploitation within Lesotho and South Africa; some Basotho women willingly migrate to South Africa seeking work in domestic service only to be forced into prostitution; some Basotho men who voluntarily migrate to South Africa for work become victims of forced labor in agriculture and mining or are coerced into committing crimes tier rating: Tier 3 — Lesotho does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so, therefore it was downgraded to Tier 3; positive steps included partnering with an NGO and an international organization in awareness-raising activities, participating in a regional data collection tool, and training 27 diplomats on trafficking in persons; however, authorities did not investigate, prosecute, or convict any traffickers or officials complicit in trafficking and did not investigate concerns of official complicity in trafficking crimes restricted law enforcement actions; fewer victims were identified and received no protective services; no standard operating procedures for victim identification or implementation of the national referral mechanism; the government did not finance the Victims of Trafficking Trust Fund or the Child and Gender Protection Unit; front-line responders to trafficking crimes are inadequately trained; penalties for human trafficking are not stringent enough to serve as a deterrent (2020) |
Source: CIA World Factbook
This page was last updated on September 18, 2021
