The government maintained modest efforts to protect trafficking victims. It identified 12 trafficking victims, including eight foreign nationals, and referred all victims to care facilities for assistance, although the government did not report what specific services it provided. This was compared to five victims identified and referred in 2015. However, the government did not have formal written procedures for use by all officials on victim identification and referral to care. The TNCB drafted but did not adopt a national referral mechanism to formalize identification and referral procedures. In practice, when police identified a woman or child victim of crime, including trafficking, they transferred the victim to the Gender-Based Violence Protection Units (GBVPU), which refer victims of all crimes to temporary shelter and medical assistance. GBVPU facilities offered initial psycho-social, legal, and medical support to crime victims, in cooperation with the police, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare (MGECW), the Ministry of Health, and NGOs. Government shelters for victims of gender-based violence (GBV), including trafficking, were not fully operational, and were used as a last resort to provide emergency short-term shelter in limited cases. A government-funded NGO shelter in Windhoek provides care for women and child victims of GBV and trafficking; during the reporting period, it provided care to 60 women and 85 child victims of GBV and trafficking, including four identified trafficking victims. The government lacked standard operating procedures for shelters, which remained under development by MGECW. The Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration continued to provide immigration officials a printed manual to guide identification of trafficking victims.
The government did not have a policy to encourage victims’ participation in investigations; the law provides for witness protection or other accommodations for vulnerable witnesses that in principle would be available for trafficking victims. There were no reports that the government detained, fined, or jailed victims for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being subjected to trafficking; however, without uniform victim identification measures, victims may be left unidentified in the law enforcement system. Street children remained vulnerable to detention as police and immigration officials did not always screen for indicators of trafficking. The police and prosecutor general began implementing a formal policy to screen individuals who have been identified for deportation for trafficking before deportation. While the government had no formal policy to provide residence permits to foreign victims of trafficking, during previous reporting periods government officials made ad-hoc arrangements for victims to remain in Namibia.