Disputes - international:
dispute with Tanzania over the boundary in Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) and the meandering Songwe River; Malawi contends that the entire lake up to the Tanzanian shoreline is its territory, while Tanzania claims the border is in the center of the lake; the conflict was reignited in 2012 when Malawi awarded a license to a British company for oil exploration in the lake

Refugees and internally displaced persons:
refugees (country of origin): 53,881 (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (2014); 129,544 (Burundi) (2016)

Trafficking in persons:
current situation: Tanzania is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking; the exploitation of young girls in domestic servitude continues to be Tanzania’s largest human trafficking problem; Tanzanian boys are subject to forced labor mainly on farms but also in mines and quarries, in the informal commercial sector, in factories, in the sex trade, and possibly on small fishing boats; internal trafficking is more prevalent than transnational trafficking and is usually facilitated by friends, family members, or intermediaries with false offers of education or legitimate jobs; trafficking victims from Burundi, Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Yemen, and India are forced to work in Tanzania’s agricultural, mining, and domestic service sectors or may be sex trafficked
tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List – Tanzania does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so; regulations and procedures for implementing the 2008 anti-trafficking act await stakeholder input; authorities did not prosecute any new cases in 2013 or convict any trafficking offenders; officials’ inability to distinguish between human trafficking and smuggling led some victims to be punished and for the crime of trafficking to be treated as a minor offense; child trafficking victims continued to be referred to NGOs that were relied on for care, but no procedure was in place for the referral of adult victims (2014)

Illicit drugs:
targeted by traffickers moving hashish, Afghan heroin, and South American cocaine transported down the East African coastline, through airports, or overland through Central Africa; Zanzibar likely used by traffickers for drug smuggling; traffickers in the past have recruited Tanzanian couriers to move drugs through Iran into East Asia