Human rights | Modern day slavery ‘very much alive’ | MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報

"Forcing a metal tube o a vacuum cleaner inside her mouth, punching her front teeth, which caused a fracture and splashing cold water on her naked body in front of an electric fan during winter were only a few examples of the maltreatment Erwiana experienced at the hands of her Hong Kong employer."

"Meanwhile, McKail, who is also a photo-journalist, described how domestic workers in Hong Kong are still experiencing modern day slavery, despite Erwiana’s story making headlines across the region’s media outlets."

"He stated that fear and lack of information are two of the main factors preventing workers from complaining about their employers."

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Human rights | Modern day slavery ‘very much alive’ | MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報:

Behavioral Medicine | CALL FOR PAPERS: Human Trafficking and Health | Explore Taylor & Francis Online

"We are seeking manuscripts for a special issue of Behavioral Medicine that will examine the influence of human trafficking on health, with a focus on how the experience and environment of abuse and exploitation in trafficking may shape health risks, health behaviors, and well being, as well as programs aimed at protecting and enhancing the health of individuals at risk."

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Behavioral Medicine | CALL FOR PAPERS: Human Trafficking and Health | Explore Taylor & Francis Online:

Rights Worker Battles Human Trafficking

2009-09-18

The founder of one of Cambodia’s most influential NGOs talks about how to more effectively combat human trafficking in her country.

AFP

Kek Galabru speaks to journalists in front of a prison in Phnom Penh, Aug. 1, 2006.

During Cambodia’s civil war in the 1980s, Dr. Kek Galabru arranged negotiations between the country’s Prime Minister Hun Sen and then-deposed King Norodom Sihanouk which eventually led to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991. The accords mandated a United Nations mission to Cambodia to supervise elections and resolve the long-standing conflict.


Galabru, who had been living overseas, returned to Cambodia following the peace accords to find a nation suffering from the aftermath of protracted war and poverty. She founded the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (known by its French acronym LICADHO) in 1992, which became one of the first human rights organizations established in the new civil society made possible by the UN mission.


In the following extracts from an interview, Galabru shares her thoughts on the current state of human trafficking in Cambodia and what the government must do to combat the problem more effectively:

“The government has shown to us that they care about the problem of trafficking because it touches Cambodian women, children, and men. Trafficking is really a crime against humanity—it’s a gross violation of human rights. It’s really bad for the stability of a country because Cambodia is not only a country of origin of trafficking, but we also receive trafficked victims. We are a transit place—the trafficked pass through Cambodia to go to other countries—and we are also the origin, meaning that people are trafficked from Cambodia to other countries…it affects many countries in the region internationally, and the U.S. also pays great attention to that.”

“We can see that the Cambodian government acknowledges that we have a problem of trafficking. They have a department of anti-trafficking in the Ministry of the Interior. They also adopted another law, more comprehensive than the previous one, but still the law is not perfect. We can make amendments, but it is still not well implemented. And the weak point of the law is that it is not independent of the court.”

“When you talk about trafficking, you rely a lot on the court. You have to arrest the trafficker and then bring them to justice, so that if other people want to do the same crime, they will think it over. They will know that they can go to jail. But here we have a problem. We only see small traffickers prosecuted, but the big ones always get impunity.”

“There are only some provisions to protect the victims and rehabilitate them. It’s very important…You have to prosecute the perpetrator and you have to assist the victim. The victim should have a comprehensive program to assist them. Victims of trafficking have trauma for their whole life. So you have to provide psychological assistance, shelter, medical assistance, legal assistance. Also rehabilitation—maybe a skilled training program—and follow up for a long time, not only a few days. Let them go to their family, because there is also discrimination against them by their own family and by the community. For one victim of human trafficking you have to spend a lot of energy to rehabilitate them, otherwise it becomes a problem for society.”

“The government has some programs, but they are not enough. They have to have a bigger program. Now some NGOs have programs for rehabilitation and assistance to the victims. The prosecution of the perpetrators relies on the government, because we in civil society can only bring the information to the government—to the authorities in charge—and the authorities have to arrest and prosecute. We have no power to do that. We can only bring information. But we have some programs to assist the victim and to provide skilled training and that should be done by the government also at the national level. We lack that, because we lack human resources and we lack financial resources. And also, there is the problem of no independence of the judiciary. The problem of corruption also has a big negative impact on that issue too.”

“So with these all combined and the world [economic] crisis, people lack jobs and are more vulnerable to trafficking…[and to] land grabbing and evictions. People who have nothing to lose—who lost their jobs and their financial resources, who have no access to medical care and no education for their children—they are also very vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation, especially human trafficking. So [through] all these combined factors we see that the problem of trafficking still remains in Cambodia, and that is the reason why the U.S. downgraded Cambodia (in the human trafficking rankings).”

Original reporting by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
http://www.rfa.org/english/women/rightsworker-09182009150252.html

The Asia Foundation: On the Ground in Asia: Combating Human Trafficking in Cambodia

"Policy on the Protection of the Rights of Victims of Human Trafficking and the Minimum Standards on the Protection of the Rights of Victims of Human Trafficking."

October 2, 2009

Nandita Baruah Chief of Party, The Asia Foundation, Counter-Trafficking in Persons Program, Cambodia

Human trafficking is one of the most serious human rights challenges confronting the world today. Across Asia, women are lured with false promises of jobs or marriage, and then forced into sex work or other exploitative labor situations. Controlled with threats, lies, drugs, and physical force, victims of trafficking are often held in slave-like conditions, unable to escape. The Asia Foundation’s presence across the Asia-Pacific region for more than 50 years, and its network of over 60 local counter-trafficking partners in Cambodia alone, gives us the unique ability to work both nationally and across borders to combat this egregious human rights violation. As a leader in the fight against human trafficking for more than a decade, we have supported initiatives to combat trafficking in source, transit, and destination countries throughout Asia, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.

In Cambodia, the Foundation helped establish a National Task Force on Trafficking in Persons and supported the government’s High Level Working Group to Combat Trafficking in coordinating NGO and government counter-trafficking initiatives. The Foundation, in collaboration with the government’s Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, created the Policy on the Protection of the Rights of Victims of Human Trafficking and the Minimum Standards on the Protection of the Rights of Victims of Human Trafficking. These two documents ensure victims have access to appropriate services from the moment of rescue through rehabilitation and reintegration.

Nandita Baruah is the Chief of Party for The Asia Foundation’s Counter-Trafficking in Cambodia program. Baruah has more than 18 years of experience working on many challenges in community development, including human trafficking. She is deeply committed to the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficking victims and in her role at the Foundation she works closely with police, social workers, lawyers, and the government of Cambodia to protect victims and prosecute traffickers.

In July, Baruah helped organize a major Inter-country Consultative Dialogue conference in Phnom Penh on anti-trafficking. The conference ended with the five participating countries, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, and Cambodia, issuing a set of 14 recommendations that outline policies expected to improve cooperation and standardize the implementation of trafficking laws. The conference marked the first time that these five countries had gathered to address the problem of cross-border human trafficking.

“Working to help people who have suffered the worst forms of abuse, indignity, and trauma is never easy. But when we meet the survivors who are getting a second chance at life because of our intervention, it makes tackling these serious challenges worthwhile.”
- Nandita Baruah
Chief of Party
Counter-Trafficking in Persons Program

http://www.asiafoundation.org/news/?p=1901