Radio Australia:Connect Asia:Story:Thailand still a hotspot for human trafficking: report

Updated August 15, 2011 14:17:48

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants are trafficked across borders in and through Thailand, especially from Burma, Laos and Cambodia.

In a report about trafficked people released this year, the US State Department placed Thailand in the same category as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Russia and Zambia.

Over one million migrants come from Burma to work in Thailand - many illegally and many under a recent policy to provide official employment documentation.

Presenter: Ron Corben
Speaker: Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, UN Special Rapporteur on human trafficking; Nai, Burmese man; Andy Hall, a researcher with the Institute of Population and Social Research at Bangkok's Mahidol University

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CORBEN: Nai a 25-year-old Burmese man came to Thailand six years ago in a bid to pay off debts after his shrimp business failed in southern Burma.

To make the journey requires a broker or front man. He is paid. In turn he lends the trafficked person monies for transport in Thailand. Nai says this loan is repaid at exorbitant rates.

NAI (voiceover translation): The front man says he is going to give you for example 10,000 baht and when you get into Thailand that's your fees for transportation then after a few months the person has to give them back 20,000 baht or 30,000 baht. That's a good front man. Because there's also bad people who just like then these people come in as soon as these people come in they just sell them as soon as they come in because they are illegal immigrants.

CORBEN: Nai tells how in one factory the manager carried guns and threatened the workers. Nai escaped. Nai is now among over 300,000 Burmese working in the seafood industry in Samut Sakon province near Bangkok. Burmese language signs at the market are a testament to the Burmese in the community.

Andy Hall, a researcher with the Institute of Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Bangkok's Mahidol University says while Thailand has in place laws and rehabilitation programs for migrant workers, the illegal migrant business is riddled with corruption.

HALL: Migrant workers when they are trafficked or smuggled into Thailand they just don't walk across borders, they don't just walk across rivers, they are put into a very complex process whereby they arrive in Bangkok and other cities in Thailand. This involves a very complex network of criminals, traffickers, smugglers including officials, law enforcement agencies and a number of different actors. So essentially what we have today is a situation where trafficking networks continue to flourish in Thailand.

CORBEN: The United Nations estimates around 2.5 million people from 127 countries are trafficked into more than 130 countries each year. The International Labor Organisation says human trafficking is worth around $30 billion a year to criminal gangs.

Nigerian activist, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, the UN's special rapporteur on human trafficking says on a global scale the illegal trade is growing.

EZEILO: There are certain push and pull factors that make people vulnerable to human trafficking. Sometime it's to show exclusion, sometimes you find that it's ethnicity have something to do with it, a particular race, a minority and then against the divide which will also bring a lot of disparity in terms of infrastructure - all of these contributing factors, the push and pull factors why people become vulnerable to human trafficking.

CORBEN: How do you convey, how do governments convey messages to traffickers that they're unwelcome in terms of the business they are in and preventing genuine migrants from making their way.

EZEILO: That's why I recommend seriously that restricting migration policy is not the answer. We have to create the opportunities for safe migration so that can get people like if we need certain skills that you provide that and then the system is open; its transparent. So some of these things are becoming very unfortunately highly politicised in many counties of the world and that is also creating the tension and all kinds of xenophobic approach to issues of migrants.

CORBEN: Ms Ezeilo is in Thailand on an official visit to assess Thailand's efforts to deal with human trafficking. She is scheduled to travel to Australia in November for talks on Canberra's migration and refugee policies.

Source: Radio Australia

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UN Urging Peru to do More to Combat Slavery in Its Country - Hispanically Speaking News

Photo Credits: Modern Day Slavery in Peru

 NOTITAS DE NOTCIA
Sunday, May `22, 2011

A United Nations human rights expert on slavery today urged Peru to do more to combat abuses in the country’s logging, mining and domestic services sectors.

Gulnara Shahinian, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said after a 12-day fact-finding visit to the Andean country that the Peruvian authorities have “demonstrated a strong will to combat contemporary forms of slavery by establishing multi-sectoral institutions at both national and regional level and developing relevant national plans.

“However, a lot remains to be done, in particular by enforcing existing legislation, introducing separate criminal sanctions for all forms of slavery, developing comprehensive protection mechanisms as well reintegration and compensation schemes for victims and strengthening implementation and monitoring of programs at regional and local levels.”

Ms. Shahinian focused on potential contemporary forms of slavery including forced labor in logging and mining, domestic servitude, and child labor.

“In urban areas domestic servitude remains mostly invisible and victims who are predominantly girls and young women migrating to cities, are not aware of their rights and feel unable to report of their abuses and exploitation,” the Special Rapporteur said.

In artisanal mining, she said that the “ungoverned gold rush in Madre de Dios [in the country’s southeast] has brought lawlessness and with it a whole range of slavery-like practices, mainly forced labor and sexual exploitation of both minors and adults.”

In the logging sector, she said, indigenous communities who live in remote and isolated communities find themselves entrapped by mounting debt for equipment, loans, and concession rentals and are locked in a cycle of poverty.

“Peru, which is experiencing one of the world’s fastest economic growths, should ensure that economic development does not take precedence over people’s rights,” Ms. Shahinian said.

Ms. Shahinian, who serves in an unpaid and independent capacity, reports to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

UN Urging Peru to do More to Combat Slavery in Its Country - Hispanically Speaking News
Source:  hispanicallyspeakingnews.com

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ARGENTINA: Proposal to Go after Clients of Sex Trafficking Victims - IPS ipsnews.net

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 25, 2011 (IPS) - An Argentine government proposal to crack down on clients benefiting from the trafficking of persons for the purposes of sexual exploitation has unleashed a heated debate between feminist organisations that support the idea and sex workers who are opposed to it.

The proposal by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights has the support of organisations whose aim is to abolish the commercial sex trade. These groups want prostitution to be condemned as a form of exploitation, and are calling for measures like the promotion of alternative sources of employment.

The concept of going after the client has received the backing of the United Nations and the Organisation of American States (OAS), which will study it to recommend its inclusion in the national laws of each country.

The idea is to discourage demand by sending clients convicted of hiring the sexual services of a trafficking victim to prison.

Women's rights and human rights groups seeking to abolish the sex trade back the idea, although they express doubts because of the difficulties of implementing it.

Monique Altschul with the Fundación Mujeres en Igualdad (Women in Equality Foundation) told IPS that her organisation agrees with the government's proposal, which is similar to Sweden's law against the purchasing of sex services, and said "it would be difficult to implement, but not impossible."

In Altschul's view, which she shares with many other members of feminist groups, prostitution is not decent work, especially in the case of sexual exploitation resulting from trafficking, a modern-day form of slavery.

Trafficking in persons is "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion…for the purpose of exploitation," according to the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, which has been signed and ratified by Argentina.

"Prostitution is not decent work, because people are subjected to humiliation, and they never know what to expect in each transaction," Altschul said. "And in the case of trafficking, it is obvious that sexual exploitation is involved."

Many women's rights groups thus believe that not only the clients of trafficking victims should be penalised, but anyone who pays for sex.

But the Association of Women Prostitutes of Argentina (AMMAR), which has more than 4,000 members, is opposed to the proposal and has promised to make its voice heard at the next OAS General Assembly, to be held in June in El Salvador.

"This confuses trafficking, which we condemn, with sex work, which is an option followed by some women, as consenting adults," Elena Reynaga, president of AMMAR, told IPS.

She also complained that the "abolitionist" groups have not listened to their concerns. "They don't respect us, they don't listen to us," Altschul said. "Bans only hurt us and expose us more than we already are."

The groups that want to abolish the sex trade argue that no woman really chooses prostitution of her own free will, and that women fall into it because of a history of violence and abuse, and a lack of opportunities.

But Reynaga rejects that argument. "Domestic workers or women who are scavenging for cardboard on the streets didn't have opportunities either, but no one is going after them. There are many women who did not have the chance to study, and we had to make choices."

The problem is that in Argentina trafficking in women is a hot issue. In its annual report, the U.S. State Department warns every year of the lack of effective measures to combat human trafficking in this South American country.

The organisations working against trafficking say women are lured or seized in other countries in the region, mainly Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru, as well as in Puerto Rico and the provinces of northern Argentina, the poorest parts of the country.

The media periodically report on raids of brothels in provinces in central Argentina, which turn up women from Paraguay or the impoverished northern provinces who denounce that they were deceived with promises of a good job, and ended up being sexually exploited.

There are also hundreds of reports filed of missing girls and women, who are assumed to be victims of trafficking rings.

In 2008, Congress passed a law to prevent and criminalise the crime of trafficking. But the legislation has many flaws and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, called for its "urgent" reform.

In a statement issued after her fact-finding mission to this country in September 2010, the special rapporteur said the current law stipulated that victims over the age of 18 had to prove they did not initially consent to engage in the activities they were subjected to.

Ngozi Ezeilo also called for stiffer sentences for convicted traffickers and improved assistance for and follow-up of victims, including adequate witness protection before and after trials.

"Trafficking in persons in Argentina is unfortunately growing in scale and repercussions. It is complex, dynamic and hugely underestimated, especially internal trafficking," the special rapporteur said in her statement.

In the meantime, other measures have been taken. The Attorney General's Office recommended that prosecutors seek to cancel the operating licenses of businesses that offer prostitution services, and some newspapers have stopped carrying sex-oriented ads.

Classified ads run in the main national and provincial newspapers frequently refer to the women's place of origin, young age or youthful looks, such as "hot Paraguayans," "blonde Brazilians," "new bunny fresh from the countryside," "just in from the north," "erotic little doll," or "wild university girls."

Both the abolitionist groups and the sex workers' associations agree that the underlying problem is corruption among politicians, judicial workers and police, who boycott and stymie measures aimed at cracking down on trafficking.

For example, when prosecutors show up at a brothel, they find that the place is "clean" because the police who were supposed to cooperate in the raid have already tipped off the owners.

Reynaga also said the laws are used to harass sex workers. "The police haul us in and bring charges against us, and force our clients to pay them bribes."

She also questioned the concept of clients being able to distinguish between sex workers in the trade of their own accord and victims of trafficking. "What, do they expect the clients to ask the women?

"The problem is corruption -- that is why the networks are mushrooming. The police already have tools and don't use them -- or rather, they use them against us." (END)

Source: IPS ipsnews.net
ARGENTINA: Proposal to Go after Clients of Sex Trafficking Victims - IPS ipsnews.net

The UN recommendeded a “urgent” law against human trafficking in Argentina | Momento 24

Source: Momento24

Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Nigerian Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, United Nations Special Rapporteur on trafficking of persons, today advised the authorities of Argentina that “a ‘urgent’ reform of the governing law of this crime, whose victims do not have protection and access to justice, is needed.”

Joy Ezeilo today ended her official visit to Argentina, very concerned about “increasing human trafficking in the country, which undoubtedly became a destination country for victims of this crime.”

She was also very concerned about the “impunity with which human trafficking takes place and the horrific abuse to the victims of this crime, which in her view became a modern case of slavery that brings enormous benefits to many companies .

In a press conference, Ezeilo denounced “the limitations of Argentine’s legislation in this area, the poor coordination of anti-trafficking activities of persons and the few resources for this work.”

And warned about the “inadequate protection in Argentina for victims from the institutions involved in offering assistance and support to them.”

The UN official expressed her “particular concern about child trafficking in this country and in South America, especially for debt bondage and forced prostitution.

Pointing out that “there is little capacity to combat trafficking of persons, we must also denounce police corruption and other members of the security forces who are directly involved in implementing measures for this crime, especially at the provincial level, where they receive bribes and collaborate illegally with traffickers.”

She also noted that “labor inspectors do not have the capacity to combat trafficking for labor exploitation, which also increased, but is more hidden than sexual exploitation.”

Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, met with Argentine Minister of Justice, Security and Human Rights, Julio Alak, and advised him to “increase cooperation with neighboring countries from which most of the victims came to Argentina, especially from Bolivia, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic” .

“The Argentine government has to allocate more resources to combat trafficking and to implement a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ to corruption, to ensure that any agent involved in the crime of trafficking in persons could be prosecuted and severely punished.”

The UN recommendeded a “urgent” law against human trafficking in Argentina | Momento 24

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