Trafficking in children: what parliamentarians can do

Lucid Interval
First posted 02:49am (Mla time) Feb 21, 2006
By Rowena Guanzon
INQ7.net

Following is my presentation at the Asia-Pacific Regional Seminar on Developing a Protective Framework for Children: The Role of Parliaments. The seminar was held Feb. 15-17 in Hanoi, sponsored by UNICEF and the Inter-Parliamentarians Union. Thirteen countries sent 55 parliamentarians and their staff, including delegations from Australia, India, China, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand.

TRAFFICKING in persons is a human rights violation. Traffickers victimize the most vulnerable of our people — our women and children, although men are also trafficked for forced labor and servitude. The figures are alarming. The United Nations estimated that corrupt public officials, procurer and smugglers engaged in international trafficking in persons gained seven billion dollars in profits, making it more profitable than the international trade in weapons.

Trafficking syndicates operate on an estimated five to seven billion dollars annually. We are therefore up against an evil so powerful that it will require the utmost commitment, hard work, compassion and courage of our parliamentarians in order to save our children and women from trafficking for exploitation.

As of this month, there are 117 signatories and 97 parties to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN Protocol). Another international instrument that protects children from trafficking is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) which has been ratified by all states, except the US and Somalia.

The UN CRC protects children from economic exploitation such as bonded labor and servitude, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, cruel or inhuman treatment, arbitrary detention, abduction, sale, or trafficking (Articles 32, 34, 36, UN CRC). Yet, traffickers continue to go about their evil business, trading the bodies of our citizens, especially our children, for sexual exploitation, slavery, bonded labor, and removal and sale of organs.

Trafficking is a serious problem in the Philippines, because our women and children, just like in other developing countries, are vulnerable to the bait of traffickers mainly due to poverty and, gender discrimination. Under the leadership of Senate President Franklin Drilon, the Philippine Senate ratified the UN Protocol in 2001 and passed its Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act in 2003. While we have this law, which is comprehensive, our country cannot solve the problem of trafficking without all your countries’ help and collaboration.

Let me enumerate problems common to all our countries:
a) lack of specific legislation on trafficking in persons, which includes not only sexual exploitation but also slavery, practices similar to slavery, forced labor or services, servitude, removal of organs;
b) weak political will to curb or stop the DEMAND for trafficked persons;
c) weak law enforcement and low rate of prosecution and conviction in the judicial system;
d) poor collaboration between non-governmental organizations and law enforcers;
e) need for strong collaboration between governments.
If countries do not have comprehensive legislations on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children, we will have a situation where an act is classified as a crime of trafficking in one country, but not in another. Traffickers then would be able to “dance around” our laws as we watch helpless and immobilized. We need not look further for a comprehensive definition. The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (UN Protocol) has such a definition, and I quote:
“Trafficking is recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power of a position of vulnerability of the victim, or giving or receiving payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another, for the purpose of exploitation.”
Exploitation “shall include, at a minimum, exploitation of the prostitution of others, or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, removal of organs.”

The Philippines’ Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 (Republic Act No. 9208) has a comprehensive definition that substantially complies with the UN Protocol. Following the UN Protocol’s enumeration of “exploitation” as being the minimum, the Philippine law covers trafficking in children whether within or outside country for the purpose of armed conflict.
We know that our countries can pass a thousand laws, but without the collaboration and partnership with each other, we will be helpless against traffickers. Allow me to give the following recommendations on what parliamentarians can do:

• Pass comprehensive legislation with a human rights approach, treating trafficked persons as victims, not as criminals
• Put guidelines in the law
• Recognize that women and children are most vulnerable, but children need special protection
• Extend protection to trafficked children who are not nationals of your country
• Put resources/funds
• Identify who is accountable for what
• Check on performance of law enforcers and prosecutors through legislative powers
• Advocate
• Consider extradition/bilateral/multilateral treaties
• Address the issues of poverty, gender inequality, gender discrimination in their countries
• Not to treat trafficking as a mere labor or migration problem but a human rights violation

It is very important that states have a human rights approach in their legislations and not to treat trafficking as labor or immigration problem. If states approach it as an immigration issue, then trafficked persons will be treated as criminals for violating immigration laws. Trafficked persons are helpless, especially since many of them are not citizens of your countries. Children especially need special assistance. It is humane not to require that they cooperate with the prosecution as a condition for assistance. They should be helped whether they file cases against their traffickers or not.

With the help of advocates of women’s rights and children’s, some countries have passed anti-trafficking laws. Among these countries are Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines. In 1007, Thailand passed its Measures in Prevention and Suppression of Trafficking in Women and Children. However, the law protects only women and children, not men and boys. Its focus is on sexual exploitation only, although Thailand has a recent Memorandum on Understanding for its government agencies to include other forms of exploitation such as forced labor.

Cambodia has its Law on Suppression of Kidnapping, Trafficking, and Exploitation of Human Beings, which protects “any person,” male or female, but it covers the trafficking/sale of persons for prostitution only and excludes other forms of exploitation.

The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 (Republic Act No. 9208) of the Philippines follows the UN Protocol definition and guidelines. Among its salient features are:
a) Consent of the victims is irrelevant, be they children or adults.
b) It includes other means such as trafficking through adoption, marriage.
c) It includes trafficking of children for armed activities in the country or abroad.
d) It penalizes those who buy trafficked persons.
e) The highest penalty of life imprisonment is imposable if the victim is a child, or offender is public officer, military or law enforcer, parent, guardian.
f) The law covers domestic or trafficking to other countries.
g) The victim can file case in 10 years or 20 years if the violation is committed by a syndicate of at least three persons or committed against at least three persons.
To date, after almost three years, there have been only seven convictions for the crime of trafficking in the courts of the Philippines. Sixty-eight cases are pending in our courts, and 85 cases are pending in the public prosecutors’ offices nationwide.

While our law is quite comprehensive, there are gaps in the law that will hopefully be addressed in the near future. One of these is the lack of funds. Funds are not provided for under our Anti-Trafficking Act, so that the government agencies tasked with its implementation have to make do with their existing budget, without a special fund for anti-trafficking. A law without funds for its implementation will be toothless. An English slang probably expresses the message best, “Put your money where your mouth is.”
Another weakness of the Philippine law is that while “users” or buyers of trafficked persons are penalized with six months of community service for the first offense and one-year imprisonment for the second offense, we do not have the technology that networks our courts nationwide, hence we will have difficulty in tracking down repeat offenders. Corruption is also a problem in our law enforcement agencies.

Governments would benefit from collaboration with nongovernmental organizations because they have, for many years, worked hard to stop trafficking in persons. In the Philippines, we are lucky that these NGOs are members of a national Inter-Agency Council on Anti-Trafficking, and there are similar councils in some provinces.

NGOs also helped draft the Guidelines on the Creation of Regional and Local Inter-Agency Councils Against Trafficking in Persons and Violence Against Women and Children.

But the most important task for governments aside from passing laws is to curb or stop the demand for trafficked persons. If the demand is not stopped, developing countries will find it very difficult to stop or prevent the trafficking of their citizens especially women and children.

Parliamentarians can be effective in this task by compelling law enforcement and prosecution agencies to comply with the law and help stop the demand, through your power over the budget. Just yesterday, the Honorable Joan Fraser from Canada told me that without the knowledge of Parliament, some bureaucrats in government issued visas for bar strippers and these bureaucrats justified their action by saying that there was a high demand for this type of workers. Parliament swiftly stopped the issuance of these visas.

The need to protect our children from trafficking is urgent. Every day, children are trafficked in the borders of Cambodia, Thailand and Burma. Last week, Japanese researchers informed me that the highest numbers of trafficked persons in Japan are Indonesians and Filipinas. Filipino women and girls are being trafficked through our southern port, which is only some six hours by ferryboat to a nearby country.
Another problem is the recruitment of Filipino and other Asian women for marriage to men in the rural areas of another Asian country. You can help ensure that these women, who are not your nationals, have legal protection.

Your honors, I am hopeful that from among you, children have found courageous champions against trafficking. Thank you.

Note: For lack of space, this presentation was shortened by the writer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 6:28 am and is filed under Gender and Law, INQ7 Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.