RP still on US trafficking watch list
The United States is waiting to see labor traffickers sent to jail before it removes the Philippines from its Tier 2 watch list of countries that failed to curb human trafficking last year.
This is the second year in a row that the Philippines is on the Tier 2 watch list, making the country vulnerable to sanctions by next year if the situation does not improve.
“Despite legal provisions designed to ensure a timely judicial process, trafficking cases in the Philippines take an average of three to four years to conclude,” the US State Department said in its 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report released yesterday in Washington, DC.
It noted that despite rampant labor trafficking in the country, no conviction has yet been made since an anti-trafficking law was passed in 2003.
It added that the first ever conviction of a public official for sex trafficking only happened last year, referring to a September 2009 court ruling that sentenced a police officer caught four years earlier to have trafficked children at a nightclub he owned.
“Greater progress in prosecution and conviction of both labor and sex trafficking offenders is essential for the Government of the Philippines to demonstrate significant and increasing progress toward compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking,” the State Department said in the report.
While it acknowledged the Department of Justice’s June 2009 order to have prosecutors prioritize trafficking cases, the US report noted there is no corresponding mechanism to do so in the Philippine court system where over 380 such cases are pending.
US State Secretary Hillary Clinton described the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report as very thorough, which also outlines how countries could be removed from Tier 3 or the Tier 2 watch list.
Tier 3 is a list of countries not making significant efforts to combat human trafficking.
Tier 2 countries are those making significant efforts, but others on the watch list are countries that failed to achieve much during the year in review.
Tier 1 countries are those deemed fully responsive to anti-human trafficking benchmarks. Overall, 177 countries are monitored in the report.
“Countries come to us and ask very forcefully not to be dropped in their category and we hear them out and we tell them. And we increasingly tried last year to do that earlier in the process –we’re going to do it even earlier this year– to tell them the kinds of things that we would look to that would demonstrate the commitment that we think would make a difference, to talk about best practices, to share stories. And some countries have listened and the results speak for themselves. Others have not,” she said during a press briefing.
The State Department’s recommendations to the Philippines are:
- – Demonstrate greater progress on efficiently investigating, prosecuting, and convicting both labor and sex trafficking offenders involved in the trafficking of Filipinos in the country and abroad;
- – Increase efforts to vigorously investigate and prosecute government officials complicit in trafficking;
- – Dedicate more resources and personnel to prosecuting trafficking cases;
- – Devote increased resources to victim and witness protection, including for shelters;
- – Increase efforts to engage governments of destination countries through law enforcement and diplomatic channels in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking offenders;
- – Ensure the terms of Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with foreign countries hiring Filipino workers are met such that workers are adequately protected while abroad;
- – Assess methods to measure and address domestic labor trafficking; and continue to disseminate information on the 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act throughout the country and train law enforcement and social service officials, prosecutors, and judges on the use of the law.
In East Asia and the Pacific, also on the Tier 2 watch list are China, Macau, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Micronesia and Fiji.
On Tier 2 are Mongolia, Japan, Indonesia, Palau and Timor Leste. Among Tier 1 countries in the region are Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea.
In contrast, on the negative list (Tier 3 countries) are North Korea, Burma and Papua New Guinea.
Trafficking law enforcement slackened in East Asia and the Pacific last year despite a 55-percent increase in the number of victims identified.
According to the report, the number of prosecutions slid from 1,083 in 2008 to a dismal 357 last year and in terms of convictions, from 643 to 256.
On a global scale, there was an eight-percent increase in trafficking prosecutions and a 40-percent increase in convictions last year compared to 2008.
There were 49,105 trafficking victims identified in 2009, which is almost 60 percent more than the previous year’s number.
