Sunday, July 28, 2013

The unsolved problem of human trafficking in the Philippines

By Belarmino Dabalos Saguing, Rome, Italy, Sunday 28.07.02013 1500ICT


In the Philippines, systemic, economic, social and other factors create an infrastructure the facilitate human trafficking and make it hard to identify traffickers, prevent trafficking and criminally prosecute the perpetrators.



The problem was aggravated by the insufficiency of government efforts to curb this crime. Since the enactmernt of the Anti-trafficking in Persons Act of 2003, vthe Philippine government has made modest strides to combat human trafficking.                                                                                                          
·         There was an  increase of $230,000 to $1.5M in funding for the government  anti-trafficking agency between 2010-2011.
·         The number of agency staff was increased from 8 to 37 with 115 additional part-time staff.
·         $9.86M was set aside as budget for the assistance to Filipinos in distress overseas.
·         An inquiry revealed that of the 514 Filipinos repatriated from Syria in January-March 2012, 90% were trafficked.
·         More than 2,000 seminars were given to over 100,000 workers leaving the country to work abroad.


Recruitment of trafficking victims occurs mostly in rural and poor regions of the country. The industries that drive the Philippine economy are concentrated in urban areas, mostly in Manila. Inadequate transportation and infrastructures make it hard for those who live in the countrysides the access to the jobs in these industries in the cities.


Despite more resources being spent and programs being added for the effort to combat human trafficking, cases are still unprosecuted because of continuing ignorance of trafficking laws and severe backlogs in the courts.

·         680 cases are pending or ongoing in the court system  during the period 2011-2012.
·         Only 29 convictions of traffickers for the same period.



Causes

The Social issue that facilitates the problem is poverty. The subsistence-level existence for many Filipinos creates a scenario iun which they becom succeptable to offers from trafficking recruiters. This situation is exacerbated by the massive numbers of Filipinos with no birth records or other identity documents.


·         38% of the population lives below the national poverty level.

·         47.5% of the Filipinos live on less than $2.00/day
·         17% of those ages 15-24 are unemployed
·         900,000 Filipinos lack identity documents




Of the trafficking victims

·         300,000-400,000 are women
·         60,000-100,000 are children
·         80% are females younger than 18 years of age.



Migrant Workers

The Philippine economy is dependent on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW). Government structures are in place to export over 1,000,000 Filipinos per year to jobs abroad (Labor Export Program (LEP). The same legal structure are being illegally exploited by human traffickers making it hard to identify and prosecute the traffickers.


·         10% of the total population and 22% of the working age population are employed abroad.

·         10% of the GDP, or $24B in 2012, are made up of OFW remittances.
·         Tying with Mexico, the Philippines rank third in the world in migrant worker remittances, behind only to India and China which have much greater populations than the Pilippines.



The role of corruption.

Corruption helps to  enable and facilitate human trafficking from recruitment to departure of victims from the country.

·         More than $2B are lost annually from Philippine economy due to corruptions.
·         Ther Philippines is the 105th place out of 176 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception index.



Destinations

·         Domestic destination are mostly urban areas such as Manila, Cebu, Angeles City and increasingly to Mindanao.

·         International destination across Asia and the Middle East including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Syria.




Sources: Tansparency International, United Nations, US State Department.















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