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.
· 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.
· 17% of those ages 15-24 are unemployed
· 900,000 Filipinos lack identity documents
Of the trafficking victims
· 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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