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Phl off US human trafficking watch list
By Jose Katigbak Star Washington Bureau (The Philippine Star) Updated June 29, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (0)
WASHINGTON – With notable improvement in its record of combating human trafficking, the Philippines has been removed from a US watch list of problem nations in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.
The latest report, issued Monday, elevated the Philippines, Singapore and Laos off the Tier 2 watch list to simply Tier 2, which means that the countries do not fully meet standards on human trafficking but are making efforts to do so.
Had the Philippines not been upgraded from the Tier 2 watch list where it had stagnated for two consecutive years, it would have automatically dropped to Tier 3 and be subjected to certain US sanctions including the withdrawal of non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance.
Malacañang said the development was proof of inroads in the Aquino administration’s effort to curb human trafficking.
“The Aquino administration expresses its appreciation at these citations and emphasizes our continuing campaign against human trafficking,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said.
The 2011 TIP report said that during the period under review, the Philippines convicted 25 trafficking offenders in 19 cases compared with nine convictions in six cases the previous year, a 300 percent increase in both categories.
Included among the 25 offenders was a labor trafficker convicted last February for selling two women into domestic servitude in Malaysia where they were enslaved for nine months without pay.
The labor trafficker was sentenced to 28 years in prison and fined over $28,000 while sentences for the other 24 convicted offenders ranged from six years to life imprisonment, the report said.
The improved performance followed a June 2010 Justice Department order to prosecutors to make trafficking cases a priority and a Supreme Court circular urging courts to expedite the disposition of trafficking cases within 180 days of arraignment.
The TIP report represented a major victory for President Aquino and lifted the sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
Andrelita Austria, head of the embassy’s political section, said the Philippines was grateful its efforts had been recognized but added there was no time for complacency.
A poor grading would imperil US economic aid, particularly the $434-million compact with the Millennium Challenge Corp. to reduce poverty, accelerate growth and create opportunities for Filipinos.
The report said the Aquino government enacted numerous measures and policies to improve institutional responses to human trafficking for this year and in future years, such as increased training of officials and the creation of anti-trafficking task forces in airports, seaports, regions and localities.
Nevertheless, hundreds of victims continue to be trafficked each day and much remains to be done, the report stressed.
Widespread corruption and an inefficient judicial system continue to pose very serious challenges to the successful prosecution of trafficking cases, it said.
The report said the government needed to address significant obstacles to anti-trafficking progress, including the substantial backlog in trafficking cases pending in courts.
Heroes
The TIP report included more than 180 narratives of victims and “heroes” across the globe.
One of the heroes cited was Darlene Pajarito, an assistant prosecutor in Zamboanga City who secured the first sex trafficking conviction in the Philippines in 2005 and the first labor trafficking conviction in 2011. She had prosecuted and secured the conviction of five traffickers in Zamboanga.
It said Pajarito accomplished all this while juggling an average caseload of more than 300 other criminal cases in a country where criminal trials last an average of six years.
One of the victims cited was “Maria” who came to the US with 50 other Filipinos under the H2B guest worker program after paying substantial recruitment fees with the promise of housing and lucrative jobs at country clubs and hotels.
When she arrived the recruiters seized her passport and prohibited her from leaving their house.
A federal grand jury inducted two defendants for conspiracy to hold Maria and other workers in a condition of forced labor.
The TIP report said Filipino prosecutors have difficulty distinguishing labor trafficking crimes from labor contract violations, which may be one cause for the lack of a greater number of criminal forced labor cases filed.
Of a total of 178 countries rated in the report, 29 were deemed compliant with US efforts to fight trafficking and grouped in Tier 1, including Australia and Taiwan.
The Philippines and 83 other countries adjudged to be making significant efforts to comply with minimum standards to eliminate trafficking were in Tier 2.
A total of 43 countries were in the watch list and 22 were in Tier 3.
Five ASEAN members - the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Cambodia - are among those in Tier 2. Four others - Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei - are in the watch list and Myanmar is in Tier 3.
“We have done away with the sanctions but there’s still an indication that we still have to make progress toward the total abolition of human trafficking,” Lacierda said at Malacañang. “We’re doing that, we’re trying, doing our best in curbing human trafficking. But the most important thing is that we have done away with sanctions,” he said.
‘Sea change’
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, praised President Aquino for effecting a “sea change” in the Philippine campaign against human trafficking.
“Look at what the Philippines has done in a change of administration. The Philippines probably export more people of their citizenry than nearly any other country in the world. They go all over the world to work in many different settings. And until the new administration of President Aquino, we didn’t really have the level of commitment we were seeking. We do now, and we see a sea change of difference,” she said in an interview on CNN.
For Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, the Philippine removal from the watch list was a recognition of the Aquino administration’s achievements in fighting human trafficking.
“We are committed to ensuring that our Filipino workers overseas are given full protection and safeguarded from human traffickers. We pledge to further intensify our efforts in addressing this problem,” Del Rosario said.
Justice Undersecretary and Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking in Persons (IACAT) head Jose Vicente Salazar hailed all the country’s anti-human trafficking champions and advocates for helping the country rise a notch from it’s ‘watch list’ rating.
Salazar credited the confluence of persistent and determined efforts of all the government agencies involved in the battle against human trafficking as well as the dogged commitment and support of the non-government organizations in the initial successes of the campaign as he vowed of an even more serious and intensified campaign that would see the eradication of human trafficking in the country.
“We salute all the nameless warriors against human trafficking and we will celebrate our modest gains, but we have barely scratched the surface of this modern day menace that victimizes our men, women and children into involuntary servitude, sexual abuse and bondage... We will forge forward. And all these efforts are in recognition of our, the government’s, responsibility to protect our people, first and foremost,” Salazar hastened.
IACAT, Salazar said, will further identify the most effective mechanisms to fight trafficking, strengthen the existing network of government and non-government organizations dedicated to suppressing the global evil, ensure effective, fast but judicious prosecution of trafficking suspects, and look after the welfare and counseling needs of rescued victims.
Salazar, likewise, congratulated Pajarito for handling the most number of successful prosecutions of human trafficking cases in the country.
At the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker Lorenzo Tañada III said the removal of the Philippines from the US human trafficking watch list “is a clear indication that we are on the right track in protecting the welfare of our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).” But he stressed the development “must not trigger any sort of complacency on the part of the government.”
Tañada, through a privilege speech last year, exposed a case of human trafficking in Biloxi, Mississippi involving 11 OFWs who were allegedly duped by their recruitment agency.
“We shouldn’t be totally pleased with this recent development with the US State Department since it means that we are still in Tier 2,” he said.
“It’s a long and difficult fight since it’s on all fronts - within our shores and in the countries where our fellow Filipinos are sent to by dubious agencies. It’s not just in the US, but everywhere around the globe,” Tañada said.
He said Congress as an institution as well as its individual members should help the government in its crackdown against entities and organizations involved in human trafficking.
“Some of them still get accreditation from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. We need to take more measures that shall see to it that these people will no longer get to manipulate their fellow Filipinos for the sake of profit,” he said.
Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo said the removal of the Philippines from the watch list was fruit of the “sincere and effective effort of the government, particularly immigration officials, in curbing such practice.”
“This will sit well on the stature of the Philippines on the compliance of accepted international standards of safety and order,” Castelo said.
The development was a vote of confidence for the Aquino administration, according to Ang Kasangga sa Kaunlaran party-list Rep. Teodorico Haresco.
But for Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello, chairman of the House committee on overseas workers affairs, “whatever the US State Department says, human trafficking is getting worse in the Philippines.”
Blas Ople Policy Center president Susan Ople said the removal of the country from the watch list averted a possible loss of $250 million in aid from the US and sent “a strong signal to human traffickers around the world.”
Social Welfare Undersecretary Alicia Bala attributed the favorable rating to tougher rules aimed at curbing human trafficking.
“We have stepped up requirements. The government’s anti-human trafficking campaign has been intensified,” she said.
“The basis of the accomplishment is to prevent more victims of human trafficking. This is what we want to highlight as the accomplishment of the Philippine government,” Bureau of Immigration spokesman Antonette Mangrobang said. With Aurea Calica, Evelyn Macairan, Mayen Jaymalin, Helen Flores, Paolo Romero, Jess Diaz, Pia Lee-Brago
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