ONE OF OUR ACTIVIES IN CLASS (GROUP ACTIVITY)
Miss, please try to double check if Lindsey include my name, I was the one who did the OWWA Part. I still have it saved on my sent item on my yahoo mail.
Human trafficking in Eurasia (Group Work)
LADY LINSEY S. YANG
JOY ANNE DELACRUZ
ARMAND PARUGUING
JASPER CAGUILA
NIKI ALVES
YARA DESTURA
PROTECTION OF NATIONALS: HUMAN TRAFFICKING OF FILIPINOS IN EURASIA
We as a student of Consular and Diplomatic Affairs will attempt to formulate foreign policy program(s) that will hopefully avoid human trafficking, support the lives of the people as well as to avoid future victims of it. We focused our study on Human Trafficking in Europe as an exemplary for our formulation of foreign policy. Before going to our proposal, we would want to define first human trafficking. According to Article 3 paragraph a of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, it defines Trafficking in Persons as “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” Wherein exploitation include, at a minimum, forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, oppression or performs similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
On a brief Background of Human Trafficking of Filipinos in Europe, According to The US department of state human rights report, Philippine men, women, and girls from our country were trafficked for labor and sexual exploitation to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Africa, North America, and mostly in Europe. The government and NGO estimates on the number of women trafficked range from 300,000 to 400,000 and the number of children trafficked range from 60,000 to 100,000. Many Filipino men and women voluntarily migrate to work abroad but later coerced into exploitative conditions. The Philippines has also Internal trafficking of women and children from rural areas, particularly the Visayas and Mindanao, to urban areas, such as Metro Manila and Cebu, for sexual exploitation or forced labor as domestic workers, factory workers, or in the drug trade.
Bigger efforts to battle human trafficking both locally and international should be prioritize by increasing public responsiveness activities and strongly prosecuting those abusing the victims as well as prosecute and convict public officials who profit from or are involved in trafficking itself. In accordance with this paper, NGOs, international organizations as well as Philippine Agencies ought to be responsible to this serious matter because “it is a form of the increasingly mounting problem of organized crime that violates human rights and public liberties” (Younes, 2010) . In preventing this scenario, we include NGOs and agencies such as POEA, and PCTC. International Organizations such as the Solidarity Center - USAID - Trade Union Congress of the Philippines Anti-Trafficking Project, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and lastly, the European Union Commission against Human trafficking.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
The Solidarity Center-USAID- in cooperation with the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) and other local NGO partners, we support a “counter-trafficking awareness program” that includes a project website and development of a trafficking database to track the people who come and go to the country with sufficient proof of their identity and building capacity at the level of local government and not only acknowledges the key role of local governments in service delivery but also the obligation, per the anti-trafficking Law, for the operation of Interagency Councils against Trafficking in Persons at the local level . Philippine Center on Transnational Crime (PCTC), in terms of information exchange and database development promotes, develop and establish a shared database with the PCTC as the lead agency, Compile relevant laws also with the PCTC as the tasked agency, a directory of contact persons and focal points. The idea is to develop a directory of personal and identification addresses of pertinent groups and individuals. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), as a member of the Inter-Agency Council against Trafficking, assumes to deliver education, information dissemination campaigns and free legal assistance to victims of trafficking in persons in the guise of overseas employment promotes the Drafting of laws punishing the acts of trafficking. The group believes that this concern falls under the GOs and the NGOs. As such, it is recommended that the deregulation and amendment of RA 8042 which is the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 or An act to institute the policies of overseas employment and establish a higher standard of protection and promotion of the welfare of migrant workers, their families and overseas Filipinos in distress, and for other purposes, is needed in order to include Trafficking In Persons (TIP) and Illegal Recruitment.
The European Union Commission acts as the international organization responsible for this issue of human trafficking in Europe. EU commission proposed EU rules that would oblige EU Member States to act on the three fronts of prosecuting criminals responsible for trafficking human beings, protecting the victims and preventing the offences. The proposal would increase reliability among national rules on crimes and penalties. Offenders should face their charges even if they did crimes abroad. Inspective tools should use to fight organized crime and must be made available to authorities such as through police and judicial power. On the other hand, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) aims to do more ways to prevent human trafficking; the proposal envisions rising awareness of potential victims on the risks of falling prey or victims to traffickers, and for public officials to distinguish cases of trafficking and deal with them.
In summary, our Policy recommendation encourages sanctions against to individuals, groups or organizations that knowingly hire or buy services from trafficking sufferers, the compilation of data and the use of inspecting strategies were also some of our main goals in acting and preventing human trafficking. This paper promotes the integration of local governments to a bigger scale, because we believed that for a certain movement to achieve its success it must first focus on a smaller scale and once it is achieved in that sense, it can successfully move into a bigger scale which is in the international arena in combatting these crimes and it would also establish bodies in Member States to monitor implementation of these actions.
REFERENCES:
2006 US department of Human Rights Report
2006 US Department of State Human Rights Report
2007 US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report
OWWA. (2010). Retrieved July 17, 2010 from Syria issues anti-human trafficking decree: http://www.owwa.gov.ph/news/2010/02/ syria-issues-anti-human-trafficking-decree/.
Patrick Belser, Michaelle De Cock, Fahrad Mehran, ILO Minimum Estimate of Forced Labour in the World, ILO, Geneva, April 2005.
POEA. (2010). Retrieved July 17, 2010 from Role of the Organization: http://www.poea.gov.ph/.
UNODC. (2010). Retrieved July 17, 2010 from Human Trafficking: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/ what-is-human-trafficking.html#what_is_human_trafficking.
