Global Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons

BY WENCHI YU-PERKINS
Vital voices global partnership

Thank you. Finally it's the last session. I know it's been a long day but it's been a very productive and rich day for me. My presentation will not be as dynamic as Atty. Guanzon's was. She certainly gave a very interesting presentation.

Again, I just want to congratulate the 10 th anniversary for DAWN. I was so moved when I was watching the program. I was telling Ms. Niimi that I felt like tears were almost coming down and that just shows the impact of this program that brings back the lives to the children and the women.

Today I was asked by Carmelita to give a presentation on Global Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking. Today we have talked about the human trafficking problem in the Philippines , and between Philippines and Japan . But now let's look at human trafficking in a global context.

I think this will help us to think more creatively and strategically about how to really address the human trafficking problem. I know that our discussions have been more focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation from the Philippines to Japan . It's a very good case study. As Vital Voices works in many countries with many organizations, we are seeing that the special case between the Philippines and Japan is actually not that unique. There is an entertainment visa system in Cyprus , in South Korea , and potentially other countries. I remember last year when I was in Cyprus attending an international conference on human trafficking and people said they also have the entertainment visa system. So how does Japan address this issue? I think while we are looking at Philippines specifically, this experience can be shared in other regions, in other countries, in other continents. At the same time, other countries' experiences can be shared in the Philippines and in Japan as well.

My job today is to give a very brief introduction on what other forms of human trafficking exist in other parts of the world and illustrate how the world, the international community addresses human trafficking issues in all forms, not just sexual exploitation, but also labor exploitation. Before I start, I will give an overview of the international legal framework that I learned from another lawyer and also through my own research, which led me to understand that human trafficking, as Atty. Guanzon said, is actually a slavery issue. Human trafficking also has another name. It is called modern-day slavery. The world started to address the slavery issue long ago. In the United States we fought a war because of slavery and we thought this war ended 150 years ago. We thought that slavery no longer exists. But unfortunately, today in the 21 st century we are still seeing modern-day slavery, not only in the US but also in many other countries. And no country is immune to this problem.

So in the early 20 th century, we had an international convention about white slaves. Human trafficking, as some of you may know, actually started as a problem when white women were abducted to the Middle East to serve as white slaves. This was one of the first phenomena of human trafficking. Then in 1949, the United Nations held a convention against human trafficking. That convention was the first time to address prostitutes being trafficked to other countries. However, that convention did not set forth the 3-pronged approach that I will discuss later. The convention in 1949 did not provide protection to women. It discussed prosecution and it discussed potential prevention, but it did not talk about protection of victims of trafficking.

It was not until the year 2000 that we formulated an international legal framework to seriously address human trafficking from a more comprehensive perspective, a three-pronged approach – prevention, protection, and prosecution - the so called 3 Ps. And how did that come about? How is it that between 1949 and 2000, in almost 50 years of time, no other international legal framework actually came about or tackled this issue? I would say it started in the early 1990s, with globalization, with the collapse of the former Soviet Union . There was a lot of migration, the flow of human beings from one region to another, from the impoverished regions to more affluent regions happened and it intensified in the mid-1990s. People started to notice that a lot of women, daughters, neighbors were missing. And where did they go? They had no idea.

Let me tell you a story. As I said, Vital Voices started as a State Department program in the mid 1990s. At that time we started working on the human trafficking issues. Why? Because at that time, the First Lady, Mrs. Clinton, current Senator Hillary Clinton, visited Ukraine and there she met with a lot of women. Those women came to her and told her, “We don't know what is going on in our community. Our daughters are missing. Our neighbors are missing. We only know that they were going somewhere but then we never heard from them.” So that's the story about what happened in Ukraine .

Back home in the United States , there were faith based organizations in the Midwest that went to the White House to see the First Lady. They said, “We don't know what to do. We are breaking the laws.” The First Lady asked, “What laws are you talking about that you are breaking?” These organizations said, “We are breaking the laws by harboring illegal immigrants, while we know they are actually victims.” At that time in the United States , we didn't have laws to protect victims of human trafficking. All of them were still treated as criminals in the country. And that's how it started in the United States .

Along with many other countries, mainly in the European Union, we started talking about human trafficking as a global problem, as a global challenge. Luckily there is now an international legal framework, with the UN Protocol, and in most countries we have national laws like in the Philippines with the 3-pronged approach, the 3 Ps. Regionally, there are conventions, such as the European Convention, which was just adopted in 2004. There are also regional policies, for example NATO has zero tolerance policies. ASEAN countries also have an anti-trafficking policy.

So I think in terms of policy and legislation, there are things in place. But implementation is the challenge. I want to talk about the key players in today's world that address human trafficking. They include international global organizations and many of them are present here. The national labor organizations address human trafficking from the labor exploitation perspective. UNICEF addresses this problem from child exploitation perspective. The International Organization for Migration looks at this issue from the migration perspective. There are also many other organizations, such as UNAIDS, seeing it as a public health issue. Then there are NGOs at the national and local level, like DAWN, who provide direct services to victims or survivors of human trafficking. There are organizations like Vital Voices who are international non-government organizations and primarily focus on international advocacy work. Finally, there are governments, one of the more important players and stakeholders in addressing this issue.

We identify those key stakeholders and everyone must work together. And it's not easy. Human trafficking in the US was actually the first issue that brought the law enforcement and NGOs together. It was not easy. It was very challenging. I remember I was working with another organization which was a direct service provider in the Midwest . It was just after we passed the law. But we still asked, “How is it that we still are not receiving victims? How is it that the police and immigration law enforcers continue to send the victims to detention facilities without proper screening?” It was because these law enforcement officers didn't know about this law. They didn't know that we had just passed this law. That is why the training of law enforcers and of judges is so important before we can actually implement the law.

Public awareness about human trafficking is also extremely important. We need to educate the public. Not only because we want help them to understand that these people are actually victims, but also because they can play an important role to help identify victims of trafficking. Most cases in the United States , again I'm only sharing the US experience, were identified by good Samaritans or by community-based organizations. Many times human trafficking victims are in your own backyard; they could be in your neighbor's houses, they could be any random person that if you do not pay close attention to you don't even realize they could be abused or exploited. Many times you need vigilant good Samaritans to be suspicious about their surroundings. The New York Times magazine in 2003 had a huge article about human trafficking and that shocked the society, the American society. This was because the article was basically taking about in Manhattan . There you have many victims of human trafficking. But without proper education, without media writing of such stories, nobody would know they are victims of human trafficking. So that's another reason why raising public awareness is very important. And also the more citizens that are aware of this issue, the more pressure they can put on the politicians, in order to urge for better policies and legislation.

Lastly, I just want to talk about current challenges in the global fight against human trafficking. While we have seen a lot of progress in the Philippines , in Japan , in the United States , in most of the European countries, in Australia , in many other countries and regions, we still are facing a lot of challenges. Mainly it is our lack of understanding of human trafficking. Today, there is still no consensus in terms of what constitutes human trafficking. There is the legal definition and the UN protocol. In reality and in practice, however, there are always different opinions. For example, some law enforcement would argue that the in cases of forced fraud, when some of the women voluntarily go to certain places, these women should not be treated as victims of trafficking because they know. But obviously, from the human rights perspective, consent is irrelevant, as the attorney said, because we are looking at the exploitation. It is not whether you agree to do something or not, it‘s about whether your rights have been violated.

So the knowledge base still needs to be broadened. We still lack proper statistics to show us how severe the problem is and how serious the problem is in most of the countries. We still don't know how many victims of trafficking exist in the Philippines every year. We still don't really know how many trafficking victims and potentially trafficked persons are in the world.

Another challenge we are facing is that governments do not see anti-trafficking efforts as a priority. In the Philippines , we are lucky to have a government that helped pass the law. But in most countries, at the most the government is willing to change their criminal code to criminalize human trafficking because they see human trafficking as a national security threat, as a criminal issue instead of seeing it as a human rights issue. So in most countries, when we approach those governments, they are willing to change their laws to criminalize human trafficking because they also want to arrest criminals. But they are unwilling to provide additional protection or resources to NGOs and to victims of trafficking. Most of them are not willing to provide any funding or resources to invest in prevention programs and that's because the governments don't see it as a priority.

Lastly, I think the biggest challenge is that there is debate about what are the best practices to counter human trafficking. Human trafficking is really a complex issue. You can approach it as a prosecution issue, a migration issue, a labor issue, a public health issue, an illegal immigration issue, a child exploitation issue, a child labor issue, and from so many perspectives. No one can address this issue alone. And what we are seeing is that there is constant debate about what is the best way to address it. Whether it is the criminalization of prostitution, or regulation of migration, or simply tightening border control, all kinds of debates are in place. My suggestion is that different countries obviously have different traditions and cultures and practices. In the Philippines , I think migration is of particular concern because of decades of culture and tradition of migrating and people moving overseas. However, we should not forget that to address human trafficking, we cannot rely on one single approach. It requires comprehensive approaches. That is why I think the government should not be short-sighted to only look at this problem as a regulation of migration. Then you can solve the problem. We should really have a comprehensive strategy and that's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. And then again that's why it requires collaboration and consultation with different non-governmental organizations to have a more balanced and comprehensive perspective.

Lastly, I want to say that we have achieved a lot, but so much more that needs to be done. While we celebrate the 10 th anniversary and celebrate the progress made since the mid-1990s around the globe, we cherish the achievements. We must work harder. There is one saying by an Italian politician that I like very much. He said, “The organized, transnational syndicates are organized and we are not.” So we should be united.

Thank you.