Philippines urged to evaluate response for trafficking cases
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is urged to create better systems to respond to human trafficking cases, from evaluating cases of distressed migrants to publishing a detailed annual detailed report of human trafficking cases and providing training for officials deployed in foreign service posts.
This comes just as the Philippines’ record on implementing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was evaluated at the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The UN expert body has yet to publish the result of the review.
In the meantime, Migrante International, a coalition of grassroots migrant workers and their families’ organizations from across the globe, is calling on the Marcos administration to:
- Conduct an evaluation of all active and pending cases of distressed migrants reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs and all of the Philippines’ foreign service posts. Migrante put an emphasis on checking the status of Filipino migrant women under the care of the government’s temporary shelters and determine cases of human trafficking
- Published a detailed report of documented human traffickingcases that involve Filipino migrants every year. The report should include data on age, gender, province in the Philippines, industry trafficked into, and the country’s response to each cases.
- Develop and publish guidelines and protocols on how staff at foreign service posts should identify and protect victims of human trafficking.
- Increase the number of trained welfare officers in all foreign services posts and conduct regular trainings on combatting human trafficking and supporting their victims.
Migrante previously submitted its alternative report to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights detailing the government’s neglect of Filipino migrants are human trafficking victims ahead of its 41st Session of the Universal Period Review. The group emphasized the issue of trafficked Filipino women to Syria.
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