EDITORIAL - Human trafficking haven

The Philippines is not among the worst three in the world, but the country has remained on a US government watch list of states that have not done enough to fight human trafficking. For the fourth consecutive year, the Philippines is in Tier 2 in the US State Department’s latest annual Trafficking in Persons report.

As in the Impunity Index where the Philippines has consistently ranked among the worst in the world in the murder of journalists, the country remained in Tier 2 in the US report largely because of the weakness in bringing human traffickers to justice.

The government is aware of the sectors most vulnerable to human trafficking: Filipinos recruited for work and who end up as sex workers or slave laborers in Asia, the Middle East, and in urban centers and tourist destinations in the Philippines. The US report noted that human trafficking with Filipinos as victims is also on the rise on Europe. The report also pointed out that Philippine law enforcers’ complicity plus corruption at all levels of government, including in diplomatic missions abroad, undermined efforts to fight the problem.

Aid groups had earlier reported that prostitution is on the rise in the areas devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda and other disasters in the Visayas and Mindanao. Those sold for sex include children. Last week Greek police filed charges against five men, two of them policemen, watching live-streaming of men in the Philippines sexually abusing children, some as young as six years old.

Laws have been passed in the Philippines against cyber crimes to give more teeth to the campaign against child pornography. Authorities are also coordinating with their counterparts around the globe to bust human trafficking rings. Human traffickers, however, continue to find ways of evading the law across borders. The retention of the country on the US watch list is a reminder that the campaign needs more effort.