‘The chance for a life without fear’

The Freedom Walk at the Quezon Memorial Circle last Friday was a festive event,  with an estimated 15,000 individuals from the Quezon City government and national government, NGOs including the Visayan Forum Foundation, religious groups,  and  students  dancing and singing to celebrate their united concern to abolish an insidious global malpractice  of trafficking in  persons.

Trafficking  in persons is defined by the Global Trafficking in Persons Report (GTIP) as sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

 The Global Trafficking in Persons Report 2015 released last Monday  by US State Secretary  John Kerry placed the Philippines in Tier 2, for a fifth year in a row.

By being in Tier 2, the Philippines is one of the countries whose governments do not fully comply with the (TVPA) Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

Tier 2 countries’  governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards . This means the number of victims of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, and the absence for determination that a country  is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with those minimum standards to take additional future steps over the next year.

Tier 2 defines the Philippines as a “source country” and, to a much lesser extent, a destination and transit country for men, women and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Many victims exploited overseas and domestically experience physical and sexual abuse, threats, inhumane living conditions, nonpayment of salaries, and withholding of travel and identity documents. An estimated 10 million Filipinos migrate abroad for work, and many are subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor – including through debt bondage – in the fishing, construction, education, nursing shipping, and agricultural industries, as well as in domestic work, janitorial service and other hospitality-related jobs throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America.

The Report notes that Philippine recruitment practices leave migrant workers vulnerable to trafficking, such as charging excessive fees and confiscating identification documents. Traffickers also use email and social media to fraudulently recruit Filipinos for overseas work.

Trafficking occurs within the Philippines as well. Women and children – many from impoverished families, typhoon-stricken communities, and conflicted  areas in Mindanao —  undocumented returnees, and internally displaced persons are subjected to domestic servitude, forced begging, forced labor in small factories, and sex trafficking in Manila, Cebu, Angeles and urbanized cities in Mindanao. Trafficking also occurs in tourist destinations such as Boracay, Olongapo, Puerto Galera and Surigao where there is a high demand for commercial sex acts. Men are subjected to forced labor and debt bondage in agriculture, fishing, and maritime industries.   

That is not to say the Philippine government has been sleeping on the job. It boasts of having signed Republic Act No. 9208 otherwise known as the “Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003,”   on May 26, 2003, later to be amended, as  an act to institute policies to eliminate trafficking in persons, especially women and children, and establishing the necessary institutional mechanisms for the protection and support of trafficked  persons, and providing penalties  for its violations.

Since its creation, IACAT  claims to be at the forefront of the drawn-out battle against trafficking in persons.  With the committed support from an expansive range of partners, from the government, private sector, civil society, international development and law enforcement organizations, it has made significant strides in the Philippine government’s campaign against trafficking in persons.

The US  report comes two  weeks after the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) released the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for the Expanded Anti-Trafficking Law of 2012 or RA 10364. In light of these successes, and to call for the full implementation of the Expanded Anti-Trafficking Law and its IRR, the IACAT, in partnership with Visayan Forum Foundation Inc., other partners and the local Government of Quezon City,  held the Freedom Walk last Friday, dubbed as  Walk for Freedom: Wakasan ang Human Trafficking, Ito’y Ating Tungkulin         

Uncomfortable the US Report may be, the Philippines has reason to celebrate in the 2014 Global Slavery Index’s  ranking of the Philippines as 1st in Asia, 3rd in Asia Pacific, and 29th globally (out of 167 countries) in terms of interventions to address modern slavery. The Index is released annually by Walk Free, a private non-government international organization.

John Kerry, US Secretary of State, released the Report with the following remarks: “The bottom line is that this is no time for complacency. Right now, across the globe, victims of human trafficking are daring to imagine the possibility of escape, the chance for a life without fear, and the opportunity to earn a living wage. I echo the words of President Obama and say to them: We hear you, and we will do all we can to make that dream come true. In recent decades, we have learned a great deal about how to break up human trafficking networks and help victims recover in safety and dignity. In years to come, we will apply those lessons relentlessly, and we will not rest until modern slavery is ended.” — John F. Kerry, Secretary of State