Ex-SC chief justice calls for 'radical action' vs human trafficking

A former Supreme Court chief justice is urging Filipinos to “excise the evil of human trafficking” that has been victimizing millions of poor women and children for years.


“This is most disquieting.... Unless something radical is done now, the problem will be too overwhelming to solve tomorrow,” former Chief Justice Reynato Puno said last Friday at an orientation meeting in Quezon City.

The meeting was initiated by the International Justice Mission (IJM) at the Puno United Methodist Church.

Puno said, even the Department of State of the United States admitted in its recent report that the Philippines is one of the worst hit by human trafficking.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there are nearly two million children in the commercial sex trade worldwide.

In the Philippines, there are at least 250,000 street children who are constantly exposed to sexual exploitation and physical abuse, it added.

Meanwhile, the International Labor Organization (ILO) pegged to $9.7 million is generated from trafficking in close to 12 million laborers in the Asia-Pacific region each year.

According to the Rev. Jose Umali, IJM’s national church mobilization consultant, human trafficking is next to illegal drugs, the the largest criminal industry in the world. But the former outpaces the latter in terms of growth rate.

Christina Pinnell of IJM said the growth rate of trafficking in humans outpaces illegal drugs trade because “trafficked girls can be sold several times, unlike drugs that can be sold only once.”

For her part, Mary Girlie Glen Tupas, IJM’s community mobilization manager for churches, said the illegal activity is hard to break in the Philippines because of the tendency of poverty-stricken victims and their families not to pursue a legal course against traffickers.

Tupas said they believe nothing will come out of any such action because they do not have enough resources to pursue an expensive legal case.

Also, she said the IJM it is exerting its best effort to curb the problem in the country.

Last year, it helped facilitate the rescue of 227 victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation, even as it was also instrumental in the forced closure of seven establishments that were found to employ children who were forced into prostitution.

On the other hand, Puno said there is “a challenge to all of us to do something, anything and all things” in order to minimize, if not stop, human trafficking. “This is one battle where we can’t have an anemic faith.”

Puno served as the 22nd Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court. He was appointed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on December 8, 2006.  — Fort Nicolas /LBG, GMA News

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