Anti-human trafficking task force to be created in typhoon-wrecked Eastern Visayas
'Cash-for-Work' program attracts work force in Tacloban. Residents of typhoon-devastated municipalities hitch a ride on a jeepney bound for Tacloban City on Tuesday, November 26, to find work in the government's Cash-for-Work Program for the victims of Typhoon Yolanda. Carlo Mateo
Lawyer Jonathan Lledo, chief of the National Inter-Agency Taskforce Against Trafficking (NIATFAT), on Wednesday said the region needs its own task force to conduct an investigation similar to the one undertaken in Davao Oriental after Typhoon Pablo devastated the region in 2012.
“Any typhoon or calamity-stricken areas is a fair game for the recruitment of people, who will take advantage of their vulnerabilities,” Lledo told GMA News Online at the sidelines of a workshop being conducted by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights in Makati City.
Eastern Visayas is the hardest hit region by Typhoon Yolanda, one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded. It generated freak storm surges that swallowed up entire towns, killing over 5,000 and uprooting countless families from their homes.
Exacerbating the catastrophe is that the worst-hit areas, the eastern islands of Leyte and Samar, are among the poorest in the Philippines, with most of the four million people there enduring near subsistence farming or fishing lifestyles.
Cases in quake-hit Bohol
Lledo pointed out that Bohol, which was hit by a magnitude-7.2 earthquake last month, had reported cases of trafficking.
In one case, the Philippine Office of Employment Administration (POEA) alerted NIATFAT of a European man who recruited two Filipinas from the area, Lledo recalled.
Lledo said officials at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport were allerted on the three to prevent their flight to Poland via Malaysia. The three, however, did not show up at the airport. Lledo believes they had been tipped off.
Among the programs that the task force in Eastern Visayas will undertake is an awareness campaign that will explain to the residents the dire consequences of human trafficking.
Lledo said it is important for the residents to know the distinction between given consent and consent given under duress. Protection of all trafficked persons, he said, will also be a priority.
The two-day ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights workshop aims to develop the care of trafficking victims and to encourage continued cooperation between all member nations.
To protect trafficked persons, harsher penalties will be dealt to offenders, Lledo said. “The first offense for the use of trafficked persons... we have increased the penalty from a mere community service to imprisonment and higher fines.”
Workshop
Such concerns were the topic of the AICHR workshop, which aims to develop the care of trafficking victims and to encourage continued cooperation between all member nations, even if they have not ratified the Palermo protocols.
The Palermo protocols refer to the three system of rules adopted by the United Nations' General Assembly in 2000 at Palermo, Italy. Formally known as the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the protocols “target specific areas and manifestations of organized crime.”
The protocol most concerned with human trafficking is the Protocol to Prevent, Supress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children; and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air.
Ambassador Rosario G. Manalo, the Philippine representative to the AICHR, said areas of commonalities allowed for cooperation between ASEAN countries. True cooperation, she said, stems from the trust these countries built with each other from respecting the laws that govern their states.
“ASEAN partners talk to one another,” said Manalo, adding that, despite not having the massive resources of other international groups, the trust they've formed meant their support is a constant.
When asked of opinions on the necessity of intervention, she said intervention should not even be an option. Non-interventionism meant states were in-control of their own countries by use of their self-made laws. When the capacity or authority of each country is respected, common problems—like human trafficking—can actually be acted upon. — with AFP/KBK, GMA News
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