UK CONSUMERS TO HELP END HUMAN TRAFFICKING

UK CONSUMERS TO HELP END HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Gracious day from the Pearl of the Orient!

12.3 Millions of laborers work under severe, forced labor conditions at any given time today. Such conditions are akin to the involuntary servitude of the colonial heydays of Western imperialism. Come think of it, the slave trade hasn’t really ended, it only mutated into a new form.

During the halcyon days of the British Empire, no less than over 20,000 ships owned by British traders were plying the seas just for one key purpose: to trade slaves sourced from Africa. The same slave traders, working behind the British East India Company, paid every intellectual prostitute that they can tap in order to propound and popularize laissez faire as a doctrine that, in reality, defended the interests of the same slave traders. Free trade means the unhampered, unregulated, uncontrolled trading of human chattel by greedy and inhumane British slave traders.

Today, that situation of the Empire’s dirty business is reversing towards a humanitarian bent. British consumers are now being urged to support the campaign against human trafficking, which seems to be a karmic payment for the sins of commission of their not-so-ancient compatriots.

Below is a report from the IOM about the anti-human trafficking campaign.

[Philippines, 18 November 2011]

Source: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/pbnEU/cache/offonce/lang/en?entryId=30788

IOM Campaign Urges UK Consumers to Buy Responsibly to Help End Human Trafficking

Posted on Friday, 14-10-2011

United Kingdom - Eliminating the demand for trafficked and exploited labour is critical if efforts to end human trafficking are to be successful, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM) ahead of Anti-Slavery Day in the UK.

Launching its "Buy Responsibly" campaign in London on 18 October 2011 (http://www.buyresponsibly.org/), IOM is urging consumers in particular to play a greater role in ending human trafficking in the UK and across the world.

Encouraging the public to question "What's Behind the Things We Buy?" the campaign, designed together with Saatchi & Saatchi in Geneva, hopes to mobilise consumer power in dramatically changing consumer habits in the UK.

Estimates put the number of people in forced or bonded labour and sexual servitude in the world at 12.3 million at any given time. Although public focus has largely been on the issue of trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation, greater incidences are emerging of trafficking for labour exploitation involving all ages and both sexes.

Despite best efforts by all those involved in countering human trafficking, indications are that it is at least as widespread today as it was ten years ago.

In the UK, there is a slow but growing realisation that slavery is present in the UK itself and not limited to distant shores.

"A change in mindset and practices among consumers and businesses needs to occur," Swing adds. "Consumers in the UK who are increasingly demanding fair trade have the power to end labour exploitation by buying responsibly and getting businesses to rethink how they operate. It's also in the interest of business to ensure that supply chains are free of trafficked or exploited labour," says Swing.

The IOM campaign, part of a global effort to address the demand side of human trafficking for labour exploitation, has already been launched in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands.

The IOM campaign, part of a global effort to address the demand side of human trafficking for labour exploitation, has already been launched in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands.

For the UK launch on 18 October, IOM and NGOs, including the Human Trafficking Foundation, Anti-Slavery International, Barnardo's and Stop the Traffik, will be in Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London.

A 5x4 metre upside-down giant shopping trolley imprisoning people representing trafficked migrant workers, an image of the campaign, will be on site in Trafalgar Square. The public will be encouraged to stop and ask what it can practically do to make a difference.

The Buy Responsibly launch is one of the many awareness raising events being held in London and across the UK by NGOs as part of Anti-Slavery Week.

BROADCASTERS – The Buy Responsibly TV spot is available for use and download

Please go to:

http://www.quicklink.tv/IOM/download.asp?Clip_ID=1246

http://www.quicklink.tv/IOM/download.asp?Clip_ID=1244

For further information on the Buy Responsibly campaign, please visit: http://www.buyresponsibly.org/

For further information on IOM and its Counter-Trafficking Work, please visit: www.iom.int

For any media or interview requests, please contact:

Jean Philippe Chauzy
Tel: +41 79 285 4366
E-mail: jpchauzy@iom.int

or

Jemini Pandya
Tel: +41 79 217 3374
E-mail: jpandya@iom.int

For any further information on the launch itself, please contact:

Chiara Gnoli:
Tel: +44 20 7811 6053
E-mail: cgnoli@iom.int

or

Chris Gaul:
Tel: +44 207 7811 6077
E-mail: cgaul@iom.int

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UKRAINE DOWNPLAYS HUMAN TRAFFICK RISKS, WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?

UKRAINE DOWNPLAYS HUMAN TRAFFICK RISKS, WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Ukraine, that once mighty component state of the Soviet Union, hasn’t seen much of the light of day of the new republic post-USSR. The once imperious and grand USSR was the world’s 2^nd largest economy during its heyday, but historical mills have rolled on and the rugs under the feet of the Union peoples had drastically changed.

Badly sore on its feet for the dis-integration of that economic union, Ukraine had to scrounge for meager resources to re-start its sagging economy. It simply doesn’t have the experience to run a market economy, thus spawning mafia groups that took on every sector of the economy they can grab in a copycat of the Russian mafia.

Ukrainians, like their fellow ex-USSR folks, are compelled to seek for jobs overseas no matter what the mistreatment and risks they take. So desperate for cash are the Ukrainians that they’d opine a blindness to abuses and other mistreatments for the gainsake of pumping their cash-starved pockets.

What is your take of the Ukrainian downplaying of labor hazards overseas? Below is a report on the subject culled from the IOM.

[Philippines, 17 November 2011]

Source: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/pbnEU/cache/offonce/lang/en?entryId=30789

Ukrainians Underestimate Dangers of Human Trafficking, Report Finds

Posted on Friday, 14-10-2011

Ukraine - The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians have a limited awareness of the dangers of human trafficking, a newly published survey suggests.

The opinion poll conducted by a market research company GfK Ukraine for IOM Ukraine was carried out among a sample of 1,000 respondents (representative of Ukrainian population 14 – 65 years old by administrative units, types of settlements and gender). It found that 70 per cent of the interviewees believed they were not personally at risk of being trafficked.

While the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians (92 per cent) said they were aware of trafficking for sexual exploitation and 82 per cent conscious of the fact that Ukrainians are being trapped into forced labour, it is their low economic status and previous successful migration experiences which determine the level of risk they are under. 9 per cent of the poll respondents said they were planning to go abroad in search of living. Almost 80 per cent of this group's representatives would agree on illegal employment, 13 per cent are ready to work for any employer who would offer an attractive payment. Residents of the Central region are more inclined towards risky behaviour. According to GfK data, 36.6 per cent of Central Ukraine's population have to save on food and clothes. Up to 16 per cent of the Central Ukraine's residents have external migration experience.

"Although considerable numbers of Ukrainian migrants have experienced exploitation and abuse abroad, the poll suggests that many more are willing to engage in risky practices in their often desperate search for employment abroad," says IOM Ukraine's Chief of Mission Manfred Profazi. "This risk taking behaviour is often fuelled by migrants who have successfully escaped exploitation and have returned home with earnings."

Another disturbing finding of the survey is that Ukrainians tend to accept mistreatment and even rights violations in order to keep their jobs. According to the poll, 24 per cent of all respondents said they were willing to accept penalties from their employer for making mistakes at work. Further 11 per cent would accept withholding of their salaries, a method regularly used by traffickers to coerce migrants into exploitation.

More than 110,000 Ukrainians are believed to have fallen prey to traffickers since 1991 and Ukraine remains one of the main countries of origin of exploited labour in Europe.

As part of efforts to reduce the vulnerability of migrants to trafficking and exploitation, IOM Ukraine recently launched a website (http://www.stoptrafficking.org/) aiming to raise general public awareness of the irregular migration dangers and foster further cooperation among all partners fighting traffickers who increasingly use the internet to lure their victims into situations of exploitation.

"This is why IOM and its partners are increasingly going online to combat human trafficking," says IOM's Profazi. "This means getting our awareness message across job searching sites and employment portals, which regularly contain false promises of easy work abroad."

Since the start of its counter-trafficking activities in Ukraine in 1998, IOM Ukraine assisted almost 8,000 victims of trafficking, both women and men who suffered from sexual and labour exploitation mainly in the Russian Federation and Poland.

For more information please contact:

Varvara Zhluktenko
IOM Ukraine
Tel: +38-044-568-50-15
E-mail: vzhluktenko@iom.int

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YOUTH ANTI-XENOPHOBIA: WHAT’S UP COSTA RICA?

YOUTH ANTI-XENOPHOBIA: WHAT’S UP COSTA RICA?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

The drug menace has been identified as a top crime to boot in Latin America, rendering it as the top national security problem as well. The youth has been notably most direly affected by social problems spawned by the drug menace, so much that xenophobia has come to infect the likes of Costa Rica’s youth very recently.

Necessarily, xenophobia breeds hatred, and hatreds scale up hate crimes. For countries that have had histories of respectable tolerance to other Latinos such as Costa Rica and Dominican Republic, it is terribly challenging to sustain the tolerance for long and not cave in to distrust and violence.

Just exactly what measures are being taken to “dis-infect” the youth from going the road of intolerance and start a rampage of anti-foreign hate crimes or so? Below is a reportage from the UNHCR concerning the subject.

[Philippines, 01 November 2011]

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/4e9856c79.html

Costa Rican youth strives to combat xenophobia

News Stories, 14 October 2011

© UNHCR/P. Mora

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, October 14 (UNHCR) – Sitting around a large table in UNHCR's San José office, four young friends discuss a topical subject in Costa Rica that impacts directly on the lives of each of them. The earnest quartet – one Costa Rican, a Colombian, a Nicaraguan and a Bolivian – are members of La Red de Jóvenes sin Fronteras (Youth Network Without Borders), which was set up earlier this year to combat the spread of xenophobia among the country's youth.

Gathering a core of about 70 members – Costa Ricans, foreign migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers – the group has been active in countering negative, stereotypical perceptions about foreigners in a country that lies on a major south-north mixed migration route but where many young people oppose integration of refugees.

The young activists regularly hold small meetings to discuss the scourge of xenophobia and draw up strategies to counter it and to spread understanding about refugees and migrants and debate why they deserve to be treated fairly. Using mediums such as art, sports, theatre and social media platforms to attract young people, they are starting to make progress and setting an example in the region.

Twenty-year-old Millerland Angulo is the Colombian among the group of friends around the table. She is a refugee who made her way to Costa Rica three years ago after fleeing from persecution and conflict in her homeland. It was not long before she encountered hostility.

"When I first moved here, I remember my neighbour asking our landlord why she was renting her house to Colombians," Millerland explains, adding that the woman "strongly believed we were only here as [drug] traffickers and would bring drug-dealing to the neighbourhood."

Such ill-informed and negative perceptions about refugees are widespread, especially among young people. A national study conducted in 2010 by UNHCR found that 64 per cent of the population had an unfavourable opinion of the 12,500 refugees from more than 40 countries in Costa Rica. Within that group, 87 per cent said they believed refugees have a negative impact on society and the economy.

It was against this background that UNHCR helped establish a project called Lazos sin Fronteras (Bonds Without Borders). As part of this project, a group of about 180 young refugees, migrants, and Costa Rican nationals set up La Red de Jovenes sin Fronteras, or La Red, at a conference in February and issued a declaration of their goals.

They have received support from the Dutch government and UNHCR, which wanted a project that would promote young people as leaders of the present as well as the future. The core members of the fledgling group, with technical help from the refugee agency, mapped out a programme of activities to address the integration challenges that refugees and migrants face in Costa Rica.

Jozef Merkx, UNHCR's representative in Costa Rica, said the programme was unique and a possible model for other countries where xenophobia is a problem. "It's the first initiative where migrants, refugees and Costa Ricans are working together towards integration," he says. "It's a completely different approach to addressing the issue because the affected population is getting involved in creating a solution. It's a terrific means of providing a strong sense of empowerment to these groups," he adds.

Martha Amada, the young migrant from Nicaragua in the UNHCR office meeting, agrees with Merkx about the potential influence of La Red. "If other young people all over the world came together to do something similar to what we are doing to make a difference, then the vision of change can become reality," she says.

Part of the problem in Costa Rica is that many young people are not being taught at school about toleration. La Red is trying to bridge that gap by promoting solidarity and friendship between youth of different cultures and nations and by spreading awareness about refugees and migrants.

UNHCR's Valentina Duque, who works closely with La Red, believes that the involvement of young people in countering xenophobia is vital. "If they are willing and the desire is there, they can achieve so many great things," she says. "Their only setback is that they often lack the tools and information necessary to make significant changes. This programme was designed to give them that opportunity."

They've been busy and creative using the tools that they do have to hand. On World Refugee Day (June 20) this year, members of La Red organized a flash mob performance in San José. In July, they created a TV commercial for UNHCR's "1" Campaign.

And they have been getting results, attracting interest from prospective new members as well as important outside organizations, including the Costa Rican Youth Parliament, which has agreed to promote the objectives of La Red. This could help the group get political support for tackling important integration challenges, including access to health care, employment and education.

Eduin Jane, a 25-year-old Costa Rican member, summarizes what motivates them. "The most important thing is that, as a group, we don't believe in borders. No one place and one person is better than anyone else," he says. "Everyone may have a different nationality or live in a different country, but we are all citizens of the world."

It's a sentiment that Millerland embraces wholeheartedly. "When I first moved to Costa Rica, I didn't have any friends. I spent all of my time watching TV and felt useless," she admits. "However, now that I am in the network, I forget that I'm in Costa Rica and it feels like I'm back in Colombia – for the first time, it feels like I am home."

By Erin Kastelz in San José, Costa Rica

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ANTI-TRAFFICK & LABOR EXPLOITATION

ANTI-TRAFFICK & LABOR EXPLOITATION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Human traffick is meant to exploit laborers. This is a commonsensical truth that even kindergarten minds can pretty understand well.

Following the trend for crimes that have become globalized, so has human traffick become globalized as mafia rings and petty criminals engage in the luscious trade of peddling illegal human resource. Some human traffick outfits utilize the labor recruits for transiting narcotics and precious metals & minerals (gold, diamond), with many of such ‘mules’ landing in jail eventually.

Below is an apt news reflection from the International Organization for Migration about the subject.

[Philippines, 25 October 2011]

Source: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/pbnEU/cache/offonce/lang/en?entryId=30749

Awareness Campaign against Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Marks World Day for Decent Work
Posted on Friday, 07-10-2011

Germany -

The IOM led Berlin Alliance against Labour Trafficking is today launching a nationwide campaign to raise public awareness on the issue of trafficking for labour exploitation.

The campaign, which will run until the end of November throughout Germany, urges the public to think about the links that exist between human trafficking and labour exploitation, which are largely driven by a relentless demand for cheap labour and services.

According to estimates of the International Labour Organization (ILO), at least 12.3 million people worldwide are victims of forced labour.

"Trafficking for labour exploitation is often not recognized at first glance," says Philipp Schwertmann, Head of the IOM Germany Counter-Trafficking Team. "This crime is nevertheless widespread in many different industries, including the restaurant and catering sectors, private household services and in the construction and agricultural sectors."

Victims of trafficking for forced labour have no other choice but to work unduly long hours with little to no pay, with high debts often owed to recruitment agencies and threats of violence from employers.

As part of the campaign, a dedicated website containing general information about trafficking for labour exploitation, information on the rights of employees and available counselling services in 14 different languages is also being launched today.

It includes industry-specific indicator lists to help identify trafficking and labour exploitation as well as a selection of case descriptions from within Germany and abroad.

Billboards underlying the hidden and harmful nature of trafficking for labour exploitation will be distributed throughout the country and a video will be shown in movie theatres in Berlin and on the Berlin subway screens.

The World Day for Decent Work is commemorated globally. It was established in 2008 by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to promote humane working conditions.

The Berlin Alliance against Labour Trafficking is a joint project between the IOM, the confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Berlin Senate Department for Integration, Work and Social Issues (SenIAS).

For more information, please go to: gegen-menschenhandel.de

For other information please contact:

Philipp Schwertmann
IOM Berlin
Tel: +49 30 27877818
E-mail: pschwertmann@iom.int

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ADDRESSING HUMAN TRAFFIC VIA TRAINING: AFRICA SHOWCASE

ADDRESSING HUMAN TRAFFIC VIA TRAINING: AFRICA SHOWCASE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Human trafficking can make or break a country that is known the seat of human traffic operations. So abhorrent is the phenomenon of human traffic and smuggling that any country named as seat of operations will need to work harder to shore up its tainted image, craft public policy to address the ailment, and strengthen institutions that can address the problem.

So gargantuan is the ailment of human traffic today as it has become globalized, with mafia groups collaborating across borders to smuggle people outside. Not only that, smuggled humans are also utilized to smuggle gold, treasures, and drugs, thus multiplying the complications to the problem.

Capacity-building initiatives aimed at training stakeholders, both grassroots and country-wide volunteer organizations, is another key result area for addressing the problem directly. Below is one such showcase training in Africa conducted by the IOM and partners.

[Philippines, 24 August 2011]

Source: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/pbnAF/cache/offonce/lang/en?entryId=30060

IOM Provides Somaliland, Puntland and Djibouti Coastguards with Lifesaving Rescue at Sea Skills to Protect Vulnerable Migrants

19-07-2011

Djibouti - Coastguards from Somalia's Puntland, Somaliland as well as Djibouti are taking part in an innovative IOM training programme to equip them with the necessary skills to assist and protect irregular migrants and asylum-seekers travelling at great risk through Somaliland, Puntland and Djibouti en route to Yemen and the Gulf States.

The six-day workshop, which opened yesterday in Djibouti City, brings together 50 coastguards as part of a Japanese-funded initiative to equip them with the necessary equipment and skills to assist and protect vulnerable migrants, trafficking victims and smuggled migrants.

"This training is critical to enhance the coastguards' ability to save lives," says IOM's Mixed Migration Coordinator Husham Halim. "We are particularly encouraged to see that for the first time, coastguards from Somaliland are taking part in the training alongside colleagues from Puntland and Djibouti. This will no doubt increase their ability to respond at a sub-regional level."

These workshops are part of a broader IOM programme to strengthen the protection of, and emergency assistance to, irregular migrants and asylum-seekers from Somalia and Ethiopia travelling through the region.

Every year, tens of thousands, mainly Ethiopian and Somali migrants and asylum-seekers, make the hazardous journey from their place of origin across the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and beyond. These individuals, driven by political unrest and extreme poverty face not only dangers at sea but also physical risks, harassment and discrimination during their journey on land.

For more information, please contact:

Husham Halim
IOM Djibouti
Tel: +253 35 72 89
E-mail: hhalim@iom.int

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