THE RECRUITMENT and sale of humans is an age-old crime against the rights, freedom and dignity of everyone exploited and forced to work for little or no wages and controlled and trapped by their traffickers and slave-masters.
Young women and boys are especially targeted and offered fake jobs and given empty promises to get them to sign documents that put them in debt and under the control of their recruiters.
Worse, when trafficked to work in the Philippines or abroad, they are forced to work in brothels, as domestics, in factories and are living mostly in sub-human conditions and are underpaid. Many are brought to brothels and sex parlors, sexually abused and trapped in sex work from which few escape.
The “Not for Sale Fund,” an international charity says, “Today, there are approximately 45.8 million people caught in the trap of modern slavery around the world. This includes 10 million children, 15.4 million people in forced marriage, and 4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation. However, it is difficult to determine exact statistics because so many cases of human trafficking go undetected and unreported.”
Poverty and the desire for a life of economic liberty and well-being of one’s family make poor men and women vulnerable and in danger of a life of slavery. Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery and it is facilitated in the Philippines by individuals’ and syndicates aided by corrupt officials. It is a global business worth billions of dollars to traffickers around the world.
It is a crime that will never be vanquished unless the victims are healed and cared for and the criminals convicted and jailed.
Most criminals operate with impunity and walk free. Only 89 were convicted in 2019 and 73 were convicted in 2020 in the Philippines.
The Philippines is considered a hot spot for human trafficking and slavery and while hundreds of suspected traffickers are arrested, few are convicted. The US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for 2020 points out how very few convictions there are in a population of 110 million people.
In part the report says, “The government convicted 73 traffickers under the anti-trafficking act and related laws (89 traffickers in 2019). Most of the convicted traffickers subjected children to sex trafficking, including 25 who sexually exploited children online (compared to 32 in 2019); three committed labor trafficking (five in 2019).”
This low conviction rate is because some investigators, government social services and rescue NGOs have limited facilities and therapeutic centers to protect, treat and empower the rescued victims of sexual abuse, exploitation, and trafficking.
Many victims after giving statements, staying a few days or weeks in a temporary shelter without therapeutic and psychological intervention, are sent home, traumatized. There, the relatives and friends of the accused trafficker threaten them not to testify. (To be continued)/PN
