GABRIELA WOMEN’S PARTY LIST on Wednesday urged the Arroyo government to implement fully the “Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003” or Republic Act No. 9208.
GABRIELA worries over the increasing rate of human trafficking in the country as reports show that there are already 500,000 women and 100,000 minors who have been victimized.
The group also expressed its appreciation for the recently launched Task Force Anti-Trafficking of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport although it believes this is not enough to ensure prevention of trafficking and rescue of the victims.
The women group commends the legislation of RA 9208, co-authored by Rep. Liza Maza of 12th Congress, for being the first law of the Republic of the Philippines that protects women and children from trafficking and which has clear provisions on services for the victims, “But unclear implementation has rendered it futile for almost four years now.”
“There is a big gap between this beautifully crafted law and its implementation,” according to Jeanette Laurel, Advocacy Staff of the Talikala Inc., a GWP network of non-government organizations that protect women and children from sex-trafficking.
Laurel said there are no appropriate facilities for the services for victims, such as livelihood and skills training, emergency shelter or appropriate housing, counseling and rehabilitation, which are stated in the law.
GWP also pointed out the need to educate the people about the said law but this must be done first in the government ranks because it has not yet been popularized even in the local government units.
“Government agencies have not concretized the services mandated by the law. In the city, these services are hard to access and even monitoring systems among barangays are definitely non-existent,” Laurel said.
“Definition of trafficking is still vague for the judiciary. It does not consider an act as trafficking when a victim is rescued in the airport for it has not been consummated yet,” Laurel said.
Most of the cases were downgraded to illegal recruitment disregarding the gravity of human trafficking, she added. “In February last year, we had rescued eight victims from trafficking; five of these cases were treated as illegal recruitment and three were dismissed,” she added.
Talikala Inc. reported that in Davao City, there were 40 victims of sex-trafficking for February to December 2006, youngest of them was 14 year-old, not including cases of other forms of trafficking documented in the city.
“These cases (40) were all unresolved leaving the victims vulnerable for re-trafficking because they remain unemployed and unable to access education,” Laurel said.
No comments:
Post a Comment