Urgent need for enforcement agencies to address

 


 



In recent months, a number of incidents of suspected human trafficking and people smuggling have featured in news headlines across the Pacific.
Last month, ISLANDS BUSINESS reported the case of two people in Tonga charged with human trafficking. The arrests related to the recruitment, transportation from another country and harbouring of women in Nuku’alofa.
In April, Solomon Islands Police charged two Asians for living off the earnings of prostitution involving a case of a group of Asian women who arrived on visitor permits and were subsequently found to be working as sex workers in an industry fuelled by fishermen from the many tuna longliner vessels that frequent Honiara.
In March, a man pleaded guilty to charges relating to the alleged recruitment and attempted smuggling of 22 Chinese nationals from Saipan to Guam. In January, American Samoan officials admitted that possibly hundreds of victims had been trafficked from China, the Philippines and South Korea, through Samoa to American Samoa.
A seminar held in Suva in May, jointly organised by UNICEF and the Fiji Police on human trafficking, raised the profile of human trafficking when speakers including Police Commissioner Esala Teleni and the US Deputy Chief of Mission to Fiji, Richard Pruett acknowledged that human trafficking was a problem in Fiji that needed a collective approach in tackling it.
Pruett did not mince his words when he said the US considered Fiji to be a Tier 3 country that did not do enough to address human trafficking and people smuggling issues.
As such, the US as a board member of two key financial bodies—the IMF and World Bank—may have to vote against Fiji’s $500-million loan application the Fiji Government said it would be seeking from the IMF and World Bank.
In 2007, Palau reported the conviction of three Chinese nationals for trafficking 10 Chinese and Filipino women to work as waitresses in a bar. Two of the Chinese nationals were sentenced to 20 years gaol, fined US$50,000 and ordered to pay US$18,500 restitution to the victims.
The third Chinese national was sentenced to one year imprisonment and a US$2,000 fine due to her age. A Filipino national was convicted for exploiting a trafficked person and sentenced to three years in gaol and a US$5,000 fine.
Human trafficking and people smuggling are often difficult to distinguish. They both can involve the illegal movement of persons, but human trafficking involves some element of coercion or exploitation.
Human trafficking is also not necessarily a cross-border crime and can also occur within a country. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children defines human trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. A number of agencies have been working in recent years on human trafficking. The Regional Rights Resources Team (RRRT) has analysed loopholes in Pacific Islands’ national laws that prevent an effective response to human traffickers.
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat currently has a programme of work to ensure that all of its members have in place appropriate and harmonised people smuggling and human trafficking legislation. Save the Children Fund (Fiji) has started a twelve month project on “Combating Trafficking and other forms of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Fiji (CSEC)” aimed at enhancing national efforts, building partnerships and raising awareness amongst institutions/communities in the country against trafficking and CSEC.
People smuggling, on the other hand, is defined under Article 3 of the UN Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants as the procurement in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit of the illegal entry of a person into a State of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident.
Figures are compiled annually by the Pacific Immigration Directors Conference (PIDC), a forum for the official immigration agencies of the Pacific region that since 1996 been meeting annually. In 2008, PIDC members, including Australia and New Zealand, reported 200 cases where people smuggling was detected and 42 cases of human trafficking. For 2008, immigration departments in the Pacific region reported 11 prosecutions for people smuggling and three for human trafficking.
The PIDC has been collecting data on the levels and patterns of human trafficking, people smuggling and other instances of irregular migration for over six years. This data is analysed and provided to governments to assist their policy processes.  Figures for 2009 are currently being compiled.
According to the PIDC Deputy Head of Secretariat and Research Manager, Akuila Ratu compared to other regions around the world, numbers are not large, but they are significant given the criminal nature of people smuggling and human trafficking and the size of the population in the Pacific.
“The statistics reconfirm the perception that the Pacific is being used as a transit point for both smugglers and traffickers, reflecting the vulnerability of the region to these illegal activities,”Ratu explained.
“Unlike in previous years, there appears to be an increasing involvement of locals in smuggling and trafficking cases. This trend of foreign nationals collaborating with local networks needs to be addressed by the law enforcement community,” he said
But given their transnational and clandestine nature, these crimes pose difficulties for investigation and prosecution, Ratu said.
With increased awareness, strong legislation, a clear policy direction and appropriate resourcing the Pacific region can move forward in protecting victims and tackling the perpetrators of these serious crimes.