The
global fight against human trafficking
Benny
YP Siahaan ; A foreign service officer based in New York
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JAKARTA
POST, 24 Februari 2014
Sparked by the interview with Shandra Woworuntu in Agence
France-Presse on Jan. 31, the issue of human trafficking became news again in
Indonesia, with Shandra revealing herself as a survivor of human trafficking
in the United States. Just on Dec. 31, President Barack Obama had proclaimed
January as a month of campaigning against modern slavery and human
trafficking.
A possible misunderstanding from the news reports on Shandra may
have been that the Indonesian government was responsible for her fate, particularly
its consulate in New York.
Reports had said Shandra experienced difficulty in securing
assistance at the consulate, however, a new passport was issued once she
acquired a police notice on a missing document. A consulate member has said
that the consular team had no information that Shandra was a victim of
trafficking; the situation might have been different had they known.
Beyond the case of
Shandra, a former financial analyst now lobbying for better foreign workers’
protection in the US, let’s look at what lies ahead in our fight against
human trafficking. Indonesia only adopted the Human Trafficking Law in 2007
while the US enacted the law in October 2000. In comparison to 2001,
Indonesian embassies and consulates abroad are more ready and well equipped
to confront cases like Shandra’s.
Since 2003, the Foreign Ministry established a special
directorate that mainly focuses on protecting Indonesian citizens and
establishments abroad. By 2008, through a presidential decree following the
passing of the 2007 law on trafficking, a national task-force on human
trafficking was established involving 19 ministries and national institutions
like the police force and Attorney General’s Office.
The strategies are not perfect but Indonesia is on right track.
Aside from the current national strategies to combat human
trafficking, eradicating poverty will also help prevent poor people from
being trapped by criminal organizations. However, this case might not be
applied to people like Shandra since she has a middle class background and is
well educated. Thus, awareness of the danger of human trafficking is also of
paramount importance.
In this context, the 2013 US report on human trafficking, which
ranked Indonesia in “Tier 2” in human trafficking efforts (of course, with
the US in “Tier 1”), based on its Human and Violence Protection Act of 2000,
is rather judgmental and does not help, as no country is immune to the issue.
Human trafficking is an extraordinary crime. Hence, to eradicate
it warrants extraordinary measures. Furthermore, due to its concealed nature,
it is difficult to get the accurate number of victims. In many cases, the
victim themselves are afraid or too ashamed to report their cases.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, although most
states have signed and ratified the protocol on anti-trafficking,
implementation remains problematic given the few convictions and the rare
identification of and assistance to victims. The International Labor
Organization also estimates that more than 21 million people worldwide are
victims of trafficking, with women and children being the most vulnerable
groups.
Hence, only interstate cooperation and continuous improvement of
national strategies to combat human trafficking, and not being judgmental to
others, would positively contribute to the UN global campaign to eradicate
human trafficking.
Therefore, Shandra’s effort to lobby members of Congress in
Washington DC to push a bill into a law obliging foreign worker recruiter
companies in the US to be listed with the Department of Labor should be
applauded and supported. As long as there is a loophole both in the source
and receiving countries, human trafficking will continue to exist. ●
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