Help fight human trafficking, recruitment firms urged

MANILA, Philippines - An official of an international manpower agency has urged companies, especially recruitment agencies, to help prevent human trafficking, which he said has become a global “industry." Richard Evans, country manager of Manpower Philippines, said help from every company is needed in view of the huge number of victims — about 12.3 million —of forced labor or servitude worldwide. “Every company has the potential to contribute to the elimination of human trafficking," Evans said in a presentation during the recently concluded International Conference on Gender, Migration, and Development at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Manila. "This is our world, our people, it is our responsibility to protect it," he said. “Human trafficking has become the third largest illegal industry in the world, generating profits estimated at already $32 billion, with $28 billion coming from the exploitation of women and children," said Evans, whose company has presence in 80 countries. According to HumanTrafficking.org, a site dedicated to fighting human trafficking, even the Philippines has become a source, transit, and destination country for the illegal trade. The Web site said the number of Filipino and foreign child victims in the Philippines could reach up to 100,000. It added that the Philippine government and non-government organizations estimate the number of trafficked women to range between 300,000 and 400,000. Moreover, it said the Philippines has become a transit country for victims trafficked from China and a destination for a small number of women who were trafficked also from China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia for prostitution. Internal trafficking of women and children from rural areas has also become rampant, with Filipinos coming the Visayas and Mindinao, to urban areas such as Metro Manila and Cebu City, just to be exploited or forced to work as domestic workers, factory workers, or in the drug trade. Evans also said that according to the International Labor Organization, trafficking is “the fastest growing criminal act in the world." A report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc) said that some 2.5 million people worldwide are at any given time recruited, entrapped, transported and exploited. Unodc reported that persons from 127 countries are exploited in 137 nations. It said that this number estimated by experts represents just “the tip of a much greater iceberg." “Slavery is a booming international trade, less obvious than two hundred years ago for sure, but all around us," said Unodc Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa in the report. “Perhaps we simply prefer to close our eyes to it, as many law-abiding citizens buy the products and the services produced on the cheap by slaves," he said. The report added that most victims of this “modern-day slavery" are women and young girls, many of whom are forced into prostitution or otherwise exploited sexually. On the other hand, men are trafficked to work in fields, mines and quarries, or in other dirty and dangerous working conditions, the report said. - GMANews.TV