New initiatives to fight child-trafficking

Plan launches project against child-trafficking

The International Labour Organisation reported that in 2002 alone, around 1.2 million children worldwide were trafficked, with some 225,000 women and children trafficked in Southeast Asia.

In the Philippines a significant number of children from poor provinces are trafficked to major metropolitan areas, where they are forced into the sex trade or exploited in inhuman working conditions.

Plan, in partnership with local organisation Visayan Forum (VF), has launched a three-year project to fight child-trafficking at country level and in some hotspot areas, including Leyte, Samar and Cebu.

The project aims to raise public awareness of the problem and rally support to combat child-trafficking in key transport gateway areas, such as ports, borders and stations.

Supriyanto, Plan Philippines Country Director says, “This project is part of Plan’s overall effort against child exploitation and child abuse. Because of poverty, many children, especially those from poor remote villages, fall victims to the false promises of better opportunities in the city, only to later end up in child prostitution and other forms of hazardous labour.”

With the assistance of the Department of Social Welfare and Development Office, a halfway house, allowing authorities to shelter victims intercepted from traffickers during transit, is now operating in Matnog and Sorsogon ports; and help desks to intercept the traffickers and assist the victims are being set up in several port terminals.

During a major week-long event in Tacloban City organised by Plan, law-enforcement agencies were trained to improve the successful prosecution of trafficking offenders and showed successful initiatives to help combat it. The event also helped increase local and national awareness of child-trafficking.

“There is a lack of understanding about the intricacies of the child trafficking and the Anti-Trafficking Act, so we need to train people in creative prosecution strategies,” says VF President Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, noting that in the Philippines a single conviction of a trafficker still hasn’t been made.