Monday, March 24, 2008

Eastern Visayas in the Philippines Hotbed for Trafficking



From the Inquirer:

A partylist lawmaker on Monday urged national and local authorities to address the rampant human trafficking in the Eastern Visayas region, where even girls as young as 13 years old are being victimized.


In a statement, An Waray Rep. Florencio “Bem" Noel said hundreds of Eastern Visayan women and young children are going to spend their Christmas inside brothels and sweatshops in Metro Manila as the trade of human trafficking continues unabated.


“For these young Warays, Christmas means spending the holidays inside a dark room with a complete paying stranger or working to death inside factories not fit for humans," Noel said.


He noted that from January to June this year, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has monitored 108 cases of human trafficking from Eastern Visayas, the region comprised of Leyte, Samar and Biliran.


He said of the number, 70 percent are young women aged from 13 years to 17 years old.


In 2006, Noel said DSWD documented 185 cases of human trafficking from Eastern Visayas and 105 cases in 2005.


Noel said the figure could still go up because there are still many undocumented and unmonitored human trafficking cases from Eastern Visayas .


“With the grinding poverty, the cases are bound to increase every year and the solution is the combined vigilance of Eastern Visayas provincial and local leaders, law enforcement agencies and the national government through the DSWD," Noel said.

Read the full article

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous3:50 PM

    "Zero Tolerance for Johns : How the Government of Sweden Would Respond to Spitzer"
    http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2940

    ReplyDelete