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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA, Philippines - Vice President Jejomar Binay is confident the country could soon achieve a Tier 1 rating in the global campaign against human trafficking with a more efficient and aggressive investigation work, and the prosecution of both labor and sex trafficking offenders, including government officials who may be involved.
“The country’s modest achievements allow us to believe that we could achieve Tier 1 status at the soonest possible time. To that end, we are committed to upgrade our efficiencies in investigating, prosecuting both labor and sex trafficking offenders, including government officials involved,” said Binay in his speech at the 5th Social Watch Global Assembly Tuesday night at the Sulo Riviera Hotel in Quezon City.
Issues on migration are among the topics being featured in the various workshops of the Social Watch Global Assembly, as its international delegates work to come up with a Strategy Plan covering advocacy and capacity building programs for 2012-2014, guided by this year’s theme “Claiming Democracy: Accountability For Social And Economic Justice.”
Besides migration, the workshops will also tackle Social Justice, Anti-poverty and Redistribution Strategies, Gender and Social Movements, Budget Issues and Budget Advocacy, and Future for the Millennium Development Goals after 2015, among others.
Binay, head of the Task Force OFW and Presidential Adviser of OFW concerns, told the Social Watch assembly the government will go beyond protective and responsive measures, and create an environment that makes it impossible for traffickers to ply their trade.
On Wednesday, Binay also attended the Experts’ Meeting to study the feasibility of developing an ASEAN Convention on Trafficking in Persons, held in a Makati City hotel. Binay, who is chairman emeritus of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, and Executive Director Felizardo Serapio of the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime discussed trafficking issues with ASEAN country delegates at the meeting.
The Philippines was recently upgraded from Tier 2 watch list to Tier 2 rating by the United States’ Department of State, whose report lauded an “intensified effort” by the Philippines. The report noted the country convicted 25 trafficking offenders, compared with nine the previous year, including first-ever convictions for forced labor.
At the Social Watch assembly in Sulo Hotel, meanwhile, Binay said, “Our gains in the OFW front have been adequately reported. But our small victories against human trafficking probably require repeating. We gave that task the highest priority, and less than one year later, the U.S. State Department upgraded the status of the Philippines in its 2011 global trafficking in persons (TIP) report.”
He said the global TIP report recognized the country’s determined efforts to prosecute and convict trafficking offenders, as well as the increase in training and public awareness efforts on trafficking, for judicial officials, diplomats, civil society groups, and overseas Filipino workers.
According to him, the Filipino diaspora has created a huge Filipino community that now spans virtually the entire globe. What must be done, he said, is to make sure that Filipinos leaving for jobs abroad have adequate technical skills and the ability to cope with foreign cultures and laws in their adopted country. The government must also continue, in collaboration with other labor-exporting countries, to work for an international agreement that allows family members to join workers wherever they go according to him.
Commenting on the Social Watch Global Assembly’s theme “Claiming Democracy: Accountability For Social And Economic Justice,” Binay said the Aquino administration has set its course upon exchanging more information with the people, strengthening all institutions, acting with full transparency and accountability on every issue, project or contract, without any self-interest, and always according to a shared conception of justice.
“Democracy is meaningless unless and until our fellow Filipinos get their due. Economic and social justice must make all of us active contributors to the social order, and co-owners of the national economy. The change promised by the Aquino administration must not only benefit all Filipinos. At the end of the day, it must make them agents of change themselves,” Binay stressed.
Democracy, social justice
Meanwhile, former national treasurer Prof. Leonor Briones, the lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines, said the main concern of Social Watch with networks globally is democracy and social and economic justice—hence, the theme: Claiming Democracy: Accounting for Economic and Social Justice. “We advocate the rights-based approach to human development, campaign for gender equity and stay in the forefront of the campaign for the environment and climate change preparedness.”
She said the 2011 Global Assembly is now being held in the Philippines, which has a rich history of movements for democracy and social and economic justice. “The first revolution in Asia took place in the Philippines when Filipinos took up arms to free themselves from over three centuries of Spanish rule. We are celebrating the 150th anniversary of our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal whose writings sparked the revolution. We fought the United States of America who bought us from Spain for $20 million. We fought Japan during World War II, when it sought to annex us to their empire. During the 1930’s peasants started the revolt for genuine agrarian reform—a struggle which continues even now.”
Social Watch is holding its Global Assembly from July 11 to 13 with over 100 delegates designated by national coalitions from 60 countries around the world representing women groups, human rights activists, unionists and other campaigners for social justice, attending it.
