WUNRN
SRI LANKA OPENS FIRST GOVERNMENT
SHELTER FOR WOMEN VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Dec-11-2012 - Sri Lanka - The first government shelter
for victims of human trafficking in Sri Lanka will be declared open by Hon.
Tissa Karalliyadda, the Minister of Child Development and Women’s Affairs on
Wednesday 12th December 2012 in the presence of Her Excellency Ms. Michele J.
Sison, the United States Ambassador, and Richard Danziger, IOM’s Chief of
Mission.
Recognizing the importance of safe shelters for the process of recovery and
reintegration of identified victims of human trafficking, IOM Sri Lanka, with
USD 450,000 in funding from the United States Government, provided technical
support and assistance to the Ministry of Child Development and Women’s
Empowerment to establish this first government shelter for victims of human
trafficking in the country. This will ensure that identified victims are
provided safe shelter and are also referred for necessary services,
including medical, psychological and legal assistance.
“The provision of a shelter for victims of trafficking will ensure that
appropriate assistance is provided and that the re-victimization of victims is
prevented. It will also prevent victims being placed in remand homes and
detention centers due to lack of government shelter facilities and fulfil Sri
Lanka’s international obligations in the protection of victims of human
trafficking and their rights,” says Richard Danziger, Chief of Mission of IOM
Sri Lanka.
IOM Sri Lanka has over the past five years, with almost USD 1.3 million support
from the US Government, implemented anti-human trafficking programmes that seek
to prevent the trafficking of vulnerable men, women and children through
awareness raising; protect identified victims through the provision of direct
assistance; and build the capacity of law enforcement to identify, investigate
and prosecute cases of human trafficking.
IOM also successfully advocated for and assisted with the establishment of the
National Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force led by the Ministry of Justice to
increase co-ordination in combating human trafficking in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka is a signatory to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. It is a country of
origin and is increasingly becoming a destination country for trafficked
persons. These men and women are trafficked mostly for labour
exploitation, but also for commercial sexual exploitation. Sri Lankan
nationals, mostly women, migrate for employment to destination countries in the
Middle East to serve as domestic helpers, but sometimes find themselves trapped
in involuntary servitude in appalling working conditions.
_________________________________________________________
Trafficking in Persons Report 2012 -
June 2012
SRI LANKA (Tier
2)
Sri Lanka is
primarily a source and, to a much lesser extent, a destination country for men,
women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Sri Lankan
men, women, and some children (16 to 17-year olds) migrate consensually to
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain,
Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaysia, and Singapore to work as construction
workers, domestic servants, or garment factory workers. Some of these workers,
however, subsequently face conditions of forced labor including restrictions on
movement, withholding of passports, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and
threats of detention and deportation for immigration violations. Before their
departure, many male migrant workers go into debt to pay high recruitment fees
imposed by unscrupulous licensed labor recruitment agencies and their
unlicensed sub-agents. These agencies and agents also commit recruitment fraud
by engaging in contract switching: defined as the promising of one type of job
and conditions but then changing the job, employer, conditions, or salary after
arrival. Women migrating abroad for work generally are not required to pay
recruitment fees in advance, although many report paying off such fees through
salary deductions. Some Sri Lankan women are promised jobs or began jobs as
domestic workers, mainly in Singapore or Jordan, but were forced into
prostitution. A small number of Sri Lankan women are forced into prostitution
in the Maldives. Internally-displaced persons, war widows, and unregistered
female migrants remained particularly vulnerable to human trafficking. In 2011,
Sri Lankan victims were identified in Egypt, Poland, and the United States.
Within the country, women and children are subjected to sex trafficking in
brothels. Boys are more likely than girls to be forced into prostitution in
coastal areas for domestic child sex tourism.
In addition,
there are reports of children being subjected to bonded labor and forced labor
in dry-zone farming areas on plantations, and in the fireworks and fish-drying
industries. Some child domestic workers in Colombo, generally from the Tamil
tea-estate sector of the country, are subjected to physical, sexual, and mental
abuse, nonpayment of wages, and restrictions of their movement. A small number
of women from Thailand, China, and countries in South Asia, Europe, and the
former Soviet Union may be subjected to forced prostitution in Sri Lanka.
The
Government of Sri Lanka does not fully comply with the minimum standards for
the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do
so. During the year, the government did not convict any trafficking offenders.
Serious problems remain, particularly in protecting victims of trafficking in
Sri Lanka and abroad, and not addressing official complicity in human
trafficking. However, the government took strong preventative efforts,
including the convictions of two labor recruitment agents who committed
fraudulent recruitment offenses, and enhanced inter-ministerial coordination
through monthly meetings.
Recommendations
for Sri Lanka:
Improve efforts to investigate and prosecute suspected trafficking offenses,
and convict and punish trafficking offenders, particularly those responsible
for recruiting victims with fraudulent offers of employment and excessive
commission fees for the purpose of subjecting them to forced labor; develop and
implement formal victim referral procedures; ensure that victims of trafficking
found within Sri Lanka are not detained or otherwise penalized for unlawful
acts committed as a direct result of their being trafficked, such as visa
violations or prostitution; train local law enforcement on victim
identification, investigation of cases, and assembling strong cases; facilitate
the speedy repatriation of foreign trafficking victims by providing airfare and
not obligating them to remain in the country if they choose to initiate law
enforcement proceedings; provide witness protection and incentives for victims
to cooperate with law enforcement to enable prosecutions; improve services for
shelters, legal aid, counseling, and trained staff at embassies in destination
countries; promote safe tourism campaigns to ensure that child sex tourism does
not increase with expected rapid growth of tourism; promote safe and legal
migration rather than discouraging migration or imposing age restrictions on
migrants; and improve regulation and monitoring of recruitment agencies and
village-level brokers.
Prosecution
The Sri
Lankan government’s law enforcement response to human trafficking offenses was
minimal during the reporting period. Sri Lanka prohibits all forms of
trafficking through an April 2006 amendment to its penal code, which prescribes
punishments of up to 20 years’ imprisonment. These penalties are sufficiently
stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious offenses,
such as rape. The National Child Protection Authority and Criminal
Investigation Department (CID) investigated 44 reported cases of trafficking in
2011, and referred nine of these cases to the Attorney General’s office for
advice. During the year, the CID also jointly investigated a potential sex
trafficking case with police in Singapore. There was no information on how many
suspected trafficking offenders were prosecuted in the reporting period. The
government did not convict any human trafficking offenders in the reporting
period, in contrast to three traffickers convicted in the previous reporting
period.
Government
employees’ complicity in trafficking remained a problem. There were allegations
that police and other officials accepted bribes to permit brothels to operate;
some of the brothels exploited trafficking victims. Many recruitment agencies
were run by politicians or were politically connected. Some sub-agents
cooperated with Sri Lankan officials to procure forged or modified documents,
or real documents with false data, to facilitate travel abroad. There were no
reported law enforcement actions taken against officials complicit in human
trafficking. The government undertook law enforcement training. For instance,
in August 2011, the Ministry of Justice and the Judges’ Training Institute
trained 80 judges, in collaboration with the ILO, on issues such as the
application of international standards within domestic trafficking legislation,
and the trauma for trafficking victims during the judicial process. In December
2011, the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) organized a workshop
for 80 district-level government officials on identifying victims and sending
case information to relevant law enforcement departments.
Protection
The
government made limited progress in protecting victims of trafficking during
the year. Government personnel did not develop or employ systematic procedures
for proactively identifying trafficking victims or referring them to care
facilities. The SLBFE continued to operate, through Sri Lankan embassies in
some destination countries, short-term shelters, as well as an overnight
shelter in Sri Lanka’s international airport for returning female migrant
workers who encountered abuse abroad. These facilities were funded by fees the
SLBFE collected from registered migrant workers prior to their departure. There
were complaints that the shelters were grossly overcrowded with unhygienic
conditions, and that at least one did not permit the residents to leave the
premises. There have been some reports of abuse by Sri Lankan embassy officials
in shelters abroad, and one official in a Sri Lankan embassy reportedly condoned
passport withholding – a sign of human trafficking – by employees in that
country. Child trafficking victims received shelter, schooling, and medical,
legal, and psychological services from the Department of Probation and Child
Care Services.
The government
has not yet established a trafficking shelter with IOM, as noted in the 2011
TIP Report. The government did not encourage victims to assist in the
investigation and prosecution of trafficking cases; instead, they sometimes
forced victims to remain in the country (without the permission to seek
employment) and testify if they chose to file charges. The government penalized
some adult victims of trafficking through detention for unlawful acts committed
as a direct result of being trafficked. Most commonly, these acts were
violations of their visa status or prostitution. All detainees who were
awaiting deportation for visa violations, including trafficking victims,
remained in detention facilities until they raised enough money to pay for
their plane ticket home, which in some cases has taken years.
Prevention
The Sri
Lankan government made progress in its efforts to prevent trafficking during
the last year. The government’s inter-ministerial anti-trafficking task force
met monthly, improving communication between ministries, and invited ten civil
society organizations to one meeting in October 2011. In January 2012, the
Colombo High Court sentenced two recruitment agents for offenses that included
fraudulent recruitment. The agents were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment
and a fine, paid to the mother of the migrant workers who filed the complaint.
The SLBFE continued to require migrant domestic workers with no experience
working in the Middle East to complete a 12-day pre-departure training course, funded
by fees the SLBFE collected from the departing migrant workers. It is not known
how many migrant workers completed this course in the reporting period. In
measures that could prevent transnational labor trafficking of Sri Lankans, the
SLBFE reported that it filed 276 charges against recruitment agencies in 2011
for charging illegal fees in recruitment, conducted 73 raids against employment
agents (in comparison to 84 in 2010), and fined recruitment agencies found to
be guilty of fraudulent practices over the equivalent of $25,000 (in comparison
to $40,000 in 2010). The government worked on several awareness-raising
initiatives with the ILO. In one initiative, the government, in partnership
with the ILO, developed a handbook for migrants bound for Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, including information on the relevant labor laws, descriptions of
forced labor and trafficking, and contact information. The SLBFE printed and
distributed 40,000 copies of the handbook to all registered migrant workers
heading to those two countries. The Government of Sri Lanka, working with the
UNDP, continued to provide personnel time to conduct mobile documentation
clinics for conflict-affected people. The Government of Sri Lanka did not
report any efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts during the
reporting period. The Ministry of Defense provided anti-trafficking training to
all Sri Lankan peacekeepers prior to their deployments abroad for international
peacekeeping missions. Sri Lanka is not a party to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol.