Trafficking of migrants

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Description: Twenty representatives of law enforcement agencies were brought together this week, for the latest in a series of workshops designed to boost prosecutions on serious cases of migrant smuggling. The participants learnt how complex investigations could benefit from multi-agency cooperation, as well as from the proactive use of intelligence. Special emphasis was placed on the context of Myanmar, with interactive talks and up-to-date threat assessments from senior officials from the departments of Immigration, Anti-Financial Crimes, Anti-Human Trafficking Police, Maritime Police and Transnational Crime. The smuggling of migrants poses a significant threat to Asia, generating an annual value of $2 billion for criminal groups. In recent years, there has been growing awareness of the potential human suffering that smuggled migrants can incur, notably since the Bay of Bengal crisis in Spring 2015. This week's capacity training is the latest instalment of the UNODC project on Building Capacity to Investigate and Prosecute Migrant Smugglers, designed to boost the numbers of successful prosecutions in serious cases of migrant smuggling. Previous workshops in this series have been held in Thailand and Malaysia. Sub-regional sessions, designed to promote cooperation transnationally, are scheduled for later in the year.
Source/publisher: UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)
2017-06-12
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "A national workshop with representatives from Myanmar's Central Authority and related government departments was organised in Nay Pyi Taw last week to assist the country to more effectively address transnational crime and security challenges within the framework of the ASEAN Vision 2025. The aim of the workshop was to strengthen the capacity of Myanmar and its officials to engage in cross-border criminal justice cooperation, in particular mutual legal assistance (MLA) and extradition. Throughout Southeast Asia, transnational organised crime groups and their networks profit from illicit activities that range from drug and precursor trafficking, to human trafficking and migrant smuggling, to the trade of illegal timber and endangered species. Along with the launch of the ASEAN Political-Security Community, the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 has helped bring about freer flows of goods, services, labour and money. If recent evidence is correct, legitimate economic flows will continue to increase. While this is positive for the region as a whole, it also provides increased opportunities for transnational crime groups to engage in criminal activities. Illicit flows and movements mirror and travel alongside legal flows and movements, and as these illegal flows expand, criminal and terrorist networks will continue to benefit. This will only serve to further challenge governance, law enforcement and criminal justice systems of countries in the region. During the workshop, representatives of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the National Police, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Union Attorney General's Office, the Ministry of Border Affairs (Na Ta La), the Ministry of Finance and Planning and the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population and the General Administrative Department worked through a series of exercises designed to increase their understanding and ability to utilise MLA and extradition. As a result, they were provided the opportunity to not only learn more about the legal traditions and systems regarding MLA and extradition in other countries, but also to strengthen relationships and understanding between the various Government departments within Myanmar that form part of its Central Authority and work on these issues..."
Source/publisher: UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)
2017-08-08
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "Since 2007, IOM Myanmar has been implementing victimcentered and right-based approach counter-trafficking programs. The effort is aimed at improving the technical capacity of key government agencies to prevent human trafficking, provide assistance to victims of trafficking (VoT), and to enhance law enforcement effectiveness and good governance to combat human trafficking and smuggling. IOM works closely with key government bodies under the Central Body for the Trafficking in Persons (CBTIP), including the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA), Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement (MoSWRR), and the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population (MOLIP). IOM also collaborates with Myanmar’s civil society organizations (CSOs) and promote home generated solutions towards the issue of human trafficking..."
Source/publisher: IOM Myanmar
2018-07-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 666.4 KB
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Description: "The State Department designated Burma as a Tier 3 government in its third annual Trafficking in Persons Report due to the Burmese government?s lack of significant efforts to meet congressionally set standards for combating human trafficking. The report, released June 11, faults Burma?s military rulers for continued extensive use of internal forced labor. "The military is directly involved in forced labor trafficking," the report says. The report acknowledges that the military junta ruling Burma has taken steps to combat trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation, but it describes Burma?s record as "inadequate." "The Government of Burma does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so," the report says. The State Department is required to report to Congress annually whether foreign governments fully meet the minimum standards set for the elimination of trafficking as detailed in the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of October 2000. Governments that are not making significant efforts to meet the standards are placed on the Tier 3 list.
Source/publisher: U.S. Dept of State
2003-06-12
Date of entry/update: 2010-12-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "...Thailand has emerged as the number one destination in cross-border trafficking of children and women. Many children and young women from Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR migrate to Thailand in search of better life. Often their journey leads them to a life of exploitation. A significant percent of these young migrants work in four employment sectors; agriculture, fishing boats and fish processing, manufacturing and domestic work. While they become an integral part of the economy, they remain invisible and face exploitation. Exploitation is widespread and ranges from non-payment or underpayment of wages, a requirement to work excessive hours sometimes involving the use of hazardous equipment - to even more serious violations of forced labour and trafficking..."
Creator/author: Elaine Pearson, Sureeporn Punpuing, Aree Jampaklay, Sirinan Kittisuksathit, Aree Prohmmo
Source/publisher: Mekong Sub-regional Project to Combat Trafficking in Women and Children, ILO
2006-12-13
Date of entry/update: 2008-04-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 2.46 MB
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Description: Informal Burmese networks supply teenaged girls to customers of Thailand?s commercial sex industry.
Creator/author: Colin Baynes
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy", Vol. 12, No. 10
2004-11-00
Date of entry/update: 2005-01-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: I. Executive Summary; II. Introduction; III. Thailand: Background. IV. Burma: Background. V. Project Methodology; VI. Findings: Hill Tribe Women and Girls in Thailand; Burmese Migrant Women and Girls in Thailand; VII. Law and Policy ?€? Thailand; VIII. Applicable International Human Rights Law; IX. Law and Policy ?€? United States X. Conclusion and Expanded Recommendations..."This study was designed to provide critical insight and remedial recommendations on the manner in which human rights violations committed against Burmese migrant and hill tribe women and girls in Thailand render them vulnerable to trafficking,2 unsafe migration, exploitative labor, and sexual exploitation and, consequently, through these additional violations, to HIV/AIDS. This report describes the policy failures of the government of Thailand, despite a program widely hailed as a model of HIV prevention for the region. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) findings show that the Thai government?s abdication of responsibility for uncorrupted and nondiscriminatory law enforcement and human rights protection has permitted ongoing violations of human rights, including those by authorities themselves, which have caused great harm to Burmese and hill tribe women and girls..."
Creator/author: Karen Leiter, Ingrid Tamm, Chris Beyrer, Moh Wit, Vincent Iacopino, . Holly Burkhalter, Chen Reis.
Source/publisher: Physicians for Human Rights
2004-07-14
Date of entry/update: 2004-07-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: Interview by Samuel Grumiau, ICFTU Online..., 214/991116/SG, 18 November 1999 "Every year, thousands of Burmese women fall into the hands of mafias who force them into prostitution in Thailand. How is this traffic organised? Hseng Noung Lintner, an activist in the "Shan Women Action Network", an NGO that assists women from the Shan ethnic group, explains..."
Creator/author: Samuel Grumiau
Source/publisher: ICFTU
1999-11-19
Date of entry/update: 2003-07-27
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: OVERVIEW; RESTRICTION ON WOMEN'S FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT; REGIONAL MIGRATION; TRAFFICKING; SEX WORK; DEPORTATION; ACTIONS TO COMBAT TRAFFICKING; FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS.
Creator/author: Brenda Belak
Source/publisher: Images Asia
2002-01-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 566.69 KB
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Description: A substantial and important report. ""Lin Lin" was thirteen years old when she was recruited by an agent for work in Thailand. Her father took $480 from the agent with the understanding that his daughter would pay the loan back out of her earnings. The agent took "Lin Lin" to Bangkok, and three days later she was taken to the Ran Dee Prom brothel. "Lin Lin" did not know what was going on until a man came into her room and started touching her breasts and body and then forced her to have sex. For the next two years, "Lin Lin" worked in various parts of Thailand in four different brothels, all but one owned by the same family. The owners told her she would have to keep prostituting herself until she paid off her father's debt. Her clients, who often included police, paid the owner $4 each time. If she refused a client's demands, she was slapped and threatened by the owner. She worked every day except for the two days off each month she was allowed for her menstrual period. Once she had to borrow money to pay for medicine to treat a painful vaginal infection. This amount was added to her debt. On January 18, 1993 the Crime Suppression Division of the Thai police raided the brothel in which "Lin Lin" worked, and she was taken to a shelter run by a local non-governmental organization. She was fifteen years old, had spent over two years of her young life in compulsory prostitution, and tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV. "Lin Lin" is just one of thousands of Burmese women and girls who have been trafficked and sold into what amounts to female sexual slavery in Thailand. In the last two years, Thai NGOs estimate that at a minimum, some twenty thousand Burmese women and girls are suffering Lee's fate, or worse, and that ten thousand new recruits come in every year. They are moved from one brothel to another as the demand for new faces dictates, and often end up being sent back to Burma after a year or two to recruit their own successors..."
Source/publisher: Asia Watch and the Women's Rights Project (Human Rights Watch)
1993-08-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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