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1. World Day Against Child Labour 2008
12 June marked the World Day Against Child Labour. This year's
motto was education as a response to eradication of child labour.
According to the ILO, 165 million children between 5 and 14
years of age are in child labour. There is a close association
between poverty and child labour as well as various forms of
slavery involving children.
The right to education is the core for exercising of other
basic human rights. Through education, children and young persons
that would face economic deprivation and social exclusion can
elevate themselves out of poverty and decrease their vulnerability
to forced labour and exploitation.
The UN Millennium Development Goals set a target that by 2015,
all boys and girls complete a full course of primary education
and there is a gender parity in universal primary education.
To achieve the goal, the international community will have
to address a number of other issues that are underlying factors
of child labour and prevent poor families from sending children
to school.
2. EU Returns Directive
The ministers of the interior of the EU Member States have
agreed to proceed with a directive on returns in attempt to
create common standards and procedures for returning non-EU
nationals who no longer fulfil the conditions for entry, stay
or residence in a Member State.
There are a number of potentially problematic elements in the
draft directive that could effect adversely on vulnerable migrants.
One of the points is the length of detention. Although each
member state shall set a limited period of detention, which
may not exceed six months, the governments will be allowed to
extend the period of detention by additional twelve months.
The extension would be acceptable in “very specific circumstances”,
such as the lack of cooperation by a migrant or delays in obtaining
necessary documentation from their home country.
It is commonly known, that many victims of trafficking go unidentified
and find themselves detained as illegal immigrants and identified
only after they have been detained. To avoid further detrimental
impact of the new directive on victims of trafficking, safeguards
should be put in place by the Member States to ensure that in
cases where a detained person has been identified as a victim
of trafficking, that person shall be treated as a victim of
crime, be immediately released from detention and provided support
and assistance.
3. Rules on the election procedure of the
members of the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking
in Human Beings (GRETA) adopted by the Committee of the Ministers
of the Council of Europe
On 11 June, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe
adopted a Resolution establishing the election procedure of
the members of the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking
in Human Beings (GRETA). This is an important first step in
the setting up of an effective and independent mechanism to
monitor the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention
on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings.
The procedure aims at guaranteeing the election of 10 to 15
experts in the fields covered by the Convention who will be
independent and impartial in their evaluation of the implementation
of the Convention by the state parties. Moreover, the election
procedure aims at guaranteeing multidisciplinary expertise and
a gender and geographical balance in GRETA, as well as representation
of the main legal systems.
The governments of the states parties to the Convention (Albania,
Armenia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Cyprus, Denmark, France, Georgia, Latvia, Malta, Moldova, Norway,
Portugal, Romania and Slovakia) have the right to nominate candidates
for GRETA membership. The governments may submit to the Secretary
General of the Council of Europe the names and the curricula
vitae, using the model set out in the appendix to the Resolution,
of at least two candidates.
Each state party shall ensure that the national selection procedure
leading to the nomination of candidates for GRETA is in accordance
with published national guidelines or otherwise transparent
and designed to lead to the nomination of the most qualified
candidates.
Only candidates whose names and curricula vitae have been received
by the Secretary General from a government of a state party
by 1 October 2008 shall be allowed to stand for election for
the first composition of GRETA.
The Committee of the Parties shall elect the members of GRETA
by 1 February 2009 at the latest.
4. UN General Assembly Special Debate on
Trafficking
During the June UN General Assembly meeting in New York, a
special thematic debate on trafficking was held on 3 June. The
debate focused on the topic of multi-lateral cooperation in
prevention of trafficking in human beings, protection of trafficked
persons and cross-border cooperation in prosecution of traffickers.
(Source: www.coe.int/trafficking)
5. UK baby trafficking case/ Nigerian baby
trafficking ring broken
On 12 April 2008, a Nigerian woman was found guilty of illegally
bringing a baby into the UK to fraudulently claim benefits.
The police believe that this case is one of a growing number
of examples of "child trafficking" for benefit fraud.
The woman, a housing official in London, flew to Nigeria in
November 2006 and returned three weeks later with a baby boy.
It is believed she bought the baby - at the time just a few
months old - from a hospital and smuggled it into Britain to
qualify for priority housing. Police believe she sent between
£150 and £200 to Nigeria in advance payment for
the baby. Social services have been unable to trace the biological
family of the infant who has been taken into care. Due to a
loophole in the British legislation, the woman was not convicted
of trafficking, but of facilitation of illegal entry. The British
police complain that the Crown Prosecution Service is "not
bold enough" in pursuit of child trafficking cases. Instead
of prosecutions under new legislation, cases like this one are
being brought under the lesser crime of "facilitation"
of illegal entry into the Britain.
(Source: The Guardian)
In June 2008, the Nigerian police informed that they had broken
a major baby trafficking ring, arresting a doctor believed to
have bought infants from pregnant women and sold them at a profit
for more than 20 years. Police in the southeastern city of Enugu
arrested Kenneth Akunne along with 20 pregnant women aged 18-20
during a raid last week on his Uzuoma Clinic. "The doctor
is notorious and has been in the trade of selling babies for
over 20 years now," Desmond Agwu, Enugu state commandant
of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, told Reuters.The
arrests were made after officers stopped a taxi during a routine
search and found a woman with a day-old baby she said she had
bought for 340,000 naira (1,483 pounds) from Akunne's clinic.Uzuoma
Clinic is one of scores of illegal "baby farms" in
southeastern Nigeria, where infants are sold to people desperate
for children and ready to pay to avoid the red-tape of the country's
adoption laws. Despite being the world's eighth-biggest exporter
of crude oil, most people in Nigeria live on less than $2 a
day.
(Source: Reuters)
6. Daffodil harvester accused of using forced
labour
A major company, harvesting around 13 million bunches of daffodils
across the UK this season, lost its license in May 2008 as a
result of investigation by the Gangmaster Licensing Authority/GLA
(the Gangmaster Licensing Authority is a regulatory body in
the UK, regulating those who supply labour or use workers to
provide services in agriculture, forestry, horticulture, shellfish
gathering and food processing and packaging).
The harvester supplied daffodils to major supermarket chains
all across the UK.
The GLA found that workers were subject to various forms of
exploitation from the side of the company:
- the company debt bonded its mainly Polish workers
- threatened the workers and their families if they failed
to pay off the debt
- made deductions from their wages
- failed to pay minimum wage
- subjected the workers to sub-standard working and living
conditions.
The GLA has passed the case and evidence to the police to begin
investigation of the case as trafficking for forced labour.
7. New Publications
OSCE/ODHIR published a study on Compensation
for Trafficked and Exploited Persons in the OSCE Region.
The publication can be downloaded from the OSCE/ODIHR web site.
The US State Department published it’s annual Trafficking
in Persons Report. The report is available at the State
Department web site.
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