Women as Victims of Human Trafficking in the Philippines

Women as Victims of Human Trafficking in the Philippines

Human trafficking is the process of taking people by force and forcing them into situations that have no way out and then exploiting them. It involves forced labor, forced prostitution, forced marriage, forced criminality, forced removal of body organs, forced begging, and domestic servitude. Human trafficking is against the law and is punishable by law in case of arrest.

In this paper, we are going to discuss human trafficking and mainly how it affects women, how they are subjected to the different forms of exploitation, the causes of their exploitation, and what has been done about it. The women have fallen prey of people who have taken away their dignity and their ability to make choices, this paper goes to an in-depth of explaining how and why that happens.

Studies indicate that between the years 1965-1995, the number of migrants moved from 75million people to 130million. In recent days, it is said to be around 150million people around the world, with between 700,000 and 2million people comprising of women and children. Women and children are the most affected as they are unable to fight back and are unable to compete with the men that traffic them. At least 50% of the illegal immigration is assisted by smugglers, which makes human trafficking highly profitable and the third most income-earning organized crime aside from gun smuggling and selling of drugs.

In the ancient times of the Philippines, women were regarded as equals with the men, and they had a voice and a say both at the community and at the family level. They also had a chance at leadership, ownership of property, and even in the businesses; this was before the colonial rule. The idea of women being second to men had never also been in existence. However, the introduction of the civil code institutionalized inequality between the men and women, and this has made the women to be made second and to only follow in the traits of her male counterpart. The idea of women being second had never been in a play before, but now they had a new way of life that involved being told what to do by the men, as well as receiving new gender roles to which they had to follow strictly.

Human trafficking and particularly women trafficking in the Philippines, is more rampant than in other countries because the Filipino government considers immigration as a strategy for development. The government finds immigration as one of the forms of adding up to their revenue; between 1995-1999, the number of immigrants otherwise known as overseas Filipino workers working abroad contributed a total of $59,002,750 in membership fee to the Overseas Workers Welfare Fund (OWWA). Every year, the government collects over $82,702,000 from people working overseas, and that is not inclusive of all the other remittances that they have to pay. This is as well using the legal means alone.

According to research done by the Commission of Overseas workers, it shows that there are at least 2000 legal contracts made every day for workers working overseas. There are 7.41 million immigrants from the Filipino spread in 187 countries around the world; 64% of whom are women and 1.64 million of the total number are there through smuggling and human trafficking.

This means that the Filipino government is pushing away its people by giving them a chance to agreeing on a vast mass to go overseas to look for work in the hope of a better tomorrow as a result of the unemployment situation in the country at the moment. During the years 1995 and 1996, there were vast numbers of women who left the country and got married to men overseas and, most especially, the South Koreans. Over the past 10years, immigration has highly increased legally, 60% of the total number of immigrants being women. They get overseas and get subjected to abysmal wages for the work they do, which is quite a lot, and 50% of the women who are taken up for immigration are single and are between 20-29 years old.

The reason for the continually increasing numbers of immigrants is several factors that force the Filipino people to choose to work overseas instead of staying home with their family members. For example, the constant state of unemployment has forced both men and women to opt to work abroad to search for a steady flow of income. The dependence on women to support their families has also led the women to choose for overseas employment, which has low pay but is better than what is available in the Filipino. The constant state of poverty in the country and especially in the rural areas has forced so many men and women to decide to leave the country in search of the proverbial “greener pastures.”

Women’s expanding sense of having financial and economic stability has led to them wanting to seek jobs to be able to maintain and keep up with the standards of life. Also, the legalization of sex activities and the term behind the events called “entertainment” in the destination countries, has made the Filipino men and women want to travel and work overseas. Activities like the legalization of prostitution in the outside states have pulled the men and women there. The legalization of pornography, which is also a very paying job, has forced people to join the industry as workers. Even stripping in clubs and bars has been legalized as an “entertainment” job, and so it is one of the most significant sign up for employment among the immigrants. All the above posts are the easiest to find once a person gets Overseas, and at the very least, one is sure to get paid at the end of each “entertainment” session.

In this job still, it is essential to note that it is not all of the people from Filipinos working in them have been smuggled or trafficked. Some of the people there are thereby legal means, and the government is aware of what is happening on the ground without wanting to do anything about the situation. This, however, makes it easier for human traffickers to do their jobs.

The Coalition Against human trafficking in their research also found that women easily fall prey to human trafficking and sexual exploitation using both illegal means. Several factors have subjected women to be vulnerable to the recruiters of human smuggling and rendered them to the situation of being sexually mistreated.

For example, the history of sexual abuse among women. Sexual abuse is a severe offense everywhere around the globe, and most victims prefer not to talk about it because they are threatened by the offenders that, when they speak, it will happen again. Or to some, it could still be happening again and again, but they are unable to tell anyone. Most victims feel ashamed to share their experiences as they feel like no one will ever understand. In this case, you find that most of them have even stopped caring about themselves and view themselves as unimportant and worthless; its hence so easy for them to go for jobs that demean their value even more like prostitution and pornography.

Familial pressure is also a factor that pushes women into doing jobs that would otherwise be meant to discourage them rather than help them to move forward. Some families see other families send their children abroad, and they would then put pressure on their children to also go overseas to look for work. The main reason being poverty, this makes the children subject to trafficking as the family members would take them or even go there by themselves due to lack of the finances to pay for air tickets and transport to the destination countries.

Low level of education and lack of information about the process of recruitment. Most girls and women who get recruited through illegal means are mostly uneducated and are unable to read the documents being made for them as well as be able to tell that these people are tricking them into situations that would otherwise lead them to worse cases of their state of being. Some women even get recruited by being tricked using very simple means like food and expensive clothes or the promise of a better tomorrow.

Poverty and lack of economic activities; the state of poverty in the Philippines is quite high, and so is the financial state of the country. This subject’s half of the population into a life that would otherwise mean that they live below the poverty line. Therefore, the younger family members would opt to go to work overseas to be able to earn money to feed themselves and their family members.

The sense of personal and economic autonomy among women; In modern-day, women are the backbone of their success. They have gone out of their way to prove that they are very much capable of being self-dependent even without the men. This is because of the patriarchy that has since ruled society and subjected women to a lesser position than those of the men. Therefore, in search of earning the spot they so severely want of recognition in the society, they would do the unthinkable to be able to get there.

Alleged stories of success of those who migrate abroad; Most people all over the world only need to hear the word of another person saying that they have made it a specific area for them to be able to venture into it. It is also the case here as when one person from your village comes home and with expensive clothes and a better version of themselves than who they were when they left for the overseas, it shines a light to the ones who are still at home and makes them admire going abroad in search for the same opportunities as their home mates.

These and other factors are the reason why women have fallen prey to this vice and injustice that has caused so much damage to their lives physically and mentally. In light of this, the government has come up with some measures to help curb the vice.

In the years 2003-2012, the Philippine government has made efforts to come up with law enforcement plans that will help to reduce and eventually end the criminal offense of human trafficking. The government passed anti-trafficking acts which criminalize sex and labor trafficking and attracts six years to life imprisonment to offenders who get caught and fines that amount to 5million pesos ($100,300). These laws were made punishable by law, that is sex trafficking and got categorized with other serious crimes such a rape.

In research that got conducted shows that the authorities found 448 cases suspected to be human trafficking as compared to the 553 cases that got noticed in the year 2016. As a result, 283 suspects got arrested, which is an increase in the number of suspects arrested in 2016 who were 272 suspects. During this period as well, the government prosecuted 177 traffickers and convicted 65 traffickers as compared to the 441 prosecuted and 55convited in 2016. Sentences imposed during this time ranged from 12years to life imprisonment, with most offenders being convicted for life imprisonment. However, the government did not file any cases to punish the recruitment of children that were being used as child soldiers in the highly intensified areas with violence.

During the years, the government has reviewed and revised guidelines to this case of trafficking; however, due to issues like corruption, 1,200 cases of trafficking have gone pending and are still in the judicial systems. Through the use of plea agreements, the government has convicted 19traffickers from 7cases of trafficking, which involved online sexual exploitation of children and the re-traumatizing of the children who are victims and also those who served as witnesses in this cases. However, the government did not implement laws to deal with the re-traumatization of the children victims. As much as the government has tried to increase its funding for the facilities and funding of the Philippine National Police Women and Children’s Protection Centre, the support for the anti-trafficking has then reduced in task force from 2016-2018.

The NGO’s and international legal frameworks they stepped in, to help in eliminating this issue of human trafficking. The government has since then been increasing efforts to prevent human trafficking. Three NGO members meet thrice in a year to approve the resolution setting policies and the action plans that have been set against human trafficking between the years 2017-2021. In the same period, 24 regional and municipal task forces met regularly to share information and organize activities that were meant to speak against human trafficking.

In conclusion, no human should be subjected to a job that they do not want and mostly being forced to do things and jobs that make them feel worthless. Women especially should be given a right to choose what is best for them, their bodies, and their lives without being coerced to do anything, especially when it’s against human rights.

REFERENCES

United States Department of States, 2018 Trafficking in persons report- Philippines 28 June 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5b3e0aa4a.html[accessed25November2019]

(2019). Retrieved 26 November 2019, from https://www.unafei.or.jp/publications/pdf/RS_No62/No62_17PA_Guevarra.pd