Government representatives, employers/workers organizations & NGOs from five countries to participate in Bangkok presentations – 9th October 2008.

Bangkok (ILO News): Trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation is a form of modern day slavery – a gross human rights abuse – yet it continues across the world, and is very evident here in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

This week, representatives from Governments, Workers’ and Employers’ Organizations in five countries (including Thailand), as well as NGO partners and others, are gathering in Bangkok to examine more than two-dozen “proven practices” in human trafficking prevention – developed in partnership by the ILO’s Mekong Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women and its Governmental and Non-Governmental partners.

The ILO estimates that, globally, there are 12.4 million victims of forced labour, including some 2.4 million who are trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation. Indeed three-quarters of the world’s forced labour occur right here in the Asia-Pacific region and half of all the world’s trafficked victims are Asian.

These workers are being denied their basic human rights. Often as young migrants, they have, either by choice, necessity and/or sometimes coercion or force, ended up labouring below the radar screen of the local authorities – and sometimes even within their view but with a purposeful neglect. These young victims are among the millions of young migrants making the cheap clothes that one can so easily buy in the markets. They are among those catching the fish that appear in our restaurants and are often cleaning the homes of many others – most often with no safety nets or redress should they be exploited, injured, cheated or treated unfairly.

Their plight often goes unnoticed within a sea of undocumented manual workers who cross borders to toil in foreign countries within Asia in general, and the Greater Mekong Sub-region in particular.

But, fortunately, governments are now paying much closer attention to the problem. Trafficking is now seen to occur within a labour migration paradigm - one involving young migrant workers moving within countries and across borders, often without the proper documentation, leaving them vulnerable to trafficking-related abuses. New laws have been enacted in the GMS to respond to trafficking for labour exploitation. The ILO has played an important role in this recognition.

Since 2000, the ILO’s Mekong Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women has worked with five Governments in the GMS, as well as Workers’ and Employers’ Organizations, NGOs and others, to identify sectors where trafficking for labour exploitation occurs. The most likely workplaces are the fishing and seafood processing sectors, small scale manufacturing, agriculture, construction and domestic work, to name a few. In more recent years, our partnerships have gone beyond identifying the areas of exploitation and toward finding ways to prevent the abusive environments from flourishing.

There has been considerable success in trafficking prevention work. Through these partnerships, we have reached out to hundreds of thousands of young people, especially girls and young women, to warn them about the dangers of ill-prepared migration when leaving home to look for work. From television soap operas about trafficking, to formal and informal classroom instruction, to one-on-one outreach, we have armed young people of working age with the information they need to make migration for work a safer choice – within their own countries and when crossing borders.

The ILO has also provided assistance to Governments in the GMS to help them develop and implement recruitment policies to make migration work better for them. More often, employers in migrant-dependent areas want easier access to a flexible workforce .They see the value in treating their migrant workers fairly so they don’t leave prematurely – after time and money has been spent to train them. Unions also see the value in ensuring migrant workers – documented or otherwise – are receiving the same wages and working conditions as local workers, so as not to undercut their own members.

You or your representatives are cordially invited to attend the presentations of these proven practices on Thursday 9 October at the Pullman Hotel, Bangkok. (registration at 8:00 am).

ILO officials and others will also be on hand to answer your questions during the day and at a dedicated news briefing following the presentations (at 5 pm). A Conference Agenda and map are attached.

Venue:

9 October 2008 (Registration 8:00 am)
Pullman Hotel, Soi Rangnam (near Victory Monument)
Bangkok, Thailand

For further information please contact:

Mr. Allan Dow
ILO Mekong Sub-regional Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women
Tel: 02 288 2057, Mob: 089 891 5003
Email: dow@ilo.org