Philippines (Tier 2)
The Philippines is a source country and, to a much lesser extent, a
destination and transit country for men, women, and children subjected
to sex trafficking and forced labor. A significant number of Filipino
men and women who migrate abroad for work are subsequently subjected to
conditions of involuntary servitude worldwide. Men, women, and children
are subjected to conditions of forced labor in factories, at
construction sites, on fishing vessels, on agricultural plantations, and
as domestic workers in Asia and increasingly throughout the Middle
East. A significant number of Filipino women working in domestic service
in foreign countries also face rape, physical violence, and sexual
abuse. Skilled Filipino migrant workers, such as engineers and nurses,
are also subjected to conditions of forced labor abroad. Women were
subjected to sex trafficking in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore,
Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, and Japan and in various Middle Eastern
countries. For example, from January to March 2012, the government
repatriated 514 Filipina domestic workers from Syria; over 90 percent
were identified as trafficking victims who had suffered physical,
psychological, and verbal abuse from employers in Syria.
Trafficking of men, women, and children within the country also
remains a significant problem in the Philippines. People are trafficked
from rural areas to urban centers including Manila, Cebu, the city of
Angeles, and increasingly cities in Mindanao, as well as within other
urban areas. Men are subjected to forced labor and debt bondage in the
agriculture, fishing, and maritime industries. Women and children were
trafficked within the country for forced labor as domestic workers and
small-scale factory workers, for forced begging, and for exploitation in
the commercial sex industry. Hundreds of victims are subjected to
forced prostitution each day in well-known and highly visible business
establishments that cater to both domestic and foreign demand for
commercial sex acts. Filipino migrant workers, both domestically and
abroad, who became trafficking victims were often subject to violence,
threats, inhumane living conditions, nonpayment of salaries, and
withholding of travel and identity documents.
Traffickers, in partnership with organized crime syndicates and
corrupt law enforcement officers, regularly recruit family and friends
from villages and urban neighborhoods, often masquerading as
representatives of government-registered employment agencies. Fraudulent
recruitment practices and the institutionalized practice of paying
recruitment fees often leave workers vulnerable to forced labor, debt
bondage, and commercial sexual exploitation. Reports that illicit
recruiters increased their use of student, intern, and exchange program
visas to circumvent the Philippines government and receiving countries’
regulatory frameworks for foreign workers are not uncommon. Recruiters
adopted new methods in attempts to avoid government-run victim detection
units at airports and seaports. Traffickers utilized budget airlines,
inter-island ferries and barges, buses, and even chartered flights to
transport their victims domestically and internationally.
Child sex tourism remained a serious problem in the Philippines, with
sex tourists coming from Northeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand,
Europe, and North America to engage in the commercial sexual
exploitation of children. Increasingly, Filipino children are coerced to
perform sex acts for Internet broadcast to paying foreign viewers.
Children in conflict-afflicted areas faced increased vulnerability to
trafficking. One NGO estimated that over 900,000 Filipinos, most of
whom are based in Mindanao, lack identity documents; the lack of birth
registrations or other official documentation is widely recognized as
contributing to this population’s vulnerability to trafficking. The Moro
Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group, and the New People’s Army
were identified by the United Nations as among the world’s persistent
perpetrators of violations against children in armed conflict, including
forcing children into service. During the year, the UN reported on the
Abu Sayyaf Group’s continued targeting of children for conscription as
both combatants and noncombatants.
The Government of the Philippines does not fully comply with the
minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is
making significant efforts to do so. The government significantly
increased funding of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking
(IACAT) from the equivalent of approximately $230,000 in 2010 to the
equivalent of $1.5 million in 2011. The government continued to
prosecute and convict trafficking offenders and implemented a new
program to protect and rehabilitate victims. Additionally, authorities
continued to make efforts to address trafficking-related corruption,
filing criminal cases against 18 officials during the year. The
government made notable efforts to prevent trafficking, including
through training public officials, strengthening and expanding
structures to screen for trafficking indicators before Filipino migrant
workers’ departure overseas, and negotiating bilateral agreements to
protect its workers employed in foreign countries. The government did
not, however, make progress on efforts to criminally prosecute labor
recruitment companies involved in the trafficking of migrant workers
abroad, and overall victim identification and protection efforts
remained inadequate. Rampant corruption at all levels continues to
enable traffickers and undermines efforts to combat trafficking.
Recommendations for the Philippines
Sustain the
intensified effort to investigate, prosecute, and convict an increased
number of both labor and sex trafficking offenders in the trafficking of
Filipinos within the country and abroad; increase funding for
anti-trafficking programs within IACAT member agencies; address the
significant backlog of trafficking cases by developing mechanisms to
track and monitor the status of cases filed with the Department of
Justice (DOJ) and those under trial in the courts; conduct immediate and
rigorous investigations of complaints of trafficking complicity by
government officials and ensure accountability for leaders that fail to
address trafficking-related corruption within their areas of
jurisdiction; strengthen anti-trafficking training for police recruits,
front-line officers, and police investigators; improve collaboration
between victim service organizations and law enforcement authorities
with regard to law enforcement operations; make efforts to expand the
use of victim processing centers to additional localities to improve
identification of adult victims and allow for victims to be processed
and assisted in a safe environment after a rescue operation; increase
victim shelter resources and expand the government shelter system to
assist a greater number of trafficking victims, including male victims
of both sex and labor trafficking; increase funding for the DOJ’s
program for the protection of witnesses and entry of trafficking victims
into the program; increase efforts to identify trafficking victims in
destination countries and to pursue criminal investigation and
prosecution of their traffickers; and develop and implement programs
aimed at reducing the demand for commercial sex acts.
Prosecution
The government continued to prosecute and convict sex and labor
trafficking offenders at a rate similar to the previous year. The
Philippines criminally prohibits both sex and labor trafficking through
its 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, which prescribes penalties
that are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed
for other serious crimes, such as rape. During the reporting period, the
government convicted 29 trafficking offenders, compared with 28
traffickers convicted during the previous year. Two of the 29
traffickers were convicted of labor trafficking. Sentences for the
convicted offenders ranged from one year to life imprisonment, with the
majority of offenders sentenced to life imprisonment. The government
reported that it concurrently pursued civil cases on behalf of victims,
unless the victims opted to pursue such a case independently.
Nevertheless, hundreds of victims continue to be trafficked each day in
well-known, highly visible establishments, many of which have never been
the target of anti-trafficking law enforcement action. Five of the 29
convictions were the results of cases filed and prosecuted by an NGO on
behalf of victims, as the Philippines justice system allows private
attorneys to prosecute cases under the direction and control of public
prosecutors.
Although the DOJ continued to encourage courts’ expedited processing
of trafficking cases, inefficiencies in the judicial system continue to
pose serious challenges to the successful prosecution of some
trafficking cases. Philippine courts have over 680 pending or ongoing
trafficking cases and an additional 129 cases remained pending at the
DOJ. In 2011, the DOJ increased its number of designated trafficking
prosecutors from 36 to 58 individuals in various national, regional, and
airport task forces to work on anti-trafficking cases. In this task
force model, prosecutors are assigned to assist law enforcement in
building cases against suspected trafficking offenders, a notable
difference from the normal practice in which prosecutors wait until an
investigation is complete to review a case.
The government increased its efforts to provide anti-trafficking
training to law enforcement officials: IACAT conducted 81 training
sessions for 3,000 government and NGO stakeholders, police trained 2,105
officers, including nearly half of the officers working on women and
children’s desks, and NGOs and foreign donors provided additional
training to law enforcement officers. Nevertheless, NGOs continue to
report a lack of understanding of trafficking and the country’s
anti-trafficking legal framework among many judges, prosecutors, social
service workers, and law enforcement officials – a significant
impediment to successful prosecutions. Prosecutors continue to have
difficulty distinguishing labor trafficking crimes from labor contract
violations, which may be one reason more criminal forced labor cases are
not filed.
Law enforcement officials’ complicity in human trafficking remains a
pervasive problem in the Philippines, and corruption at all levels of
government enables traffickers to prosper. Officials in government units
and agencies assigned to enforce laws against human trafficking
reportedly permitted trafficking offenders to conduct illegal
activities, allowed traffickers to escape during raids, extorted bribes,
and accepted payments or sexual services from establishments known for
trafficking women and children. Allegations continued that police
officers at times conducted indiscriminate or fake raids on commercial
sex establishments to extort bribes from managers, clients, and women in
the sex industry, sometimes threatening women with imprisonment for
solicitation.
During the last year, the government continued to take some steps to
identify and prosecute officials complicit in trafficking and it
dismissed officials who may have facilitated trafficking for
administrative violations, but no public officials were convicted for
trafficking or trafficking-related corruption during the reporting
period. The DOJ filed criminal cases against 18 officials for
trafficking-related offenses, but none of the cases had been concluded
as of the end of the reporting period. While the government began a
partnership in 2009 with three NGOs to jointly prosecute corrupt
officials, and several investigations have resulted in this partnership,
no criminal cases have been filed under this program. Cases against six
officials accused of trafficking-related corruption were dismissed
during the year.
Protection
The government increased its efforts to protect trafficking victims
during the year. In 2011, the government allocated the equivalent of
approximately $577,000 to the Department of Social Welfare and
Development (DSWD) to fund the Recovery and Reintegration Program for
Trafficked Persons, which it began implementing in June 2011. Over 1,000
victims received skills training, shelter, and legal assistance under
this program, and almost half of those received financial assistance to
seek employment or start their own businesses. The DSWD continued to
operate 42 temporary shelters for victims of all types of abuse, and
some victims continued to receive support through its residential and
community-based services. The government referred victims to both
government and private short- and long-term care facilities and provided
a small amount of funding to NGOs to provide victim care, although the
government did not provide reliable statistics for the total number of
victims identified and assisted during the year. Government shelters did
not detain victims against their will, although victims who chose to
reside in shelters were not permitted to leave the premises unattended.
Identification of adult trafficking victims remained inadequate, which
left victims vulnerable to being charged, fined, and imprisoned for
vagrancy. Three children reportedly were detained by the government’s
armed forces for alleged association with armed groups. No foreign
trafficking victims were identified during the year. IACAT operated an
anti-trafficking hotline; during the year, the line received 68
trafficking-related calls leading to the identification of 17
trafficking cases. The government encouraged victims to assist in the
investigation and prosecution of their traffickers, but the government’s
serious lack of victim and witness protection, exacerbated by a lengthy
trial process and fear of retaliation by traffickers, caused many
victims to decline or withdraw cooperation. The DOJ’s witness protection
program assisted 18 victims, including nine children, during the year.
However, this program lacked funding, and inadequate witness protection
and shelter remained a significant deficiency in the government’s
response to victims’ need for protection and assistance. The DSWD
conducted training for 552 government and non-governmental social
workers on recovery and reintegration of victims, and IACAT, with
support from an international organization, trained 3,000 police
officers on trafficking victim identification. Most local social welfare
officers, however, remain inadequately trained on how to properly
assist rescued trafficking victims, particularly children and victims of
labor trafficking.
In 2011, the government significantly increased its budget allocation
to the Assistance-to-Nationals program, administered by the Department
of Foreign Affairs (DFA), to the equivalent of $9.86 million to assist
Filipinos in situations of distress overseas, including trafficking. The
DSWD and the DFA coordinated with NGOs in other countries to provide
temporary shelter, counseling, and medical assistance to 1,469 victims
of trafficking and illegal recruitment abroad, largely in Malaysia,
Lebanon, the United States, and Palau. From January to March 2012, the
government repatriated and provided shelter to 514 trafficking victims
evacuated from Syria. The government continued to operate multi-agency
Filipino workers resource centers overseas to assist Filipino migrant
workers in 21 countries with 20,000 or more Filipino workers.
Prevention
The government demonstrated increased efforts to prevent human
trafficking during the reporting period. Senior government officials
regularly spoke publicly about the importance of combating human
trafficking, and the IACAT developed and disseminated a three-hour
television show on trafficking awareness.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) conducted 1,539
pre-deployment orientation seminars and 583 pre-employment seminars for
over 100,000 prospective and outbound Filipino overseas workers. The
POEA and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) also conducted
seminars on recruitment and trafficking in the country, attended by
local prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, local government units,
NGOs, recruitment agencies, and community members. The POEA distributed
nearly 100,000 pieces of printed material about trafficking and illegal
recruitment and the community education programs of the Commission on
Filipinos Overseas (CFO) reached over 50,000 people. In 2011, POEA
opened a community center to offer legal assistance to trafficking
victims in partnership with civil society representatives and a labor
assistance center to verify overseas workers’ documents before
departure; the latter identified 101 suspected victims and prevented
them from departing for situations of suspected exploitation.
In 2011, the government significantly increased the IACAT
Secretariat’s full-time staff from eight to 37; it also employed 115
part-time staff members. In December 2011, the government launched its
National Strategic Plan of Action against Trafficking in Persons 2011 –
2016. The government continued to operate its Overseas Passenger
Assistance Center (OPAC) to screen passengers for signs of trafficking;
in August 2011, it opened a second OPAC in a region in which the
seaports are known to be a departure point for many trafficking victims.
CFO assisted 40 adults working overseas in labor and employment cases
during the year, five of whom were identified as trafficking victims and
referred to the DFA. CFO conducted anti-trafficking training sessions
for 201 government, NGO, and community stakeholders.
In October 2011, the government implemented a provision in its
amended law on migrant workers and overseas Filipinos, banning
deployment of Filipinos to 41 countries deemed to lack adequate legal
protections for workers. The following month, however, this list was
recalled for further review. At the close of the reporting year, the
deployment ban remained suspended pending the issuance of a new POEA
resolution. During the year, the government signed a new MOU with Jordan
on the employment of Filipino domestic workers, and it reported ongoing
negotiations for similar agreements with other noncompliant countries.
In January 2012, the Bureau of Immigration began implementing the
“New Guidelines on Departure Formalities for International Bound
Passengers in all Airports and Seaports” to screen for potential
possible trafficking victims. This intensified effort to detect
potential trafficking victims and “off-load” them for interviews – in
essence blocking their travel from the Philippines – raised concerns
that Filipinos’ right to travel out of the country might be unduly
restricted. The guidelines were enacted to systematize the process and
ensure consistent norms were applied. From January – March 2012, 66
potential victims were identified through this process.
In 2011, the government canceled licenses of 153 recruitment
companies for violations of overseas employment laws, closed two
unlicensed staffing agencies, and convicted five individuals for illegal
recruitment. As a result of 22 DOLE-led rescue operations, 125 children
were rescued from the sex trade and six businesses accused of sex
trafficking were permanently closed. Despite significant local demand in
the country’s thriving commercial sex industry, the government’s
efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts in the Philippines
were limited, as were the government’s efforts to address the demand for
forced labor. Although the government acknowledges the problem of child
sex tourism, it did not prosecute or convict any foreign pedophiles,
instead deporting suspects without pursuing criminal charges. The
government provided training, including a module on human trafficking,
to Philippine troops prior to their deployment abroad on international
peacekeeping missions.
