The Philippines and the US signed on Thursday an agreement for a three-year project to combat the alarming increase in the number of human trafficking cases whose victims are mostly Filipino women and children.
As agreed, the US would provide $500,000 to fund the training by American federal prosecutors of their Filipino counterparts and judges as well as protect human trafficking victims and witnesses.
The agreement was signed by Secretary Leila de Lima of the Department of Justice and Harry Thomas Junior, the US ambassador to the Philippines.
Thomas was applauded when he spoke in Filipino thus after the signing: “Together, we will end the living hell of the victims. Together, we will fight human trafficking and we will win.”
De Lima described the agreement as a welcome development in the determined efforts of the two countries to end the problem of human trafficking
De Lima noted that the government has filed hundreds of cases against suspected members of human trafficking syndicates since it enacted the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act on 2003.
However, the government succeeded in securing the conviction by the courts of only 23 of these cases, according to De Lima.
She also disclosed that in 2009 government prosecutors filed a total of 206 such cases before the courts.
The agreement, De Lima said, becomes even more significant because the US State Department has included the Philippines and other nations in the “Tier 2” category in its 2010 report on human trafficking worldwide.
As defined by the report, Tier 2 means the Philippines “does not fully comply with but is making significant efforts to meet” the US State Department’s standards.
The Philippines has been warned that if it does not improve in its performance in the prosecution of human trafficking cases in February 2011, it would lose $250 million in aid from the US State Department.
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