We are OFWs and families of OFWs who have been victimized by human trafficking, migrants’ rights advocates, defender of women and children’s rights and members of the religious community and other sectors of society who have come together to fight human trafficking.
The Philippines is one of the main source countries for human trafficking in different parts of the world. Filipinos, mostly women and children, are being trafficked for labor or sexual trade to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Malaysia, HongKong, Singapore, Japan, South Africa, North America and Europe.
The Philippine government estimates the number of Filipino victims of trafficking from 300,000 to 400,000, with the number of children victims ranging from 60,000 to 100,000. Many of them migrate to work through legal and illegal means but are later coerced into exploitative conditions, drug trade or white slavery.
Because of this, the Philippines was placed in Tier 2 in the 2007 US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report for not fully complying with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
Ironically, the Philippines is one of the countries that boasts of having enacted an Anti Trafficking in Persons Act, otherwise known as Republic Act 9208.
RA 9208 defines “trafficking of persons” as the “recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring, or receipt of persons with or without the victim’s consent or knowledge, within or across national borders by means of threat or use of force, or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or of position, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the person, or, the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation which includes at a minimum, the exploitation or the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, servitude or the removal or sale of organs.”
Further, the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of a child for the purposeof exploitation shall also be considered as ‘trafficking in persons’. RA 9208 imposes penalties to up to life imprisonment and allows private prosecutors, including NGOs, to file lawsuits against traffickers.
Despite this, the Inter-Agency Council against Trafficking persons (IACAT) only received a total of 146 cases of human trafficking for investigation. Many victims, with the help of concerned organizations, have filed charges of violations of RA 9028 but the government, unfortunately, lacks the political will and financial resources to fully address the cases. There are also reports of immigration and government officials who are coddlers trafficking syndicates but so far none have been prosecuted.
It is in this light that we now come together to call on the government to address this urgent problem that has curtailed labor and human rights of our overseas Filipino workers and in some cases caused their untimely and unjust deaths for decades now.
We all unite under the creed that it is the government’s main responsibility to protect and ensure the welfare and rights of our OFWs, our dakilang bagong bayani.
We call on the government to monitor, investigate and evaluate the implementation of RA 9208, as well as the implementation of deployment bans and the compliance of both the national government and governments of receiving countries to existing bilateral agreements and such with regard to the protection and promotion of the rights of OFWs, especially those of women and children.
We call on the government to investigate, prosecute and punish all erring private recruitment agencies, government officials and employers/individuals who have violated RA 9208 or any other clause pertaining to human trafficking in the Migrant Workers’ Act or RA 10022, without prejudice and with political will.
We also condemn the budget cuts on funds for assistance to nationals and legal assistance for OFWs that would greatly affect the much-needed government support for our OFWs in distress.
We call on the government to bring home all OFWs who are victims of human trafficking and seeking immediate repatriation, regardless of their status.
We vow to continue to work together to realize a day when our citizens will no longer be forced to face dire and dangerous conditions overseas out of desperation, poverty and hopelessness in our very own homeland. ###
Bring Them Home 
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