Human trafficking

After much delay, the Justice Ministry has finalised standard operating procedures in line with international standards regarding human trafficking victims. Yet they have much to do as Sri Lanka remains a Tier 2 country in the US State Department’s latest Trafficking in Persons report.
Tier 2 countries are those whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
Given the large number of Sri Lankans that have been detained in the last few years, it is clear that much needs to be done to minimise human smuggling. In the last two years alone an estimated 1,500 people were arrested while attempting to illegally migrate to Australia while another 1,200 odd have been returned. In addition many women and children of both sexes are routinely trafficked within the country, mostly for prostitution, while migrant workers also face severe problems.
The Sri Lankan Government has made very limited law enforcement efforts to address human trafficking, the report observes. Sri Lanka prohibits all forms of both sex and labour trafficking through Article 360(c) of its penal code, although the law also covers non-trafficking offenses, such as selling children.
The law prescribes punishments of up to 20 years’ imprisonment. These penalties are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious offenses, such as rape. But the report says only one trafficking case was heard under this law in 2013 and the judicial process seems “unwilling” to use it to full affect. In some instances only suspended sentences are handed out, with judicial redress largely left in the shadows. The Government also investigated only 20 new cases of trafficking in 2013, compared to 44 in 2012.
The report underscored that despite trainings and the partial implementation of victim identification procedures, the Sri Lankan Government officials did not have a clear view on human trafficking and they confused trafficking in persons with other crimes, such as human smuggling, illegal immigration, and prostitution. This confusion impeded law enforcement and victim protection efforts, the TIP report noted.
The US report recommended the Government to, among other things, improve efforts to investigate and prosecute suspected trafficking offenses, respecting due process, and convict and punish trafficking offenders, including Government officials suspected of complicity in human trafficking. It also suggested expanding the Bureau of Foreign Employment’s mandate to include the regulation of subagents and train local and national Government officials on the differences between trafficking and crimes such as smuggling and prostitution.
Some other recommendations included approving and fully implementing procedures to proactively identify trafficking victims among vulnerable populations and refer them to care facilities, improving services for shelters, legal aid, and counselling and improving data collection on the number of trafficking victims identified and assisted in Sri Lanka and in Sri Lankan embassies.
The TIP report also asked Sri Lanka to accede to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. Sri Lanka is yet to ratify the United Nations TIP protocol of 2000, the protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children.
With increasingly large numbers of migrant workers, beefing up Sri Lanka’s muddled judicial system becomes ever-more important but it continues to be agonisingly slow.