NewsWhore
01-17-2011, 02:00 PM
The US government is putting pressure on the Dominican government to shake off its laissez-faire approach towards its border controls and work harder to reduce child smuggling from Haiti. There are reports that border guards are profiting from looking the other way to allow illegal aliens to enter, including smuggled children. For years now, women with small children and small children on their own (or supervised from afar) have been begging at key city streets in Santo Domingo and Santiago, displacing Dominican beggars. The media have reported on several occasions on how the children are exploited, and are rarely the offspring of the adults they accompany.
Luis de Baca is leading the push to get the DR government to do more. He is the US Ambassador-at-Large of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Prior to joining the Obama government last year, De Baca was known as the strongest champion of ending human trafficking in the US government.
As reported in Diario Libre, the DR could lose economic and military aid, and risks the blocking of exports to the US, opposition in the IMF and the World Bank.
De Baca said the DR has until June to implement recommendations made by the US Department of State to persecute and penalize children traffickers, as reported in El Nuevo Herald of Miami.
Child smuggling has not been tried in the DR. De Baca says there is a need not only to arrest the traffickers, but also their accomplices in government. "In the DR we have not seen the first, and that is where the frustration is," he said. He said the recommendations were included in the report on People Smuggling 2010 that ranked the DR at level 3, the lowest.
According to the report: "The Government of the Dominican Republic does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. The government has not convicted any trafficking offenders, including officials possibly complicit in trafficking, since 2007. Results in the areas of victim protection, and trafficking prevention were also limited."
They recommend increasing efforts to investigate, prosecute, and punish trafficking offenders, especially public officials complicit in human trafficking; separate and track data on prosecutions, convictions, and sentences involving forced prostitution and forced labor as opposed to human smuggling, and consider prosecution of forced prostitution cases under the comprehensive anti- trafficking law rather than under the lesser offense of pimping; encourage the identification of more victims by working with NGOs to establish formal procedures to guide police and other officials in identifying trafficking victims and referring them to available services; institute formal, ongoing training for police, border officials, labor inspectors, and health officials on the difference between smuggling and trafficking, and in identifying and assisting victims of forced prostitution and forced labor; ensure adequate shelter and services are available to adult and child victims; ensure victims are not penalized for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked; establish formal legal alternatives to removal for foreign victims to countries where they would face retribution or hardship; and increase prevention and demand-reduction efforts.
www.state.gov/documents/organization/142982.pdf (http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/142982.pdf)
www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/index.htm (http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/index.htm)
www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/27/102659/border-guards-profiting-from-haitian.html (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/27/102659/border-guards-profiting-from-haitian.html)
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)
Luis de Baca is leading the push to get the DR government to do more. He is the US Ambassador-at-Large of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Prior to joining the Obama government last year, De Baca was known as the strongest champion of ending human trafficking in the US government.
As reported in Diario Libre, the DR could lose economic and military aid, and risks the blocking of exports to the US, opposition in the IMF and the World Bank.
De Baca said the DR has until June to implement recommendations made by the US Department of State to persecute and penalize children traffickers, as reported in El Nuevo Herald of Miami.
Child smuggling has not been tried in the DR. De Baca says there is a need not only to arrest the traffickers, but also their accomplices in government. "In the DR we have not seen the first, and that is where the frustration is," he said. He said the recommendations were included in the report on People Smuggling 2010 that ranked the DR at level 3, the lowest.
According to the report: "The Government of the Dominican Republic does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. The government has not convicted any trafficking offenders, including officials possibly complicit in trafficking, since 2007. Results in the areas of victim protection, and trafficking prevention were also limited."
They recommend increasing efforts to investigate, prosecute, and punish trafficking offenders, especially public officials complicit in human trafficking; separate and track data on prosecutions, convictions, and sentences involving forced prostitution and forced labor as opposed to human smuggling, and consider prosecution of forced prostitution cases under the comprehensive anti- trafficking law rather than under the lesser offense of pimping; encourage the identification of more victims by working with NGOs to establish formal procedures to guide police and other officials in identifying trafficking victims and referring them to available services; institute formal, ongoing training for police, border officials, labor inspectors, and health officials on the difference between smuggling and trafficking, and in identifying and assisting victims of forced prostitution and forced labor; ensure adequate shelter and services are available to adult and child victims; ensure victims are not penalized for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked; establish formal legal alternatives to removal for foreign victims to countries where they would face retribution or hardship; and increase prevention and demand-reduction efforts.
www.state.gov/documents/organization/142982.pdf (http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/142982.pdf)
www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/index.htm (http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/index.htm)
www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/27/102659/border-guards-profiting-from-haitian.html (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/27/102659/border-guards-profiting-from-haitian.html)
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)