Tag: <span>Labour Organization</span>

Trafficking in Persons Appeals

Concerted Efforts Against Trafficking in Persons.

Featured Image: Photo by  sammisreachers in Pixabay.

On 30 July;  there should be a world-wide concerted effort against trafficking in persons.  The United Nations General Assembly in Resolution A/RES/68/192 in 2012;  set out 30 July as a day to review and reaffirm the need for action against the criminal global networks dealing in trafficking of persons.   The traffick in human beings reveals the hunger of the global economy for human labor and the disrespect for human dignity.  Drugs, guns, illegal immigration are the nightmare avenues of how the poor world becomes integrated into the global economy. These are intricate networks and are intertwined with interests in business and politics.

A recent U.N. Report presented to the Commission on the Status of Women;  highlighted that human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries and one of the crucial human rights crises today.

From Himalayan villages to Eastern European cities – especially women and girls – are attracted by the prospects of a well-paid job as a domestic servant, waitress or factory worker.  Traffickers recruit victims through fake advertizements, mail-order bride catalogues, casual acquaintances, and even family members.  Children are trafficked to work in sweatshops, and men to work in the « three D jobs » – dirty, difficult and dangerous.

        Despite clear international standards;  such as the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime  and its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons;  Especially Women and Children; there is poor implementation; limited governmental infrastructure dedicated to the issue.  There is also a tendency to criminalize the victims.

Since 2002;  the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime has collected information on trafficking in persons. 

The International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization – especially in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention – and the International Organization for Migration – all have anti-trafficking programs; but they have few « people on the ground » dealing directly with the issue.

Thus real progress needs to be made through non-governmental organizations (NGOs),  such as the Association of World Citizens;  which has raised the issue in human rights bodies in Geneva. 

Trafficking in Persons

Kari Johnstone serves as Acting Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons delivers remarks at an event recognizing the release of the 2018 Trafficking in Persons report and honoring the 2018 ‘TIP Report Heroes’ at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC on June 28, 2018. (State Department photo/ Public Domain). By U.S. Department of State from United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

There are three aspects to this anti-trafficking effort. 

The first is to help build political will by giving accurate information to political leaders and the press.  The other two aspects depend on the efforts of NGOs themselves. Such efforts call for increased cooperation among NGOs and capacity building.

The second aspect is research into the areas from which persons – especially children and women – are trafficked.  These are usually the poorest parts of a country and among marginalized populations.  Socio-economic and development projects must be directed to these areas so that there are realistic avenues for advancement.

The third aspect is psychological healing.  Very often persons;  who have been trafficked have had a disrupted or violent family life.  They may have a poor idea of their self-worth. The victim’s psychological health is often ignored by governments.  Victims can suffer a  strong psychological shock that disrupts their psychological integrity. Thus;  it is important to create opportunities for individual and group healing;  to give a spiritual dimention through teaching meditation and yoga.  There is a need to create adult education facilities so that persons may continue a broken educational cycle.

          We must not underestimate the difficulties and dangers; which exist in the struggle against trafficking in persons nor the hard efforts;  which are needed for the psychological healing of victims. 30 July can be a rededication for our efforts.

   

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.

Here are other publications that may be of interest to you.

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Indigenous Rapprochement of Cultures.

The Protection of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples

Featured Image: Big Pow-Wow with traditional costumes from East coast First Nations of Canada. By Marc-Lautenbacher, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

While both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is man’s vocation. This vocation is constantly negated. It is thewarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity.

Paulo Freire.

Photo of Paulo Freire (1977). By Slobodan Dimitrov, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention.

The United Nations General Assembly has set 9 August as the International Day of Indigenous People. However, the term ‘indigenous’ is ambiguous since at some point nearly every group came from somewhere else at an earlier time. Thus when the first UN effort was undertaken in the International Labour Organization in 1957, the ILO Convention (N°107) was called the “Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention”. It is not always possible to say who is ‘indigenous’ but it is usually easy enough to know if a group has a tribal structure.

For many years, indigenous and tribal peoples were the forgotten stepchildren of the intergovernmental organizations dealing with human rights. Yet they needed protection at least as much as those on whom the political limelight had focused.

The world community is filled with many different types of collective actors: clans, tribes, castes, ethnic groups, cities, races, social classes, religious organizations, nation-states, multi-state alliances for military or economic goals, transnational corporations and associations. Each is the creation of individuals who have grouped together – or have been grouped together – to achieve goals considered common to the group’s members. All such collective groups have techniques to socialize new members to share the common values, to accept the ideology and beliefs of the tribe, the nation-state or the association.

This socialization process goes so deeply that a person’s sense of identity becomes associated with these collective identities. The family passes on a sense of belonging to a collective identity, the school, the army, the church, the political process and institutions – each propose a sense of group purpose.

Image by Basil D Soufi, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tribes and Clans.

Yet none of these groups is static and unchanging. Even clans and tribes whose members often consider that they have a common ancestor do in fact change. Tribes merge and divide; new identities are formed: new ancestors are created to justify the new grouping.

Some types of collective belonging are more easily left than others. One can move relatively easily from a city and take on the character, the values and the goals of a new city. Social mobility can produce changes in social class, and even caste lines become blurred. Persons change nationality or acquire new nationalities as frontiers are modified. Race is less easily changed but definitions of what constitutes a race do change. Ethnic identity is often associated with birth, but parents can belong to different ethnic communities, although the child is usually raised as belonging to the more dominant group. However the socialization process of group identity goes to the level of sub-conscious behaviour and is not easily set aside.

Today, the nation-state claims to be the dominant collective association – setting the boundaries of loyalty and identity. The state claims the right to set out the major collective goals and values. Through laws, the state claims the right to set out the rules by which other collective entities may pursue their goals; through taxation the state draws the resources to further the goals it has set, and the state claims to have the only legitimate use of violence to punish those who break the laws and rules it has set.

There have always been tensions between these collective groups for their spheres of goal-setting and value-setting have overlapped. Thus there have been tensions between religious organizations and the state as to who should set what goals and the means to achieve these goals. There have also been tensions between classes and the state when it was felt that the state was dominated by another economic class who used its power within state institutions not for the good of all but only to advance class interests. The same is true of other collective units – races or ethnic groups – excluded from power within state institutions.

Madhesi Istet Woiche (aka William Hulsey) 1923. By Big Band Hot Spring, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nation-States.

Today in many parts of the world those most excluded from power within state institutions are people living in alternative structures of authority, goal-setting and rule-making: persons living in tribal societies. Tribal societies predated most of today’s nation-states. A tribal society usually has all the same functions as the nation-state: it sets out membership, loyalties, common goals and rules of behaviour. It has sanctions against those breaking the laws of the tribe and has – or had- the monopoly of the legitimacy of using violence against those breaking the laws. Tribes are, in fact, more realistically “nation-states”
If one defines nation as a common language, a common history and a common will to act together.

Thus because the tribal society is the closest in function to that of the nation-state, it is also the most feared. Tribes are institutions with whom it is difficult to compromise because they have the same presumptions as the state. It is relatively easy for a government to offer higher wages to the industrial worker or higher prices to the farmer as social classes do not claim to carry out in an alternative way the functions of the state. It is more of a challenge to the state’s image of its role to allow tribal societies to set out a land policy or fishing rights or trans-frontier trading rights because these activities conflict directly with the functions that the government has set for itself.

The Reservations.

Thus, there has been a long history of the state destroying alternative institutions of governance on its territory. The nation-states of Europe were built upon the ruins of feudal institutions as much of Asia was built on the destruction of local rulers. We see the pattern today as we watch traditional chiefs in Africa loose their authority to the heads of state and the military. In the Americas, many of the indigenous tribal societies were destroyed. Others were pushed into areas that those who controlled the government did not want – the “reservations” – of Canada and the USA. In Latin America and Asia, there is still active struggle going on between those trying to preserve their tribal institutions and homelands and the state which claims complete authority over all its territory and who often wish to put new settlers on tribal lands.

Three Native American women, standing, full-length, facing front, holding beaded bags, Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Wasco County, Oregon. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The amount of violence and suffering is considerable. Slowly the fate of tribal societies has come to the attention of the United Nations. The UN was set up to facilitate relations between nations-states. However, because wide-spread violations of individual rights had been the consequences of the Second World War, a Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. The aim of the Declaration is to stress the rights of the individual – a natural consequence of the philosophy of the drafters. The rights of collective bodies with which the drafters were familiar: trade unions, churches, professional associations are also protected. However, tribal societies were not particularly thought of as one sees by reading the drafting negotiations leading to the 1948 Universal Declaration. Thus, the Universal Declaration protects the rights of all individuals – including, of course, individuals living in tribal societies – but there is no direct recognition of the functions of tribal societies.

It was not until the first World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, held at the UN in Geneva in August 1978, that certain aspects of discrimination against indigenous populations were included in the Programme of Action. In 1983, the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations started meeting in Geneva which led to the growing attention being given to indigenous and tribal peoples. There is still much work to be done as the process of humanization of those now oppressed and marginalized will come about only through radical changes in the outlook of those now holding power and authority.

Here are other publications that may be of interest to you.

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