Participants at the one-day seminar on Trafficking In Persons at the Hotel Tower yesterday.
Minister in the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security, Bibi Shadick described Guyana's Tier 3 grade for trafficking in persons as unfair.
The assessment in a US State Department report was based on investigations done in Guyana by the US Embassy in Georgetown and revealed that over 100 persons were trafficked in Guyana last year. Guyana has 60 days to address the situation, which mostly involves forced prostitution in interior locations, or face sanctions.
In her address at the opening of a seminar on Trafficking In Persons (TIP) at the Hotel Tower yesterday, Shadick said she became angry when she first saw the report as it gave the impression that Guyana was not doing anything about it.
She said from the time the government be came aware of the problem it had been putting "so much effort into this problem... Quietly we have been looking after sexually exploited young girls. We have not been looking after it in terms of trafficking in persons but as part of family probation and welfare services. We have been looking at labour as part of the work of the Ministry of Labour." Other issues being dealt with, she said, were prostitution in terms of health, though the laws were outdated.
She feels that somehow the definition of trafficking in persons has been expanded to include many activities that she never thought would have come under this definition.
Shadick said since early 2003 when she was appointed principal delegate to the Inter-American Commission on Women (CIM) of the Organisation of American States (OAS) she found there were studies and projects being done on Latin American countries on what was called trafficking in persons.
At that meeting she questioned the reasons for the Caribbean region not being included in the studies given the fact that there is a large number of Caribbean countries in the OAS.
CIM and the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) came together and last February held a meeting in Washington. There, Shadick said she agreed that Guyana be one of eight countries in the Caribbean where a regional study on Trafficking in Persons could be done.
At present seven countries are part of the study, the others being Barbados, where a seminar was held last week, The Bahamas, Jamaica, The Netherlands Antilles, St Lucia and Suriname.
Participants at yesterday's seminar included representatives of the country's ten administrative regions, governmental and non-governmental organisations and some diplomatic missions. The seminar was meant to better acquaint participants with what trafficking in persons means and the forms it takes.
A number of the participants from the regions told Stabroek News that while the term Trafficking In Persons might have been new to them the phenomenon was not.
Coming out of the seminar was a draft national proposal with recommendations on the way forward but they were to be tidied up before being disseminated for public discussion, presenter of the document, Hymawattie Lagan told Stabroek News yesterday afternoon.
Shadick said there was a need to distinguish between sexual exploitation and prostitution and a need not to only look at women but at the plight of boys.
Since the problem was being looked at in terms of trafficking in persons, Shadick said that in March the government convened a high -level meeting that included President Bharrat Jagdeo; Minister of Education, Dr Henry Jeffrey; Commissioner of Police Winston Felix; and US Ambassador to Guyana, Roland Bullen among others.
At that meeting she was appointed to lead the effort to formulate a national plan of action in addition to the regional plan of action that is already in train to deal with this problem. The ministry solicited the help of interest groups. When the draft was formulated in April it was sent to the Office of the President and the Head of USAID, Mike Sarhan among others.
Based on the plan, Shadick said she met with Sarhan to look at a proposal for USAID to fund. The offer for funding came from USAID and the proposal has been sent to Washington for approval. The funds would be used for public awareness programmes, training and the establishment of a network to deal with the problem.
Reiterating her disappointment, she called on participants to commit themselves to getting Guyana off the Tier 3 within the sixty days.
In brief remarks Counsellor and Traffic In Persons Co-ordinator at the US Embassy in Guyana, Timothy Birner said that the US State Department is required by US laws to submit to the Congress each year a report on foreign governments' efforts.
The term trafficking in persons, Birner said, encompasses slave trading and modern- day slavery in all of its forms. Human trafficking differs from alien smuggling in that victims are not always moved across international borders.
Guyana was placed in Tier 3, because the country did not meet the minimum requirements of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed by the US Congress in 2000. The information submitted for the report was based on thorough investigations conducted by the US Embassy, Birner said, adding that their researchers spoke to a wide variety of credible sources and independently verified the reports received. He said the analysis was fair and balanced noting that more than 100 Guyanese were victims last year. (Miranda La Rose)