Guyana accuses US of being unfair in report on human trafficking
Thursday, June 17, 2004
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP): Guyana on
Wednesday accused the United States of being "unfair" in its assessment of
Guyana's efforts to combat human trafficking but promised to fast-track plans
to avoid a cut in funding from US and international lending agencies.
"That Guyana has been ranked 'tier three' in the US State Department's report
disappoints me. I think it's very unfair with all the work that we have been
doing," Guyana's Minister of Labour and Human Services, Bibi Shadick, told the
opening of a seminar on trafficking in persons.
She recalled that it was Guyana that last
year asked the Inter American Commission of Women (IACW) to stop focussing
only on human trafficking in Latin America because the Caribbean has "its own
special brand of the problem." The seminar is
one of seven planned for Guyana, Bahamas, Barbados, Netherlands Antilles, St
Lucia and Suriname by the International Organisation for Migration and the
IACW, an agency of the Organisation of American States (OAS) to craft a
regional strategy for combatting the problem.
"The Caribbean region, itself, has not been well looked at in terms of
understanding the context and certainly countries were asking for and
requesting assistance to be able to develop a response," IOM Project Manager
for trafficking in persons, Ashley Garrett, said.
Shadick said Guyanese police and other authorities have been raiding mining
camps and other areas to rescue mainly indigenous women from prostitution,
cheap and forced labour, as well as prosecuting offenders under existing laws.
She said efforts to erase Guyana from
tier-three of the US State Department's global report on human trafficking
included drafting legislation on human trafficking, training people to
identify and report instances of the crime, and educate the public about the
issue.
"Rest assured, we're not doing this because
we want to satisfy the US State Department that we're doing something about
it," Shadick said, however. Tier-three
countries are those whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum
standards to tackle human trafficking and are not making significant efforts
to do so.
Under the Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act of 2003 (TVPRA), the US may withhold non-humanitarian,
non-trade-related assistance and this could result in withholding of funding
for participation in educational and cultural exchange programs.
The US could also oppose assistance, except
for humanitarian, trade-related, and certain development-related assistance,
from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and multilateral development banks such as the World Bank.
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