Protection
The Philippine government relied heavily on NGOs and international organizations to provide services to victims. Victims were encouraged to file civil cases against traffickers, and the former are not penalized for any crimes committed as a direct result of their being trafficked. The implementing rules and regulations of the 2003 anti-trafficking law outline identification and referral procedures. The government assisted victims by providing temporary residency status, relief from deportation, shelter, and access to legal, medical, and psychological services.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development established 42 temporary shelters for victims and 13 of these were supported by a non-profit charity organization. The government sent 8 social workers to Philippine diplomatic missions to provide psychosocial counseling to overseas Filipino workers in distress. The Philippine Ports Authority provided the building and facilities for halfway houses in Manila, Davao, Batangas, and Sorsogon, managed by an NGO; the Ports Authority, police, and the Coast Guard referred victims to the halfway houses. In March 2007, the Department of Labor and Employment opened the first reintegration center where returning overseas Filipino workers may seek services such as skills training, psycho-social counseling, and business development assistance.
This law saves and protects many women and children from and against prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage, both domestic and overseas. R. A. Sec. 4b of 9208 supplements the Anti Mail-order bride law which only prohibits matching of Filipino women for marriage to foreign nationals on a mail-order bride formula, for this law punishes "introducing or matching any Filipino woman to a foreign national for marriage for the purpose of acquiring, buying, offering, selling, or trading her to engage in prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage is also considered an act of trafficking."
RA 9208 directs the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to establish programs for Filipinos who are trafficked overseas, to ensure the safety of overseas Filipinos. This law covers both national and international migration, and requires the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Immigration (BI), Philippine National Police, Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), NCRFW, and local government units (LGUs), to establish programs to prevent, protect, and rehabilitate trafficked victims.
Read more about this topic: Anti-Trafficking In Persons Act Of 2003
Famous quotes containing the word protection:
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the laws’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“... actresses require protection in their art from blind abuse, from savage criticism. Their work is their religion, if they are seeking the best in their art, and to abuse that faith is to rob them, to dishonor them.”
—Nance O’Neil (1874–1965)
“Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)