The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human on Trafficking seems to be a good online source on human trafficking. I came across it just now while taking the training on basic online publishing with Newsbreak.

Trafficking in persons, according to UN.GIFT, involves the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

We really need to know and share information about this serious social problem. Blogging, like what we are doing now, could be a good start.

The Center for Community Journalism and Development is pleased to participate in today’s Training on Basic Online Publishing by Newsbreak.  We hope to use this skill in sharing information to community journalists, and helping the public understand human trafficking and act against it.

A media colleague recently shared with us her family’s own fight against human trafficking. Lyn Ramo, editor of the Baguio-based Northern Dispatch recently recounted to us how she and other kin successfully saved their 16-year-old niece from traffickers. The teenager and two other young girls were promised jobs as domestic helpers in Manila. But it was only later they found out the real intentions of their supposed recruiters.

Sad to say, as this incident has shown, even one’s family members could be unwitting instruments to human trafficking. Many parents urge their sons and daughters to find work outside their barrios, not knowing that the predators are out there.

Sorry I wasn’t able to post this sooner.  Shelley at the Visayan Forum sent this press release earlier on the concert the Visayan Forum is holding to kick off the MTV End Exploitation and Trafficking (EXIT) Philippine campaign. Here goes…

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Hi all! This might be of interest to you.  Soon after we published our series of special reports on organ trafficking, we received this email from the office of DSWD Secretary Esperanza Cabral informing us of progress in the approval of the IRR implementing the provision on organ trafficking in the anti-human trafficking law.

Here’s the full text of the email:

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Effective communication, education, information sharing, and collaboration among advocates, law enforcement officials, and service providers are essential to preventing human trafficking and protecting and reintegrating victims. The Internet answers to most of these needs by enabling a low-cost, broadly accessible platform for information dissemination, management, and exchange.

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