Ireland lauded despite failure to prosecute any traffickers

A GLOBAL report on human trafficking has placed Ireland in the top tier of countries for its efforts to tackle the crime, even though not one person has been prosecuted under this country’s specific legislation dealing with trafficking.

The US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) 2010, says Ireland “fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.

While it finds this country is a destination and transit country for women, men and children subjected to trafficking, it said the Government had made “substantial strides” in acknowledging Ireland’s human trafficking problem and implementing legislation and policies to punish trafficking offenders and protect trafficking victims.

Last year, Ireland was placed in the second tier of countries. At that point the US State Department said the country did not comply with the minimum standards.

Ruhama, the organisation which works with victims of human trafficking, said Ireland should have, at the minimum, fully ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Human Trafficking before being promoted.

“There is a danger that this year’s TIP Report sends out a false perception that victims of trafficking are receiving full protection and assistance from the state because we know that this is not the case,” it said.

“Many victims still struggle to get satisfactory assistance from the State and continue to find it difficult to get identified as a victim of trafficking, with very few receiving protection under the State’s new special measures. The reality is that often victims find themselves in a precarious residency status for long periods of time and there are inconsistencies in how victims can access residency.”

The 2010 report said the Irish Government had confirmed that some children who have gone missing from state care have been found in brothels, restaurants, and private households where they may have been exploited.

“Of the 47 children who were reported missing from state care in 2009, nine were recovered; authorities believed at least one of the nine may have been trafficked,” it said.

The report also makes a number of recommendations, including that Ireland establish a national anti-trafficking rapporteur “to draft critical assessments of Ireland’s efforts to punish traffickers, protect victims, and prevent new incidents of human trafficking”.

Both Ruhama and the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) called on the Government to act on the US State Department’s recommendations.

“Certainly, the Irish Government has improved its response to sex trafficking over the past few years but equally clearly there are many women and girls being exploited for profit in this country today,” said ICI chief executive Denise Charlton. “No child has been formally identified as a victim of trafficking in Ireland, despite the clear evidence that this is occurring... As yet, no one has been prosecuted for sex trafficking in Ireland.”

She urged the Government to appoint a national rapporteur to independently assess of how Ireland is dealing with “this modern form of slavery”.