Published On:Friday, March 12, 2010

CLAIMS that children are being trafficked from Haiti into the Bahamas to be used for sex and forced labour have been raised for a second time in a US government report - this time attributed to independent social workers.

The State Department's 2009 Human Rights Report, released yesterday, said representatives of non-governmental organisations on the ground in Haiti reported the problem of child trafficking for sexual and labour purposes, "especially to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas."

The researchers noted that Haiti continues to be a source country for persons trafficked to a number of other places as well, including Jamaica, the United States, Europe and Canada.

The report said: "Trafficked citizens reported conditions of bonded servitude, slavery, and forced labour. Extreme poverty and lack of employment were among key risk factors supporting human trafficking."

It added that no information could be collected on the principal traffickers, their networks, or methods, and noted that there were no anti-trafficking laws in Haiti and therefore no prosecutions or convictions during the year.

This comes after noted anti-slavery campaigner Aaron Cohen warned that the Bahamas is "at risk of falling into the tentacles of organised crime in the Caribbean".

In an interview with The Tribune last week, he said that while the country is already a transit stop and destination for women and children either tricked or forced into servitude, the problem could be about to get much worse.

He fears that in the wake of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, the Bahamas could replace that country as a chief transit hub for human traffickers.

Mr Cohen pointed to the State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports for 2008 and 2009, which mentioned the Bahamas as a destination for sex workers from the Dominican Republic and "restaveks", or children exploited for domestic labour, from Haiti.

The most recent TIP report, released last week, noted that in 2008, parliament passed the Trafficking in Persons Prevention and Suppression Act which sets out penalties for offenders that range from three years to life imprisonment.

However, the State Department criticised the tendency of local officials to lump human trafficking together with human smuggling - the transportation of persons engaging in voluntary illegal immigration - and punish the victims with arrest and deportation rather than offering them help.

* SEE PAGE TWO

You can find our interview with Aaron Cohen at:

http://www.tribune242.com/editorial/Insight/03082010_slavery_Insight-pg