Press Release
February 10, 2006
PIMENTEL CALLS FOR FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF LAWS AND TREATIES AGAINST TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban)
today bewailed that the trafficking of women remains largely
unchecked despite the enactment and enforcement of laws and
international agreements that have strengthened the hands of
governments in combatting this social menace.
Pimentel challenged political leaders and law enforcement
authorities to strictly implement the two and a half-year old law
proscribing the trafficking of women and children, as well as
related international agreements of which the Philippines is a
signatory.
Laws and international agreements are only effective if countries
get down from the rarefied air of legal norms to address the problem
and get into the tough battle for the equality of sexes which is in
the realm of the economic and social lives of peoples, Pimentel
told the International Conference on Migration and Trafficking of
Persons at the Bayview Park Hotel in Manila.
To get this objective done successfully, he stressed the need to get
the cooperation of governments of the less affluent parts of the
world, where the supply of trafficked women comes from, to legally
interdict it.
He said there is also a need to get the more affluent world, where
the demand for trafficked women is greatest, to help the less
affluent nations to eradicate the basic cause of trafficking of
women poverty.
Saying the problem has acquired global proportions, the lone senator
from Mindanao said trafficking of women exists in some countries in
Africa, Asia and Europe were the squalor of poverty drives the
affected women abetted by their families in many instances to
seek life elsewhere even at the risk of abuse.
The problem, of course, is aggravated by the fact that there
appears to be a growing demand for women who could be used as
chattels, molested as sex-toys, and maltreated as slaves in the more
affluent parts of the world, he said.
Pimentel cited common instances of women coming from the poor Asian
nations, including the Philippines, who are battered and victimized
mostly sexually by bad elements in countries like Japan and South
Korea or ill-treated as slaves in some Middle Eastern states. He
mentioned a recent report that in the United States alone, some
45,000 to 50,000 women a year are trafficked by criminal syndicates.
He emphasized that it will take the collective genius of the
well-meaning peoples of the world to combat this menace that
threatens the moral fabric of all societies of the world.
It is important for the peoples of the world to realize that unless
we address the problem of the moral degradation of our societies in
general and of women in particular, there wont be much that our
respective societies can do about that other serious problems of the
world, women trafficking, included, Pimentel said.
Pimentel said the warning that former US President Jimmy Carter
aired in his recent book, Our Endangered Values (Americas Moral
Crisis), may well apply to the rest of the world.
Without upholding moral values, no country no matter how powerful
economically or militarily can last for long. |