Taiwan remains a destination — and to a much lesser extent — a source and transit territory for men, women and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor, according to a new report from the US Department of State.
Most trafficking victims in Taiwan are migrant workers from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Cambodia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and India.
According to this year’s Trafficking in Persons Report, they are caught in a trap set by recruitment agencies and brokers to perform low-skilled work in Taiwan’s manufacturing and fishing industries and as home caregivers and domestic workers.
“Many of these workers fall victim to labor trafficking by unscrupulous brokers and employers, who force workers to perform work outside the scope of their contract and often under exploitative conditions,” the report says.
“Some women and girls from China and Southeast Asian countries are lured to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages and deceptive employment offers for purposes of sex trafficking and forced labor,” it adds.
While progress has been made, the Council of Labor Affairs hotline for trafficking victims received 146,000 calls over the past year and the hotline for foreign wives seeking assistance received more than 14,000 calls.
And although there is a law criminalizing the sexual exploitation of children by Republic of China passport-holders traveling abroad, no one has been prosecuted for child sex tourism since 2006.
The report assesses efforts by a total of 184 governments worldwide to fight sexual exploitation, forced labor and modern-day slavery.
Considered to be one of the most comprehensive analyses of worldwide human trafficking, it ranks countries in three “tiers” and Taiwan is ranked in the first and most desirable tier. The country has been in the top grouping since 2006 when it was put on the Tier 2 “watch list.”
The State Department says 27 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide and the report was prepared using information from US embassies, government officials, non-governmental and international organizations, published reports, e-mailed tips and research trips to every region.
The report recommends that Taiwan extend labor protections to all categories of workers, including workers in the domestic service sector and caregivers, to prevent labor trafficking.
It also suggests that Taipei improve on efforts to investigate, prosecute and convict trafficking offenders and ensure that convicted offenders receive stringent sentences.
In addition, the report says Taiwan should make “greater efforts” to investigate and prosecute child sex tourism.
“Taiwan failed to provide full labor protections to the estimated 160,000 foreign workers in the domestic service sector. Domestic workers currently do not have defined working hours or minimum wages, which may have contributed to some situations of forced labor among this vulnerable group of migrants,” the report says.
Some migrant workers are charged as much as US$7,700 in recruitment fees in their home countries, meaning that they arrive in countries like Taiwan in substantial debt.
That debt, the report says, is often used by brokers or employers as a “coercive tool” to subject the workers to forced labor.
“Some women from Taiwan are recruited through classified ads for employment in Japan, Australia, the UK and the US, where they are forced into prostitution,” the report adds. “Taiwan is a transit territory for Chinese citizens who enter the US illegally and may become victims of debt bondage and forced prostitution.”
In Taipei, government officials called a press conference in response to the report, saying that Taiwan would continue to cooperate with the international community to prevent human trafficking.
Efforts by the government to tackle the issue have borne fruit as Taiwan maintained its Tier 1 ranking, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said.
Jiang cited international recognition of the country’s achievements in this regard to the enactment of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防制法) and its implementation.
That Taiwan has been categorized as a Tier 1 country for two consecutive years by the US demonstrated that government agencies have cooperated well in carrying out human trafficking prevention measures under the routinely held coordination meeting of the Executive Yuan, Cabinet spokesman Philip Yang (楊永明) said.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
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