Crime groups recruit Venezuelan migrants for dangerous work, increasing their trafficking risk
Criminal gangs profit from the Venezuelan displacement crisis, unaccompanied migrant children work in dangerous jobs across the U.S., and charities say modern slavery victims are being failed by a UK system at breaking point.
A recently published report puts renewed focus on the high risk of human trafficking faced by Venezuelan migrants, who are falling prey to organized criminal groups as they flee from violence, poverty, and a lack of food and medicine in their homeland. Often forced to take irregular routes in search of safety, they risk recruitment and trafficking by crime gangs, and exposure to harrowing levels of violence, threats, forced disappearance and homicide, say researchers.
More than seven million Venezuelans have been externally displaced amid an ongoing economic crisis in the country exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, according to a report by Plataforma de Coordinación Interagencial para Refugiados y Migrantes (Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants of Venezuela, or R4V), those migrants are being exploited for profit in Latin American and Caribbean countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Aruba and Curaçao.
Human smuggling networks across Latin America have long profited from the Venezuelan displacement crisis by offering “packages” to migrants that include travel from Venezuela via Chile or Argentina through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia or Brazil. However, on arrival at their destination, they are often passed into the hands of traffickers. Now, according to the report, crime groups are also exploiting migrants for profit by recruiting them into risky work such as selling contraband, harvesting coca leaf, transporting drugs between countries by boat or selling them in cities. However, these low-level positions also place migrants in great danger of trafficking due to their interactions with other criminals and their high levels of vulnerability.
Commonly, women and girls are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. They are predominantly recruited through social media and false job offers to work in private residences, restaurants, or as hairdressers. Once they arrive, however, criminals confiscate their documents and force them into commercial sex activities to “pay” for their transportation and accommodation. Some victims are handed over to other groups, who further exploit them. Migrants also become victims of labour exploitation in the agricultural, construction and domestic sectors in countries such as Brazil, Aruba, and Curaçao. As unauthorized migrants, victims are unable to report what is happening to them or seek help, further adding to the precariousness of their situation.
Venezuelan migrants are frequent victims of forced disappearance, with border regions being particular points of danger. Human trafficking is a leading cause, with traffickers often moving victims along perilous routes, and frequently abandoning them. Some disappearances occur in regions where armed groups are battling for control of territory, while others disappear in the context of sexual violence, or of labour exploitation in bars in Aruba and Curaçao, and mining areas of Bolivia and Brazil.
The report’s authors make a number of recommendations for governments, humanitarian organizations and the international community, including international cooperation to prevent and combat organized crime; protection, assistance and access to justice for Venezuelan migrants who have been the victims of sexual crimes; the strengthening of migrants’ rights, especially their access to justice and essential services; and the improvement of mechanisms for the regularization of Venezuelans’ migratory status.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
Last week, the UK introduced a bill criminalizing marriage and civil partnerships for under-18s in England and Wales. This article discusses how the change in UK law could spur action globally to end child marriage, with the UK government now being in a stronger position to advocate internationally for the UN’s target of ending child marriage by 2030.
Kenya Airways yesterday launched its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Policy and Public Awareness Campaign in collaboration with UNODC, to educate staff and the public about the misconceptions and realities of human trafficking as well as how to identify and report cases. In December 2021, UNODC combined the expertise of two of its programs – the Better Migration Management (BMM) Programme and the Airport Communication Project (ARCOP) – for an inter-agency workshop on combatting Trafficking In Persons (TIP) at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
An investigation by The Times of Israel reveals that foreign caregivers in Israel have been subjected to extortion for decades, and exposes a multi-million-dollar industry in which foreign workers are compelled to pay “placement fees” to employment “brokers” – with the government’s full knowledge.
A national coalition of more than 40 organizations and unions across Australia is calling for the Federal government to establish whistleblower protections that would enable migrant workers to report exploitation without risking their visas. The proposed reforms would begin to break the entrenched cycle of exploitation and expand government enforcement of labour law.
Overseas Filipino workers who were trafficked and forced to work for a Cambodia-based cryptocurrency scam had to wait for weeks before their return to the Philippines, as the Cambodian government had processes that required “many negotiations” before they were cleared to go home, according to a senator statement.
An activist for foreign workers’ rights has called the British government hypocritical over its requirement that Malaysian glove makers absolve themselves of forced labour complaints before selling their products in the UK, while failing to take a similar approach in tackling Britain’s own problem of forced labour practices in the agriculture, retail, hospitality and healthcare sectors.
The Freedom Fund is offering grants of up to US$20,000 to organizations who previously submitted evidence of forced labour under the U.S. Tariff Act and want to conduct follow-up advocacy.
The Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) has announced an open competition for grant funding to support the Program to End Modern Slavery (PEMS) along two programming priorities: 1) Applying Intervention Development Research to produce model interventions on human trafficking, and 2) Provide tailored Adaptive Learning and Evaluation (ALE) coaching and support to IDR partners.
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