The inhumane conditions faced by Italy’s migrant farmworkers
A documentary highlights the conditions faced by Italy’s agricultural workers, OSCE and TaT launch an in-depth analysis of anti-trafficking technology tools and Aura Freedom reacts to the 2020 TIP report.
Over 200,000 migrant laborers, mostly from Africa, work in Italy’s fields. Having being exploited for years, these farmworkers became ‘essential’ overnight due to the coronavirus pandemic – but without labor rights or even access to basic sanitation they are living and working in conditions that have been described as modern slavery.
A new documentary produced and distributed by Doha Debates captures union leader Aboubakar Soumahoro’s fight for workers’ rights, along with the conditions the laborers have dealt with on a daily basis at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hundreds of thousands of foreign agricultural workers in Italy are exposed to exploitation, according to the country’s trade unions. Some of them are subjected to the ‘caporalato’ system, under which farm owners recruit laborers through a go-between, often with links to criminal gangs similar to the Mafia. Caporalato has been compared to modern-day slavery, with intermediaries siphoning off a large part of the workers’ meager wages.
The Italian economy was brought to its knees earlier in the year by the COVID-19 crisis, bringing the agricultural sector to a near-standstill. In May the government announced that it would grant temporary legal residency to hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, who are essential to the agricultural and human services sectors. This would give them access to social services such as healthcare and, by early July, there were 80,000 applications under the new scheme.
However, activists are not satisfied with the regularization program announced by the government, as it excludes countless people from long-term support: foreigners in Italy whose residency permits expired on or after 31 October 2019 have until 15 August to apply for a residency permit under the new program, and only those working in the agricultural or domestic sectors qualify. Moreover, that permit will only be valid for six months. In addition, employers are responsible for filing the application, which includes a fee of €500, therefore there’s a danger they will instead hire new workers who don’t meet the program criteria.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
On 20 April, Liberty Shared submitted a petition to U.S. Customs and Border Protection concerning the potential prohibition of importation into the United States of palm oil products produced by Sime Darby Plantation Berhad if, under § 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1307), they contain in whole or in part materials made with forced labor.
Last week, the Human Rights Council concluded an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations on trafficking in persons, especially women and children. In her concluding remarks, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro said that states must change their legislation and a new wave of laws inspired by the human rights agenda was needed. In the future, the international community should be open to the vision of a new human rights global instrument against trafficking, slavery, forced labour and exploitation in general terms.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Tech Against Trafficking jointly launched ‘Leveraging innovation to fight trafficking in human beings: a comprehensive analysis of technology tools’ recently. The publication takes stock of technology tools and initiatives developed to combat trafficking in human beings in its different forms in the OSCE area and beyond. It also examines the ways technology can be misused to facilitate trafficking in human beings. A recording of the launch event can be found here.
On Monday, a South Korean court rejected an extradition request by the United States for a South Korean citizen convicted of running one of the world’s biggest child pornography websites on the dark web.
Online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines has soared since the COVID-19 crisis began. Despite the need for comprehensive child protection services during the pandemic, many children’s shelters and safe houses have been operating at half capacity since the outbreak of the virus, with limited space for girls and boys in urgent need of somewhere to stay.
Aura Freedom International has released a statement on the 2020 TIP report and points out that no reference was made to the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, despite its numerous mentions of the connections between missing and murdered indigenous women and human trafficking in Canada.
On 13 July, the Liechtenstein Initiative for Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking will host a virtual webinar that will explore the role of sustainable finance in addressing modern slavery and human trafficking, with a particular focus on lessons learned from the COVID-19 era.
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