Thursday, July 28th is World Day Against Human trafficking, a day to raise awareness against this unique type of gender-based violence for exploitation.
It was a major topic of discussion on this morning's edition of SunUp on 7 where The Ministry of Human development's Jaunna Murillo gave us some insight into this very specific crime that often involves coercion, deception, and really any means necessary.
Juanna Murillo, Head of the ATIP Unit, Min. Human Dept.
"In Belize what we've observe is that we've seen two forms of exploitation; that's labor and sex exploitation. Like I mention earlier there are different forms that you have, but we've only have confirmed cases of labor and sex exploitation. There could be other, yes, because we see that in our region. There's the organ industry, there is illegal adoptions going on and so we are Scott free, its within our neighborhood, so we have just have to keep an eye out to make sure that whatever, the training that we are giving to the persons responsible to respond that they are catching these things if its happening in Belize. But technically speaking what has been confirmed are cases of sex and labor exploitation. Again, it goes in line with the fact that it is a gender base violence, because women are disproportionately affected and because sex trafficking which is kind of a higher percentage. I think within the Caribbean and Central American region in 2018 about 80% of the cases were sex exploitation."
"Sex is more, but there is the factor that labor exploitation is harder to uncover. So think of domestic servitude, someone that has to work in a home 24/7. Nobody is seeing them, you're not going into these homes, so it might be there or one of our recent arrest at the start of this year was a case involving a Guatemalan miner that was a domestic servant down south in Belize and then you have persons that's maybe on farms and what's not. It's harder to uncover, because the lines are a little more grey, if you think of it. So it's a little harder to uncover so that could be a reason why sex exploitation has a higher number than labor exploitation."
Human trafficking can encompass everything from sex exploitation, labor exploitation, domestic servitude, and goes all the way to illegal adoption.
