Human Trafficking Workshop Convenes

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Wednesday, 06 June 2012 02:30

By caribarena news

Antigua St John's - A three-day seminar aimed at building local capacity to deal with human trafficking and smuggling of persons convened here on Tuesday.

The workshop, which is being held under the theme “Trainers Session: Sensitizing Peers about Human Trafficking”, is the collaborative effort of the Immigration Department within the Ministry of National Security & Labour and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
 
Facilitator, IOM’s Chissey Mueller, said the workshop was a continuation of prior sessions held in Antigua and was aimed at advancing the number of stakeholders in the country. She added that persons involved in policing this activity had to keep adjusting to the new and innovative methods that traffickers use.
 
Chief Immigration Officer, Lt. Col. Ivor Walker, welcomed the participants and said that the laws against human trafficking and smuggling of persons are only as effective as their enforcers, and that the notion of trafficking in Antigua was not a “farfetched” one.
 

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Minister of National Security & Labour Senator Dr. L. Errol Cort added that not only did traffickers find new methods, but their actions are profit driven. He presented a breakdown of the number of persons being trafficked and the profits being made from the illegal activity.
 
He added that the real litmus test of the effectiveness of the enacted legislation is how many successful prosecutions come out of the process. Therefore, because the increasing workload was posing a challenge, participants needed to rise to the occasion by bringing offenders to prosecution.
 
Dr. Cort also thanked Ms Mueller and the IOM for their continued assistance to the country.
 
The workshop will cover areas such as time management, session planning, public speaking, and press briefings. A closing ceremony will be held on Thursday afternoon, where IOM Regional Coordination Officer Rui Oliveira Reis will make a few remarks.
 
Antigua and Barbuda is the first OECS country to be a member of the IOM.

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