Religious against People Trafficking in NZ

Friday, July 18th, 2014

The third Prevent People Trafficking Conference to be held in New Zealand took place in Porirua on June 5th and 6th.

The conference was attended by representatives from ANZRATH (Aotearoa New Zealand Religious against Trafficking in Humans)

ANZRATH is a group made up of New Zealand religious from a variety of congregations based in Auckland

Sister Gemma Wilson who is a member of ANZRATH and attended conference says ANZRATH is trying to raise awareness of humane Trafficking and to address some the issues involved.

Some possible trafficking offences in New Zealand discussed at the conference included:

Strong anecdotal evidence of underage street prostitution in Auckland and other cities
Last year a survey of NZ brothels revealed that 5% of the sex workers had had their passports taken from them.
There are many internet sites depicting violent sexual abuse against children and though these are not New Zealand children, the sites are accessed by up to 50,000 New Zealanders each day.
There is growing evidence that the exploitation of migrant workers is still quite common in New Zealand (underpayment, excessively long hours…) despite the introduction of a Bill in 2013 which will impose penalties on those employers found doing this.

Speakers included the Minister of Immigration Michael Woodhouse, Human Rights Commissioner David Rutherford, UN legal advisor Dr Anne T Gallagher, activist Matt Friedman, and US Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Marie Damour and a range of academic, NGO and government representatives.

New Zealand has stringent anti people trafficking laws. Prevention is a key strategy. However there have been no prosecutions in the last 9 years.

The US State Departments report on People Trafficking for 2013 maintains this is because the “evidentiary bar” set by our laws is too high.

At the international level though there are many organisations working to prevent trafficking, it seems that for a variety of reasons, the numbers of those trafficked is on the increase.

Read the Conference report

Source