The 7th TIP covering the period April 2006 through March 2007 was released in Washington on June 12.

“The report probes even the darkest places, calling to account any country, friend or foe, that is not doing enough to combat human trafficking," Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said.

“The power of shame has stirred many to action and sparked unprecedented reforms, and the growing awareness has prompted important progress in combating this crime and assisting its victims wherever they are found," she added.

In its report on the Philippines , the State Department said a significant number of Filipino men and women who migrate abroad for work are subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Africa, North America and Europe.

Women and children are also trafficked within the Philippines, primarily from rural areas, such as the Visayas and Mindanao, to urban areas for forced labor as domestic and factory workers, and in the drug trade and for sexual exploitation, it said.

A smaller number of women are occasionally trafficked from China , South Korea , Japan and Russia to the Philippines for sexual exploitation.

Foreign tourists, particularly other Asians, sexually exploit women and children in the Philippines.

“The Philippine government demonstrated exemplary efforts to prevent the trafficking of migrant workers and to protect those who were exploited abroad. However, the government demonstrated weaker efforts to combat internal sex and labor trafficking," the TIP report said.

It said the Philippine government demonstrated increased efforts to protect victims of trafficking in 2006 though it continued to rely heavily on NGOs and international organizations to provide services to victims.

The Philippines criminalizes and prohibits human trafficking for both sexual and labor exploitation through its 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act. Penalties prescribed for human trafficking for commercial and sexual exploitation are commensurate with those for rape and the overall penalties prescribed for such trafficking offenses are sufficiently stringent.

The TIP report said only one conviction under the country’s trafficking law was recorded during the reporting period. A court in Zamboanga City sentenced a member of a trafficking syndicate to life imprisonment in March 2007 for having recruited six victims and peddled them to a brothel in Sandakan , Malaysia.

However, the government is currently engaged in 107 prosecutions of trafficking crimes, with more being investigated, the report said.

Corruption and the general ineffectiveness of the judicial system impede the government’s ability to effectively prosecute trafficking cases, it added.

The report also welcomed the Philippine government’s efforts to raise awareness and prevent trafficking in persons. In 2006 law enforcement agencies filed 60 new cases before the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“Although there was no evidence of government complicity in trafficking at an institutional level, individual groups of customs officials, border guards, local police and immigration officers reportedly received bribes from traffickers or otherwise assisted their operations," the report said. “Corruption in the government and the general ineffectiveness of the judicial system impeded the (Philippine) government’s ability to effectively prosecute trafficking cases."

In December 2006, a top executive of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) was suspended for three months for allegedly accepting a bribe from a labor recruiter applying for a license to operate a recruitment agency.

The report also cited the arrest in 2006 of five foreign tourists by Filipino police for their sexual exploitation of Filipino children.

The report also said the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) issued new employment requirement for overseas Filipino household workers to protect them from widespread employer abuse and trafficking.

By Jose Katigbak