TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS SOLICITATION FOR G/TIP FY 2007 ESF

UNCLAS JAKARTA 001129 SIPDIS SIPDIS FOR EAP/RSA, G/TIP, EAP/MTS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL ELAB KWMN SMIG ID SUBJECT: TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS SOLICITATION FOR G/TIP FY 2007 ESF AND INCLE FUNDS: INDONESIAN PROPOSALS REFERENCE: State 28292 ¶1. U.S. Mission Jakarta submits to G/TIP the following five Indonesian Anti-Trafficking in Persons project proposals for consideration of funding from FY 2007 INCLE and ESF appropriation. Also listed are two regional proposals. These are listed in the rank order recommended by a Mission panel composed of State and USAID officers that met on April 20 to consider seven Indonesian proposals and two regional proposals, as follows: Indonesian Projects: ¶2. First: International Organization for Migration Budget: $300,876 Title: Strengthening the Capacity of Criminal Justice Agencies to Combat Human Trafficking as Well as to Protect Victims of Trafficking in Indonesia Duration: One year Abstract: Within the framework of this project, IOM proposes to work in partnership with Government of Indonesia (GOI) to strengthen local capacity to combat human trafficking through effective criminal justice responses. Particularly, IOM will provide technical assistance and targeted trainings to the police, prosecutors, immigration officials, labor inspectors and judges in an effort to increase the numbers of convictions of human traffickers, while at the same time provide better protection to victims. Importantly, IOM will link the criminal justice agencies (CJA) with the victim assistance agencies. IOM is well suited to empower the GOI in this endeavor given its extensive experience the last three years working with GOI on comprehensive victim assistance as well as law enforcement programs. The project is designed to maximize Government ownership, and sustainability at all levels. Although a new project with GTIP, the project will build upon the successful results of IOM's recent law enforcement program to combat human trafficking, funded by NZAID. The NZAID funded law enforcement project began in March 2004 and ended in March 2007. The proposed project will also complement IOM Indonesia's current Return, Recovery and Reintegration Programs in Indonesia (funded by both the US PRM under the Presidential Initiative and the US DOL). Currently, additional pledged funds from PRM will run through approximately December 2007 and the USDOL program (which targets only school age children) will run through March 2009. ¶3. Second: Department of Justice, ICITAP Indonesia Budget: $400,000 Title: Technical Assistance, Training and Limited Equipment to the Indonesian National Police Duration: One year Abstract: The purpose of this proposal is to provide continued ICITAP technical assistance, training, and limited equipment to the Indonesian National Police (INP) Assistance Program to assist the Government of Indonesia (GOI) to increase and continue the development of sustainable efforts initiated in the ICITAP "Point of Origin Strategy. This proposal capitalizes on the integrated multi-disciplinary anti-trafficking strategy for identification, investigation, information sharing and prosecution of transnational trafficking organizations and the protection and safety of trafficking victims that began in late 2006. ICITAP worked directly and collaboratively with local IOM, NGO's, and USAID to integrate and train law enforcement and non-governmental personnel together in geographic areas where the most vulnerable of populations reside, specifically in North Sumatra and East Java. Micro-training sessions have resulted in the training of 320 police officers and 75 NGO staff, representing 58 NGO organizations in less than one year. The result has been an increase of arrests, NGO's now feel more comfortable to contact police regarding victims and traffickers and have done so on a regular basis since the strategy was initiated. As important is the police now understand the role and benefit of NGO's and IOM. Further, this strategy was expanded to border areas of Malaysia where ICITAP received funding to conduct an Indonesia-Malaysia Bi-Lateral TIP Project developing operational relationships with Malaysian law enforcement counterparts and also non-governmental organizations and stakeholders at Points of Transit along the porous borders and waterways of common trafficking routes. This project proposal would expand the strategy to include prosecutors being integrated into the process working directly with IOM that is currently involved in the training and education of the procuracy and judiciary. With a new trafficking law recently passed, increased collaboration with IOM and other NGO's, demand for assistance, and a new and consistent willingness by the police to work with other non-law enforcement components, it is important to maintain the momentum generated in the last year. Outcomes would include a and augmented, synthesized, multi-disciplinary response to trafficking issues in the previously identified areas of North Sumatra and East Java; areas plagued by trafficking organizations that have preyed upon the vulnerable populations of young women for sexual exploitation. Stakeholders, including police, prosecutors, IOM, and NGO's would be again be integrated into training modules to develop requisite skills, competencies, and working relationships to produce a seamless process of prevention, rescue, investigation, and arrest of traffickers and disruption of trafficking organizations in Indonesia. This would be supplemented by already existing ICITAP initiatives with the Marine Police Special Boat Units interdiction capacity along trafficking routes, the ICITAP Cyber Crimes Investigative Unit and Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) that operationally address transnational criminal activities. ¶4. Third: Save the Children Budget: $388,690 Title: Combating Exploitation of Child Domestic Workers Duration: Two years Abstract: The trafficking of Indonesian children for domestic labor within and outside of Indonesia is a serious and often overlooked human rights concern. Official figures estimate that 25-50 percent of Indonesia's 1,350,000 domestic workers are under the age of 18, with many under the minimum working age of 15. Children who are trafficked for domestic work face long working hours with no opportunity for education, exposure to physical, emotional and sexual violence, frequently little to no pay, and a variety of occupational hazards. In addition, they often have little or no freedom of movement. These same children often aspire toward migrant domestic work as a way to increase their earnings. Without basic education, they become a reliable source for traffickers and brokers who seek to lure them with the promise of a more prosperous life. Save the Children Federation, Inc (SC) is pleased to submit this proposal for $388,690 over two years to reduce the number of Indonesian children trafficked for domestic labor within and outside of Indonesia. SC and its Indonesian partners, JALA, Laha, Children's Crisis Center and Women's Crisis Center will work in Bandung, Surabaya, and Jogjakarta to withdraw and provide quality reintegration services to children trafficked into domestic work; improve the quality of reintegration services and referral networks; increase community awareness of domestic servitude and trafficking for domestic work, increase the knowledge and improve behaviors of employers toward child domestic workers; and increase the Government of Indonesia's (GOI) capacity to reintegrate child survivors of trafficking. Over the past six years, SC's strong network of experienced staff and local and international partners have made groundbreaking progress in Indonesia's fight to eliminate trafficking in persons and in the meanwhile, earning SC global recognition as a leader in anti-trafficking programming for children. ¶5. Fourth: American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) Budget: $330,000 Title: Sustaining the Efforts of Government and Civil Society in Eastern Indonesia to Combat Human Trafficking Duration: One year Abstract: Recent field research documents a growing industry of trafficking in women and girls for commercial sexual exploitation in the provinces of Papua and West Irian Jaya (WIJ). Thousands of women, girls, and boys are vulnerable to trafficking in the economically disadvantaged communities of East Nusa Tenggara (ENT) province, where international migration for work is an increasingly attractive option for economic survival. In trafficking to Papua for commercial sexual exploitation, the province of North Maluku plays an important role as a holding and redistribution center for trafficked women and girls. Under a USAID-supported Anti-Trafficking in Persons project commissioned in March 2007, the Solidarity Center/ICMC implements actions in five western Indonesian provinces in order to optimize the impact of funds available. In that project grant, no assistance for counter trafficking programming is provided for Indonesia's eastern provinces. In Solidarity Center/ICMC's five previous US Government-funded projects, little attention was paid to the eastern provinces other than East Java, West Nusa Tenggara (WNT),and North Sulawesi. However, east Indonesian provinces are known to be major sources (particularly North Sulawesi, East Java, East Java, and ENT) and destinations (particularly Papua and WIJ) of domestic and international trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, domestic work, and slave-like labor in Malaysia's plantations and factories. Based on an application submitted to G-TIP through the US Embassy in Jakarta in February 2006, Solidarity Center/ICMC has been notified of pending approval of $400,000 in funding for a one-year project to combat trafficking in eastern Indonesia. However, given the intensity of the problem, a longer intervention is critically needed in order to be effective. This application intends to extend support to the project for another year. ¶6. Fifth: The Asia Foundation Budget: $300,330 Title: Linking Law Enforcement with Local Community Groups to Stop Trafficking in Indonesia Duration: Two years Abstract: The Asia Foundation requests a grant of $300,340 for a two-year program to replicate a proven model that links law enforcement with community groups to stop trafficking, protect victims, and prosecute traffickers in major trafficking centers in East Java. In 2006, the U.S. Department of State rated Indonesia a Tier 2 Watch country because of its lack of persistent efforts to combat trafficking in persons (TIP). Indeed, both internal and international trafficking of Indonesians remains a serious problem. Women and children are especially vulnerable to being trafficked into the sex trade and domestic servitude. However, some recent steps by the Government of Indonesia, including passing a comprehensive anti-TIP law, indicate that the problem has become a higher priority. The Asia Foundation has worked with local partners in Surabaya in East Java, a trafficking hot-spot, to establish an anti-trafficking task force comprised of community and religious leaders, police, prosecutors, judges, and civil society organizations that has been remarkably successful in combating trafficking in the surrounding area. The task force model creates synergy among different actors working to combat trafficking, drawing on their individual resources and strengths to stimulate community-wide action to stop trafficking. The Foundation will utilize its own expert staffs, who provided technical assistance to local organizations to form the Surabaya task force, and carefully selected local partners, to identify and engage local community stakeholders from both civil society and law enforcement to establish four new anti-TIP task forces. The Foundation will use strategies and training materials from its successful community policing program in Indonesia to build partnerships between communities and law enforcement in each target location that will form the basis of the new anti-TIP task forces in each area. The proposed program will increase the capacity of the Surabaya task force to enable it to provide technical assistance and training in four other major trafficking areas of East Java- Banyuwangi, Jember, Blitar and Ponorogo - to replicate the task force. At the end of the two-year program, there will be a network of community-based task forces across East Java that are mobilizing and coordinating community resources, leaders, law enforcement, and ordinary citizens to stop trafficking in their respective areas. Regional Projects: ¶7. First: International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) Budget: $204,809 Title: Protection of and Assistance to Indonesian Women and Girls Trafficked to Sabah in Eastern Malaysia for Commercial Sexual Exploitation Duration: One year Abstract: The trafficking of Indonesians has been profiled for several years, yet annually tens of thousands of people continue to be trafficked, both domestically and internationally. The majority of international trafficking takes place to Malaysia, particularly through Nunukan, Entikong and Tanjung Pinang to the Malaysian states of Sabah, Sarawak and Jahor respectively, and especially into construction, plantation and domestic work as well as the hotel and entertainment industry, where many migrant women and girls are forced into prostitution. The proposed program is to be implemented over a year by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC),in partnership with Human Development Committee (HDC), Diocese of Kota Kinabalu, a leading NGO advocating for the rights of and providing services to migrants. The primary objective of the project is the development of a replicable model of bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia at local level; and particularly between the local governments of Nunukan (E. Kalimantan, Indonesia) and Tawau (Sabah, Malaysia) which see about one-thirds of all Indonesian migrants to Malaysia passing through every year, and a proportional number of trafficking victims. The program will be implemented at district and municipality levels in four locations: in Nunukan in East Kalimantan and in Tawau, Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu, in Sabah. Nunukan and Tawau are the primary exit and entry points along the so-called eastern trafficking corridor to Malaysia and therefore represent a critical juncture at which trafficking can be addressed. The Indonesian Ministry of Women's Empowerment (KPP) has specifically requested assistance in such border areas. Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu, in addition to Tawau itself, represent primary destinations for Indonesian women and girls trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation in Sabah. ¶8. Second: International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) Budget: $449,914 Title: Increasing the Access to Shelters and Other Essential Migrant Services for Indonesian Women Migrant Workers in Taiwan Who Are Exploited and/or Held in Involuntary Servitude Duration: One year Abstract: In the recent years, Taiwan has emerged as the second most preferred East Asian destination for Indonesian migrant workers after Malaysia. The two major reasons for this are, the systematic promotion of Indonesians women as caregivers by placement brokers in Taiwan, and the lure of a salary equivalent to US$ 495 per month - high by the standards of any other country of destination. For Indonesian migrant workers to Taiwan the costs incurred in migrating are considerable: firstly, because of high salaries in Taiwan, recruiters typically "sell the job" requiring a considerable down payments from potential migrants even before they leave Indonesia, which in itself may force the migrant into debt; and secondly because considerable recruitment, holding center and transport costs, initially borne by recruiters, are most often passed down contractually as debts to the brokers and then employers in Taiwan who recoup the costs through usurious salary deductions, effectively placing the migrants in situations in which debt is used as an instrument of bondage, exposing migrants to exploitation and abuse. There is little to distinguish trafficked persons from most migrant workers held in debt bondage; both have experienced deceit in their recruitment, the withholding of documents while in debt, and varying levels of confinement. Many Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan realize that they are in servitude, and the promised salaries are illusory because of various deductions enforced by agents. They also find that Taiwanese labor laws do not offer them many options to leave one employer and seek another. They must either endure, or "run away" to the irregular employment market, opening themselves to risks of further exploitation or arrest, detention, and deportation. In similar situations, migrant workers from other south-east Asian countries - especially Filipinos - get crucial support such as temporary shelter, legal assistance, counseling etc. from church-run migrant worker service centers, which also help a migrant worker with problem to find another job. Indonesian migrant workers however, rarely access these services - firstly because they are less aware of their existence, and secondly, for fear of being chastised by their Muslim religious leaders for associating with other religions. On the other hand, the clergy of the five mosques in Taiwan, so far, have shown little interest in supporting migrant workers with problems. In fact, some of the Chinese Muslim clergy openly oppose unaccompanied migration by Muslim women - Indonesian or otherwise. Debt-bondage of migrant workers to Taiwan requires a comprehensive response - the foremost being the enactment of a suitable anti-trafficking legislation. Pending that, however, Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan, almost 90% women, need better information about institutions that could help them to get out of involuntary servitude and abusive situations. They also need approval by their religious leaders to approach service organizations managed by persons with different faiths or to receive support from organizations of their own faith. The proposed project is expected to achieve this result through sensitization of Muslim religious leaders, Indonesian migrant workers' associations; and by bolstering the capacity of service providers, sometimes church based, to extend shelter to migrant workers seeking change of employer, and to repatriate survivors who want to return to Indonesia but are stranded as they cannot pay their passage. At the same time, it will give ICMC a base in Taiwan from where to advocate for a comprehensive new AT law.