Taiwan’s efforts to combat human trafficking have been internationally recognized! The U.S. Department of State announced the results of “The 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report” at 9.00 a.m. on June 20, 2019 (Taiwan time, 9:00 p.m.). Taiwan is still remained on Tier 1 for 10 consecutive years among more than 180 countries in the world, showing that the Taiwan government has combined the non-governmental forces to demonstrate the effectiveness of the partnership teamwork and once again become one of the countries with excellent performance in preventing human trafficking in the world.
The Ministry of the Interior said that during President Tsai took a position of vice premiers of the Republic of China in 2007, she gave birth to the establishment of an integrated mechanism for the "Regulations on the Prevention of Human Trafficking Coordination in the Executive Yuan", which was combined with the resources of various groups such as non-governmental organizations, experts and scholars, central ministries and local governments to coordinate, review and lay a good foundation for effective prevention of human trafficking in Taiwan. Last year (2018), the number of foreign-born human trafficking victims was 120, a new lowest record in the past years. The number of people in charge of human trafficking crimes in the local prosecutor was 112, which was the lowest in history. It shows that Taiwan success in the prevention of human trafficking and got praised by the US.
The Ministry of the Interior further stated that the prevention of human trafficking as a global campaign is also shows that each country attaching importance to human rights or not. The Tier 1 country does not mean that there is no human trafficking case in Taiwan, but it shows that both people and the government recognize the seriousness of human rights violations caused by human trafficking and work hard to find ways to prevent and protect victims. Taiwan has been rated as a Tier 1 country for 10 consecutive years and the people deserves the pride and continues to maintain.
The Ministry of the Interior stresses that the issue of preventing human trafficking is extensive and must be undertaken and jointly promoted by the public and private sectors of the country, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the Council of Agriculture and civil society.
This year, the US recommended in the report that Taiwan should strengthen the supervision of Taiwanese fishing vessels; Interviewing, identifying and protecting fishermen who may be exploited on fishing vessels ; amending relevant policies and legislation to reduce the recruitment and service fees for migrant workers, etc., all of which have been regularly tracked in the Executive Yuan.
In addition, this year, the US began to promote the Prevention of Unfree Labor Cooperative Initiative to prohibit the import of products involving forced labor to the United States. Once implemented, the "preventing of human trafficking" will no longer be limited to crimes of general labor exploitation and sexual exploitation. In the future, agricultural and fishery, and even high-tech products produced by forced labor may be affected.
The Ministry of the Interior pointed out that in order to be closer to the international community, the Executive Yuan approved the "2019-2020 New Guardian Action Plan" in early January this year, which will further strengthen the coordination and cooperation mechanism for preventing human trafficking with a more positive attitude, not only the number of members participating in the Central Committee will increase to 19, and the implementation of prevention work will be more comprehensive. It is expected to implement human rights protection, fulfill the responsibility of the global citizen, and move towards the second 10-year milestone.
