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Voice of the Free (VF) is a philanthropic NGO in the Philippines established in 1991. VF works for the welfare of marginalized migrants, especially those working in the invisible and informal sectors. The organization targets issues of domestic work, child labor, and human trafficking, especially of women and children. [1]
VF is licensed and accredited by the Department of Social Welfare and Development to provide "residential care and community-based programs and services for women and children in especially difficult circumstances".
It is mostly known for its documented work with domestic workers in the Philippines, especially in pushing for the Domestic Workers Bill or the Kasambahay Law. In addition, it provides services to trafficking victims by managing Halfway Houses constructed by the Philippine Ports Authority and the Manila International Airport Authority.
The organisation was founded in 1991 by Maria Cecilia Flores-Obanda as the Visayan Forum Foundation Inc. (VFF), a nonprofit organization. VFF is located in Quezon city and has rescued and helped more than 60,000 victims and potential victims of trafficking. [2]
The Visayan Forum now has its own national office in Manila and a network of over 70 staff workers, six regional offices, and seven project areas. [3]
Visayan Forum Foundation has been involved in helping women and children trafficked into prostitution by providing support, education, housing, and legal advice.
Visayan Forum Foundation has established that most of the children and young women trafficked to Manila from rural areas are in search of work and are assured jobs as domestic workers, but in a significant number of cases end up in the sex trade. [4] Statistics provided by the Visayan Forum Foundation show that most victims are between 12 and 22 years old. [5]
The Visayan Forum works with the Philippine coast guard, the government's Port Authority, and shipping company Aboitez to monitor arriving boats in the main ports, looking for possible traffickers traveling with groups of children.
The organization has operations in four main ports serving Manila, and says it rescues between 20 and 60 children a week. [6]
NCR, Batangas, Sorsogon, Cebu, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Davao, Southern Leyte, Samar, Surigao, and Zamboanga.
Maria Cecilia Flores-Oebanda of the Visayan Forum Foundation is the first person to win the Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor, a new honor bestowed by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Maria Cecilia Flores-Oebanda was presented with the award by Kristie Kenny, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines. [2] [7]
In 2005, Maria Cecilia Flores-Oebanda of the Visayan Forum Foundation received the Anti-Slavery Award from Anti-Slavery International, the world's oldest human rights organization. [2]
In 2009, the Visayan Forum Foundation was awarded the Eduardo Aboitiz Award for Outstanding Institution. [8]
On July 29, 2016 the Department of Justice issued a resolution dismissing and clearing Visayan Forum Foundation Officers and key staff on charges of Estafa through Falsification of Commercial documents filed by the NBI in connection with a USAID grant.
The four-page decision signed on July 29, 2016, by Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Merba A. Waga, Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Theodore M. Villanueva, and approved by Prosecutor General Claro A. Arellano, stated that there was insufficient evidence to warrant any further investigation.
In August 2012, the NBI probed the foundation for allegedly falsifying documents to hide the misuse of at least $2.1 Million USAID grant for the organization's pioneering anti-trafficking work.
"I'm thankful to DOJ that after more than four years of patiently and humbly waiting to allow the work of the justice system to run its course, we can put this allegation behind us. We thank our partners who stood with us during those difficult times. We can now move forward and focus our positive energies on fulfilling our greater mission. As of now there are 50 victims and survivors of human trafficking as young as 2 years old under our care in the center of Visayan Forum, and they are most important to us," said Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, Visayan Forum Founding President. [9]
According to the resolution, "thus, it is clear that the alleged falsified documents which were purportedly used as supporting documents to liquidate the funds they claimed VFFI received from the USAID and made the basis of their complaint cannot support the charges filed against the herein respondents. There is no gainsaying that the complaint filed against the herein respondents has no leg to stand on." [10]
Anti-Slavery International, founded as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, is an international non-governmental organisation, registered charity and advocacy group, based in the United Kingdom. It is the world's oldest international human rights organisation, and works exclusively against slavery and related abuses.
Lorna Regina "Loren" Bautista Legarda is a Filipina politician, environmentalist, cultural worker, and former journalist who is currently serving as a Senator and the incumbent president pro tempore of the Senate of the Philippines since 2022. This also makes her the first woman to serve as Senate President Pro Tempore in the upper chamber's history. Before entering politics, she began her career as a news reporter until becoming a news anchor. She previously served three terms in the Senate from 1998 to 2004 and from 2007 to 2019. She is the longest-serving female Senator in the history of the Senate, and the only female in the Philippines to top two senatorial elections: 1998 and 2007. Legarda was also the House Deputy Speaker during her three-year stint as the representative of Antique from 2019 to 2022.
With respect to human trafficking, Saudi Arabia was designated, together with Italy, Japan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Germany, Greece, Croatia, Israel, Iceland, Norway, and Angola, as a Tier 2 country by the United States Department of State in its 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report required by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 on which this article was originally based. Tier 2 countries are "countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards". The 2021 report shows some effort by the Kingdom to address the problems, but continues to classify the Kingdom as a Tier 2 country.
Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It has been called a form of modern slavery because of the way victims are forced into sexual acts non-consensually, in a form of sexual slavery. Perpetrators of the crime are called sex traffickers or pimps—people who manipulate victims to engage in various forms of commercial sex with paying customers. Sex traffickers use force, fraud, and coercion as they recruit, transport, and provide their victims as prostitutes. Sometimes victims are brought into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s), financially or emotionally. Every aspect of sex trafficking is considered a crime, from acquisition to transportation and exploitation of victims. This includes any sexual exploitation of adults or minors, including child sex tourism (CST) and domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST).
International Justice Mission is an international, non-governmental 501(c)(3) organization focused on human rights, law and law enforcement. Founded in 1997 by lawyer Gary Haugen of the United States, it is based in Washington, D.C. All IJM employees are required to be practicing Christians; 94% are nationals of the countries they work in.
Human trafficking and the prostitution of children has been a significant issue in the Philippines, often controlled by organized crime syndicates. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity.
Prostitution in the Philippines is illegal, although somewhat tolerated, with law enforcement being rare with regards to sex workers. Penalties range up to life imprisonment for those involved in trafficking, which is covered by the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003. Prostitution is available through bars, karaoke bars, massage parlors, brothels, street walkers, and escort services.
Contemporary slavery, also sometimes known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to occur in present-day society. Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million to 49.6 million, depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used. The estimated number of enslaved people is debated, as there is no universally agreed definition of modern slavery; those in slavery are often difficult to identify, and adequate statistics are often not available.
The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003, officially designated as Republic Act No. 9208, is a consolidation of Senate Bill No. 2444 and House Bill No. 4432. It was enacted and passed by Congress of the Philippines' Senate of the Philippines and House of Representatives of the Philippines assembled on May 12, 2003, and signed into law by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on May 26, 2003. It institutes policies to eliminate and punish human trafficking, especially women and children, establishing the necessary institutional mechanisms for the protection and support of trafficked persons. It aims "to promote human dignity, protect the people from any threat of violence and exploitation, and mitigate pressures for involuntary migration and servitude of persons, not only to support trafficked persons but more importantly, to ensure their recovery, rehabilitation and reintegration into the mainstream of society."
Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation.
Indonesia is a source, transit, and destination country for women, children, and men trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. The greatest threat of trafficking facing Indonesian men and women is that posed by conditions of forced labor and debt bondage in more developed Asian countries and the Middle East.
Violence against women in the Philippines includes different forms of gender-based violence. The term "violence against women" is "the word or concept (that) has been used in a broad, inclusive manner to encompass verbal abuse, intimidation, physical harassment, homicide, sexual assault, and rape." This form of violence is gender-biased. Violence occurs precisely because of their gender, specifically because the victims are women.
Papua New Guinea is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution and forced labor. Women and children are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude; trafficked men are forced to provide labor in logging and mining camps. Children, especially young girls from tribal areas, are most vulnerable to being pushed into commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor by members of their immediate family or tribe. Families traditionally sell girls into forced marriages to settle their debts, leaving them vulnerable to involuntary domestic servitude, and tribal leaders trade the exploitative labor and service of girls and women for guns and political advantage. Young girls sold into marriage are often forced into domestic servitude for the husband’s extended family. In more urban areas, some children from poorer families are prostituted by their parents or sold to brothels. Migrant women and teenage girls from Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines are subjected to forced prostitution, and men from China are transported to the country for forced labor.
Child labor in the Philippines is the employment of children in hazardous occupations below the age of fifteen (15), or without the proper conditions and requirements below the age of fifteen (15), where children are compelled to work on a regular basis to earn a living for themselves and their families, and as a result are disadvantaged educationally and socially. So to make it short, it is called child labor when it is forced.
Crime is present in various forms in the Philippines, and remains a serious issue throughout the country. Illegal drug trade, human trafficking, arms trafficking, murder, corruption and domestic violence remain significant concerns.
The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2013 is a bill that would authorize the appropriation of $25 million annually over the 2015-2019 period for the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide grants to states and other recipients aimed at improving the enforcement of laws against human trafficking and to assist victims of such crimes. According to newspaper The Hill, the bill would "impose an additional fine of $5,000 on any person convicted of crimes related to sex trafficking, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children or human smuggling."
Liway is a 2018 Filipino independent film about the experiences of Dakip, a young boy growing up in a prison as the son of anti-Marcos dissident Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, better known as Commander Liway and referred to in the film by the vernacular endearment "Day", during the waning days of the Marcos dictatorship. The film was written and directed by Kip Oebanda based on true events, with Glaiza de Castro playing the film's major lead.
Sex trafficking in the Philippines is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and slavery that occurs in the Republic of the Philippines. The Philippines is a country of origin and, to a lesser extent, a destination and transit for sexually trafficked persons.
Cybersex trafficking, live streaming sexual abuse, webcam sex tourism/abuse or ICTs -facilitated sexual exploitation is a cybercrime involving sex trafficking and the live streaming of coerced sexual acts and/or rape on webcam.
