I'm a PC Response volunteer finishing my 4th service with the Peace Corps. This latest has been one of the most interesting challenges of my professional life.
I was recruited as a Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Specialist to work with a Women's and Children's rights organization in the Philippines, on a project that is focused on studying the link between human trafficking and global warming and its related disaster management.
I'm posted in the Manila Metropolitan area, a city of stark contrasts of Asia's rich and poor.
The Philippines is a source, transit and destination country involved in human trafficking, which is the world's fastest growing crime. My host organization, Visayan Forum Foundation, Inc., focuses its efforts on the protection of women and children in this field and has built up quite an infrastructure of program activities and resources for a comprehensive intervention and support strategy aimed at victims of this type of exploitation.
So what does human trafficking have to do with global warming? And how could a disaster management specialist add something of value to the group's existing efforts?
In the aftermath of one of the recent typhoons that pound the Philippines on a regular basis, the Visayan Forum noticed the telltale signs of human traffickers, circulating in the chaos of the urban area, and around the disaster shelters and disaster zone. The group was determined to learn more about the correlation between these two types of threats to poor populations, and to strategize what they may do about it.
I started with an academic inquiry into the subject, and produced a research paper that traces the correlation of the increasing frequency of natural disasters and the connection to evolving forms of trafficking and exploitation.
I researched the existing disaster management structure of the Philippines and provided a strategic advisory on government and NGO organizations that could be involved in raising awareness and formulating prevention strategies, under existing law.
I included an inquiry into several other Filipino laws that are aimed at protection of the vulnerable, and mapped out existing policies that could be used in the education of local government structures that are involved in disaster risk reduction and management.
I also presented a basic approach to information sharing, with an educational module that would help educate disaster managers about the crime of human trafficking, and human trafficking organizations in the basics of disaster management, for shared awareness.
Before my departure, the Visayan Forum is already moving into disaster management activities and has begun involving partners in formulating strategies of their own. VF staff are re-producing their own materials in the local language and culture.
And national and international stakeholders have begun to take notice of this project as one of the first in the world to take practical steps toward human trafficking prevention in the disaster zone.
Contact me at tom.beebe@yahoo.com for questions or comments.
Contact me at tom.beebe@yahoo.com for questions or comments.
