One small step. In the Philippines, statistics on women and minors trafficked from the rural areas to the cities or to other countries hard to come by. Ports are strategic areas for the trafficking of innocent women and children. They are the prime target groups of sex traffickers and illegal recruiters.

Little known to many is the fact that in order to address the issues of trafficking and illegal recruitment, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has established a halfway house called "Bahay Silungan sa Daungan", literally "Shelter at the Port" for displaced women and children victims of trafficking. The house is being managed by the Visayan Forum Foundation (VF), a PPA NGO partner. The Bahay Silungan provides immediate protective and reintegration services to migrant women and children who have been deceived or coerced into situations of economic exploitation.

These services are provided on a 24-hour basis and includes: emergency temporary shelter; travel information assistance; employment and possible support networks; referral of cases for legal remedies; telephone hotline counseling; and, regular outreach programs for stranded passengers

Perhaps the first of its kind in the Asian port management industry, the shelter is situated at the Manila North Harbor and Davao Port. Hopefully, other port areas would also be identified to enable the PPA to extend its services to more women and children victims of illegal recruitment and human trafficking.

What's the point in bringing this up? In itself, the event points to the PPA as among the agencies which have utilized its (Gender and Development (GAD) Budget in order to serve its mandate of providing efficient and safe services for port users and passengers but more importantly, the PPA has provided a mechanism for intervention in the fight against domestic human trafficking.

Just what is human trafficking?

Trafficking in persons, also known as human trafficking, is the modern version of slavery. To appreciate the enormity of this 21st form of slavery, here are some dimensions. It is the second largest criminal industry in the world today, after arms dealing, and it is now the fastest growing. Traffickers reap billions of dollars in profits every year at the expense of millions of victims from all around the world.

Trafficked persons are defined as persons forced or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Under international law, however, in the case of children, all children who are commercially sexually exploited are considered trafficking victims, even if no force or coercion is used. Sex trafficking, of course, is the one that gets the most media attention. It is the most lucrative sectors of the trade in people, and involves sexual exploitation in prostitution or pornography, bride trafficking, and commercial sexual abuse of children.

Sex trafficking victims, on average, are first exploited by their trafficker at the age of 13. One of the largest forms of domestic sex trafficking in the U.S. involves traffickers who coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through the use of a variety of recruitment and control mechanisms in strip clubs, street-based prostitution, escort services, and brothels. Domestic sex traffickers, commonly referred to as pimps, particularly target vulnerable youth, such as runaway and homeless youth, and reinforce the reality that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12-13 years old in the U.S.

Labor trafficking is rife in situations of domestic servitude and small-scale labor operations, especially, sweatshops and farms that are subcontracted to major multinational corporations. Recent cases have also shown that labor trafficking of U.S. citizens occurs in locations such as restaurants, the agricultural industry, traveling carnivals, peddling/begging rings, and in traveling sales crews.

Most victims of human trafficking for the purposes of both sexual and labor lack social networks, making it very difficult for them to escape the cycle of oppression.

In the US alone, an estimated 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked annually. The number of US citizens trafficked within the country are even higher, with an estimated more than 200,000 American children at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry each year.

Yet, governments around the world are only beginning to be aware of, and to address, the problem. Sadly, in most countries, traffickers operate with almost total impunity even in the most severe cases. Inaction on the part of authorities is compounded by a lack of awareness among the general public.

Four commonest misconceptions about human trafficking

To most of us, human trafficking consists of the forced transportation of people across borders. In international legal terms, forced transportation in the absence of slavery-like labor or commercial sexual exploitation is usually considered the crime of kidnapping. Human trafficking is slavery through labor or commercial sexual exploitation, and does not require transportation to occur, though transportation may be involved.

Domestic human trafficking victims number higher than the trafficking of foreign nationals. Indeed, both the U.N. Protocol and U.S. federal law use definitions of trafficking in persons that do not require crossing of international or state borders. Many trafficked persons are victims of internal or domestic trafficking - trafficking within the borders of a single country, and are themselves nationals of that country.

Poverty and inequality are only too frequently blamed as the causes of human trafficking. The reality is not quite simple. Admittedly, poverty and inequality are important factors in making certain populations more vulnerable to being trafficked. Still, however, poverty and inequality are not the primary cause of trafficking. Trafficking is a criminal industry driven by 1) the ability to make large profits due to high demand, and 2) because it operates in a very shadowy environment, there is only negligible-to-low risk of prosecution.

Like the drug problem, as long as demand is unchecked and the risks of arrest, prosecution and conviction for traffickers are low, trafficking will thrive regardless of other contributing factors.

Blaming poverty and inequality alone is not only inaccurate and disheartening, it tends to deflect blame from the key actors that perpetuate trafficking - the traffickers themselves and their customers.

Given that the problem is there and that even governments appear helpless in doing something decisive about human trafficking, the easy next step is to feel there's not much one can do about such a huge issue.

This is not so. As with the drug problem, we have to decide to make it a community concern. Together, we can make difference!

The Philippine situation

Philippine organizations working with migrant women workers report that while the issue of trafficking has been around for decades, only since the 1990s has it received "high visibility and action on the part of the international community." The Philippine government has readily embraced this cause since 1994. It actively supported and promoted the adoption of the UN Optional Protocol on Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children. More important, in 2003, the Philippine Congress passed the "historic" law against human trafficking, after years of advocacy by women's groups, in outstanding legislation that has been lauded by other governments as one of the "most comprehensive and progressive" laws addressing the issue of trafficking.

A continuing source of fear in this regard is the reality of human trafficking of Filipina "artists" in Japan and of Filipinas working as domestic helpers in various countries of the Middle East. In Japan, human trafficking has almost always been associated with the entertainment/sex industries. These are heavily controlled by syndicates like the Yakuza. Many studies have pointed out "a pattern of sexual and labor exploitation without recourse to legal remedies from the Japanese government which previously had no legal standards on trafficking cases."

Each additional death in the Middle East of a Filipina domestic helper only brings a wringing of hands and mutterings of "Ganyan talaga 'yan."