Final Report Speech at 20 BSPC August 2011

Final report from the BSPC Working Group on Trafficking in Human Beings20th Baltic Sea Parliamentary ConferenceHelsinki, 28-30 August 2011By André Oktay Dahl, Vice Chairman of the BSPC Working Group on Civil Security, member of the Parliament of Norway,On behalf ofLine Barfod, Chairman of the BSPC Working Group on Civil Security, member of the Danish ParliamentDear Colleagues,Dear Chairperson,Dear ConferenceIt is a great honour for me as Chairman of the BSPC Working Group on Civil Security to have the opportunity to present the Working Group’s Final Report here at the 20th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.It has also been an honour and a pleasure for me to preside over the Working Group. The Working Group has consisted of members of parliaments from all the countries around the Baltic Sea from many different political parties. Actually, I don’t know how many parties, for the simple reason that political affiliation has never been an issue at the meetings of the Working Group. The grave nature of the subject has made it possible for the Working Group to reach agreement on a number of very concrete political recommendations across countries, regions and political parties.In a short while, I shall return to some of the political recommendations to the governments, but first of all I would like to emphasise the importance of point 40 of the Draft Conference Resolution. This point is an urgent request to the BSPC members to establish networks of parliamentarians on the fight against trafficking in human beings. The Working Group agreed on that point, realizing that all the recommendations to the governments might end up as just another piece of paper if the parliamentarians do not commit themselves to continuously monitor the progress of various activities in the fight against trafficking in human beings and to develop the relations between the executive and the legislative powers. To snap at the governments’ heels, so to speak.The members of the Working Group have already decided for themselves to establish an informal network as a Facebook group in order to secure continuity of the fruitful work of the group.In the Final Report of the Working Group which you will find outside this meeting room, you can read the full text of all the 15 political recommendations from the group – plus the request to the parliaments which I just mentioned. Recommendations 1 - 6 were submitted to the 19th BSPC in 2010 and presented in the Midterm Report of the Working Group for that occasion and are consequently not repeated in the draft Conference Resolution for this 20th BSPC, but they are of course still a part of the total number of recommendations from the Working Group.Recommendations 7 – 15 have been discussed and adopted by the Working Group since the 19th BSPC in 2010 and do now constitute point 23 – 31 of the Draft Conference Resolution for this 20th BSPC.We have in the Working Group concentrated on recommendations where we as parliamentarians have learned from the experts and from each other that this particular point should be strengthened in our work against slavery.The Working Group has made an effort to be very precise when formulating the recommendations and they may therefore seem long and detailed. Accordingly, I will not read them out here, but each of them deals with its own specific theme. The headlines for each recommendation could be as follows:1. Signing and ratification of international conventions2. Recognition of trafficking as an international cross-border crime3. Secure and long term funding4. Coordinated and transparent system for information exchange5. Victim-based approach, respecting human rights6. Strengthening the operational capacity7. Follow the money8. Forced labour9. Children10. The efficiency of existing legislation and political and judicial system11. Awareness raising12. Joint understanding among all actors in the region13. Continuous evaluation and reporting on the progress14. Reducing the drainage of experienced personnel15. Identification and incrimination of the middlemenAll of the recommendations are of course important and complementary to each other. All of them need follow up. If I although should highlight some of them it would be no 3, 5 and 7.To secure long term funding of public authorities, NGOs and inter-governmental organizations and projects in order to maintain the pursuit of persistent and sustained efforts against trafficking in human beings is crucial in the combat against this horrible crime. Today, unsecure and short term funding make the life of especially the NGOs very uncertain and result in drainage from these organizations of experienced personnel – detrimental to the fight against trafficking.To ensure that a victim-based approach is adopted in all measures and actions against trafficking in human beings, meaning among other things that the human rights of trafficked persons should be at the centre of all efforts against trafficking and that victims and relatives of victims should receive unconditional assistance regardless of their status and of their willingness to participate in criminal proceedings against traffickers, is an even so crucial point.We have learned that it is a problem for an efficient work against slavery if the victims are treated rather as illegal immigrants than as victims. So a human rights approach is not only the political correct way and the best for the victims, it is also the best way to fight slavery. Because with such an approach, many more victims and concerned citizens will contact the authorities and help with the investigations and court cases against the traffickers.Finally, to follow the money means detecting money flows stemming from trafficking in human beings, tracking money emanating from trafficking as well as strengthening the measures to confiscate proceeds from those engaged in trafficking. They are all other vital tools in the fight against trafficking. In Denmark the tax authorities have been quite successful in using the so called “Al Capone method” in the fight against organized crime. It must be possible to expand this success even to profits from trafficking in human beings.Trafficking is a big business with enormous gains. We must make business analyses of where the money is in this business so that we can fight it most efficiently. For instance, a business analysis will show that the big profit is not in the selling of slaves but in the use of the slaves. If you sell drugs or guns you can only make money on each item once, but with a slave you earn new money every day. So, we must be much more efficient in putting the use of slaves to a stop and not just focus on the trafficking of the slaves.Dear Conference,I want to thank you for the opportunity to report on the results of the Working Group and I want to thank all the members of the group for their dedicated contributions. And thanks to the secretariat and the other secretarial participants. It has been a pleasure working with you all, even on this subject which you sometimes think is too gruesome to be true.Now the work of the group has come to an end but that doesn’t mean that the fight against trafficking in human beings is over. On the contrary. We have almost just started, but we are determined to win this fight. The world has shown once that it was able to eradicate slavery. Let us show that we are also able to eradicate this “modern” version of slavery.Thank you for your attention.