10/09/2013
The First Lady of Honduras, Rosa Elena de Lobo, along with government authorities, judicial representatives and civil society, will participate in the 6th Meeting of the Regional Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Central America, Colombia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. The meeting will be held in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, from the 9th to the 12th of September 2013.
The meeting was organised by the FIIAPP within the framework of the programme “Support for the Security Sector in Honduras” (PASS), which is financed by the EU. The meeting will bring together representatives from these countries to provide comprehensive, specialised services for victims of this crime.
The objective is to establish a regional action framework to enable policies, criteria, processes and standards for preventing and penalising human trafficking to be identified and unified.
The outcome of the meeting will be the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, ratified by each State. The Memorandum will enter into effect with the presentation of 3 ratification instruments at the SICA(Central American Integration System).
This issue has received little attention to date in Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, the fight is complicated by the fact that without victims’ statements, traffickers’ crimes cannot be proven.
Worldwide, the “human merchandise” business is of a similar size to drug and gun trafficking. The majority of the victims are women and children, exploited for cheap labour or the sex industry, including forced marriages, illegal adoptions, and organ extraction.
