CARI­COM had de­cid­ed to com­mis­sion a study on hu­man traf­fick­ing in the re­gion in light of the neg­a­tive im­pact it has been hav­ing in this area and oth­er se­ri­ous chal­lenges en­coun­tered.

CARI­COM in a re­cent me­dia re­lease not­ed that "traf­fick­ing in per­sons is in­creas­ing­ly be­ing iden­ti­fied as one of the largest transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crimes and one of the most un­der­re­port­ed crimes in the world. Giv­en the na­ture of the crime and dif­fi­cul­ty in ob­tain­ing sta­tis­tics, the true di­men­sions of this scourge, whether with­in the re­gion or be­yond is un­known. Con­se­quent­ly, po­ten­tial vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors of­ten go un­de­tect­ed."

Fol­low­ing a com­pet­i­tive bid process from well-known, re­search agen­cies, Cana­di­an based firm - Dunn Pierre, Bar­nett, and Com­pa­ny Cana­da Lim­it­ed was award­ed the con­tract to con­duct the study.

The coun­tries in­clud­ed in this project are Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Grena­da, Guyana, Haiti, St Lu­cia, St Kitts and Nevis, Montser­rat, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Suri­name. The CAR­I­FO­RUM study is be­ing fund­ed from the Caribbean Re­gion­al In­dica­tive Pro­gramme un­der the Tenth Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund(10th EDF).

The team ac­cord­ing to the re­lease com­pris­es of ten con­sul­tants led by Dr. Nin­na Ny­berg Sorensen from the Dan­ish In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, Dr. Vic­to­ria Knox from the De­part­ment of Force Mi­gra­tion and Refugees Stud­ies, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don and Dr. Jus­tine Pierre, Mi­gra­tion and Labour Mar­ket Con­sul­tant, Dunn, Pierre, Bar­nett, and Com­pa­ny.

The study which be­gan in late Ju­ly will track spe­cif­ic meth­ods in­clud­ing:

(i)pro­files of traf­ficked per­sons and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty fac­tors for traf­fick­ing as well as the traf­fick­ers. (ii) mech­a­nisms to coun­ter­act bor­der and law en­force­ment is­sues and in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing and (iv) an­ti-traf­fick­ing ef­forts cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en in each mem­ber state.

Dr. Vic­to­ria Knox al­ready vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go in ear­ly Au­gust and spoke with sev­er­al stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit, CARI­COM Im­pacs, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the DPP of­fice.

Last week Dr. Pierre vis­it­ed Trinidad and con­duct­ed an in­ter­view with some of the traf­fick­ers work­ing in the in­dus­try. Pierre said he was "amazed to see how or­gan­ised the in­dus­try was and how freely mem­bers of or­gan­ised clan­des­tine or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­ate in the twin re­pub­lic."

Pierre no­ticed in Trinidad and To­ba­go the in­creased de­mand for hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims in the sex and force labour sec­tor.