Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Bridgid An­nisette-George says there is "no em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence to show the ex­is­tence of hu­man traf­fick­ing in this coun­try. In a brief com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day, An­nisette-George said it must be not­ed, how­ev­er, that T&T was part of a world which was shrink­ing in size through the ef­fects of glob­al­i­sa­tion. She said giv­en the vi­bran­cy of the scourge of hu­man traf­fick­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na it was in­cum­bent that T&T "be an­tic­i­pa­to­ry in its ap­proach to in­sti­tute pre­ven­ta­tive/pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures such as tight­en­ing our im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies and im­prov­ing on ca­pac­i­ty to pa­trol our bor­ders."

An­nisette-George said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had been proac­tive from the leg­isla­tive per­spec­tive, as it re­cent­ly en­act­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al Child Ab­duc­tion Act, which pro­vid­ed for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Civ­il Child Ab­duc­tion Au­thor­i­ty, which in turn "is a mech­a­nism de­signed to pro­vide for swift re­turn of chil­dren who have been ab­duct­ed from their home of ha­bit­u­al res­i­dence." An­nisette-George said the Chil­dren's Bill, now be­fore a Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment, con­tained pro­vi­sions for the of­fence of traf­fick­ing in chil­dren with­in and out­side the bor­ders of this coun­try.

She said when en­act­ed, the leg­is­la­tion would pro­vide for "stiff penal­ties for per­sons con­vict­ed of such of­fences." The AG added: "It is note­wor­thy that at the time of the de­bate (in Par­lia­ment) the voic­es which are be­ing raised were not heard in sup­port of the bill, even sole­ly on those two mea­sures." The Con­gress of the Peo­ple last month called on the Gov­ern­ment to make hu­man traf­fick­ing leg­is­la­tion a pri­or­i­ty this year. Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert has de­nied the ex­is­tence of hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T.