RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Plans an­nounced by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds for a spe­cial court to deal with hu­man traf­fick­ing cas­es, have been wel­comed by hu­man rights at­tor­neys and ac­tivists al­though they had con­cerns about in­fra­struc­ture and sus­tain­able fund­ing for the pro­posed fa­cil­i­ty.

At­tor­ney Criston J Williams re­called that on Feb­ru­ary 24 the T&T Gov­ern­ment told the Unit­ed Na­tions they were de­vel­op­ing draft poli­cies to deal with traf­fick­ing. He ques­tioned the ra­tio­nale for the pro­posed court and said Hinds “should dis­close the pol­i­cy so we can see what the in­fra­struc­ture of this is.”

He said: “How we are go­ing to train, de­vel­op the judges and task forces to be vic­tim cen­tred. In prin­ci­ple spe­cial courts have been ef­fec­tive in bring­ing jus­tice but we have to be able to eval­u­ate spe­cial courts.

“This con­struct al­so seems a bit dif­fi­cult if the Gov­ern­ment has re­fused to ac­cept and or ac­cede to var­i­ous re­quest of the UN and its af­fil­i­at­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions, so we have to see the de­tails of the in­fra­struc­ture and the sus­tain­able fund­ing cri­te­ria to en­sure it is not just a knee jerk re­ac­tion.” .

An­oth­er at­tor­ney, Mar­tin George, that while it is heart­en­ing to hear about plans for a spe­cial court to deal with hu­man traf­fick­ing, he hoped it would be prop­er­ly staffed, re­sourced and able to deal with cas­es ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

“We cer­tain­ly do not want a record, or for it to be in­ter­na­tion­al­ly not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go as a na­tion is one which does not deal swift­ly and de­ci­sive­ly with this scourge of hu­man traf­fick­ing,” he said.

“At the same time, we hope that the gov­ern­ment will take this as an ex­am­ple to al­so im­ple­ment spe­cial pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al courts for high pro­file mat­ters such as the col­lapsed Pi­ar­co In­quiry mat­ter.”

Jonathan Bha­gan wel­comed Hinds’ an­nounc­ment and point­ed out that the frame­work for the court “is the re­sult of the Ju­di­cial Re­form and Strength­en­ing project (JU­RIST) done by the CCJ and the gov­ern­ment of Cana­da. The mod­el is al­ready func­tion­ing in oth­er Caribbean na­tions.”

Bha­gan added: “Even with the new court, the cri­sis at the of­fice of the DPP is still a threat to the jus­tice sys­tem and the present gov­ern­ment like­ly needs to dou­ble the num­ber of at­tor­neys on staff at the DPP’s of­fice and give more at­trac­tive salaries to re­tain high­ly skilled lawyers, many of whom are forced to go in­to pri­vate prac­tice to earn the mon­ey they are worth.”

Ac­tivist Sofia Leon de­scribed the plan court as re­ac­tive rather than proac­tive and won­dered whether traf­ficked vic­tims would be pro­tect­ed and fair­ly treat­ed.

“There are girls out there who are now turn­ing 22 and are vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing and were res­cued at the age of 16 and sent to St Jude’s Home and still they have no re­course,” she said.

“What are we do­ing as a coun­try, hu­mane­ly, try­ing to help these vic­tims move on with their lives? Ab­solute­ly noth­ing! Well the court, yes it’s wel­comed but he did not give a time­line. He could say they go­ing to in­tro­duce a court for hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims but when, who, where? It is not enough, it is too lit­tle too late.”

She added: “I will wait and see but I’m hon­est to God not hold­ing my breath be­cause too much talk and no ac­tion.”

Yese­nia Gon­za­lez said she would ac­cept any­thing that would help get jus­tice for traf­ficked vic­tims.

“There are dif­fer­ent rings of crim­i­nals who are tak­ing those vic­tims, in­no­cent vic­tims, and sell­ing them and traf­fick­ing them, pass­ing them down on­to oth­er hands of rings ask­ing for a cer­tain amount of mon­ey for them to pay their debts which they are us­ing them like slaves. All those vic­tims are suf­fer­ing right now,” Gon­za­lez said.

“This is get­ting worse so any­thing to help the sit­u­a­tion, this crit­i­cal, un­for­tu­nate, sad sit­u­a­tion I will agree to get jus­tice, to get those crim­i­nals and put them in jail. Any­thing good to help those vic­tims get jus­tice, I agree.”

T&T’s Tier 2 sta­tus

Ac­cord­ing to the US De­part­ment of State’s 2022 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port, T&T does not ful­ly meet the min­i­mum stan­dards for the elim­i­na­tion of traf­fick­ing but is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts to do so.

“These ef­forts in­clud­ed in­creas­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions, iden­ti­fy­ing more vic­tims, and ex­pand­ing train­ing to a broad­er range of stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment did not demon­strate over­all in­creas­ing ef­forts com­pared to the pre­vi­ous re­port­ing pe­ri­od, even con­sid­er­ing the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on its an­ti-traf­fick­ing ca­pac­i­ty,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port not­ed that the gov­ern­ment has nev­er con­vict­ed a traf­fick­er un­der its 2011 an­ti-traf­fick­ing laws: “Cor­rup­tion and of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing crimes re­mained sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns, in­hibit­ing law en­force­ment ac­tion, and the gov­ern­ment did not take ac­tion against se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials al­leged in 2020 to be in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing. Vic­tim iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and ser­vices re­mained weak, and the gov­ern­ment did not for­mal­ly adopt the Na­tion­al Ac­tion Plan (NAP) for 2021-2023. There­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mained on Tier 2 Watch List for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year.”