RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Since the Mi­grant Home for Girls be­gan op­er­a­tions, 21 girls have passed through, with three be­ing cur­rent­ly housed.

How­ev­er, these girls who are housed there will not be af­fect­ed by the judg­ment re­cent­ly de­liv­ered by High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad, who ruled that the 1951 Refugee Con­ven­tion oblig­a­tions do not ap­ply and can­not be en­forced in T&T.

This was dis­closed yes­ter­day by Min­is­ter of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, who ex­plained that the mi­grant girls are housed there for “safe­keep­ing”.

“Those girls are not those who ap­plied for refugee sta­tus or asy­lum, they were/are the girls who were res­cued from hu­man traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions and are be­ing kept there as a safe house un­til they are repa­tri­at­ed. That is why we nev­er gave out the lo­ca­tion of the home,” Web­ster-Roy said.

The fa­cil­i­ty be­gan op­er­a­tions un­der the St Jude’s Home for Girls in De­cem­ber last year.

Seep­er­sad’s judg­ment means that all im­mi­grants are sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of the Im­mi­gra­tion Act and can be de­port­ed even if they have reg­is­tered with the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er of Refugees (UN­HCR).

Seep­er­sad presided over the case brought by Yohan Je­sus Rangel Dominguez who had been seek­ing to re­verse a de­ci­sion by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to is­sue a de­por­ta­tion or­der in March this year.

Web­ster-Roy, who spoke at a hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair, on Tues­day, not­ed that T&T’s strat­e­gy for com­bat­ing child abuse, par­tic­u­lar­ly hu­man traf­fick­ing, “in­cor­po­rates ser­vices for mi­grant chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly mi­grant girls”.

Fif­teen lap­tops and oth­er items, in­clud­ing sewing kits, were do­nat­ed to the Min­istry of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs as part of the Heal, Em­pow­er, Rise —Counter Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (HER CTIP) project. The items that were do­nat­ed by the IOM and US AID are to be de­liv­ered to the Mi­grant Home for Girls.

“Work­ing with key pro­tec­tive agen­cies such as the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, our di­vi­sion seeks to se­cure on­go­ing as­sis­tance for chil­dren with­in our bor­ders as we recog­nise the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion and re­sources aligned with fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights to mar­gin­alised groups,” Web­ster-Roy said.

“In ac­cor­dance with moral oblig­a­tion, it is nec­es­sary to pro­vide care and as­sis­tance to chil­dren in dis­ad­van­taged cir­cum­stances as en­forcers of child rights, gen­der equal­i­ty and eq­ui­ty TT con­tin­ues to col­lab­o­rate with IOM to strength­en vic­tim sur­vival sup­port mech­a­nisms,” she added.

The min­is­ter said that in digi­tis­ing T&T for its ad­vance­ment in tech­nol­o­gy they are keep­ing in mind the chal­lenges of the dark web.

“The dark web where they use as a place to pro­lif­er­ate in­for­ma­tion, that will help them to at­tract vul­ner­a­ble boys and girls and help to iden­ti­fy mar­kets where they could sell vul­ner­a­ble boys and girls but not on­ly that use as a place to cre­ate schemes to get to work on the minds of vul­ner­a­ble per­sons so that they be­come trapped in the web of de­ceit.

“We must be vig­i­lant as a coun­try. We must en­sure not on­ly the phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty of our space, but we must al­so work to ad­vance cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty to se­cure all our cit­i­zens but al­so all of the per­sons of the world and our re­gion.”

Mervyn Far­roe, re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the East­ern and South­ern Caribbean, Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US AID), who al­so spoke, said 30 per cent are young peo­ple who are be­ing traf­ficked as the pri­ma­ry tar­gets for sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion and forced labour, 15 per cent are young boys.

“Around the globe, al­most a quar­ter mil­lion peo­ple un­der the age of 30 are mur­dered every year and for every young per­son killed by vi­o­lence, an­oth­er 20 to 40 more be­come vic­tims of vi­o­lence,” Far­roe said.

“Fif­teen per cent of traf­fick­ing vic­tims are young boys while young girls and chil­dren make up 30 per cent. Young peo­ple are the pri­ma­ry tar­get for sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion and forced labour. As you may know, hu­man traf­fick­ing per­pe­tra­tors dis­guise them­selves in var­i­ous forms such as friends, well wish­ers, rel­a­tives, lovers and em­ploy­ers,” he added.

Far­roe as­sured that the US AID is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing young men and women, es­pe­cial­ly those who are most vul­ner­a­ble and mar­gin­alised, have ac­cess to qual­i­ty care and treat­ment so they can live em­pow­ered lives.

He not­ed that since 2001, glob­al­ly, US AID has pro­vid­ed over $340 mil­lion in as­sis­tance to 83 coun­tries and re­gions to fight hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Web­ster-Roy said the do­nat­ed items will add to what al­ready ex­ists at the home.