Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Giv­en the hor­rif­ic al­le­ga­tions against lo­cal au­thor­i­ties con­tained in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca’s De­part­ment of State 2023 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port, the Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights (CCHR) says it is ob­vi­ous why T&T ur­gent­ly needs a le­gal frame­work to ad­dress the in­flux of asy­lum seek­ers, refugees and mi­grants.

In CCHR’s World Refugee Day mes­sage, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Denise Pitch­er high­light­ed the im­por­tance of im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy giv­en the al­leged sex­u­al abuse of a 21-year-old mi­grant at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC), Ch­aguar­mas. Pitch­er said the events that fol­lowed af­ter po­lice lo­cat­ed her il­lus­trat­ed the short­com­ings of al­most every State agency re­spon­si­ble for her pro­tec­tion.

“Had a le­gal frame­work ex­ist­ed with clear­ly de­fined roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and es­tab­lished co­or­di­na­tion mech­a­nisms amongst the var­i­ous agen­cies and stake­hold­ers, the events which un­fold­ed may have been quite dif­fer­ent,” Pitch­er said.

In ex­am­in­ing the State’s re­sponse, the CCHR found many gaps ex­ist among State agen­cies in ad­dress­ing the rights of mi­grants and refugees.

Pitch­er re­called that dur­ing a Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty press con­fer­ence, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion re­vealed it screened the vic­tim and found in­di­ca­tors that she was a traf­fick­ing vic­tim and was in the care of the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU). 

The press con­fer­ence al­so re­vealed that she re­ceived screen­ing be­fore be­ing de­tained and sent to the IDC. How­ev­er, these were im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials with­out train­ing to de­tect in­di­ca­tors of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

At the same press con­fer­ence, po­lice claimed it un­cov­ered no ev­i­dence of sex­u­al abuse. Pitch­er said it seemed a pre­ma­ture con­clu­sion, giv­en that they had on­ly found the vic­tim two days be­fore. She said it war­rant­ed a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion giv­en the com­plex sit­u­a­tion, the num­ber of agen­cies in­volved and that the mat­ter is be­fore the courts.

The CCHR al­so re­vealed an­oth­er con­cern­ing en­counter: say­ing the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures gov­ern­ing im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion and re­quests to vis­it the fa­cil­i­ties seemed elu­sive to every­one, in­clud­ing those en­trust­ed to ex­e­cute them. 

Pitch­er said the CCHR re­ceived in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing a re­quest last week to vis­it an­oth­er de­tainee at the IDC who need­ed ur­gent as­sis­tance due to a med­ical con­di­tion. How­ev­er, the IDC de­nied ac­cess even af­ter an of­fi­cial re­quest to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion. It said the of­fi­cial in charge could not com­mu­ni­cate the pol­i­cy re­gard­ing ac­cess. 

“These re­peat­ed fail­ures by the State to re­spond ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, due to the lack of a le­gal frame­work, ex­pose the State and tax­pay­ers to a slew of avoid­able le­gal chal­lenges, bur­den­ing the courts and State re­sources un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

CCHR un­der­stands that the in­flux of mi­grants and refugees presents sev­er­al chal­lenges to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.

How­ev­er, we can­not af­ford to ig­nore the is­sue and ex­pect it will man­age it­self. A proac­tive ap­proach is re­quired.” 

The CCHR ap­pealed for es­tab­lish­ing a le­gal frame­work to guide the State’s re­sponse to the treat­ment of mi­grants, asy­lum seek­ers and refugees a year ago. Pitch­er lament­ed there is no pol­i­cy or leg­is­la­tion to date.

She re­called a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) hear­ing last month when the CCHR pre­sent­ed hu­man rights is­sues re­lat­ed to al­leged sex­u­al abuse of mi­grants and refugees and heard Gov­ern­ment men­tion a draft mi­gra­tion/refugee pol­i­cy re­ceiv­ing par­lia­men­tary at­ten­tion.

But up­on in­quiry, the CCHR learned that sev­er­al stake­hold­ers were not privy to the doc­u­ment, nor was it pub­licly avail­able.

Pitch­er said mi­gra­tion is a crit­i­cal glob­al is­sue pro­ject­ed to in­crease in the fore­see­able fu­ture, giv­en the in­sta­bil­i­ty in sev­er­al states and the eco­nom­ic cri­sis trig­gered by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, com­pound­ed by the Russ­ian/Ukraine cri­sis.