×

Our award-winning reporting has moved

Context provides news and analysis on three of the world’s most critical issues:

climate change, the impact of technology on society, and inclusive economies.

INTERVIEW-Bogota launches drive to combat invisible slavery, increase convictions

by Anastasia Moloney | @anastasiabogota | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 4 August 2017 18:39 GMT

In Colombia, women and children sold into sex work is the most common form of human trafficking

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA, Aug 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Across the streets and squares of Colombia's capital, men and women have started appearing in large glass boxes; some look like sex workers dressed in skimpy outfits, others wear hard hats and hold shovels.

The boxes featuring actors representing different forms of modern-day slavery, including forced prostitution and labour exploitation, are part of a campaign to increase public awareness of the hidden crime in Bogota.

The initiative comes amid government efforts to crack down on human trafficking in the city of 8 million, which has seen just three convictions for the crime in the past decade.

"We're showing that human trafficking translates into people being imprisoned in invisible boxes," Deputy Mayor Miguel Uribe Turbay told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"People historically have associated human trafficking solely with sexual exploitation, or think it's a phenomenon that doesn't happen near them, or that it happens in other parts of the world," said Uribe, adding that trafficking also includes forced marriage and forced child begging.

An estimated 308,200 people are trapped in slavery in Colombia, according to rights group The Walk Free Foundation, the second highest number in Latin America after Mexico.

But Uribe warned that human trafficking is likely to rise in Bogota, and across Colombia, following a peace deal signed last year with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

"The post-conflict, rural to urban displacement to the big cities like Bogota ... increases the risk of the crime of trafficking," he said.

Research from countries like Bosnia and Guatemala shows human trafficking "skyrockets" in countries that have recently experienced war, he added.

As illegal armed groups lay down their weapons they can "reinvent" themselves and turn to other ways to make money like human trafficking, Uribe said.

The deputy mayor also warned that traffickers were likely to prey on the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans seeking refuge in Colombia from an escalating humanitarian and political crisis at home.

"The massive arrival of Venezuelans to Bogota increases the risk of human trafficking because they are people who are vulnerable, and as such are attractive for these trafficking mafias," Uribe said.

SEX TRADE

Human trafficking is the world's fastest growing criminal enterprise worth an estimated $150 billion a year, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), with nearly 21 million people victims of forced labour and trafficking.

In Colombia, women and children sold into sex work is the most common form of human trafficking, with women accounting for seven in 10 trafficked victims, Uribe said.

He said "mafias" in Bogota target children for forced prostitution and recruiters lure women with false promises of jobs as models and waitresses but then sell them into the sex trade.

However, lesser-known forms of human trafficking also occur in the capital, including children pushed into begging on city streets, forced labour in low-skilled jobs, domestic servitude and forced marriage, Uribe said.

Yet few trafficking cases come to light.

Authorities in Bogota reported 30 cases in 2016, up from six in 2015.

So far this year in Bogota, 16 trafficking victims have been rescued and 33 suspected traffickers arrested, Uribe said.

"Unfortunately we're aware that there's underreporting of cases, and much of that is explained due to a lack of awareness about the issue of human trafficking," he added.

Uribe said the authorities were on an "active search" for possible victims of trafficking across the city.

"We want to increase the number of reported cases of trafficking," Uribe said.

Yet just a handful of prosecutors in Bogota are dealing with trafficking cases.

According to the 2015 U.S. State Department report on human trafficking, there was just one prosecutor in Bogota overseeing all cases of domestic trafficking in the city.

Uribe said more prosecutors are being trained to increase the conviction rate and ensure victims get justice.

"We're sure that from this campaign, we'll have more reports of trafficking .. and especially more convictions," he said.

(Reporting by Anastasia Moloney @anastasiabogota, Editing by Emma Batha.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

-->