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Human Trafficking For Health Practitioners
posted (July 26, 2019)
On Wednesday night we told you about the human trafficking workshop for health practitioners. Well the series of workshops continued today with a session for the labor department. We dropped by this morning to find out about the labor department's role in detecting human trafficking victims.

Rosilyne Borland, Senior Migrant Protection and Assistant Specialist, IOM
"Today we are in the labor department and we are with labor inspectors from around the country and again we are talking about human trafficking but we are getting deeply into migrant smuggling which is a different crime, how they relate and interact and also for them how do they detect someone who needs help when they do their daily work so how can they find someone in forced work, activities such as forced prostitution and others."

Courtney Weatherburne:
"Just describe the role of the labor department in identifying victims of human trafficking and human smuggling and also speak specifically on the topics and tips you are discussing today?"

Rosilyne Borland
"Okay so when you fight something like human trafficking you really have to come at it from all angles so of course you are educating the communities and the children and the potential migrants and everyone on how to be careful and how not to fall into the hands of these criminals but at the same time the more you can have better labor rights and labor protection for all people who are in work, the safer people are because if you have work that is informal or unregulated it is much easier for a trafficker to exploit people if no one is watching them, if no one catches them and days this is against the law, you are not paying them, you are not giving them food, this is wrong then they can carry on their negative business or criminal enterprise without interference so labor inspectors are very important because they may in their normal duties come across a situation that seems wrong, it seems like it has poor conditions, it seems people are being forced or not being paid so that is why they have such a key role."

This one day session completes this phase of workshops.

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