BAKU: A two-day workshop on the hazards, spoils and the prevailing menace that is human trafficking, was held in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday and Friday for Pakistani journalists, where experts, journalists and documentary makers were flown in from England, Moldova and the Netherlands to talk at length about the subject on hand.
Tamme De Leur was the first to address the 18-member delegation from Pakistan. “I am not important. My stories are important. It’s all about writing a story that would leave its impact, long after I’m gone. I have travelled all over and as far as Ukraine, etc to train police personnel as well as my other students about human trafficking and how prevalent it is in our society,” he said. Tamme talked about the documentaries he had made on this subject he felt the most passionate about and the affects it had created, for example in 2000, he made ‘Black Slaves For Sale’.
“Sometime it is pertinent even to buy the slaves back from their owners, in bid to rescue them. For instance, the terror of Boko Haram and the horrors experiences by the Yazidi girls. My job as a media person is not just to give the story and go away,” Tamme said.
Tamme conveyed to the delegation how it should be binding upon every journalist to ensure that measures are taken to safeguard and uphold the rights of victims that they write about, through whichever medium they find convenient. Through his in-depth research and various documentaries, Tamme compelled politicians to amend and make laws against human trafficking in his home country. “Politicians from various parties cannot see eye to eye on many topics. But we, as journalists, can speak to all of them and write about their opinions and maybe then they can see whether they are on the same page on an issue or not,” Tamme said.
Elena Krsmanovic from England talked about breaking stereotypes in the perception of human trafficking. She raised some very valid points, saying, “Some victims are so used to working in tough conditions so sometimes they don’t even know they are victims of human trafficking. They see it as a norm,” she said while addressing the delegation. “Every country needs to be self sufficient in order to bust this menace from their societies. Developed countries need developing countries to stay poor so that they can export and import on favourable prices. No country can help any other. It’s all business,” she said.
Tamme pointed out 12 core challenges that needed to be dealt with in order to highlight the cause of curbing human trafficking. Those core issues are of law enforcement, human resources, gender issues, migration, politics, economics, technology, corporate law, health care, multidisciplinary approach, education and media.
Olga Ceaglei also talked about her endeavours to bring to attention the rising menace of human trafficking in the society and how she had done her bit to beware the government authorities about this practise. She had tried to locate these traffickers through social media where they operate casually and found their victims.
The second day was allotted to two experts from Azerbaijan, to talk about human trafficking within their own country.
The journalist delegation was assigned a project in four groups to highlight this issue of human trafficking from their own point of views and demonstrate its relevance in their own countries.
The training seminar for Pakistani journalists – mass media and public awareness about trafficking in human beings in the framework of the project Fight against Trafficking in Human Beings and Organised Crime was funded by the EU. The project sought to contribute to the prevention of and fight against transnational organised crime and supported anti-trafficking actors in Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Moldova, Pakistan and Turkey in enhancing their capacity to address and fight the crime of trafficking in human beings more effectively.
The training, which was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, was designed for journalists to learn more about the crime of trafficking in human beings and how to properly report on human trafficking. The training was led by anti-trafficking and media expert from the Netherlands Tamme, organised and arranged by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development.
Published in Daily Times, November 6th 2017.
