Law Campaign
Ridoypur Declaration of Fourth SAARC Peoples Forum / Page 2
RIDOYPUR DECLARATION
Of Fourth SAARC Peoples' Forum
ORGANISED BY
South Asian Network for Food, Ecology and Culture (SANFEC)
Resistance Network against Trafficking in Women and Children
HOSTED BY
UBINIG - Policy Research for Development Alternative
In collaboration with Odhikar, Dhaka
VENUE: 'Ridoypur' (UBINIG Tangail CenterTangail, Bangladesh
DATE: 28 - 30 September 2005
We the participants (87) in the Fourth SAARC Peoples' Forum meeting in Ridoypur Tangail from countries of Pakistan (10), Nepal (6), India (6), Malaysia (1), UK (1) and Bangladesh (63), representing grass root organizations, academia, consumer activists, development organizations, media, farmers, fishers, women activists, lawyers and others adopted the following declaration on 30 September 2005 after a three day meetings in Ridoypur, Tangail, Bangladesh, to consolidate our collective position and articulate our collective voice on various issues that affect our lives in South Asia. We will undertake programmes, campaigns and activities in light of this declarations both individually and collectively, This position will be the basis to prepare the Memorandum on behalf of the Fourth SAARC Peoples Forum to the Head of the State in the coming 13th SAARC Summit to be held in Dhaka and our advocacy and campaign in the coming Hong Kong WTO Ministerial.
Migration and Trafficking
1. We reaffirm our principal to defend and promote 'security of movement and security of livelihood' as adopted in the formation period of the SAARC Peoples Forum since 1998. We demand that our government also acknowledge and accept this principle as human right in order to build peace and stability in the region. We urge our governments to guard migrants from harassment, detention and forced eviction.
2. We demand that there should be clear legal mechanisms for migration and processes of absorbing migrants into the host countries as full citizens since migration is a right. We condemn the policy of our governments to render migrants as 'stateless' persons denying them constitutional and fundamental rights forcing them to suffer inhuman conditions.
3. There should be well-defined state policies of migration and trafficking. The two 'terms' are closely inter-related, but while migration is the right of people, human trafficking is a criminal offence and violation of human rights.
4. The definition of the Trafficking as accepted in SAARC Peoples' Forum organised by SANFEC & Resistance Network is the following:
'Trafficking" in women consists of all acts involved in the procurement, transportation, forced movement, and/or selling and buying of women within and/or across borders by fraudulent means, deception, coercion, direct and/or indirect threats, abuse of authority, for the purpose of placing a woman against her will without her consent in exploitative and abusive situations such as forced prostitution, forced marriage, bonded and forced labour, begging, organ trade, etc.'
'Trafficking in children consists of all acts involved in the procurement, transportation, forced movement, and/or selling and buying of children within and/or across borders by fraudulant means, deception, coercion, direct and/or indirect threats, abuse of authority, for the purpose of placing children against their will with or without her consent in exploitative and abusive situations such as commercial sexual abuse, bonded and forced labour, begging, sports such as camel jockeying, organ trade, etc.'
These definitions should be included in the 'SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution' to broaden the scope of the Convention beyond prostitution. We urge our governments to amend the Convention so that it can address the trafficking for all purposes.
5. We urge upon the SAARC governments to implement the SAARC convention to help the victims of trafficking and to punish the criminals. We are against bilateral agreements between countries of South Asia, as this will weaken the implementation of the SAARC Convention and will result in complications of mutual bilateral issues rather than SAARC as a region. We believe trafficking is not a trade which happens between two countries alone. It is linked to international flesh trade and therefore South Asia must take it up as a regional issue.
6. Trafficking in women is encouraged by the sex trade, particularly prostitution, pornography, abuse of women in media and in general commoditisation of human being particularly women. We must act to stop activities which create demand for trafficking in persons.
7. We reject the Trafficking in Persons Report by US Department of State in which countries are ranked as Tier 1 to Tier 3 on the basis of the government's effort to combat trafficking. Countries ranked in Tier 3 are black listed and therefore are subjected to economic sanctions by USA, particularly cut-offs in non-humanitarian and non-trade related US aid. This report unduly blames the source countries of trafficking but there are no actions against the user and receiving countries.
8. A regional tribunal to dispose of cases must be stationed at a suitable centre, which can rotate as per requirement to stop the criminal trade link nationally & internationally. Policy of decriminalisation for the trafficked person must be adopted.
9. We are concerned that trafficking is also happening in the guise of cultural exchange programmes with the support of the government agencies. These should be stopped.
