MANILA, PHILIPPINES, 27-29 January 2015 – NEXUS Senior Researcher Rebecca Surtees presented lessons learned on the identification and assistance of victims of forced labor at the Conference on the Labor Dimensions of Trafficking in Persons in the ASEAN Region, hosted by AAPTIP and the ILO. The NEXUS presentation What Victims Need: Supporting Victims of Labor Trafficking in South East Asia focused on how to better support victims of trafficking in persons for labor exploitation, based on research with trafficked persons in the ASEAN region.
The regional conference brought together criminal justice and labor officers, inspectors and labor attachés from the ASEAN member states, including representatives of SOMTC (Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime), ACMW (ASEAN Committee on the Implementation of the ASEAN Declaration), ATUC (ASEAN Trade Union Council), ACE (ASEAN Confederation of Employers), TFAMW (Task Force on ASEAN Migrant Workers), as well as social partners and other stakeholders working on labor migration and trafficking in persons. The conference aimed to enhance an understanding of the labor migration management, labor exploitation and criminal justice elements of labor trafficking.