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Activists in the Philippines have welcomed this week's decision by Washington to remove the country from the Tier 2 Watch list of the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report.
"It is truly a relief. A consistent collaborative effort across all government agencies is needed to ensure that we stay off the watch list," Ruby Ramores, a programme officer for the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, told IRIN.
"Within just one year, there were 25 trafficking convictions. This is more than the total number of convictions in the past seven years," said Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, executive director of the Visayan Forum, an anti-trafficking NGO, said citing government efforts to deal with trafficking cases within 180 days of arrest.
For the past two years, the Philippines was on the Tier 2 watch list, meaning it had failed to show evidence of trying to meet minimum standards set out in the internationally recognized Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Another watch list rating might have meant the withdrawal of millions of dollars in non-humanitarian US aid.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
