Concern over human rights issue

If the Government fails to "bring the human rights of the victims of trafficking centre stage" it will be compounding human rights abuses these people have suffered, a major conference will be told tomorrow.

Suzanne Egan, commissioner with the Irish Human Rights Commission, will give the keynote speech at the conference on human trafficking which opened in Trinity College last night and runs until tomorrow. She will say the victims of trafficking to Ireland are "invisible" in proposed legislation on trafficking, which she describes as "more concerned with crime control".

The "European Slave Trade: Character, Causes, Challenges"conference will hear from speakers including Stana Buchowska, director of La Strada - the leading Polish NGO working to tackle trafficking, and Rebecca Dudleof the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

Ms Egan will say the current and proposed legislation to deal with trafficking is "inadequate to deal with the phenomenon".

NGOs working with women in prostitution as well as the Garda have highlighted growing numbers of foreign national women working in the sex industry who they say have been trafficked.

"It is significant that while Ireland has signed both the 2000 Palermo Protocol on Trafficking as well as the optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, it has not ratified either instrument."

Current legislation does not define trafficking, while any protection is for trafficked children only, she says. "Prompted perhaps by increased incidents of trafficking into the State in recent years, the Government introduced heads of a new bill to tackle the issue earlier this year." This could be an opportunity for a more "holistic" approach.

However, the measures in the Bill "are simply not sufficient to tackle the problem of trafficking in a truly meaningful way", she notes. The emphasis "is overwhelmingly prosecutorial". "There can be little doubt but that the trafficked person is virtually invisible in this scheme."

She calls for measures to ensure victims are provided with accommodation, medical and psychological assistance, time to recover and decide whether to take part in a prosecution, as well as protection from being forcibly returned to their country of origin.