Asia-Pacific strategy against people-smuggling on the cards
Asia-Pacific strategy against people-smuggling on the cards
P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse, Manila
An Asia-Pacific regional strategy to combat people-smuggling is
in the offing following a landmark regional conference on the
lucrative illicit trade, a special Australian envoy said.
John Buckley, newly appointed Australian Ambassador for People
Smuggling Issues, said the first ministerial conference on human-
smuggling in Indonesia last month had provided a strong
foundation for regional technical cooperation and policy
coordination on tackling the scourge.
But he warned that there was no quick solution to people-
smuggling, estimated to be worth $10 billion a year and
spearheaded by sophisticated and highly organized networks.
"The region has said very clearly that it wants to work
together to find a regional solution to what is a human tragedy
faced by all of us. But we are building on existing cooperation,"
Buckley, the outgoing ambassador to the Philippines, told AFP in
an interview.
"So, it is not a short-term process. There are no quick
fixes," he added.
Buckley, a veteran diplomat with a strong Southeast Asian
background, said two ad hoc expert groups led by Thailand and New
Zealand would be following up key recommendations adopted at the
Indonesian conference.
The meeting found that poverty, joblessness, poor education
and conflict in home countries were the root causes of illegal
emigration.
A similar conference will be held at the end of next year, he
said.
"What we will be seeking is to have made real progress by the
end of next year so that we can report to the ministers and say,
'Look, we have done the following things, especially getting
coordination in the policy and technical fronts'."
Among the immediate priorities is the formulation of national
legislations against people-smuggling.
"There will also be technical issues like helping one another
to check documents fraud, or advice on likely movement of people,
or the experience of some countries in rehabilitating people or
readmitting them to their country of origin.
"So a lot of it will also be exchange of information but there
will be some technical cooperation as well," Buckley said.
Indonesia, which jointly hosted the Bali Conference with
Australia, reportedly has begun drafting a law against people-
smuggling to fill a void in its criminal code which bans the
smuggling of goods but not humans.
Australia has had an influx of boat people, mainly from the
Middle East and South Asia. They go into Australia usually
through Indonesia.
Hundreds have drowned on the perilous sea route, including
about 350 people -- mainly Iraqis -- who died in international
waters last October.
Two months earlier, Australia used troops to turn away a
Norwegian freighter carrying 433 migrants who had been rescued
from a sinking Indonesian boat.
Despite strident international criticism, Australia has stuck
to its new policy of diverting unauthorized arrivals to Pacific
island nations for asylum-claim processing.
Asked whether the people-smuggling problem could be checked at
source, Buckley said there were "push and pull" factors,
including the question of "genuine refugees".
"Some of the people smuggled happened to be refugees but we
are not talking about refugees per se, we are talking about
people-smuggling," he said.
"So I don't think there is any one solution. I don't think
there is one thing that can fix it.
"The real key issue is regional cooperation and all the
countries in the region recognize it is an important issue,"
Buckley said.