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.