The 14th IACC conference in Bangkok, Thailand

The ending of a war may not necessarily mean the finale to all its problems for post conflict nations, which are trying to pick up the pieces after a bloody battle. As one crisis after another continues to take toll on some of these nations, yet another fresh crisis is enveloping them – their vulnerability to organized crime.

We had the pleasure of talking to Dimitri Vlassis, Chief of the Corruption and Economic Crime Branch at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, during a meeting with the social media unit held on the sidelines of the 14th IACC. He conceded that post conflict nations are absolutely more vulnerable to organized crime. “Organized crime develops, if not already present, it evolves and thrives by absorbing elements of the combatants.”

Citing an example, despite the irony of it, Vlassis shared an experience of a particular post conflict nation, where a local group had begun to rent out an armored tank on a daily basis for anyone who wanted to use it for any purpose.

Vlassis in discussion with the IACC Young Journalists

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Governments and donors are warned to be more careful in distributing disaster relief funds. It has many critical points which are prone to corruption.

‘Where the most money get lost is in the procurement,’ said the Transparency International Senior Advisor Roslyn Hees last night.

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Asia has been home to some of the bloodiest wars in history and the 25 year old conflict in the South Asian nation Sri Lanka is no exception, yet disappointingly Asia and its conflict prone nations seem to be getting very little focus here at the 14th International Anti Corruption Conference (IACC) in Bangkok.

With much anticipation I participated at the workshop titled ‘Anti Corruption Challenges in Post Conflict and Recovery Situations’ held today, hoping for some insight on how countries such as mine and even neighboring nations in the likes of Nepal could address the corruption menace, specially as these are relatively new post conflict nations, yet sadly, no mention was made on either of these two countries at the workshop.

As a journalist from Sri Lanka, I have personally witnessed the foreign interest including from the international media in my country over the past few years specially during the last leg of the war which ended in May last year with the military defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were at that time dubbed as the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit. Yet, despite the severity of the conflict and the controversial end to the war, most South Asian nations let alone Sri Lanka received no attention at this topical workshop.

The panel at the workshop indeed seemed impressive, yet their expertise was more towards Africa and the Americas. An Asian perspective in the panel would have thus been welcome.

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Her body was her enemy, his adolescence his……….

Human trafficking, a silent plague burning the lives of millions across the globe continues to inflict pain on mostly the innocent and the most vulnerable be it in powerful nations as such as the United States to Canada to lesser developed nations in Asia.

For countries which often boasts of equality, a woman is often prized for her body, a youth for his future. Despite continuous deliberations the world over to put a stop to this menace, which even ends in death, most governments around the world have failed miserably to put an end to this problem, let alone take steps to minimize the human trafficking even domestically.

For a country like Sri Lanka, which until recently battled with a quarter century long war, human trafficking specially domestically exists to date, mostly in rural areas where economic development is sparse and day to day survival is a gamble.

16 year old Leela and her 13 year old brother Kamal were living in a mud thatched hut in a rural village with their parents, so when a trustworthy neighbor approached them and promised them the best of the world in the country’s commercial capital, Colombo, their parents jumped at the idea without much questions, because not only were they getting ‘lots of money’ but it appeared that their children would have better living conditions.

The parents were offered a ‘grand’ Rs. 10,000 (US $ 100) for the two children. Read more »

“Corruption is the oil that fuels the human trafficking machine,” remarked Danish anti-human-trafficking NGO Hope Now’s head Ms. Anne Brandt Christensen during this morning’s workshop “Corruption and Human Trafficking: Unraveling the Undistinguishable for a Better Fight.”

She’s right.  Despite the fact that almost every country has passed laws against slavery, National Geographic recently reported that there are still over 27 million slaves today—toiling in locations as diverse as the brick kilns of South India and piaçaba plantations of Brazil, the brothels of Svey Pak and Sonagachi, and in the agricultural industries of California and Florida that put food on the plates of millions of Americans daily.

It’s impossible to explain this discrepancy without acknowledging the inextricable link between corruption and human trafficking, and that’s precisely what this morning’s panelists set out to do.

Photo: Ricardo Valdes discusses Peru’s efforts to empower and motivate government officials to take sex trafficking seriously

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