Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

is primarily a destination for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation

Sexual slavery

Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...

. It is also a source of women trafficked to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Women and girls from the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) and Southeast Asian countries are trafficked to Taiwan through fraudulent marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

s, deceptive employment offers, and illegal smuggling for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Many trafficking victims are workers from rural areas of Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, employed through recruitment agencies and brokers to perform low skilled work in Taiwan’s construction, fishing, and manufacturing industries, or to work as domestic servants. Such workers are often charged high job placement and service fees, up to $14,000, resulting in substantial debt that labor brokers or employers use as a tool for involuntary servitude. Many foreign workers remain vulnerable to trafficking because legal protections, oversight by authorities and enforcement efforts are inadequate. Taiwan authorities reported that traffickers continued to use fraudulent marriages to facilitate labor and sex trafficking, despite increased efforts by the authorities to prevent this practice. Some women who are smuggled onto Taiwan to seek illegal work were sometimes sold in auctions to sex traffickers, and subsequently forced to work in the commercial sex industry. NGOs reported a sharp increase during the reporting period in the number of boys rescued from prostitution

Prostitution

Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

, mainly discovered during police investigations of online social networking sites suspected of being front operations for prostitution rings. Taiwan authorities do not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, they are making significant efforts to do so.

Taiwan authorities made clear progress during the rating period by improving efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking cases, approving amendments to Taiwan’s Immigration Act

Immigration Act

An Immigration Act is a law regulating immigration. A number of countries have had Immigration Acts including:*Canada**The Immigration Act, 1906**The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923**The Immigration Act, 1952**The Immigration Act, 1978...

 that will significantly enhance legal protections for trafficking victims, and approving a budget plan of $12.6 million for victim protection measures.

Prosecution

The authorities on Taiwan made significant efforts in investigating and prosecuting trafficking crimes over the last year, particularly involving labor exploitation. Taiwan does not have a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, but a number of its laws collectively criminalize most forms of trafficking. Section 296 and 296-1 of Taiwan’s criminal code prohibit slavery and the use of coercion or deception to exploit a victim, but existing legal definitions and proof burdens hamper prosecutors’ ability to obtain convictions in cases involving fraudulent recruitment, coercion, or deception. One convicted under Section 296 or 296-1 can face up to seven years in prison. The Labor Standards Law, which prohibits forced labor under Articles 5 and 75, ensures overtime rates, and sets limits on the work-day and work-week. However, this law does not apply to the 160,000 foreign workers employed as private nursing caregivers or domestic helpers on Taiwan, who are especially vulnerable to labor exploitation.

Typical punishments imposed on offenders convicted of forced labor under the Labor Standards Law are fines or imprisonment of less than one year—punishments that are not sufficient. All employers of foreign laborers are covered by the Employment Service Act, which punishes labor trafficking offenses with fines, jail time, or both. The Ministry of Justice took commendable steps during the reporting period to standardize data on trafficking to obtain more precise statistics on sex and labor trafficking cases. The Ministry of Interior reports that authorities commenced prosecutions against 423 individuals for suspected trafficking in 2007, most of which were sex trafficking cases. Also in 2007, 74 individuals were convicted, including 16 for sexual exploitation of a minor, 53 individuals for sexual exploitation, and five for labor exploitation. However, most individuals convicted of sexual and labor exploitation of adults received a sentence of less than one year. During the reporting period, there were confirmed incidents of several local authorities accepting bribes and sexual services in return for ignoring illegal sex and labor trafficking activities. Of the nine local authorities charged with aiding or abetting trafficking activities in 2007, one was sentenced to 12 years in prison and the remaining eight cases are still pending. The Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau continued to assist U.S. law enforcement authorities in investigations of Taiwan-based smuggling networks involved in trafficking women to the United States.

Protection

Protection efforts by Taiwan authorities have improved modestly, but remained inadequate during the reporting period. The vast majority of trafficking victims in Taiwan continue to be undetected by law enforcement authorities. Although Taiwan has formal victim identification procedures and has provided training on these procedures, immigration officers, police, prosecutors, and other law enforcement personnel do not consistently follow the procedures. It is widely reported that authorities, particularly at the local level, fail to identify the vast majority of trafficking victims, classifying them instead as illegal immigrants or “runaway” foreign workers in illegal labor status. As a result, many trafficking victims are detained, prosecuted, fined, or jailed, and ultimately deported. The majority of victims are treated simply as illegal immigrants or illegal laborers, and housed in formal, long-term detention facilities, which are sometimes plagued by overcrowding and poor sanitation. While incarcerated, most detainees have no access to psychological or legal counseling, and only limited access to medical services. Only a small percentage of trafficking victims are properly identified and removed from detention facilities. Some trafficking victims who were formally identified as such were inappropriately incarcerated solely for unlawful acts that were a direct result of being trafficked.

During the reporting period, some identified victims, the majority of whom were held in detention facilities, were prosecuted for immigration, labor, and criminal law violations. In most cases, only those victims who cooperated with prosecutors in cases where charges were actually filed against the trafficker or other defendants were excused from punishment. The treatment afforded to victims varies considerably from place to place. The Council for Labor Affairs (CLA) provides subsidies to 11 NGO-operated shelters for trafficking victims. Most of those sheltered in these facilities were referred by churches, NGOs, or other informal channels. In July 2007, the Executive Yuan

Executive Yuan

The Executive Yuan is the executive branch of the government of the Republic of China , commonly known as "Taiwan".-Organization and structure:...

 approved the “Human Trafficking Implementation Plan,” setting aside $12.6 million for construction and improvement of shelter facilities, education, and training for authorities. During the reporting period, the National Immigration Agency

National Immigration Agency

National Immigration Agency or ' is the statutory agency under the Ministry of Interior which is responsible for immigration, entry and exit security, border services, citizenship, visas, and registration of foreigners transiting the Free Area of the Republic of China. The agency is headed by the...

 solicited bids to operate a shelter for trafficking victims, but when no NGOs bid for the funds, which they deemed insufficient, the Legislative Yuan

Legislative Yuan

The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China .The Legislative Yuan is one of the five branches of government stipulated by the Constitution of the Republic of China, which follows Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People...

 (LY) cut the funding allocation from the 2008 budget. Although the LY amended Taiwan’s immigration law to provide additional protections to trafficking victims in 2007, these amendments have not yet gone into effect.

Prevention

The Taiwan authorities report that their efforts to combat trafficking abroad are hampered by a lack of formal diplomatic relations with source-country governments and an inability to join relevant international organizations. Domestically, the Taiwan authorities used broadcast and print media to sensitize the public to the plight of trafficked women forced to work in Taiwan’s commercial sex industry. The authorities also continued an outreach program to enhance foreign workers’ understanding of their rights and the resources available to them, which included the distribution of multilingual emergency contact cards, announcements in foreign-language publications, and radio and television advertisements. The CLA spent $2.1 million in 2007 on 24 Foreign Labor Consultant Service Centers, which provide counseling, legal aid, and labor dispute resolution services to foreign workers. As part of an ongoing campaign to combat child sex trafficking, authorities on Taiwan displayed public service announcements at 680 cinemas nationwide and broadcast announcements on television and on online chat rooms frequented by Taiwan’s youth. Taiwan continues to operate an island-wide toll-free hotline for foreign spouses and foreign workers seeking assistance. Taiwan has an extraterritorial law criminalizing the sexual exploitation of children by Taiwan residents traveling abroad; however, it did not take other steps during the reporting year to reduce demand for child sex tourism

Sex tourism

Sex tourism is travel to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes.The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary...

.