Colombo – The US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (GTIP) is to fund an IOM project to help Sri Lanka develop a national strategy on combating human trafficking, to identify and prosecute trafficking cases, to protect victims and to improve the country's collection of trafficking data.

The USD 300,000 programme, which will build on an earlier US-funded IOM counter-trafficking project in Sri Lanka, will provide training for law enforcement and government officials, and technical support for the government's anti-trafficking task force, to help it to develop a comprehensive national strategy.

US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis commented: "GTIP grants have been a great tool to build the capacity of governments to combat trafficking and we look forward to building on our past work with IOM and the Government of Sri Lanka to eliminate this modern day form of slavery."

The project will work to improve the government's process of identifying and protecting trafficking victims by ensuring that they are referred to appropriate agencies for assistance. The programme will also look at establishing shelters and training staff to work in them.

"This new initiative will bring together IOM, our partners and the government to comprehensively tackle the problem of human trafficking and protect some of the most vulnerable people in our society," said IOM Sri Lanka Chief of Mission Mohammed Abdi Ker. 

Previous US-funded IOM initiatives to curb human trafficking in Sri Lanka have included assistance to victims; a series of nationwide workshops that trained over 1,000 law enforcement officers and NGO workers to identify and protect victims, and to prosecute traffickers; a programme that sensitized judges on the issue; and the establishment of a national counter-trafficking research centre.

Human trafficking is one of the most profitable criminal industries in the world. According to GTIP's 2009 annual report, human traffickers target women, children and men by using creative and ruthless schemes to trick, coerce and win the confidence of potential victims. Victims are subjected to gross exploitation including forced labour, prostitution, involuntary marriage and even illegal organ theft. 

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For more information, please contact: Anuradhi Navaratnam, IOM Sri Lanka, Tel. +94.5325 300 (Ext: 348), E-mail: pnavaratnam@iom.int or Stacey Winston, E-mail: swinston@iom.int  or Passanna Gunasekera, E-mail: pgunasekera@iom.int