Human trafficking in New Zealand
Encyclopedia
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

is a source country for underage girls subjected to trafficking
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...

 in persons, specifically forced 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...

, and a destination country for foreign men and women in forced labor. In the past, there were claims that New Zealand had reportedly been a destination country for women from Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, 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...

, 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...

, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, other Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

n countries, and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 trafficked into forced prostitution, but no new information about such cases was reported in the past year, and there is no evidence of such claims. Immigration constantly raid brothels seeking people who have reportedly been trafficked, but have not found any evidence. Of all persons in the legal sex industry, approximately 1.3 percent started when under 18. Some of these girls under 18 years old engage in prostitution occasionally on the street without the obvious control of a third party. It is often claimed that child trafficking victims, however, are found engaging in prostitution illegally in brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

s, and other teenage girls who engage in prostitution on the street are closely controlled by local gangs, but again, the police and other authorities have uncovered no evidence of this.

Unskilled Asians and Pacific Islanders
Pacific Islands
The Pacific Islands comprise 20,000 to 30,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands are also sometimes collectively called Oceania, although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago....

 migrate to New Zealand voluntarily to work legally or illegally in the agricultural sector, and women from 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...

 migrate legally to work as nurses. Some of these workers report that manpower agencies placed them in positions of involuntary servitude or debt bondage by charging them excessive and escalating recruiting fees, imposing unjustified salary deductions on them, restricting their travel by confiscating their passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....

s, and significantly altering contracts or working conditions without their permission. Relative to the population of New Zealand, the estimated number of trafficking victims is modest, although no research has been conducted to determine the full extent of the trafficking problem in New Zealand.

The Government of New Zealand fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The government continued to fund and participate in international anti-trafficking initiatives, and introduced a national Plan of Action. New Zealand offers an extensive network of protective services to both internal and transnational trafficking victims, regardless of whether they are recognized as trafficking victims. It is possible, however, that citizens and foreigners in New Zealand exploited in forced labor and the legal or illegal commercial sex trade, in nursing, or in the viticulture and/or horticulture areas have not been identified by the government as trafficking victims.

Prosecution

It is claimed the Government of New Zealand made little discernible progress in its anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts during the past year. Nevertheless, police and Immigration continually examine brothels, and other places where victims of trafficking may be, though these agencies have found none of the victims claimed to exist. New Zealand does not have a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, and authorities did not arrest or prosecute any trafficking offenders during the past year. It has, however, imprisoned various people who hired people under 18 to work in brothels. Part 5 and various amendments of the Crimes Act of 1961 prohibit transnational sex and labor trafficking. Laws against sexual slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

, the receipt of financial gain from exploiting children in prostitution, and labor exploitation prohibit forms of internal trafficking. Such crimes are not specifically included within the anti-trafficking provisions of the Crimes Act and therefore cases of internal trafficking are not recognized by the government as trafficking crimes. Fraudulent employment and recruiting practices are prohibited under the Crimes Act of 1961 and the Wages Protection Act of 1983. New Zealand has never prosecuted trafficking offenders under these laws. Sufficiently stringent penalties of up to 20 years’ imprisonment and/or a fine of $250,000 under the above statutes are commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes.

The government released no information about the progress or conclusion during the year of trafficking-related arrests and prosecutions opened during previous years. During the reporting period, the government continued prosecution of an accused sex trafficking offender who allegedly subjected two underage girls to prostitution in a brothel. One girl was a New Zealand citizen and one was a foreign exchange student. Since 2007, all Immigration Compliance Officers received training in identifying trafficking indicators in sectors considered high risk for the exploitation or trafficking of foreigners. Police constables, health and safety inspectors, and labor inspectors received training on how to identify exploitative offenses involving citizens and residents. In accordance with its Plan of Action, the government began developing programs to train front-line staff from the Department of Labor (DOL), Customs, and the New Zealand Police to detect trafficking activity in the course of their routine duties involving both citizens and foreign nationals. The police also recently began to identify and train specialized interviewers for both trafficking victims and offenders. The government provided training in trafficking indicators to all new detectives in the Criminal Investigation Branch, and sent officers to Australia for training from trafficking specialists in the Australian Federal Police. Officials made two brothel compliance inspections during the past year, a significant decrease from the 29 compliance inspections it conducted in 2008. The government significantly decreased its efforts to monitor the agricultural sector for labor trafficking offenses. In 2008, it conducted 264 agricultural labor compliance checks, but reported conducting only 46 compliance visits and 90 educational visits during this reporting period.

Protection

The Government of New Zealand continued to provide strong support and social services for victims of all crimes through the New Zealand Council of Victim Support Groups. The government reports it did not assist any trafficking victims during the year, even though it provided support services for children involved in commercial sexual exploitation. No victims of trafficking were identified by the government during the reporting period, despite ongoing reports of children exploited in the commercial sex trade and foreign workers subjected to involuntary servitude and debt bondage. Under the Victim’s Rights Act of 2002, police attend to victims’ immediate welfare needs, such as food and shelter. There are currently no shelters specifically dedicated to trafficking victims.

Youth and Cultural Development in Christchurch
Christchurch
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

 ran the “Street Youth Work Project” for girls and boys under 18 years of age at risk of or already engaging in commercial sex. The law allows foreign victims temporary legal residence and relief from prosecution for immigration offenses. In accordance with the national Plan of Action, the DOL began formulating a policy to regularize a foreign trafficking victim’s immigration status to allow that person to lawfully remain in New Zealand long-term and continue to access a wide range of support services. No identified victims were jailed, fined, or deported. It is possible, however, that foreigners were deported instead of being investigated as possible trafficking victims because police and immigration officials do not routinely employ formal procedures for identifying trafficking victims among vulnerable populations such as illegal migrants and women engaging in prostitution. New Zealand contributed personnel and a significant amount of funding to victim protection programs in the Mekong Sub-Region and the Pacific Island region.

Prevention

The Government of New Zealand continued making efforts to prevent the transnational trafficking of foreigners into New Zealand, and made few discernible efforts to prevent internal trafficking. During the year, it did not run campaigns in New Zealand to raise public awareness of trafficking risks, nor did it take steps to reduce demand for commercial sex acts in the decriminalized commercial sex industry. In July 2009 the New Zealand government released its Plan of Action to Prevent People Trafficking, developed in consultation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and relevant government agencies. The Department of Labour
Department of Labour (New Zealand)
The New Zealand Department of Labour was established in 1891 and its primary role is to improve the performance of the labour market and, through this, strengthen the economy and increase the standard of living for those in New Zealand....

, which coordinates anti-trafficking activity on behalf of the Inter-Agency Working Group, launched an intranet page dedicated to raising trafficking awareness among its frontline labour inspectors. It also began preparing educational materials to be given to airlines, NGOs, and other victim service providers.

To date, the government’s policies on trafficking and prostitution have failed to give adequate priority to the problems of adult and child sex trafficking. The government made significant efforts to reduce the participation of its nationals in 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...

. In 2009, the government established the Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (OCEANZ) program. OCEANZ team members, working with international partner organizations, conducted investigations of potential child sex tourists when online activity uncovered links between online exploitation of children and child sex tourism. New Zealand remained active in international efforts to monitor and prevent trafficking. Immigration New Zealand provided the publication entitled “Information for Migrant Workers from the PhilippinesA Guide to Work and Work Rights in New Zealand” to all work visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...

applicants in the Philippines. Its foreign assistance agency provided substantial funding to foreign countries and international organizations to build countries’ anti-trafficking capacity, to prevent trafficking, and to provide services to victims. The government provided anti-trafficking training to military personnel prior to their deployment abroad on international peacekeeping missions. There were no reports of New Zealand peacekeeping personnel involved in trafficking or exploiting trafficking victims during the year.
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