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. 

For more information, please contact:

Anuradhi Navaratnam

IOM Sri Lanka

Tel. +94.5325 300 (Ext: 348)

E-mail: "mailto:pnavaratnam@iom.int">pnavaratnam@iom.int

or

Stacey Winston

E-mail: "mailto:swinston@iom.int">swinston@iom.int 

or

Passanna Gunasekera

E-mail: "mailto:pgunasekera@iom.int">pgunasekera@iom.int