Your Royal Highness Princess Basma Bin Talal,
Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be with all of you here today in this event to launch a very important information campaign to combat human trafficking.

Let me start by warmly thanking Your Royal Highness Princess Basma Bin Talal for making us the honour of being here with us today and for the continuos and outstanding leadership that her Royal Highness has shown in combating human trafficking. You are a true inspiration to us all. For the International Organization for Migration and for our Director General is an honour to have you as his Special Envoy on counter-trafficking in Jordan and I look very much forward to working with you personally and strengthening this fruitful collaboration with you in the future.

Royal Highness, Ladies and gentlemen,

Several years ago the international community recognising the fact that the trafficking in persons was one of the most heinous crime took the very important decision to adopt an international agreement to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, as a Protocol to the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, known as the Palermo Protocol.  Since this Protocol was opened for signature, more than 12 years ago, national laws have been enacted, referral systems established, shelters built, return and reintegration programmes implemented, thousands of officials trained, joint investigations instigated, and information campaigns carried out. 

IOM together with its partners has implemented around 950 projects around the world with the specific aim of preventing trafficking, protecting victims of the trade, and/or building the capacities of national governments to counter trafficking, and has been directly involved in the protection of more than 25,000 victims. In the year 2000, IOM created a Global Assistance Fund that, with the financial support of Governments and private sector entities, has assisted over 1,500 victims of trafficking.

Here in Jordan, IOM, in collaboration with its Jordanian governmental counterparts, including the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Health and other key ministries in the field of capacity building, and with the generous financial support of the United States Department of State has:

• Trained around 150 government officials and diplomatic mission’s staff members on victim identification;
• Provided over 250 victims of trafficking and vulnerable migrants with return, recovery and reintegration assistance;
• Printed and distributed nearly 30,000 Information Education and Communication materials on Trafficking awareness;
• We also expect to reach around 1 million people through our joint public service announcement broadcasted through Amin FM and Farahanaz FM.

All the results above mentioned are very significant, but unfortunately, not very determinative as human trafficking continuous to be present in all countries and still constitutes one of the most lucrative businesses in the world.

Organised criminal groups earn approximately 32 billion dollars annually in profit from exploiting and abusing of victims of trafficking. Over the last decade, 9 million people were subjected to this crime. Trafficked persons are very often victims of multiple crimes as in addition of being trafficked, they are often also victims of rape; torture; debt bondage; unlawful confinement; physical, sexual and psychological violence. In addition they are often re-victimised and stigmatised by the trafficking experience.

IOM’s commitment to fight human trafficking aims at achieving sustainable impact through a comprehensive approach that involves the three Ps identified in the Palermo Protocol -prevention, protection and persecution- and strengthens the capacity of its governmental counterparts and civil society partners to protect and empower trafficked persons, raise awareness and understanding of the risks involved and facilitate the provision of justice against the perpetrators and the protection and provision of assistance to the victims.

Preventing trafficking in persons, that is what we are aiming to achieve with initiatives like this one that we are launching today, undoubtedly requires a sustained investment of time and resources, and is probably the most difficult of the 3Ps to achieve. But surely prevention is worth this investment. Surely it is better the prevent trafficking from occurring in the first place than it is to be forced to react to its horrific consequences.  My own view is that we will only succeed in preventing trafficking in persons if we address the root causes directly. This means working to curtail the demand for the labour and services of trafficked persons, as well as the goods produced by their labour, and to reduce the profit margins for the perpetrator.

The idea of demand as a root cause is not a new one, but it has been somehow neglected. While hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on campaigns to raise awareness of trafficking among aspirant migrants in the vain hope that they won’t be seduced by false offers of employment abroad, relatively little has been spent to prevent trafficking in the countries and communities where the victims are most likely to be exploited.

That is why Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, this event and the campaign  that we are launching today are of such an importance. Today, we are witnessing the leadership of the Kingdom of Jordan to fight this crime. As a country that hosts thousands of migrants, many of whom are vulnerable, Jordan has an important role to play. Jordan’s efforts represent a regional best practice model towards strengthening the protection of trafficked victims. Jordan has a strong governmental institutional framework including a rights-based domestic anti-trafficking law to prosecute the crime of human trafficking and assist the victims and has also ratified major global instruments to protect migrant workers. On top of that, Jordan has active civil society organisations that provide direct assistance for victims together with the IOM. In particular, I would like to congratulate the Government for its efforts to bring domestic workers within the scope of the labour law, and on their efforts to provide the opportunity to remedy their work status or return home in dignity, without overstay fees and with the chance to start a new life through an IOM reintegration scheme once back home. I certainly hope that these practices can be followed by other countries in the region.

Having that in mind, the next step is the awareness raising of the general public and the private sector that are the subjects of the demand for the labour and services that might be produced by trafficked persons, as well as the goods produced by their labour.  We need to make them aware of the risk that the services they are receiving and the goods that they are purchasing might be produced by people that been exploited and abused, and that is why Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen your presence here is so important.

I would like to conclude by reiterating IOM’s commitment to assist the Jordanian government and the people of Jordan in combating this crime and to thank you, Royal Highness Princess Basma bint Talal, for your strong support and commitment and for the work that you do for IOM as the Director General's Special Envoy in Jordan.

Thank you.