‘30 cases involving human trafficking uncovered in 2016’

AMMAN — Thirty cases related to the human trafficking of migrant workers were referred to the judiciary for further investigation in 2016, a government official said on Tuesday.

Mohammed Khateeb, the Ministry of Labour’s spokesperson, said these cases were uncovered during the ministry’s inspection campaigns, noting that over 85,000 inspections were conducted last year.

According to Khateeb, cases referred to the judiciary last year included minor violations such as employers confiscating workers’ passports and delaying or withholding salaries.

“Most of the violations are related to forced labour,” he explained.

Ahmad Awad, director of the Phenix Centre for Economic and Informatics Studies, said many violations are committed against foreign labourers in Jordan, mostly domestic workers, which he considered to be indicators of human trafficking.

Confiscating passports and preventing foreign workers from terminating their contracts and signing new ones, after arriving in Jordan, are two common violations, according to Awad.

In her visit to the Kingdom last year, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, UN special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, noted that in Jordan there is a “will by the government to stop this [human trafficking]; there is commitment and a mechanism to find cases”, but the challenge is to make use of this mechanism to protect people and to prevent any future cases.

“A solid legal framework is in place. The challenge is now to fast-track the revision of the legislation for a clearer definition and effective prevention and protection of the human rights of trafficked persons — after five years of implementation — and issue a new national strategy against trafficking,” Giammarinaro said last February.

According to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, around 42,900 people are living in “modern slavery” in Jordan today, up from 31,000 cited in its 2014 report.