GOVPH
MENU

The Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong joined on 7 November 2018 at the Consul General’s Residence prominent individuals and representatives of organizations combating human trafficking in meeting with a top-ranking American diplomat charged with leading the United States’ engagement on the issue.

U.S. Consul General Kurt Tong hosted the gathering at his residence at Victoria Peak to introduce Dr Kari Johnstone, Acting Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking, who was making a short stop in Hong Kong after visiting partner countries in the region to coordinate and support efforts to combat human trafficking.

Representing the Philippine Consulate General, Consul Roderico C. Atienza met with representatives of other consulates as well as local and international governmental and non-governmental organizations tackling the issue, such as International Organization for Migration (IOM), Enrich HK, and the International Domestic Workers Federation.

Many organizations discussed recent developments in the field, including the Anti-Slavery Summit organized by Thomson Reuters on 29 August 2018, updates on the proposed members’ modern slavery bill authored by Legislative Council (LegCo) members Kenneth Leung and Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, both of whom were represented at the gathering.

The Philippine Consulate has been engaging the Hong Kong government in meetings and through the established quarterly bilateral consultative working group with the HK Immigration Department and Labour Department to address the issue of human trafficking in Hong Kong, which does not currently have any anti-trafficking legislation.

In June this year, Hong Kong placed on the Tier 2 Watch List in the 2018 US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for the third consecutive year.

Despite rules prescribing automatic downgrading to Tier 3 for countries and regions that do not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, Hong Kong was  granted a waiver because the “government has devoted sufficient resources to a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute significant efforts to meet the minimum standards”.

Dr Kari Johnstone, Acting Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking at the U.S. State Department, greets the guests at an informal reception organized by U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong and Macau Kurt W. Tong and attended by Philippine Consul Roderico C. Atienza at the U.S. Consul General’s Official Residence on Victoria Peak on 7 October 2018.

 

Consul Roderico C. Atienza (5th from left) meets Dr Kari Johnstone (4th from left(), Acting Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking at the U.S. State Department, along with her colleague from the same office, Caitlin Heidenreich (1st from left) at the U.S. Consul General’s Official Residence. Also in the photo are Zamira Monteiro and Lucinda Pike, Communications Officer and Executive Director, respectively, of Hong Kong-based NGO Enrich HK (2nd and 3rd from left), Elizabeth Tang, General Secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation (6th from left), and U.S. Deputy Consul General Thomas Hodges. (Photo credit: Enrich HK)