Tokyo: little progress in the fight against human trafficking

A US State Department report reveals poor preformance. A controversial apprenticeship programme set up in 1993 continues to allow the exploitation of migrant workers. The efforts of the organisation that is supposed to oversee the initiative are insufficient.

Tokyo (AsiaNews) - Japan has a human trafficking problem. Unfortunately, this is nothing new for the Asian country, but the US State Department's annual report, released last week, has turned the spotlight back on the issue.

Although the document acknowledges the efforts made, Japan remains pigeonholed in the intermediate category, highlighting the seriousness of a widespread problem even and especially in government plans to attract foreign workers to the country. "The Japanese government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, but it is making significant efforts in this regard," says the report.

At the centre of the Japanese authorities' controversial involvement is the apprenticeship scheme known as the Technical Intern Training Program (Titp). Conceived in 1993 to attract citizens of developing countries with a visa and a job and train them professionally in Japan, the programme has often been criticised for being essentially a tool to exploit cheap foreign labour.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens from less developed East Asian countries participate in it. Most of them come from Vietnam, followed by China, Indonesia and the Philippines. In some cases, however, participating in apprenticeships means suffering abuse and mistreatment. Some of these migrant workers have been subjected to blackmail by the companies that took them on, severely restricting their personal freedoms. In recent months, the case of three Vietnamese workers who came to Japan thanks to the Titp came to light: in order to resolve a dispute with their employer, the three women had joined a trade union, but the programme authorities had ordered them to leave it.

In order to avoid this kind of situation and to prevent abuses against the human rights of migrant workers, in 2017 the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labour had set up an organisation (called Otit) to oversee the running of the programme. However, according to several civil society groups, Otit's interventions on behalf of those migrants in need are largely insufficient. 'Otit is supposed to protect trainees, but it is slow to act,' says a member of Posse, an organisation that deals with labour disputes.

Otit, however, defends itself by saying that the duty to support foreign apprentices falls on non-profit organisations that act as intermediaries between migrant workers and employers, and that its right to intervene is limited to those cases where the work of the latter is deemed insufficient. However, the fact remains that the cases in which the organisation that is supposed to supervise the proper conduct of the programme intervenes are very limited. In the face of thousands of reports of mistreatment, only 33 non-profit organisations have been withdrawn from brokering.

However, the problem is also emerging in the eyes of the government. In fact, the US report mentions that for the first time the Japanese authorities have acknowledged that four trainees who participated in the Titp were found to be victims of human trafficking.

• japan
• tokyo
• labour
• human trafficking
• apprenticeship
• workers
• migrants
• east asia
• exploitation
• report