The President of the Red Cross Michael Joseph is dismissing suggestions that the free movement within the OECS, is a passport for sex and trafficking in Antigua and Barbuda. Joseph says free movement or not, sex workers are going to move around as they please.
“Because at the end of the day it’s not a case where we have like Europe where people are being abducted and driven across borders and being held against their will.
So we have to first face that reality that its not just within CARICOM, and at the end of the day even if there wasn’t free movement, the fact that you buy a ticket for someone and someone goes expecting something its not there is going to be a red flag raised or anything like that.
Because these individuals when they go to immigration they don’t say they are going to do x y z most of the time they just say hey I’m being brought here by a friend for vacation and then vacation ends up turning into what I consider to be modern day slavery,” said Joseph.
The State Department’s 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report claims that Antigua and Barbuda is a destination and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.