By Songporn Leelakitichok

Wanchana Waree, 21, was among the selected twenty-eight youths from six countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-region who joined the Regional COMMIT Youth Forum in Phnom Penh from 27-30 April 2015 where they presented recommendations to their governments on how to best support youth-led community activities for human trafficking prevention.

Prior to joining the regional forum, he attended the Thailand COMMIT Youth Forum, a national forum organized by Save the Children Thailand and its partner organizations. He was among the five Thai youths selected by their peers to represent Thailand.  He was also an active member of his university, promoting the risk of unsafe migrations and human trafficking. He coordinated and organized information sharing event at his university.
 

Learning to Stop Human Trafficking

“I recognized that many of my university’s peers don’t know nor understand what human trafficking is. After I attended the Thailand COMMIT Youth Forum, I talked to my friends and professor to organize a learning and awareness raising event at the university where I continued to receive support from Save the Children,” said Wanchana. He stated that he was glad that he had the opportunity to learn about human trafficking issues: “I feel responsible to share my experience and knowledge with my friends.”

“I learned about other solutions to stop human trafficking by our friends from six countries. At the COMMIT Youth Forum, we created a human Snakes and Ladders game to give knowledge about human trafficking and safe migration. When we showed our prototype at the Senior Officer Meeting, many government staff were interested and paid close attention to our game. I am really proud of our ideas,” said Wanchana.

Including Wanchana, there were twenty-eight youths participating at the Regional COMMIT Youth Forum. Nguyen Van Doan from Vietnam expressed his feeling about his experience, “I learned many things from this forum. I learned more about human trafficking and safe migration. I hope the government will support more money to organize more activities to prevent trafficking in communities. This forum has also taught me to work in a team and be confident when presenting our work.”

 

The COMMIT Youth Forum (CYF), originally known as the Mekong Children’s Forum and then the Mekong Youth Forum, was established in 2004 as an initiative of a coalition of children’s rights and counter-trafficking organizations to promote the important role that young people play in human trafficking prevention and to provide a platform for them to share their recommendations with governments of Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam within the framework of the COMMIT Process. The transition from the Mekong Youth Forum to the COMMIT Youth Forum reflects the increasing integration of youth participation in national and regional counter-trafficking efforts.

The process of the CYF starts at the national level, where each country in the Greater Mekong Sub-region organizes a national youth forum in which children and young people actively involved in counter-trafficking work discuss the challenges of their own countries and develop recommendations for their respective government. The national forum is also a platform for the children and youth to select their representatives to participate in the Regional COMMIT Youth forum.

Youth Recommendations

The Youth Forum took place in conjunction with the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking (COMMIT) Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) and Inter-Ministerial Meeting (IMM), where the fourth Sub-Regional Plan of Action (SPA-IV) was approved.  SPA-IV includes support for the COMMIT Youth Forum and collaboration with community stakeholders across the six COMMIT countries – Cambodia, China, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The teenagers recommended that governments invite young people selected by their peers to join the COMMIT Task Forces, make funding available to young people to implement trafficking prevention activities in their communities, and help young people acquire safe migration skills and trafficking awareness by ensuring that migration and prevention against human trafficking are part of the mainstream school curriculum.

Recommendations were well received by attending governments, and various representatives voiced their support to the initiative. “As the representative from the Thai Government, I admire the youth for their recommendations and ideas,” said Ms. Saowanee Khommapat, Deputy Director-General of the Department of Social Development and Welfare, Thailand's Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. She stated that these recommendations would be taken into account in the next steps taken towards trafficking prevention: “The recommendations from youth are innocent and powerful. We will use and implement the output and products by these youths to convey messages on the issue of human trafficking for the benefits of our communities and the child target groups.”

“I hope that the other COMMIT Youth Member countries will support the children’s work and encourage them to allow children to have a voice. We see the future of our countries and communities in the hands of these youth,” Ms. Saowanee concluded.

“Human trafficking is a very relevant issue for these young people. They have witnessed or experienced it within their communities and they are best placed to develop recommendations for the government to maximize the positive impact that young people can have in the fight against human trafficking,” said Warangkana Mutumol, Save the Children Thailand’s Child Protection Specialist.

“Young people know what their peers are listening to, what they are watching, who influences them and how they like to get information. The Regional COMMIT Youth Forum gave these young people a platform to use this knowledge to engage their governments,” said Lindsey Higgs, IOM X Public Sector Officer. “By working together, we are finding solutions for those who are most affected by this issue – the young people themselves.”

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For more information or media enquiries, please contact:

Songporn Leelakitichok
Communications and Advocacy Coordinator 
bea.leelakitichok@savethechildren.org