It would not be altogether surprising if it transpired that the Government of Guyana finds it discomfiting the United States Secretary of State John Kerry has deemed Guyanese woman miner Simona Broomes a “hero” for her efforts to try to suppress the practice of Trafficking In Persons (TIP) in Guyana.
It is hard to assess the extent to which TIP is a problem in Guyana though one suspects that the practice persists in various ways, ranging from pressing under age children into in exploitative and abusive working relationships to engaging young girls in mining camps for the sexual services that they provide. By dubbing Guyana a Tier Two Offender the US administration
is effectiverly saying that too little effort is being made to stamp out the practice. It is a charge that the political administration resists and resents but which, on the basis of the available evidence, is probably plausible.
Simona Broomes is no crusader. She is simply a miner who has been associated with the industry for several years and who has watched the exploitation ofr women and young girls grow over a period of time. Whatever the Ministry of Human Services may say about its efforts to curb the problem (and we have to take account of the propaganda motive of the state) Ms Broomes would probably have witnessed the unfolding of the TIP practice over many years and would have decided to proffer a response as a woman and a mother.
The Government of Guyana has long made it clear that it is uncomfortable with what has been a succession of pinprick reminders by the United States regarding what has come to be seen as the administration’s indifference to the problem of Trafficking in Persons. (TIP). The truth of the matter is that the Government of Guyana’s refusal to concede that our TIP status has worsened over the years has much more to do with its mindfulness of its international image than its possession of any serious evidence that the US’ claims are untrue. The government’s credibility – or lack thereof – in this regard has to do with two issues. The first centres around what is widely believed to be a profound lack of sensitivity to the issue of TIP as manifested in a lack of training to recognize the practice if and when it materializes. TIP frequently takes place in clandestine ways that are not necessarily always attended by the forced removal of the victims from one location to another.
The second consideration has to do with the wider problem of a lack of effective policing in the interior regions of Guyana, specifically the gold-mining regions of the interior which is where much of the trafficking occurs. It is in her travels as a miner that Broomes has observed the various transgressions and it is hardly by accident that her expressed concerns on the matter have not met with any focused official response.
In this context – and while it might not necessarily say so – it would unquestionably not please the Government of Guyana that Washington’s honoring of Simona Broomes coincides with the publication of the US’s TIP Report which, for the third year in a row, places Guyana on its Tier Two Watch List, which is the same as saying that the government is not fully in compliance with the minimum standards for compliance. Washington’s views appear consistent with what is known to be woefully ineffective policing systems in those parts of the country where trafficking is most likely to take place.
Kerry’s poignant comment on the “extraordinary bravery” of Broomes, founder of the Guyana Women Miners Organization is likely to strike a resonant chord with local women’s organizations. As the lure of gold has taken larger numbers of fortune seekers to interior locations, the ‘gold bush’ as the mining regions are called, have become highly dangerous. By placing herself in the path of the traffickers by rescuing several victims and providing them with temporary shelter Broomes is running a risk and she knows it.
There is, too, a great deal of diplomatic significance in the decision by the US to honor Ms Broomes. If it is not a move that the Government of Guyana is likely to applaud, what Washington has done is to go over the head of the administration in an effort to reach the populace directly.
