little progress in the fight against human trafficking

This is indicated in a report by the US Department of State. A controversial apprenticeship program created in 1993 continues to allow the exploitation of immigrant workers. The efforts of the organization that must supervise the initiative are insufficient.

Tokyo () – 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 brought the issue back into focus. Although the document recognizes the efforts made, Japan remains in the intermediate category, which highlights the seriousness of a widespread problem even and especially in the government’s 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 is making significant efforts in this regard,” the report says.

The main issue and source of controversy regarding the Japanese authorities is the apprenticeship plan known as Technical Intern Training Program (ITTP). Conceived in 1993 to attract citizens of developing countries with a visa and a job and train them professionally in Japan, the program has been criticized many times for being essentially a tool to exploit cheap foreign labor.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens from the least developed countries of East Asia participate in this program. Most come from Vietnam, and to a lesser extent from China, Indonesia and the Philippines. In some cases, participating in the training program means experiencing abuse and mistreatment. Some of these migrant workers have been blackmailed by the companies that hired them, severely restricting their personal freedoms. In recent months, the case of three Vietnamese women workers who came to Japan thanks to the TITP has come to light: to resolve a conflict with their employer, the three women had joined a union, but the program authorities ordered them to do so. they will abandon

To avoid this type of situation and prevent human rights abuses against migrant workers, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labor created an organization (called Otit) in 2017 to oversee the operation of the program. However, according to several civil society groups, Otit’s interventions in favor of immigrants in need are insufficient. “Otit is supposed to protect apprentices, but it is slow to act,” says a member of Posse, an organization that deals with labor disputes.

Otit defends itself by saying that the duty to support foreign trainees falls on the non-profit organizations that act as intermediaries between migrant workers and employers, and that their right to intervene is limited to cases where the work of these The latter is considered insufficient. The fact is that the cases in which the organization that must supervise the good development of the program intervenes are very limited. Given the thousands of complaints of mistreatment, only 33 non-profit organizations have had their intermediation permits withdrawn.

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 victims of human trafficking.