The Economic and Social Empowerment of Returned Victims of Trafficking Project will provide social and financial assistance to trafficked persons who have returned to their communities.

The three-year project seeks to give them "a sounder footing to re-start their lives at home," the ILO said in a statement.

"For those who've previously been trafficked, returning to their home country, town or village and resuming a normal life is not an easy task. Many of these people - especially young women - face reprisals by traffickers, threats to themselves and their families, and the vulnerability of being re-traf?ficked," the ILO said.

Studies show that children and young women from the Philippines and Thailand are trafficked for both labour and sexual work within their own countries, or across borders.

The project focuses its interventions in four key areas:

lLegal assistance, psychological counselling, and medical services to returned trafficked victims;

lReintegration assistance programmes for victims who return to their country of origin;

lEducation, job placement, and small-scale sav?ings and credit schemes for a self-sustaining reinte?gration; and

lSelf-help groups for other victims.

Various organisations - including the ILO and its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour - have been providing technical assistance to the Philippines and Thailand to help combat people trafficking.

Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN