U.S. softens view of Malaysia, Cuba in human trafficking report | Reuters:
Showing posts with label John Kerry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kerry. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Monday, May 12, 2014
Joint letter to Hon. John F. Kerry Re: Human Trafficking in Thailand | Human Rights Watch
Source: Human Rights Watch:
The Honorable John F. Kerry
Secretary of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Secretary Kerry:
In your recent remarks to the Annual Meeting of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, you noted that Cambodian men are trafficked to sea to become slaves aboard fishing vessels. As a group of human rights and labor organizations concerned with this issue, we were pleased to see you address it in your remarks. We write today to ask that you ensure the U.S. Department of State takes the next step to putting an end to this practice and downgrade Thailand, whose labor and immigration policies allow trafficking to flourish in the seafood industry and others, to Tier III in the 2014 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.
The Government of Thailand does not meet the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, nor is it taking real steps to meet those standards. Thailand was placed on the Tier II watch list in the 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report, which documented the Thai Government’s failure to “adequately regulate brokers, reduce the high costs associated with registration, or allow registered migrants to change employers.” The 2013 TIP Report review of Thailand also cited “pervasive trafficking-related corruption and weak interagency coordination” that “continued to impede progress in combating trafficking” in its assessment of the Government’s efforts to combat human trafficking. Nothing about this system has changed significantly in the course of the last year, and the government continues to be at best complacent, at worst complicit, in the trafficking of migrant workers from neighboring countries to provide inexpensive labor for export industries.
Read here:
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Victim Identification First Step to Ending Human Slavery | Philadelphia News | Новости Филадельфии
Source: Philadelphia News
http://thephilanews.com/victim-identification-first-step-to-ending-human-slavery-40895.htm
http://thephilanews.com/victim-identification-first-step-to-ending-human-slavery-40895.htm
By Jane Morse
Staff Writer
Identifying human trafficking victims is the first step in ending modern-day slavery, says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Before an audience of diplomats, nongovernmental organization representatives and anti-trafficking activists at the rollout of the 13th annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, Kerry said, “There are countless voiceless people, countless nameless people, except to their families, or perhaps a phony name by which they are being exploited, who look to us for their freedom and for the possibility of life itself. … As we look at the challenge of modern-day slavery, regrettably our focus has to begin with the victims.”
Based on information U.S. diplomats have collected from governments worldwide, some 46,000 trafficking victims have been identified in the last year, the secretary said. That’s a mere fraction of the estimated 27 million men, women and children who are believed to be enslaved for labor or for the sex industry. Nonetheless, there was a 10 percent increase in victim identification last year, according to the report.
Because many trafficking victims go unrecognized and many remain hidden through fear and the power of their enslavers, traffickers are able to operate with impunity in this billion-dollar criminal enterprise, the report says. And while a majority of the word’s countries now criminalize all forms of human trafficking, government officials unevenly apply anti-trafficking laws, according to the report. Even so, trafficking convictions rose in the last year by 20 percent, from 3,969 to 4,746, the report says.
This year’s report focuses on victim identification as a top priority in the global movement to combat trafficking in persons. It details training and techniques that make identification efforts successful. These innovations, the report says, will enable more effective delivery of services to trafficking victims and aid in developing improvements in the global response to trafficking.
“Only through vigorous victim identification can we ensure that trafficking survivors get the services they need, can participate in freedom and can have their voices heard,” Kerry writes in the introduction to this year’s TIP report.
“Ending modern slavery must remain a foreign policy priority,” Kerry writes. “Human trafficking undermines the rule of law and creates instability. It tears apart families and communities. It damages the environment and corrupts the global supply chains and labor markets that keep the world’s economies thriving.”
Human trafficking is also “an assault on our most dearly held values of freedom and basic human dignity,” Kerry writes. “American leadership means protecting those values at home and working to advance them around the world.”
The United States will support people who are working to prevent trafficking, who come to the aid of victims, and who work to bring traffickers to justice, Kerry says. “We will continue to do so by bringing together an array of stakeholders — from civil society and the faith community to the private sector and government leaders — to forge partnerships aimed at spurring innovation and improving collaboration,” he writes.
“Governments bear primary responsibility for responding to this crime,” he says, and the annual TIP report is “the gold standard in assessing how well governments — including our own — are meeting that responsibility.“
This year’s report includes narratives for 188 countries and territories. The two new entries are on Bhutan and St. Maarten. The report is used by the U.S. government as a diplomatic tool in its bilateral and multilateral relations.
Read the complete report at the State Department website.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
New Push, at Home and Abroad, to Combat Modern-Day Slavery | American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights/new-push-home-and-abroad-combat-modern-day-slavery
Source: American Civil Liberties Union
Source: American Civil Liberties Union
A White House task force set up to combat human trafficking held its annual meeting today, chaired by Secretary of State John Kerry. The cabinet-level group, called the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF) coordinates the U.S. government's efforts to eradicate the phenomenon commonly likened to "modern-day slavery."
At the meeting, Secretary Kerry stated he had been "stunned by the stories and examples of the evil... It is nothing less than the most predatory, extraordinary modern slavery that you can conceivably imagine."
The PITF was not the only human trafficking-related event this week.
On Monday and Tuesday, the United Nations convened a high-level General Assumbly meeting on the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Plan of Action commits governments around the world to fully implement key anti-human trafficking treaties and to join forces to counter the multi-billion dollar industry which has trapped some 21 million men, women and children in forced labor. At the meeting, actress Mira Sorvino, the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking, described human trafficking as "one of the great social justice issues of our time." The United States also addressed the meeting, stating, "(t)he solution in face of this scourge is clear – joint action across nations and across UN agencies." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that "(h)uman trafficking devastates individuals and undermines national economies," and called on governments to prevent trafficking by ratifying relevant treaties, implementing the U.N.'s Global Plan of Action against trafficking, and making contributions to the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund to help victims.
The ACLU endorses these measures and encourages the U.S. to do more to address human trafficking through better monitoring and enforcement of existing anti-trafficking laws, policies and practices.
For years, the ACLU has worked with other organizations to protect the human rights of victims of labor trafficking. That work has included:
- Advocating on behalf of 500 guestworkers from India who were trafficked into the U.S. through the federal government's H-2B guestworker program with dishonest assurances of becoming lawful permanent U.S. residents and subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices, and threats of serious harm. The workers' lawsuit, which was filed in 2008, highlights serious flaws in the current guestworker program wherein foreign low-wage temporary workers are subjected to numerous human rights violations including trafficking and forced labor. These violations take place due in part to the exploitation of visa application processes by duplicitous recruiters and employers. The lawsuit also highlights the U.S. government's failure to regulate and supervise these visa schemes appropriately to prevent abuse, and failure to vigorously enforce anti-trafficking and labor laws when violations occur.
- Advocating on behalf of foreign workers, known as Third Country Nationals (TCNs), contracted to perform services for the United States overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these workers have been deceived about how much they will be paid, as well the nature and location of their job, and charged thousands of dollars in recruitment fees that effectively place them in debt bondage. Last year, President Obama issued an importantExecutive Order aimed at addressing these issues and in January this year Congress enacted legislation designed to achieve these same ends. These measures, while welcome, will only prove effective if they are properly implemented and enforced. Together with a coalition of anti-trafficking groups, the ACLU recently made recommendations to the Federal Acquisition and Regulatory (FAR) Council to ensure the laws effectiveness.
- Advocating on behalf of domestic workers trafficked into the United States by foreign diplomats stationed here and subjected to forced labor and other abuses. Because of diplomatic immunity, victims are left without access to legal remedies for these abuses. Domestic workers are a uniquely vulnerable population as they do not generally enjoy the right to organize, minimum wage protections, or other fundamental workplace protections, and their race, gender, immigration status, education levels, and physical isolation in the home make them particularly susceptible to labor trafficking.
Today's PITF meeting and Monday and Tuesday's UN meetings were important reminders that despite some progress, much more must be done by governments and civil society to combat human trafficking in this country and to provide redress and other support to victims.
In the words of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, "(h)uman trafficking is a vicious chain that binds victims to criminals. We must break this chain with the force of human solidarity."
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