by Dr. David Liepert
Showing posts with label United State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United State. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
The Trafficking in Persons Report 2011: Truth, Trends, and Tier Rankings
Source: http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/rm/2011/176343.htm
Testimony
Thank you Mr. Chairman, Congressman Payne, and all the members of this committee for the opportunity to testify today. As Congress continues to deliberate this year’s reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, hearings such as this one are helpful opportunities to discuss the global fight against human trafficking, and in particular one of our government’s most important tools in moving that fight forward, the annual Trafficking in Persons Report. 
Testimony
Statement Before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Washington, DC
October 27, 2011
The TIP Report assesses government action around the world against trafficking in persons—that is, all of the activities involved in reducing someone to, or holding them in, a condition of compelled service. The core of this Report is the set of Congressionally-established minimum standards set forth in the TVPA. These standards reflect the definitions and framework to combat trafficking in persons outlined in the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, known also as the Palermo Protocol.
Following Congress’s mandate, the Department of State ranks governments around the world according to these standards and determines a tier ranking based on a government’s progress in meeting those standards. The Report comprises those rankings as well as individual country narratives that further explain both the TIP situation on the ground and governmental efforts according to the criteria laid out by Congress. The methodology is sound and transparent—the facts are applied to the law. Any country, whether in Asia or elsewhere, that wants to test this methodology need only assess their efforts against these minimum standards.
Thorough and honest assessments are the benchmark of the TIP Report. Our narratives take into account information from civil society groups, foreign governments, and our own State Department reporting officers who conduct on-the-ground research throughout the year. The review process involves numerous DOS offices so that the final product represents a Department-wide consensus on how well various governments are handling this problem. Beginning last year, a United States country ranking was also included in the Report, because, as Secretary Clinton has said, we should hold ourselves to the same standards as we hold everyone else. Accurate reporting is essential to the effectiveness of the TIP Report as a diplomatic tool, and indeed governments repeatedly cite it as a factor prompting stronger action in response to modern slavery. Sometimes that happens in public—more often in private. And sometimes a government that criticizes the Report and even perhaps mobilizes others against it quietly takes steps to work with us to begin meeting these standards.
What the Report tells us is that no country is immune to this scourge, and that no government is doing a perfect job combating it. The two regions we are addressing today—East Asia and the Pacific, and South and Central Asia—are hit particularly hard by this crime. I’m pleased to be joined today by Assistant Secretary Robert Blake, who leads the Department’s South and Central Asian Affairs Bureau, and Joseph Yun, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. We always say the fight against modern slavery takes political will, and Bob Blake and EAP Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell are showing that both individually and within their chains of command. My colleagues will discuss in greater detail the progress in these areas and what governments are doing about it, but I’d like to highlight a few of the problems in trends that were discussed in the 2011 TIP Report and continue to be areas of concern.
- Sex trafficking of women and children has not abated and may in fact be increasing in places such as India. Additionally, our findings continue to show that it is local populations, more than Western “sex tourists,” that fuel the demand for sex trafficking, and law enforcement needs to address both sectors for prevention to be truly successful. Widening gender gaps in China and India are fueling the demand for young girls as forced brides or for commercial sexual exploitation.
- We know that around the world, forced labor is highly prevalent among migrant populations, and that Asia has the world’s largest share of labor migration. Migrants from both the East Asia and Pacific and South and Central Asia regions are subjected to forced labor in recognized destination countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, and the Persian Gulf. More troubling still, much of this abuse takes place under the guise of legal, contractual and temporary work.
- In recent months, concerns over forced labor on fishing fleets have garnered increased attention. Our own research suggests that this is a problem with massive geographic scope, spanning fisheries from Indonesia to New Zealand. And Asian boats are ranging from the Cape of Good Hope to Central America.
- The enslavement of domestic workers from South and East Asia is a significant problem, whether Sri Lankans abused in the Gulf or Indonesians exploited in Malaysia. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) new Convention on Domestic Workers aims at addressing the unique vulnerabilities of this group; we hope that the increased attention on this challenge will lead to governments addressing the needs for justice and services for these victims.
- Definitional confusion among governments in the EAP and SCA regions continues to lead to the conflation of people smuggling and human trafficking. This lack of clarity hinders efforts to find and help victims. When it comes to trafficking, we continue to urge destination governments to shift their focus away from the legality of a migrant. As we know, modern slavery need not involve movement or cross borders.
- Additionally, we continue to push governments to acknowledge that human trafficking is a crime that can involve sex and labor. For instance, the definition of trafficking in the 2005 South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Convention is not consistent with how the term is defined and addressed in many other prominent international instruments on trafficking in persons from groups such as the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States, and with the primary international treaty on trafficking, the Palermo Protocol. The Convention continues to focus on the concept of trafficking as the movement of women and children for prostitution and fails to address the trafficking of adults or forced labor. We hope that as the region’s leaders gather for the SAARC Summit in Male in November, they will work toward bringing the region’s conceptual notion of trafficking into conformity with the UN and other regional frameworks.
- We continue to advocate for comprehensive victim care, rather than the “Detain and Deport” model that we too often see in these regions. Protection should not mean inappropriate confinement for victims preparatory to deportation. Indeed, they need to be empowered through the opportunity for economic self-sustainability as well as aftercare and alternatives to deportation.
- We encourage governments of sending and receiving states to explicitly address modern slavery in labor-related memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and to enforce those provisions in an open and transparent manner.
My staff and I, collaborating closely with regional bureaus, will continue to engage governments in these regions in order to bring these issues to their attention, and we will urge them to take positive action in advance of next year’s TIP Report.
In addition to the country narratives, the TIP Report includes an introduction that provides a conceptual framework to the struggle against modern slavery. In this year’s Report, we show that the first 10 years of the modern anti-trafficking movement have been a decade of development: in countries all over the world, legal structures have been enacted and protection mechanisms have been put in place. However, the number of successful prosecutions seems to have leveled off, services for survivors continue to be inadequate, and victim identification remains a challenge. That’s why the 2011 TIP Report described the need for a “decade of delivery,” in which governments must be held accountable for delivering on the promises made in recent years. Because structures and results are not the same thing.
The difference between the passage of a law and the effective implementation of a law is political will. We have seen political will succeed. We have seen it in the Philippines, where the Aquino Administration is prioritizing trafficking cases in the court system and pushing through the backlog, delivering on a set of processes and promises that had been moribund at best. We have seen it in other regions; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this summer invited Nigerian prosecutors to come to Singapore and share the secrets of their success, providing a unique opportunity for ASEAN members to learn from an African country.
But the reality is that there are places where that political will is weak or nonexistent, and there, victims are most at risk. As the Report shows, some governments merely go through the motions when it comes to fighting modern slavery, and some governments don’t do anything at all. A key source of hope for victims and survivors is the work of civil society—non-governmental organizations, international organizations, the faith community, and advocacy groups.
These organizations are made up of people working every day to make the decade of delivery a reality despite the fact that many governments are doing little or nothing at all. These groups are running shelters on dollars a day. They are freeing victims from the most horrific abuse imaginable. They are the women and men on the front line of this fight. But as is often the case in places where poverty and corruption hinder the good intentions of committed people, a lack of resources and capacity are insurmountable roadblocks to those seeking to save victims from exploitation and bring their traffickers to justice.
In addition to our robust diplomatic efforts, this is another area where the Trafficking in Persons Office is making a difference, though our International Programs foreign assistance funds. In the last two years, my office received 998 applications for assistance from 546 organizations requesting a total of $547 million. We know that it will never be possible to give every organization the help they want. And we know that we have a responsibility to be responsible custodians of taxpayer dollars. That’s why our office has implemented a rigorous and transparent review process to ensure that every cent of our foreign assistance appropriation is spent responsibly and is put to the use where it will do the most good.
To answer the requests for $547 million which we received through funding applications—the vast majority of which described projects of tremendous merit— our office administered a foreign assistance budget for the last two years of $39.1 million. Based on an estimate that there are up to 27 million victims of trafficking worldwide, that funding total provides a little more than 72 cents per victim per year. This year’s solicitation is out, and we hope to receive innovative and impactful proposals.
The country-specific tier rankings and diagnostic assessments included in the TIP Report help us determine where we should be allocating these funds. To maximize the impact of our efforts, we identify priority countries for programming. We generally target our foreign assistance to Tier 3, Tier 2 Watch List, and, in some cases, Tier 2 countries. This linkage demonstrates that the Report isn’t just an exercise in finger-pointing at countries that aren’t doing a good job, but is an important tool for determining where our foreign assistance dollars can be used most effectively.
These are not places where a wealth of resources is available to fight human trafficking. If we were to suddenly pull the plug on the projects we support, there wouldn’t be another organization waiting in the wings to take over the provision of victim services. There wouldn’t be another source of funding to keep training prosecutors and police officers. In many countries, if the little funding we are able to give were to disappear, those programs would simply cease to exist. In those places, there would be no place for victims and survivors to go.
It was four months ago today that we released the 2011 TIP Report and that Secretary Clinton called for a decade of delivery. If the Trafficking in Persons Office is no longer able to stand with those organizations making a difference on the ground, the decade of delivery is already in danger of failing. If the antitrafficking movement loses the fight in Washington, in the halls of Congress, we could lose that fight everywhere else as well.
We cannot balance the budget on the backs of trafficking victims. If we try to do so, from some misplaced sense of proportion with across-the-board cuts to an already tiny budget, we put at risk all the progress made over the last decade. This crime continues to present a monumental challenge. But there’s still much reason for hope. We want the 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report to be a report about more and more success stories. We want it to tell about governments living up to their responsibilities. We want it to describe effective partnerships with robust civil society. We want this Report to show the struggle against modern slavery moving in the right direction. Because this Report is not merely a reflection of what foreign governments are doing to combat this heinous crime. It is a reflection of American leadership around the world.
Human trafficking is a threat to our security and an offense to our most important values. But more importantly, as Secretary Clinton has said, “fighting slavery is part of who we are as a nation.” We have a responsibility to act against this crime. We must not—will not—shrink from that responsibility.
Thank you, and I look forward to answering any questions you have.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Human trafficking in New Zealand? | News Video
New Zealand's classification as a source country for international trafficking has come as a surprise to the head of a child exploitation awareness group.
The latest US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report (TIPS) describes New Zealand as "a source country for underage girls subjected to sex trafficking within the country".
The National Director of ECPAT Alan Bell told TV ONE's Breakfast the classification is a concern.
"We've been ranked as source country and that means according to the TIPS report, people are being sourced in New Zealand to be trafficked," he said.
The report also claims New Zealand is "reportedly a destination country for women from Asian countries, such as Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, and China, and Eastern Europe trafficked into forced prostitution".
It states while no definite evidence of prostitutes being brought into the country has emerged in the past year, there have been press reports which claim women are brought to the country by labour agents, but have their passports confiscated on arrival and are forced to work in brothels.
Bell said there has not been a prosecution for trafficking in New Zealand in the past year, but reports like this are a reminder that it needs to be taken seriously.
"There's lots of anecdotal evidence, so just because there's been no prosecutions doesn't mean to say there's not some bad things happening somewhere.
"What this report does do is highlight there's no room for complacency and it's something we need to keep on top of and prevent coming to New Zealand."The report also mentions media reports of fishermen from Southeast Asia who are allegedly victims of forced labour in New Zealand waters.
"These men may have experienced conditions including passport confiscation, significant debts, physical violence and abuse, and are often forced to work a seven-day work week," it says.
It adds that no independent research has been carried out into the claims.
New Zealand is ranked as a Tier 1 country in the report, which is the highest category and means the Government fully complies with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's (TVPA) minimum standards.
Watch VideoSource: tvnz.co.nz
Monday, August 22, 2011
Not in New Zealand's waters, surely? Labour and human rights abuses aboard foreign fishing vessels
At the end of the slides are additional materials related to the issue of study. TRAFFICKING MONITOR recommends their review.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-
http://www.theaucklander.co.
http://www.theaucklander.co.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/
trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com/2011/08/fishing-report-released-on-foreign.html
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Raiding a Brothel in India - NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 25, 2011
The pimps nicknamed her Chutki, or little girl. She had just been sold to the brothel-owner and seemed terrified.
Investigators with International Justice Mission, a Washington-based aid group that fights human trafficking, had spotted Chutki while prowling undercover looking for prostituted children. I.J.M. hoped to convince the Kolkata police to free the girl, but it would help to have more evidence that the girl was still imprisoned. So an I.J.M. official asked: Would I like to accompany him as he sneaked into the brothel to gather evidence?
India probably has more modern slaves than any country in the world. It has millions of women and girls in its brothels, often held captive for their first few years until they grow resigned to their fate. China surely has more prostitutes, but they are typically working voluntarily. India’s brothels are also unusually violent, with ferocious beatings common and pimps sometimes even killing girls who are uncooperative.
Unicef has estimated that worldwide 1.8 million children enter the sex trade each year. Too many are in the United States, which should prosecute pimps much more aggressively, but the worst abuses take place in countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia.
So I set off with the I.J.M. investigator (who wants to remain anonymous for his own safety) into the alleys of the Sonagachi red-light district one evening, slipped into the brothel, and climbed to the third floor. And there were Chutki and three other girls in a room, a pimp hovering over them. Perceiving us as potential customers, he offered them to us.
We demurred but said we’d be back.
The Kolkata police agreed to raid the brothel to free the girl. I.J.M. told them the location of the brothel at the last minute to avoid a tip-off from police ranks. The police casually asked us to lead the way in the raid since we knew what Chutki looked like and where she was kept.
So along with a carload of police, we drove up to the brothel and rushed inside to avoid giving the pimps time to hide Chutki or to escape themselves. With the I.J.M. representative in the lead, we hurtled up the stairs, brushed past the pimp and found Chutki and the three other girls in the same room where we had seen them before.
Two female social workers from I.J.M. immediately began comforting Chutki, who police said was about 15 and looked terrified. They explained that this was a police operation to rescue her, and they helped her put on a robe for modesty’s sake.
Then another of the girls in the room asked if she could be rescued — but a few days later. She explained that if she left now, the brothel-owners would blame her for the raid and possibly harm her grandmother, whose address they knew.
We told the girl that this chance might not come again. She dissolved into tears, wavered and then decided to come out. Then a third said that she wanted to escape as well.
The girls tipped off the police that the brothel-owner was in another building, arranging to sell a new girl named Raya for the very first time, either that evening or the next night. The police hurried off and returned with Raya, a wide-eyed girl of about 10 years.
It seemed that the brothel had purchased Raya just a week earlier, after her own brother-in-law tricked her and trafficked her. If the raid had been delayed by a few hours, she might have faced the first of many rapes.
With Raya was a 5-year-old girl who seemed to have been abandoned. Perhaps the brothel-owners were grooming her for sale in a few more years. So we emerged from the brothel with five lives that had just been transformed.
Equally important, one pimp had been arrested and arrest warrants had been issued for two more. There are no quick fixes to human trafficking, but experience in several countries suggests that prosecuting pimps and brothel-owners makes a difference. A study in Cebu, Philippines, found that helping police and courts target child prostitution resulted in 87 arrests over four years — and a 79 percent reduction in the number of children in the sex trade.
We drove the five girls to a police station to fill out paperwork so that they could move into shelters and receive schooling or vocational training. Raya, the 10-year-old who otherwise at that moment might have been enduring her first rape, was giggly and carefree as she pretended to drive the car. She behaved like a silly little girl — which was thrilling.•
Raiding a Brothel in India - NYTimes.comSource: NYTimes.com
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Amb. CdeBaca Combats Sex Trafficking In The U.S. : NPR
April 28, 2011
Many prostitutes are forced into prostitution and controlled by human traffickers. Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department, talks about human trafficking in the U.S.
NEAL CONAN, host:
This week, NPR correspondent Jacki Lyden took us into the lives of prostitutes who work the streets of Nashville and their struggle to get out of that life. Between the depravity, the drugs and violence, it might seem as bad as it gets. It's not. Those women at least have some choices, others don't.
Sex trafficking for children continues to rise in the United States, especially for girls, and prosecutions are up overall. While many come from overseas, many are Americans as well.
If you've worked to combat sex trafficking, give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Luis CdeBaca is the ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons at the U.S. State Department, and Ambassador CdeBaca joins us here in Studio 3-A.
Nice to have you with us today.
Mr. LUIS CDEBACA (Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. State Department): Good to be here, Neal.
CONAN: And is it fair to describe the situation of these women and girls as slavery?
Mr. CDEBACA: It is. One of the things that we're looking at as we try to fight this thing that's been called sex trafficking over the last decade or so is that the promise that we're working to effectuate is actually the 13th Amendment promise that no one in the United States shall be subjected to involuntary servitude.
It doesn't matter whether that's in a farm, in a brothel or as a domestic servant. If somebody is being forced to work against their will, if they're trapped, can't get out, then that it is somebody who would be considered a victim of modern slavery.
CONAN: And we've heard the sad story of people who are lured to this country and in countries in Europe, too - from Central Europe, from Eastern Europe, from Russia - from various places around the world. Is that still continuing?
Mr. CDEBACA: It's definitely continuing, but I think one of the things that the focus on the international trafficking at times took away from is the realization that there a lot of U.S. citizens victims as well. We have to make sure that we're so not focused on one group of victims that we ignore those who are right in front of us.
CONAN: Anyway to estimate the numbers?
Mr. CDEBACA: It's - all the numbers are very imprecise, notoriously so, because this is a hidden crime that the pimps or the traffickers, almost by definition, their job is to keep their victims from reporting, keep their victims from going forward. If they do escape, they don't want to come to law enforcement because, unfortunately, they're afraid that they'll get arrested and deported if they're an alien. And if they're an American, they're afraid that they'll be put in prison, say, for instance, for prostitution.
CONAN: And as - we know how the mechanism works from overseas, a young girl sometimes attracted by or lured with promises of jobs in hotels or other businesses, and it turns out it's something quite different. How does the mechanism work in the United States?
Mr. CDEBACA: Well, it's remarkably similar in that the traffickers whether they're American citizen street pimps or others are basically selling the same thing that their foreign counterparts - hope, a better life, something different than what the victims have.
In this case, in the United States, because there is such a correlation between child sexual abuse and child prostitution, a lot of times it might be somebody who has that unerring ability to figure out which are the vulnerable girls, whether it's eighth, ninth, 10th graders. Maybe they have been abused at home. Maybe they're willing to run away from -mom has a new boyfriend or what have you or they might be wrestling with an addiction.
The pimp seemed to be able to look at the women around them, look at the girls around them, find that vulnerability. But then, they basically offer glamour, a better life, even love. So it's very similar to what we see with international trafficking as well. It's basically they offer hope, and they deliver with a nightmare.
CONAN: We can see the State Department's role with these women and young girls coming from Romania or Cambodia. What's your role in this country?
Mr. CDEBACA: Well, in the coordinator of the interagency taskforce, the senior policy operating group on trafficking which was set up by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
One of the things that we've seen in countries around the world is if each individual ministry or each individual Cabinet agency is off doing work on its own rather than coordinating, then the traffickers seemed to find those gaps and exploit them. Now, that's - I do the day-to-day work on that. But the chair of the Interagency Task Force is Secretary Clinton.
We had a meeting about two months ago of the Cabinet secretaries and it was, frankly, inspiring to see everybody, from the attorney general to the secretary of Defense, secretary of Agriculture, all taking an hour or two out of the day to say, how do we find and get rid of slavery within our own agency's responsibilities?
I think people would be surprised to hear that Department of Interior or Department of Agriculture has a role in this fight just as much as Homeland Security or Justice Department.
CONAN: And what do you actually do to combat this traffic?
Amb. CdeBACA: Well, one of the things that the United States has done over the last 10 years globally is that we've been pushing for a new approach to this problem. A lot of folks tend to think of it as transportation of women for prostitution across international borders. That's the old definition from the 1800s.
The modern definition, coming from our law in 2000 and the international standards set forth in the U.N. about 10 years ago, really focuses on the exploitation of the people. It doesn't have to be taken across an international border. They don't have to have been moved anywhere. If somebody has been held as a slave, they're considered a trafficking victim under the new law.
So we've been working with countries around the world to get modern laws in place, to do police training, to have structures, and then also to do that here in the United States.
For the first time in the history of the trafficking victims' report, which we do every year, we included the United States, because we realized the Obama administration was looking at where are the things that we're telling other countries that they need to do? And it wasn't a matter of simply saying, well, it would be only fair for us to analyze ourselves. It's also - we have a matrix of how we look at a country to see whether it's fighting trafficking effectively or not. And it was really kind of unfair to not apply that to the United States.
There were trafficking victims in the U.S. who might not have been getting what they needed if we didn't apply that same diagnosis to ourselves. In some ways it's like having a doctor that had spent eight years not giving himself a blood pressure test while telling every one of his patients they needed to have their blood pressure checked.
CONAN: So what do we need to do? Obviously, local officials, state officials have to be involved with this as well as federal.
Amb. CdeBACA: One of the main things that we've found last year when we analyzed the U.S. for the first time in the human trafficking report, was that victim identification and victim care continues to lag. We've got 46 of the 50 states have now passed trafficking legislation. Most recently, yesterday, in Hawaii, the state legislature is sending to Governor Abercrombie, for his signature, a bill outlawing forced labor in Hawaii.
But having those laws on the books isn't enough. That notion of being able to then get the police officers, the child protective workers, those who might be able to come into contact with these folks so they know what they're seeing and then they can help them, instead of, as all too often happens, arresting the women and prosecuting them for being prostitutes.
CONAN: It's hard sometimes - prostitution is a crime - to get them to see them as victims and not as criminals.
Amb. CdeBACA: Very much so. And I think that one of the things that we see is that prostitution can affect neighborhoods. It can affect communities and certainly affects the people who are involved in it. And a lot of the legal systems have grown up with that notion of it being a nuisance crime or a vice crime, or it's seen as a place where your - as Jacki Lyden's story sets forth - a place where there are drug abuses or violence or this or that. But a lot of the drug abuse and a lot of the violence is falling mostly heavily on the women in prostitution.
So I think that this modern anti-trafficking movement, this modern abolitionist movement of the last 10 years, is saying, you know, we need to stop for a minute, look to see how we are compassionate to those women. What do they need to be able to put their lives back together? Rather than simply say, the quickest and easiest thing to do is just arrest them, take them to jail for a few days.
CONAN: You describe it as an abolitionist movement. If you describe it as slavery, that's a fair description of the movement too. It's a little discouraging because, though ultimately successful, the abolitionist movement we think of back in the 19th century, it took some time.
Amb. CdeBACA: It took some time. And, you know, we've been very aware over the last couple of weeks, that is 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, these are things that the United States has wrestled with throughout our history.
And one of the things that's brilliant about the 13th Amendment is that it didn't simply say slavery is done. It's over. It actually said involuntary servitude shall not exist going forward.
So this is one of those things where, you know, we have a president who has the Emancipation Proclamation in his office, not a copy, the Emancipation Proclamation. And I think that he sees it, and I certainly see it in the work that I do, as we're delivering on a promise that was made 150 years ago by President Lincoln and by the people who went and fought for freedom. So I think it's entirely appropriate for us to call this a modern abolitionist movement.
CONAN: Yet the numbers would seem to suggest in some ways it's getting worse.
Amb. CdeBACA: And I think that some of that is because we're looking for it more, and we're finding cases, we're re-characterizing things. But I also think that globalization and technology allows the traffickers, allows the pimps to operate in a way that they never used to be able to.
It used to be that the pimp would have to, you know, find a street corner, maybe carve out a neighborhood that was - what he controlled as opposed to the other folks in that particular area, and manage the women through personal contact, force, et cetera.
Now, whether it's, you know, on Craigslist or on some of these other social networking sites, the pimps can offer these women and children for sale across the entire Internet. You can bring somebody who you've lured from another country. You can bring them into the United States, you know, five or six days after you met them in their village.
Back in the old days, in the late 1800s, when we had this problem with girls and women from Eastern Europe, you know, you had to take them from their shtetl to somewhere with a ship and get them to United States. It would be six months between when you first sold them this dream of America and then when you change the dynamic, when you got to where you were going. That thing has been accelerated now by technology. So I think that, you know, communications technology and transportation technology, unfortunately, have made things a lot easier for these guys.
CONAN: We're talking with Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, State Department's ambassador-at-large, who oversees the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Josh(ph) is on the line, Josh calling from Minneapolis.
JOSH (Caller): Hi, thank you. Yeah, I'm calling because I work for a nonprofit organization called Venture Expeditions out of the Twin Cities. And one of the things we focus on is creating opportunities for people to respond to the issue of human trafficking and slavery that they're hearing about on the news and in the media these days.
CONAN: And how do they do that?
JOSH: Well, one of the different forms that we found that's been effective is creating an opportunity for people to do something. And what we started about as - is a college group of guys who decided to ride bicycles across the country; and as they stop in communities, educating people about issues of injustice and oppression.
More recently in the past few years, we've been doing these types of trips in the U.S. as well as in countries like Thailand and in Turkey, talking about issues of human trafficking as well as the causes, like poverty, lack of education, exploitation, these types of things, and educating people to get connected to great organizations like International Justice Mission or Free the Slaves, stuff like that, to learn more about it as well as financially and physically give...
CONAN: Josh, I understand what you're trying to do. How are you sensitized to this? How did you learn about it?
JOSH: I found out about it in college. I was kind of (technical difficulty). And I went to college, I recognized that my perspective on life wasn't really the most accurate one, and so I focused on studying international relief and development. And as I spent two summers in Africa, learning culture and language, I started learning about how these issues were overseas. And when I came back, I started learning about how these were also in the Twin Cities and in America as well, and how, you know, now that I know, I have a responsibility to do something, or I can just continue to act like I dont know.
CONAN: Josh, thanks very much for the call. Good luck.
JOSH: Thank you.
CONAN: Bye-bye. Are there programs as well? You mention there's enormous fear of some of these women brought in from overseas of being deported; others of being thrown into jail for prostitution. Are there rehabilitation programs, or is there somewhere else for them to turn?
Amb. CdeBACA: Well, I think that that's one of the things that we've got to work on. One of the things that came out of the Cabinet meeting in February was the notion that we have to do, in effect, a victim services strategy for the United States. But we don't need to wait until that happens. Right now, there's programs for immigrant victims of trafficking. They don't have to get deported.
There's actually something called the T visa. We can get them short and medium-term immigration status that then can allow them to stay as U.S. citizens, even a program to be able to bring their families over. And there are some real amazing success stories, people who were liberated from trafficking and slavery 10 years ago who now own their own little business, employ other people. So there are some real success stories.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get one more caller in. Let's go to Mary(ph), Mary with us from Cockeysville in Maryland.
MARY (Caller): Yes. I'd like - thank you very much for having this program. And I'd like to speak about the Maryland Task Force on Human Trafficking and its cooperation with officials at the federal levels, for example, the FBI, the Immigration Service and so on.
Maryland Task Force does training for - supports training for law enforcement, supports legislation and also supports direct service when trafficked women, particularly but not exclusively in the United States, are found after a raid, so that they give them clothing, housing, therapy, job interviews.
CONAN: I wonder, do you find any resistance among law enforcement to the kinds of issues that you raise?
MARY: I attended several training programs for law enforcement and I would say there was some, perhaps among the younger members, but on the whole I found the law enforcement very open and supportive in trying to learn.
CONAN: Do you think you're making progress?
MARY: Yes, I think that it's a very good, strong program. And I'd like to add that one of the bills that passed the Maryland Legislature this term, which just ended, expunges any records for prostitution of domestic trafficking victims. And we consider that a big victory.
CONAN: Mary, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.
MARY: You're welcome. Bye.
CONAN: And Ambassador CdeBaca, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate your coming in.
Amb. CdeBACA: It's a pleasure to be here, Neal.
CONAN: Ambassador Luis CdeBaca was appointed by President Obama to coordinate U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery. He oversees the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department and joined us here in Studio 3A.
Tomorrow, it's TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. Ira Flatow will be here with a look on the latest at the wind farm controversy off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Plus, electric cars and an annoying book. That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY.
This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Amb. CdeBaca Combats Sex Trafficking In The U.S. : NPR
Many prostitutes are forced into prostitution and controlled by human traffickers. Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department, talks about human trafficking in the U.S.
Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
NEAL CONAN, host:
This week, NPR correspondent Jacki Lyden took us into the lives of prostitutes who work the streets of Nashville and their struggle to get out of that life. Between the depravity, the drugs and violence, it might seem as bad as it gets. It's not. Those women at least have some choices, others don't.
Sex trafficking for children continues to rise in the United States, especially for girls, and prosecutions are up overall. While many come from overseas, many are Americans as well.
If you've worked to combat sex trafficking, give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Luis CdeBaca is the ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons at the U.S. State Department, and Ambassador CdeBaca joins us here in Studio 3-A.
Nice to have you with us today.
Mr. LUIS CDEBACA (Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. State Department): Good to be here, Neal.
CONAN: And is it fair to describe the situation of these women and girls as slavery?
Mr. CDEBACA: It is. One of the things that we're looking at as we try to fight this thing that's been called sex trafficking over the last decade or so is that the promise that we're working to effectuate is actually the 13th Amendment promise that no one in the United States shall be subjected to involuntary servitude.
It doesn't matter whether that's in a farm, in a brothel or as a domestic servant. If somebody is being forced to work against their will, if they're trapped, can't get out, then that it is somebody who would be considered a victim of modern slavery.
CONAN: And we've heard the sad story of people who are lured to this country and in countries in Europe, too - from Central Europe, from Eastern Europe, from Russia - from various places around the world. Is that still continuing?
Mr. CDEBACA: It's definitely continuing, but I think one of the things that the focus on the international trafficking at times took away from is the realization that there a lot of U.S. citizens victims as well. We have to make sure that we're so not focused on one group of victims that we ignore those who are right in front of us.
CONAN: Anyway to estimate the numbers?
Mr. CDEBACA: It's - all the numbers are very imprecise, notoriously so, because this is a hidden crime that the pimps or the traffickers, almost by definition, their job is to keep their victims from reporting, keep their victims from going forward. If they do escape, they don't want to come to law enforcement because, unfortunately, they're afraid that they'll get arrested and deported if they're an alien. And if they're an American, they're afraid that they'll be put in prison, say, for instance, for prostitution.
CONAN: And as - we know how the mechanism works from overseas, a young girl sometimes attracted by or lured with promises of jobs in hotels or other businesses, and it turns out it's something quite different. How does the mechanism work in the United States?
Mr. CDEBACA: Well, it's remarkably similar in that the traffickers whether they're American citizen street pimps or others are basically selling the same thing that their foreign counterparts - hope, a better life, something different than what the victims have.
In this case, in the United States, because there is such a correlation between child sexual abuse and child prostitution, a lot of times it might be somebody who has that unerring ability to figure out which are the vulnerable girls, whether it's eighth, ninth, 10th graders. Maybe they have been abused at home. Maybe they're willing to run away from -mom has a new boyfriend or what have you or they might be wrestling with an addiction.
The pimp seemed to be able to look at the women around them, look at the girls around them, find that vulnerability. But then, they basically offer glamour, a better life, even love. So it's very similar to what we see with international trafficking as well. It's basically they offer hope, and they deliver with a nightmare.
CONAN: We can see the State Department's role with these women and young girls coming from Romania or Cambodia. What's your role in this country?
Mr. CDEBACA: Well, in the coordinator of the interagency taskforce, the senior policy operating group on trafficking which was set up by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
One of the things that we've seen in countries around the world is if each individual ministry or each individual Cabinet agency is off doing work on its own rather than coordinating, then the traffickers seemed to find those gaps and exploit them. Now, that's - I do the day-to-day work on that. But the chair of the Interagency Task Force is Secretary Clinton.
We had a meeting about two months ago of the Cabinet secretaries and it was, frankly, inspiring to see everybody, from the attorney general to the secretary of Defense, secretary of Agriculture, all taking an hour or two out of the day to say, how do we find and get rid of slavery within our own agency's responsibilities?
I think people would be surprised to hear that Department of Interior or Department of Agriculture has a role in this fight just as much as Homeland Security or Justice Department.
CONAN: And what do you actually do to combat this traffic?
Amb. CdeBACA: Well, one of the things that the United States has done over the last 10 years globally is that we've been pushing for a new approach to this problem. A lot of folks tend to think of it as transportation of women for prostitution across international borders. That's the old definition from the 1800s.
The modern definition, coming from our law in 2000 and the international standards set forth in the U.N. about 10 years ago, really focuses on the exploitation of the people. It doesn't have to be taken across an international border. They don't have to have been moved anywhere. If somebody has been held as a slave, they're considered a trafficking victim under the new law.
So we've been working with countries around the world to get modern laws in place, to do police training, to have structures, and then also to do that here in the United States.
For the first time in the history of the trafficking victims' report, which we do every year, we included the United States, because we realized the Obama administration was looking at where are the things that we're telling other countries that they need to do? And it wasn't a matter of simply saying, well, it would be only fair for us to analyze ourselves. It's also - we have a matrix of how we look at a country to see whether it's fighting trafficking effectively or not. And it was really kind of unfair to not apply that to the United States.
There were trafficking victims in the U.S. who might not have been getting what they needed if we didn't apply that same diagnosis to ourselves. In some ways it's like having a doctor that had spent eight years not giving himself a blood pressure test while telling every one of his patients they needed to have their blood pressure checked.
CONAN: So what do we need to do? Obviously, local officials, state officials have to be involved with this as well as federal.
Amb. CdeBACA: One of the main things that we've found last year when we analyzed the U.S. for the first time in the human trafficking report, was that victim identification and victim care continues to lag. We've got 46 of the 50 states have now passed trafficking legislation. Most recently, yesterday, in Hawaii, the state legislature is sending to Governor Abercrombie, for his signature, a bill outlawing forced labor in Hawaii.
But having those laws on the books isn't enough. That notion of being able to then get the police officers, the child protective workers, those who might be able to come into contact with these folks so they know what they're seeing and then they can help them, instead of, as all too often happens, arresting the women and prosecuting them for being prostitutes.
CONAN: It's hard sometimes - prostitution is a crime - to get them to see them as victims and not as criminals.
Amb. CdeBACA: Very much so. And I think that one of the things that we see is that prostitution can affect neighborhoods. It can affect communities and certainly affects the people who are involved in it. And a lot of the legal systems have grown up with that notion of it being a nuisance crime or a vice crime, or it's seen as a place where your - as Jacki Lyden's story sets forth - a place where there are drug abuses or violence or this or that. But a lot of the drug abuse and a lot of the violence is falling mostly heavily on the women in prostitution.
So I think that this modern anti-trafficking movement, this modern abolitionist movement of the last 10 years, is saying, you know, we need to stop for a minute, look to see how we are compassionate to those women. What do they need to be able to put their lives back together? Rather than simply say, the quickest and easiest thing to do is just arrest them, take them to jail for a few days.
CONAN: You describe it as an abolitionist movement. If you describe it as slavery, that's a fair description of the movement too. It's a little discouraging because, though ultimately successful, the abolitionist movement we think of back in the 19th century, it took some time.
Amb. CdeBACA: It took some time. And, you know, we've been very aware over the last couple of weeks, that is 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, these are things that the United States has wrestled with throughout our history.
And one of the things that's brilliant about the 13th Amendment is that it didn't simply say slavery is done. It's over. It actually said involuntary servitude shall not exist going forward.
So this is one of those things where, you know, we have a president who has the Emancipation Proclamation in his office, not a copy, the Emancipation Proclamation. And I think that he sees it, and I certainly see it in the work that I do, as we're delivering on a promise that was made 150 years ago by President Lincoln and by the people who went and fought for freedom. So I think it's entirely appropriate for us to call this a modern abolitionist movement.
CONAN: Yet the numbers would seem to suggest in some ways it's getting worse.
Amb. CdeBACA: And I think that some of that is because we're looking for it more, and we're finding cases, we're re-characterizing things. But I also think that globalization and technology allows the traffickers, allows the pimps to operate in a way that they never used to be able to.
It used to be that the pimp would have to, you know, find a street corner, maybe carve out a neighborhood that was - what he controlled as opposed to the other folks in that particular area, and manage the women through personal contact, force, et cetera.
Now, whether it's, you know, on Craigslist or on some of these other social networking sites, the pimps can offer these women and children for sale across the entire Internet. You can bring somebody who you've lured from another country. You can bring them into the United States, you know, five or six days after you met them in their village.
Back in the old days, in the late 1800s, when we had this problem with girls and women from Eastern Europe, you know, you had to take them from their shtetl to somewhere with a ship and get them to United States. It would be six months between when you first sold them this dream of America and then when you change the dynamic, when you got to where you were going. That thing has been accelerated now by technology. So I think that, you know, communications technology and transportation technology, unfortunately, have made things a lot easier for these guys.
CONAN: We're talking with Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, State Department's ambassador-at-large, who oversees the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. Josh(ph) is on the line, Josh calling from Minneapolis.
JOSH (Caller): Hi, thank you. Yeah, I'm calling because I work for a nonprofit organization called Venture Expeditions out of the Twin Cities. And one of the things we focus on is creating opportunities for people to respond to the issue of human trafficking and slavery that they're hearing about on the news and in the media these days.
CONAN: And how do they do that?
JOSH: Well, one of the different forms that we found that's been effective is creating an opportunity for people to do something. And what we started about as - is a college group of guys who decided to ride bicycles across the country; and as they stop in communities, educating people about issues of injustice and oppression.
More recently in the past few years, we've been doing these types of trips in the U.S. as well as in countries like Thailand and in Turkey, talking about issues of human trafficking as well as the causes, like poverty, lack of education, exploitation, these types of things, and educating people to get connected to great organizations like International Justice Mission or Free the Slaves, stuff like that, to learn more about it as well as financially and physically give...
CONAN: Josh, I understand what you're trying to do. How are you sensitized to this? How did you learn about it?
JOSH: I found out about it in college. I was kind of (technical difficulty). And I went to college, I recognized that my perspective on life wasn't really the most accurate one, and so I focused on studying international relief and development. And as I spent two summers in Africa, learning culture and language, I started learning about how these issues were overseas. And when I came back, I started learning about how these were also in the Twin Cities and in America as well, and how, you know, now that I know, I have a responsibility to do something, or I can just continue to act like I dont know.
CONAN: Josh, thanks very much for the call. Good luck.
JOSH: Thank you.
CONAN: Bye-bye. Are there programs as well? You mention there's enormous fear of some of these women brought in from overseas of being deported; others of being thrown into jail for prostitution. Are there rehabilitation programs, or is there somewhere else for them to turn?
Amb. CdeBACA: Well, I think that that's one of the things that we've got to work on. One of the things that came out of the Cabinet meeting in February was the notion that we have to do, in effect, a victim services strategy for the United States. But we don't need to wait until that happens. Right now, there's programs for immigrant victims of trafficking. They don't have to get deported.
There's actually something called the T visa. We can get them short and medium-term immigration status that then can allow them to stay as U.S. citizens, even a program to be able to bring their families over. And there are some real amazing success stories, people who were liberated from trafficking and slavery 10 years ago who now own their own little business, employ other people. So there are some real success stories.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get one more caller in. Let's go to Mary(ph), Mary with us from Cockeysville in Maryland.
MARY (Caller): Yes. I'd like - thank you very much for having this program. And I'd like to speak about the Maryland Task Force on Human Trafficking and its cooperation with officials at the federal levels, for example, the FBI, the Immigration Service and so on.
Maryland Task Force does training for - supports training for law enforcement, supports legislation and also supports direct service when trafficked women, particularly but not exclusively in the United States, are found after a raid, so that they give them clothing, housing, therapy, job interviews.
CONAN: I wonder, do you find any resistance among law enforcement to the kinds of issues that you raise?
MARY: I attended several training programs for law enforcement and I would say there was some, perhaps among the younger members, but on the whole I found the law enforcement very open and supportive in trying to learn.
CONAN: Do you think you're making progress?
MARY: Yes, I think that it's a very good, strong program. And I'd like to add that one of the bills that passed the Maryland Legislature this term, which just ended, expunges any records for prostitution of domestic trafficking victims. And we consider that a big victory.
CONAN: Mary, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.
MARY: You're welcome. Bye.
CONAN: And Ambassador CdeBaca, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate your coming in.
Amb. CdeBACA: It's a pleasure to be here, Neal.
CONAN: Ambassador Luis CdeBaca was appointed by President Obama to coordinate U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery. He oversees the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department and joined us here in Studio 3A.
Tomorrow, it's TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. Ira Flatow will be here with a look on the latest at the wind farm controversy off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Plus, electric cars and an annoying book. That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY.
This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
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Amb. CdeBaca Combats Sex Trafficking In The U.S. : NPR
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism: Britain's Long Fight Against Slavery
Posted: 05/ 2/11 06:29 PM ET
Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism: Britain's Long Fight Against Slavery
Source: huffingtonpost.com
"Just think, they sold me like a pig or a dog," a young woman cries to documentarians in the riveting MSNBC special Sex Slaves -- UK that will premiere in the U.S. on Sunday, May 1, at 10 p.m. eastern time. Adapted from the Channel 4 series The Hunt For Britain's Sex Traffickers, which aired last fall in the U.K., the documentary illustrates the tremendous challenges cops and reporters undertake when they seek to expose modern-day slavery. Worldwide, more people are enslaved -- forced to work for no pay beyond subsistence -- today than ever before. The documentary chronicles the most substantive modern British anti-slavery effort, Operation Pentameter II, involving all 55 U.K. police forces in a coordinated blitz of raids against sex traffickers. The 2007 operation yielded 406 arrests, over $1 million in seized assets, and 167 rescued victims, some as young as 14, whom traffickers had controlled in underground brothels, massage parlors, and saunas.
Police conducted the operation during the bicentennial of the abolition of the British slave trade. As do the journalists who filmed Sex Slaves, the architects of that original abolition 200 years ago, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, understood the power of slave narratives. Ever since then, journalists who focus on slavery have found that engaging with victims involves daunting challenges.
Consider the cautionary tale of the famous British journalist William Thomas Stead. In 1885, Stead set out to prove that sex slavery existed in Victorian London. He enlisted a former prostitute to buy a thirteen-year-old English girl for £5. "My purpose was not to secure the punishment of criminals but to lay bare the working of a great organization of crime," he wrote in his series for the Pall Mall Gazette. Stead's stories shocked the urban gentry. In their collective consciousness, as in our own, sex slavery existed not in their city but in foreign lands. Sex slaves were imagined as the plush, scrubbed, ivory-fleshed Ottoman odalisques eroticized by French Orientalist painters. Stead shattered both myths. While many entered prostitution by choice, he wrote, others "are simply snared, trapped and outraged either when under the influence of drugs or after a prolonged struggle in a locked room, in which the weaker succumbs to sheer downright force." Riots broke out as a million Londoners fought to obtain copies of a paper that had previously had a circulation of 12,000. Hundreds of thousands agitated to change British law to address the horror of children being forced into sex slavery.
But Stead was undone by his methods. George Bernard Shaw, who had originally supported the publication, shortly declared the exposé to be a "put-up job." British authorities arrested Stead on abduction charges, and an Old Bailey judge sentenced him to three months in prison. He never recovered his good reputation.
As Stead set out to do 123 years earlier, the documentarians who made The Hunt For Britain's Sex Traffickers seek to shock Britons as to the proximity and persistence of slavery. And while they rightly avoid Stead's unethical methods while accurately portraying the myriad obstacles to freeing slaves, they fail at a different challenge. Their work, as moving as it is, fails to reveal that a quick strike fight against the slave trade (or human trafficking as it is now called) like Operation Pentameter II, does not end the much larger problem of slavery itself.
To start, the fight against human trafficking is underfunded. The United Kingdom, like the United States, spends less in one year to fight the traffic in human beings than it does in one day to fight the traffic in illegal drugs. And the U.K. gets what it pays for: Operation Pentameter's 406 arrests yielded only five convictions of traffickers who had forced victims into prostitution -- and all five had been reported to the police before the raids.
Moreover, the focus on sex trafficking obscures the fact that many more people are enslaved in trades like agriculture and domestic service. "There are more people trafficked for labor exploitation than there are for sexual exploitation," Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell, program director of the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre, told the Guardian. Yet at the time of this operation in 2007, British courts had not convicted a single trafficker on forced labor charges. Despite policy changes aimed at better victim protection today, when labor slaves are discovered, authorities often process them for deportation rather than granting them asylum, according to a report released last summer by Anti-Slavery International. A year before that report was released, the U.K. shut down its only police force dedicated to trafficking after the Home Office withdrew funding.
Reports like MSNBC's can provoke outrage, but outrage alone will not keep people free from slavery. Nor will mere police work. "We can't prosecute our way out of this crime," said Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, President Obama's anti-trafficking czar. Though it is grossly underfunded in its efforts, under CdeBaca, the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has begun to creatively support those programs that address the root causes of slavery -- social isolation, inequality, and withering poverty.
The U.K. government, however, views such programs as less important than keeping undocumented workers out: "The key is prevention" of human trafficking, Conservative MP David Davis said at the time of the operation, "which is why Conservative proposals for a dedicated border police force would have the greatest impact." Survivors have told me that such restrictive immigration policies often have the unintended consequence of strengthening the hands of traffickers, who play on slaves' fear of authority to prevent them from seeking help.
Thus, despite its foundational role in abolition, and despite sizzling operations like that portrayed in Sex Slaves, the United Kingdom has fallen behind its former colony in the fight against the 5,000-year-old crime.
E. Benjamin Skinner is the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern Day Slavery, his first-person account of slavery around the world, including reporting on the experiences of current and former slaves and slave dealers in Haiti, Sudan, Romania and India. Five years in the making, the book received the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for non-fiction. He is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
Follow Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SchusterInst
Police conducted the operation during the bicentennial of the abolition of the British slave trade. As do the journalists who filmed Sex Slaves, the architects of that original abolition 200 years ago, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, understood the power of slave narratives. Ever since then, journalists who focus on slavery have found that engaging with victims involves daunting challenges.
Consider the cautionary tale of the famous British journalist William Thomas Stead. In 1885, Stead set out to prove that sex slavery existed in Victorian London. He enlisted a former prostitute to buy a thirteen-year-old English girl for £5. "My purpose was not to secure the punishment of criminals but to lay bare the working of a great organization of crime," he wrote in his series for the Pall Mall Gazette. Stead's stories shocked the urban gentry. In their collective consciousness, as in our own, sex slavery existed not in their city but in foreign lands. Sex slaves were imagined as the plush, scrubbed, ivory-fleshed Ottoman odalisques eroticized by French Orientalist painters. Stead shattered both myths. While many entered prostitution by choice, he wrote, others "are simply snared, trapped and outraged either when under the influence of drugs or after a prolonged struggle in a locked room, in which the weaker succumbs to sheer downright force." Riots broke out as a million Londoners fought to obtain copies of a paper that had previously had a circulation of 12,000. Hundreds of thousands agitated to change British law to address the horror of children being forced into sex slavery.
But Stead was undone by his methods. George Bernard Shaw, who had originally supported the publication, shortly declared the exposé to be a "put-up job." British authorities arrested Stead on abduction charges, and an Old Bailey judge sentenced him to three months in prison. He never recovered his good reputation.
As Stead set out to do 123 years earlier, the documentarians who made The Hunt For Britain's Sex Traffickers seek to shock Britons as to the proximity and persistence of slavery. And while they rightly avoid Stead's unethical methods while accurately portraying the myriad obstacles to freeing slaves, they fail at a different challenge. Their work, as moving as it is, fails to reveal that a quick strike fight against the slave trade (or human trafficking as it is now called) like Operation Pentameter II, does not end the much larger problem of slavery itself.
To start, the fight against human trafficking is underfunded. The United Kingdom, like the United States, spends less in one year to fight the traffic in human beings than it does in one day to fight the traffic in illegal drugs. And the U.K. gets what it pays for: Operation Pentameter's 406 arrests yielded only five convictions of traffickers who had forced victims into prostitution -- and all five had been reported to the police before the raids.
Moreover, the focus on sex trafficking obscures the fact that many more people are enslaved in trades like agriculture and domestic service. "There are more people trafficked for labor exploitation than there are for sexual exploitation," Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell, program director of the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre, told the Guardian. Yet at the time of this operation in 2007, British courts had not convicted a single trafficker on forced labor charges. Despite policy changes aimed at better victim protection today, when labor slaves are discovered, authorities often process them for deportation rather than granting them asylum, according to a report released last summer by Anti-Slavery International. A year before that report was released, the U.K. shut down its only police force dedicated to trafficking after the Home Office withdrew funding.
Reports like MSNBC's can provoke outrage, but outrage alone will not keep people free from slavery. Nor will mere police work. "We can't prosecute our way out of this crime," said Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, President Obama's anti-trafficking czar. Though it is grossly underfunded in its efforts, under CdeBaca, the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has begun to creatively support those programs that address the root causes of slavery -- social isolation, inequality, and withering poverty.
The U.K. government, however, views such programs as less important than keeping undocumented workers out: "The key is prevention" of human trafficking, Conservative MP David Davis said at the time of the operation, "which is why Conservative proposals for a dedicated border police force would have the greatest impact." Survivors have told me that such restrictive immigration policies often have the unintended consequence of strengthening the hands of traffickers, who play on slaves' fear of authority to prevent them from seeking help.
Thus, despite its foundational role in abolition, and despite sizzling operations like that portrayed in Sex Slaves, the United Kingdom has fallen behind its former colony in the fight against the 5,000-year-old crime.
E. Benjamin Skinner is the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern Day Slavery, his first-person account of slavery around the world, including reporting on the experiences of current and former slaves and slave dealers in Haiti, Sudan, Romania and India. Five years in the making, the book received the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for non-fiction. He is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
Follow Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SchusterInst
Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism: Britain's Long Fight Against Slavery
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Latin American Herald Tribune - UN Says Mexico Fails to Prosecute Human Trafficking
According to the UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, “it’s obvious that in Mexico the so-called ‘migration business’ exists and it is very worrying that the government has made no significant progress in prosecuting those responsible for human trafficking”
GENEVA – The U.N. Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families criticized on Monday the inability of Mexico to catch and prosecute those engaged in human trafficking.
“Migrants traveling across Mexico are prone to extortion and kidnapping by criminal organizations associated with drug trafficking,” committee member Francisco Carrion Mena said.
“It’s obvious that in Mexico the so-called ‘migration business’ exists and it is very worrying that the government has made no significant progress in prosecuting those responsible for human trafficking,” he said.
“There is a flourishing ‘migration business’ and despite government efforts, we see the problem growing like a cancer. And officials at the local level take advantage of the situation,” agreed Ana Elisabeth Cubias Mena, another committee member.
Carrion acknowledged that criminal gangs find ways around whatever action the government attempts, but recalled that this does not excuse the state from its responsibility of doing everything necessary to fix the problem.
Carrion recalled the “ghastly milestone” last August when 70 South and Central American migrants were massacred in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and asked the authorities for more effective intervention.
“We notice a recurring lack of coordination among the different levels of the administration,” he said.
Salvador Beltran del Rio, commissioner of Mexico’s INM immigration agency and head of the Mexican delegation to the meeting in Geneva, said “the action of organized crime has become the chief threat to migrants traveling across Mexico.”
Beltran said that faced with this situation, migrants’ access to justice has become “essential,” adding that “a number of mechanisms have been set up to make reporting crime easier, such as ‘humanitarian visas’ issued to migrants who are either victims or witnesses of criminal acts.”
Mexico has 1 million foreign-born residents and some 150,000 migrants traveling through the country each year, the commissioner said.
The committee is an organization charged with making sure that signatory nations of the July 2003 Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families comply with that treaty ratified by 44 countries. EFE 
GENEVA – The U.N. Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families criticized on Monday the inability of Mexico to catch and prosecute those engaged in human trafficking.“Migrants traveling across Mexico are prone to extortion and kidnapping by criminal organizations associated with drug trafficking,” committee member Francisco Carrion Mena said.
“It’s obvious that in Mexico the so-called ‘migration business’ exists and it is very worrying that the government has made no significant progress in prosecuting those responsible for human trafficking,” he said.
“There is a flourishing ‘migration business’ and despite government efforts, we see the problem growing like a cancer. And officials at the local level take advantage of the situation,” agreed Ana Elisabeth Cubias Mena, another committee member.
Carrion acknowledged that criminal gangs find ways around whatever action the government attempts, but recalled that this does not excuse the state from its responsibility of doing everything necessary to fix the problem.
Carrion recalled the “ghastly milestone” last August when 70 South and Central American migrants were massacred in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and asked the authorities for more effective intervention.
“We notice a recurring lack of coordination among the different levels of the administration,” he said.
Salvador Beltran del Rio, commissioner of Mexico’s INM immigration agency and head of the Mexican delegation to the meeting in Geneva, said “the action of organized crime has become the chief threat to migrants traveling across Mexico.”Beltran said that faced with this situation, migrants’ access to justice has become “essential,” adding that “a number of mechanisms have been set up to make reporting crime easier, such as ‘humanitarian visas’ issued to migrants who are either victims or witnesses of criminal acts.”
Mexico has 1 million foreign-born residents and some 150,000 migrants traveling through the country each year, the commissioner said.
The committee is an organization charged with making sure that signatory nations of the July 2003 Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families comply with that treaty ratified by 44 countries. EFE
Source: laht.com
WRS | Geneva-based migration group sounds alarm over human trafficking in Iraq
Monday, 4 April, 2011
WRS | Geneva-based migration group sounds alarm over human trafficking in Iraq
Geneva-based migration group sounds alarm over human trafficking in Iraq
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration is featured in a compelling report to be broadcast by BBC’s Radio 4 in the UK this evening. It focuses on the plight of women in Uganda who get drawn into a web of human trafficking which amounts to modern-day slavery in Iraq. To hear more about this, WRS’s Dave Goodman talks to Jonathan Martens, counter-trafficking specialist for IOM:
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Trade as One - Blog - Interview with Lieutenant John Vanek, Human Trafficking Task Force of the San Jose Police Department
March 12, 2011 @ 03:46 PM
Nathan George Interview with John Vanek
Today I interview Lieutenant John Vanek on the Human Trafficking Task Force of the San Jose Police Department. I first met John at the Freedom Summit. What I appreciated most about him was that here was clearly someone on the front lines of the fight against trafficking, measured in his use of language, able to partner with all sorts of different organizations to get the job done, and in it for the long haul.
NG: John, tell us what your role is and how it fits into a national law enforcement effort against human trafficking
JV: Since 2005 the San Jose Police Department has been funded through a grant from the United States Department of Justice to create and manage a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary anti-trafficking task force. We were one of the original agencies to receive this grant. The program now includes about 40 such task forces across the country. I’ve managed the program since 2006.
The program is designed so local law enforcement agencies organize task force representatives from a variety of local and federal agencies. Our task force includes representatives from our department, the FBI, ICE, the United States Attorney’s Office, U.S. Department of Labor, our District Attorney’s office, and other local law enforcement agencies.
We work in collaboration with the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking, a collection of victim-services providers. The Coalition is also funded by the Department of Justice, and we have formal agreements to work together to identify and rescue victims of trafficking. We also work on training local law enforcement officers in recognizing trafficking victims or situations, and we also put a lot of effort into raising the public’s awareness of trafficking.
I’ve been very fortunate. My role with the task force has given me the opportunity to engage a large number of governmental and non-governmental agencies across the country. We work closely with the Polaris Project, who maintains the National Human Trafficking Resource Center and the 24-hour National Human Trafficking Reporting Hotline (888-3737-888).
All of the task forces are working toward a better understanding of how we can all share expertise and information to best assist victims and investigate cases.
NG: What is the most shocking thing you have become aware of in the course of your work?
JV: I often hear comments about how shocking, or terrible, trafficking is. While that is true, in 24-years of police work I’ve seen too many terrible things. Being a victim of violent crime is a terrible thing, whether the victim has suffered sexual assault, domestic violence or other trauma. I really try to avoid comparing tragedies.
That said, the scope of slavery, worldwide, is amazing, with estimates that as many as 27 million people are enslaved today. As I began my involvement in the anti-trafficking movement, another element that surprised me was the socio-economic scope over which trafficking occurs. Trafficking occurs everywhere. One of my favorite sayings is, “If you think you don’t have trafficking in your community, your not looking for trafficking.” In the trainings we give, we try to get people to understand that they have to closely examine the cultural and socio-economic make-up of their communities. Doing so may give them a better idea of how trafficking may be discovered. Trafficking looks different in different communities.
NG: You must see some egregious crimes against people in the course of your work. What gives you the most cause for hope in tackling trafficking?
JV: What gives me the most hope, and makes my current work so rewarding, is the level of commitment of so many people within the anti-trafficking community. It is important to understand that our nation’s response to trafficking is really just ten years old, starting when Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000. And much of the support for victim-services and law enforcement task forces began around 2005.
So both from a governmental and non-governmental standpoint, most of us have been learning about trafficking as we’ve developed programs, investigated cases, and discovered how victims are exploited. Human Trafficking is the most complicated subject in law enforcement I’ve encountered, and outside of law enforcement it is just as complicated. Victims of trafficking have unique needs, and agencies that don’t have a history of working together need to learn how to do so, because no one single agency can assist a victim or investigate a case. We all have to work together to raise awareness and understanding of trafficking.
So many of the people within the anti-trafficking community are really dedicated and energetic, and just working to end slavery. This work brings together people and organizations with really divergent views on other subjects, but we are all abolitionists.
I can tell you that in all of my varied experiences in law enforcement, I’ve never partnered with social entrepreneurs like Trade As One, collaborated on a training project with Stanford Medical Center like we are now, worked with so many different federal agencies and victim services providers, or such a wide variety of faith-based organizations. Fighting slavery brings me and my partner, Officer Jenn Dotzler, into contact with all of these. The people we meet are truly inspiring to me. They give me faith in the future. And after 24 years of policing, I can use all of the positive energy I can find.
NG: What can we do to help your efforts and those of your colleagues in similar positions in police forces around the country?
JV: Talk about trafficking within your communities. Not just your neighborhood communities, but your work and faith communities, too. Raising awareness can help law enforcement agencies understand the importance of this issue, and make anti-trafficking work a higher priority. Task forces like ours’ offer training to law enforcement. Ask your local police or sheriff what they are doing to assist victims or investigate potential cases.
There are several great sources of information on trafficking, including the Polaris Project website. (http://www.polarisproject.org)
I also believe we all need to continue our personal study of trafficking; how and why it occurs, how is it linked to supply and demand both in labor and sex trafficking, and how we as individuals can be unwitting beneficiaries of slave labor, and how we impact slavery in the course of our lives. We all need to work together if we want to abolish slavery.
You can read more of Lieutenant John Vanek’s thoughts on his blog.
Trade as One - Blog - Interview with Lieutenant John Vanek, Human Trafficking Task Force of the San Jose Police DepartmentSource: tradeasone.com
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Modern Day Slavery « Four Blue Hills
Slavery. Oppression. Bondage. Servitude. Captive. Confinement. Many words, and there are more, that apply to human trafficking. Human trafficking is fast becoming the major exploitation of the human body and spirit. A modern day form of slavery. It not only takes place in the poorest of societies but also in the richest. It takes place worldwide. All fifty states in the United States have reported human trafficking. Along with the other things I mentioned above, loss of freedom cannot be forgotten. While I know all the words above pertain to a loss of freedom, it seems to me that the words above, nor can the phrase “loss of freedom” encompass or come close to all that goes with being the victim of human trafficking.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), human trafficking is defined as, “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.“1
Force, coercion, and fraud are different ways people are recruited, or lured, with the promise of paid employment or a legitimate job. In most cases they are then provided with transportation to their new place of employment. Often the place of employment is in another country. When they have arrived in their new home and country, their documents and identification are taken from them. They are not provided with new forms of identification. The majority of the traffickers are natives of the country where the trafficking process occurs. In many of the cases the recruiter is known to the victim, the percentage of recruiters being known by the victim versus being a stranger are almost half. Being a stranger to the victim represents about 54% of the recruiters of trafficking.
It is estimated that up to 2 million people are in human trafficking at any time. Approximately 161 countries are affected as a result of human trafficking, whether they are the source, the transition area or the destination area.
“Of these:
- 1.4 million – 56% – are in Asia and the Pacific
- 250,000 – 10% – are in Latin America and the Caribbean
- 230,000 – 9.2% – are in the Middle East and Northern Africa
- 130,000 – 5.2% – are in sub-Saharan countries
- 270,000 – 10.8% – are in industrialized countries
- 200,000 – 8% – are in countries in transition” 2
Some of the countries where most victims of trafficking end up are Australia, Brazil, India, Israel, Japan and others including the United States.
As for prosecuting the perpetrators, the numbers are not very encouraging.
- “In 2006 there were only 5,808 prosecutions and 3,160 convictions throughout the world
- This means that for every 800 people trafficked, only one person was convicted in 2006″ 3
Victims of trafficking come from all walks of life, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, single or married, adult or child. There is no particular criteria that exempts one from from being a possible victim of trafficking. There are groups that are targeted. 18 – 24 years are targeted, most being children. The numbers of children who are victims of trafficking are estimated at 1.2 million per year. Many are people from poor, rural areas who lack education and/or come from poverty-stricken families. Many do have a mid-level education. Many are also victims of previous abuse within their own communities.
“Trafficking in persons is emerging as one of the most serious and complex human rights challenges. The scale of human trafficking is notoriously difficult to determine, with global estimates ranging anywhere from 500,000 to several million people trafficked every year. However, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of victims are women and children”. 4
Economic exploitation is most often the reason for entrapping a victim of human trafficking. Many experience sexual or physical violence during trafficking. Most are used for forced sexual exploitation in order to make money for the traffickers. Those used for forced economic exploitation, that includes those who are forced to labor in fields or work within the domestic arena as maids and housekeepers. The numbers for forced sexual exploitation are much higher than the latter. “The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 12.3 million individuals in forced or bonded labor at any time. They estimate that at least 1.39 million are victims of commercial sexual exploitation and that 56 percent of all trafficking victims are female.” 5
Once a victim has been entrapped, their papers are taken from them. Many are forced in to sexual exploitation on their first night. Many are taken from their country of origin to another country on the promise of employment as a housekeeper or maid, a cook, or working in retail of some kind. The construction and manufacturing industries are some areas of commerce which exploit people. They are also physically, mentally and sexually abused. Many are charged exorbitant fees, such as housing costs, food, smuggling fees and drug habits. The fees can be so high that it would be impossible to repay. Without papers, the traffickers also instill the victims with fear, fear of deportment, fear of physical abuse of any kind or even fear of of being charged by officials for engagement in any illegal activities that their traffickers have placed imposed upon the victim.
There are also effects of human trafficking upon society, not just the victim:
- Perpetuates social inequalities, especially to developing societies.
- Public health issues in cost and treat to others
- Erosion of authority
- Traffickers work with impunity across borders with the involvement of organized crime
- Losses to the community in terms of human and social investment
Upon the victim:
- Traumatized
- Depression
- Stigmatized
- Outcast
- Vulnerable to a multitude of health issues, from HIV/Aids to pregnancy or drug addiction
Over the last ten years human trafficking has gained increasing attention than in the past. Globally governments are enacting more policies and laws to combat the problem of trafficking. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent towards this end. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) formally launched a global initiative to fight Human Trafficking. The UNODC helps around the world draft laws and develop anti-trafficking strategies. The challenge is taking theory and turning it in to reality.
Some ways to recognize a victim of human trafficking:
- “Lack of freedom to leave home or working conditions
- Few or no personal possessions or financial records
- Lack of knowledge of a community, frequent movement
- Under 18 and providing commercial sex
- Not in control of own documents (passport, birth certificates
- Signs of physical abuse, restraint, malnourishment, lack of general health care
- Inconsistencies in story, “just visiting”
- Individual owes a large debt and cannot pay it off” 6
Human Trafficking is becoming more and more of a problem in this world, it is a global problem and takes advantage of people in a multitude of ways and of numerous types of people. It is not limited to one area or one type of person. Your neighbor or a family member can place you in a position that can be terrifying to you. You can be approached anywhere, from the local airport to a local hotel by a stranger.
If you are interested in learning more about Human Trafficking I have provided some links:
http://www.polarisproject.org/what-we-do/national-human-trafficking-hotline/the-nhtrc/overview
http://www.humantrafficking.org/
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html
http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/end-human-trafficking/page.do?id=1108428
Author’s note:
When I decided, as an inexperienced writer, to write about this subject I had NO idea of the amount of information there is out there to sort through. None. If you find anything incomplete or incorrect, my apologies, it is/was not intended and I can only beg for mercy.
Betty
1 From Human Trafficking Facts written by By Tulika Nair Published: 11/2/2010 http://www.buzzle.com/articles/human-trafficking-facts.html
2 http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/issues_doc/labour/Forced_labour/HUMAN_TRAFFICKING_-_THE_FACTS_-_final.pdf
3 US State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report (2007) p.36
4 From UN Women http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_war_peace/human_trafficking.php
5 http://confereinservitus.org/what-is-human-trafficking/
6 http://www.bhtc.us/files/Broward%20Webinar%20.pdf
Source: fourbluehills.comModern Day Slavery « Four Blue Hills
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