http://newsblaze.com/story/20110303103058stat.nb/topstory.html
'3D' Foreign Policy Approach Combats Trafficking in Persons
Ambassador-at-Large of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons Ambassador Luis CdeBaca today underlined the "3D" foreign policy
approach of diplomacy, development, and defense. This '3D' approach can
deter and disrupt human trafficking activities.
Ambassador CdeBaca: Hello and thank you for that kind introduction and for
the invitation by PACOM today to talk about how together we can make
tangible progress against modern slavery in the Pacific region. Some have
asked, "Why does America care about whether someone is held in servitude in
another country?" "Why is this foreign policy?" or even "How dare America
issue an annual report analyzing what other countries are doing on this
issue - isn't such unilateralism presumptuous?" Some of you here today may
even be asking yourselves, "How does a civilian human rights issue apply to
me while I am at Pacific Command?"
Here's what we know. We know human trafficking is a crime; a human rights
abuse; a byproduct of conflict; an issue of national security, public
health, and democracy; a labor and migration issue; and a growing global
phenomenon. As we have seen in many places the world over, it must be at the
forefront of our planning when we race to respond to a natural disaster or
conflict.
In and around deployments that many of you may have experienced - Haiti,
Iraq, the Balkans - pimps and exploiters have taken advantage of the chaos
to find and abuse their victims. Sexual enslavement can take place not only
in a brothel or on a street corner, but in the context of war, and has been
prosecuted as a crime against humanity before the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
As Secretary Clinton said recently, anywhere from 12 to 27 million people
are currently held in bondage for labor or prostitution. That's equivalent
to all the people who live in London, at the low end, and the combined
populations of New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., at the
high end.
The victims range from the men and women enslaved in fields, factories, and
brothels, to the girls and boys whose childhoods have been shattered and
stolen, to the parents whose children have vanished. And they feel that no
one can help them, that no one is looking for them, that no one cares.
It is our responsibility to find the victims, help them, prosecute their
traffickers, and find ways to prevent enslavement in the first place. You
are no doubt familiar with the "3D" foreign policy approach of diplomacy,
development, and defense. Not to belabor the construct, but those 3Ds can
also fuel an anti-trafficking strategy of deterrence, disruption, and
demand, that can help us confront an unfortunate reality in the PACOM Area
of Responsibility - too often, countries follow a more unfortunate "3D"
paradigm, as all too often we see victims experience the phenomenon of
detention, deportation, and disempowerment. This must stop.
This is not a theoretical matter to me, or an issue for politics. I did not
learn about human trafficking in an office, a cubicle, or a think tank. For
me, the survivors of trafficking - in all its forms - are people I know,
people whose experiences as told to me are seared into my memory. The people
who trusted me to fight for them in court. The people who have shared both
their tears and their strength with me as they recounted horrific abuse at
the hands of pimps or bosses. The people who believed that the United States
stood for something, and placed their sacred trust with me and my team at
the Justice Department to vindicate their rights.
Human trafficking is a scourge on the Earth, and the United States is
certainly no exception. This year, for the first time, the annual
Trafficking in Persons Report evaluated and ranked the United States'
efforts to combat trafficking - we held ourselves accountable to the same
standards to which we hold other governments. We found that trafficking
occurs for both sex and labor. We see it in domestic servitude, agriculture,
manufacturing, janitorial services, construction, health care, and beauty
salons. We see trafficking in prostitution and strip clubs, as the
traffickers dehumanize and destroy.
In including the United States, we looked at the situation in the US and the
response of the government. We called for submissions from NGOs, and
listened to their insight and read their data. The United States was placed
on Tier One of the Report. Not a reprieve or a foregone conclusion, but a
responsibility based on the evidence.
And Tier One is not an "A" grade by any means; it just means that countries
meet the Minimum Standards set forth by Congress. In other words, just
passing the threshold.
Even if you haven't seen this modern form of slavery up close and personal
like I did for fifteen years as a federal prosecutor, you know from our own
tragic American history the damage that chattel slavery left in its wake.
The destructive impact it had on family, community, country. On our economy,
and our security.
It is because of our own experience as a Nation that we know slavery -
whether in the slave trade of the 19th century or in the modern forms of
slavery we see today - to be an affront to our most basic rights as
Americans and as human beings in a global community.
Creating strong communities and policies that eradicate the modern form of
slavery that we see today is paramount to providing the stability needed to
achieve trade, security, and economic success. And so often, the men and
women called upon to guarantee that freedom have been in our Armed Forces.
As representatives of the United States, military personnel at all levels
have a special responsibility to combat human trafficking.
It comes back to the most fundamental crimes that we have confronted for so
long as a nation - piracy and slavery. Just as Decatur went into Algiers to
deal with the Barbary pirates and their protectors who were taking American
and European slaves, America in 2011 again finds itself confronting the old
evils of piracy and slavery around the world. Just as African-Americans
during the Civil War knew that they could find freedom if they could just
reach the lines of the U.S. Army, we again find ourselves providing
protection and refuge.
While our history with this heinous practice may be unique, the struggle
against it spans time and region. For as long as people of every community,
culture, and country in the world are enslaved, our work and efforts must go
on.
That's where PACOM comes in. We cannot meaningfully address this issue
without focusing on your AOR. We cannot meaningfully address this issue
without focusing on Asia.
According to the International Labor Organization, the prevalence of forced
labor and sexual servitude is highest in Asia, with almost three in every
1,000 inhabitants falling victim. Also, the International Organization for
Migration and World Bank data show that the majority of the over 200 million
transnational migrants in the world are from Asia. Within the growing pool
of Asian migrants - reflecting greater labor mobility in the region and in
the world - is a huge population of people who are victims of sex and labor
trafficking.
As the percentage of women migrants in that pool grows exponentially, we
have to recognize the feminization of migration, and the multitude of issues
that are specific to women. So we see women held in sex slavery, in labor
servitude, or working in situations where they routinely face sexual
harassment or even rape.
Unfortunately, the number of countries in Asia downgraded in the 2010
Trafficking in Persons Report was greater than the number upgraded. Many
Asian governments lack adequate laws, and more have failed to produce
significant convictions of trafficking offenders.
None of the countries in South Asia has ratified the decade-old UN Palermo
Protocol, though they have joined the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) anti-TIP convention. The SAARC convention, however, is
problematic for numerous reasons, one of which is that it focuses on sex
trafficking rather than on both sex and labor trafficking. Furthermore, the
ASEAN countries have not formulated regional strategies along the lines of
the Council of Europe or the Organization of American States.
While some countries in Asia have passed legislation to prohibit
trafficking, governments as a whole have not yet shown the political will to
hold the traffickers to the fullest account, in the form of sentencing
reflective of the severity of the crimes they commit. Some countries only
focus on sex trafficking - and not from a compassionate place, but by
locking up the women as illegal immigrant prostitutes or criminals, rather
than recognizing them as victims.
So too, it has been a steep learning curve for some governments to consider
issues of labor trafficking. Forced labor cases - untold thousands of women
working as maids or seamstresses and men in construction or agriculture -
are sometimes treated as administrative violations, if confronted at all.
And each year, by statute, the United States has to assess these countries,
make a determination as to what is being done, and rank them by the
Congressionally-mandated minimum standards.
Secretary Clinton has said it best:
Countries come to us and ask very forcefully not to be dropped in their
category and we hear them out and we tell them [...] the kinds of things
that we would look to that would demonstrate the commitment that we think
would make a difference, to talk about best practices, to share stories. And
some countries have listened and the results speak for themselves. Others
have not.
Now this is a process that is fraught with all kinds of feelings and I
recognize that, but the easiest way to get out of the tier three and get off
the watch list is to really act. And we had some real friends, friends -
countries that are friends on so many important issues, and they were very
upset when we told them that they were not going to progress and, in fact,
were in danger of regressing. And then they said, "Well, what can we do?"
And we said, "Well, we've pointed this out, we point it out again, and we
will stand ready to help you."
Friends help each other - not just with convenient facts, but sometimes with
inconvenient truths. And in the anti-trafficking world, that kind of
friendship means honesty about the problems we see.
For instance, in the past several years, we have learned a lot about the
forced labor of migrant workers in the fishing and seafood processing
industries. In a 2006 study, the ILO found that 43 percent of Burmese in the
Thai fishing sector who have given over possession of their identity
documents to their employers cannot access these documents when they want
to. In many cases, the employers hold onto these documents to purposefully
restrict their employees' movement, even though without them migrants are
vulnerable to arrest and deportation.
A UN survey of men and boys who were victims of forced labor on Thai fishing
boats (which travel throughout the Pacific region) found that 29 of 49 (59
percent) reported seeing a murder by the boat captain. The problem of forced
labor on fishing vessels in the Pacific region is one on which we are
attempting to gain greater information and encourage governments to address
- the inherently isolated nature of work on these vessels, and the legal
jurisdictions of the waters in which these boats operate, make this a
particularly difficult challenge.
We know that there are tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of foreign
migrant workers - many of whom are trafficked - in the Southeast Asian
fishery industries. While this problem is widespread, in Thailand, we are
aware of only six offenders convicted by the Royal Thai Government for the
forced labor of foreign workers in the industry - all but one of whom were
freed on bail after conviction, pending their appeals. While the convictions
represented successes in Thailand's efforts to combat trafficking, their
limited number speaks to the work that still needs to be done. Meanwhile, it
is Malaysia, pushed by a Tier 3 ranking in 2009, that embarked on the first
steps towards addressing its multi-faceted human trafficking problem.
Farther north, Vietnam reported to us that last year, they did not
criminally prosecute any labor trafficking offenders, but they fined 98
recruitment companies a total of $10,900 and revoked the licenses of two
firms. That's a start, but it is an average of only $111 per firm - and a
total of less than what one worker pays to be recruited for a job abroad.
Indeed, a lack of avenues for redress of complaints by Indonesian,
Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Nepali men and women in many East Asian
destination countries denies them justice and a chance of effective
recovery. It also fails in providing a deterrent through tough criminal
sanctions to traffickers. Clearly, we have to elevate the ramifications for
this type of exploitation above the cost of doing business.
Equally harmful to the cause is official denial by governments which
continue to refute the existence of a trafficking problem. This is often
true of more developed nations. For example, in one small but developed
Asian country, the denial of a problem has prevented effective victim
identification or assistance efforts. It resulted in the mass arrest and
deportation of over seven thousand women and girls in prostitution last
year. Among this population, only one individual was officially identified
by the government as a trafficking victim.
Again: one victim identified, out of seven thousand women who were
identified as foreign prostitutes. Think about how likely that is...
Millions of the victims of bonded labor and domestic service are women and
girls, and they are exposed to not just physical, but sexual predation at
the hands of their captors. I will never forget two young Indian girls -
taken from their bonded laborer parents at 11. They were forced to work as
maids, waitresses, and sex slaves for their master. He didn't respect their
freedom or their bodies, and he didn't respect the labels we use to describe
their situation. I may have put him in prison where he belongs, but I can
never regain what these young women had lost.
In South Korea, the government has had some success prosecuting sex
traffickers and offering services to the victims. There is a known presence
of women and girls in forced commercial sexual exploitation, including
foreign women recruited to work on entertainment visas as singers and bars
near U.S. military facilities. We know that women such as these often incur
thousands of dollars in debts, contributing to their vulnerability to debt
bondage upon arrival. The issue of child sex tourism - one that the U.S.
government attempts to tackle head-on through extraterritorial application
of relevant laws - is also one shared by South Korea and Japan, and the 2010
TIP Report sets forth how men from those countries fuel the demand for
trafficking in Cambodia and other poorer countries. But unlike the United
States, South Korea has never prosecuted one of its citizens for sex
tourism, and Japan's last prosecution was in 2005.
The reality is that enforcement regimes in the Pacific region are woefully
inadequate. Resource constraints, corruption, and a lack of political will
have created an enabling environment in which sex slavery and forced labor
thrives, and exploiters rarely face meaningful penalties.
Yet clear successes are being registered. While ranked Tier 2 Watch List
just a few years ago, perhaps the strongest Tier 1 jurisdiction in the
Pacific region is Taiwan - thanks to its political commitment to carrying
out a series of tough anti-trafficking reforms. Now, foreign victims of
trafficking in Taiwan stand a much greater chance of being identified,
subsequently given assistance to get back on their feet, and gain legitimate
employment with legal immigration status. Taiwan authorities have made a
commitment not just to enforcement, but to victim care, and that's making
them stand out.
In the past year, the Philippine Government - led by a new President and a
Congressman who doesn't just score knockouts in the ring - has heeded the
call to take more seriously its responsibility to address the trafficking of
its citizens within the country and abroad, and the government has publicly
linked these efforts to the threat of a downgrade to Tier 3 in the 2011 TIP
Report. The hundreds of backlogged trafficking cases in the court system are
beginning to be fast-tracked, corrupt officials are being identified and
punished, government resources have increased to combat trafficking, and
most importantly, mechanisms to improve the government's anti-trafficking
responses are being institutionalized.
Similarly, Indonesia has made good use of its 2007 anti-tip law, prosecuting
the largest number of labor trafficking offenders (79) of any East Asian
government in 2009.
We want to encourage other Asian countries to embark on similar courses. And
the Defense Department can help. On February 1, Secretary Clinton and I had
the privilege of convening the cabinet-level meeting on trafficking in
persons. Annually, the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Agriculture,
Labor, Health & Human Services, Education, and Interior, as well as the
heads of other agencies including the Director of National Intelligence and
Chair of the Equal Opportunity Commission, come together to discuss this
issue. This year, the meeting was on National Freedom Day, which
commemorates the day in 1865 that President Lincoln sent the 13th Amendment
to the states for ratification.
Secretary Gates spoke of the importance of enforcing the DOD zero-tolerance
policy against forced labor and sex trafficking, of mandatory trainings for
the Total Forces to identify and respond to human trafficking, and of the
findings of Inspector General audits and reports of defense contractors
overseas. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar spoke about the upcoming need
for interagency coordination to prevent forced labor and prostitution in
overseas U.S. territories.
It was inspiring to see our senior leadership engaged and committed to
delivering on the promise of freedom that had been made 146 years ago. As
President Obama said when declaring January to be slavery and trafficking
awareness month, we need to "acknowledge that forms of slavery still exist
in the modern era, and recommit ourselves to stopping the human traffickers
who ply this horrific trade."
There was another key announcement made at the meeting that is particularly
relevant to you. In November 2010, nearly 60 private security companies
signed the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service
Providers, crafted by industry representatives, governments, and NGOs - an
effort supported by the U.S. Government. Here we have companies pledging to
uphold a number of principles both in their company policies and in the
conduct of their personnel, including not engaging or benefiting from human
trafficking or prostitution. These are companies that very well may be DOD
contractors that are recognizing that they have a role to play in
eliminating forced labor and the persistent exploitation of women in
prostitution.
Right now it is a code that speaks to the same principles as the
government's zero tolerance policy. We need to be sure that it's not just a
commitment, but that there is real action and oversight behind it, just as
we are doing with our contractors. As you may know, the Departments of State
and Defense, as well as USAID, are all subject to Inspector General audits
as mandated by Congress. They are looking for signs of human trafficking,
reporting on them, and remedying them.
Fighting trafficking is not something relegated to policy or just to the
senior leadership level. You each play a role to uphold a standard of
conduct - of dignity and the promise of freedom - that the U.S. Government
is fighting for around the globe. Its each of you, each of us.
Because traffickers don't create the markets. Traffickers exploit their
people. But it is the demand for commercial sex, for cheap goods, that they
rush to meet through violence and cruelty. And so we need to end that
demand. By placing certain clubs off-limits to those under your command. By
including and enforcing the contracting regulations that prohibit such
conduct on the part of your vendors.
By holding yourself and your staff to an appropriate and honorable standard
of conduct both on and off-duty. Purchasing sex is wrong. It doesn't matter
whether the woman is over 18 or how willing she may appear - because the
truth is you can never know. This is one of those places where government
policy truly conforms with human obligation. Through your actions, you can
do a great deal to advance not only government policy but the opportunity
and freedom of women and girls around the world.
This is driven by demand. No girl or woman would be a victim of sex
trafficking if there were no profits to be made from their exploitation. You
each play a role in reducing that demand, and living by example - by
refraining personally from engaging in human trafficking or buying
commercial sex, not just because of the UCMJ or National Security
Presidential Directive 22, but because it is the right thing to do.
In the DC area, DHS has put up posters that say "If you see something, say
something." We can live our lives by the principle of "If you see
trafficking, say stop."
And so we have to have those tough conversations with friends. Whether it is
the US and our allies in the annual report, or us and our buddies. Friends
have to be honest enough to help each other confront inconvenient truths. To
stand for the challenge that actor Ashton Kutcher has laid down: real men
don't buy girls. Or women for that matter.
But it is not enough to think that personal intolerance, or abstention, is
sufficient. Real men need to speak out against bad behavior. Even when it's
tough. Even when it's a friend, an associate, a colleague. Especially then.
Bachelor parties, R and R's, when it's your best friend or your boss or your
brother-in-law and you're just not the type to cause drama. Think of the
drama in the woman's life that - absent your action - would otherwise
continue unabated.
Do something. Make buying sex as embarrassing as it should be.
In the wake of the Civil War, the promise of freedom was so often delivered
by your predecessors. Navy and Coast Guard cutters intercepted raiders who
tried to kidnap newly-freed slaves to take them to Cuba and Hispaniola. The
Army enforced the involuntary servitude statutes in the occupied South.
Military governors and courts freed domestic servants from peonage in the
Southwest territories.
Today, whether in a broken Haitian village or a war-torn countryside, we
rely on you to be equally vigilant. Third Country Nationals brought in by
contractors. The local women and girls. Even things explained away as
cultural practices, such as the Haitian "restaveks" or the Afghan "bacha
bazi". All of these things can be prevented by you, both in your commands
and in your personal lives.
Collectively, we cannot afford to have a fragmented or partial U.S.
Government approach. The Department of State stands ready to partner with
you to advance the anti-trafficking efforts of the countries within your
area of responsibility, for instance, by leveraging your expertise to build
capacity and train foreign law enforcement.
As a nation looked to as a world leader on this issue, much is expected of
us. And, as Americans we expect much from ourselves. And so let us heed the
words of President Obama, "From every corner of our Nation, to every part of
the globe, [let us] stand firm in defense of freedom and bear witness for
those exploited by modern slavery."
Source: U.S. Department of State
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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