11 May 2005
Stemming the International Trafficking of Children
Ambassador John R. Miller is senior advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Each year 600,000 to 800,000 people — half of them children — are forced from their homes and their countries to work in other countries. These children are being used as soldiers, camel jockeys, and forced laborers, or engaged in commercial sexual exploitation. The U.S. government, working directly with governments and through nongovernmental organizations, is committed to stopping child traffickers, rehabilitating child victims, and reunifying them with their families. "We must fight government corruption, which allows trafficking to flourish and destabilizes economies," says Ambassador John Miller, the State Department's top official in the effort to stem human trafficking. "We must step up law enforcement to rescue child slaves and deter traffickers. And we must improve our prevention efforts so children are not vulnerable to this terrible crime."
Since all countries have outlawed slavery, many people think the practice is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the crime of trafficking in persons, or modern-day slavery, is thriving in 2005, and it is having a particular impact on children around the globe.
When we talk about trafficking in persons, we are talking about victims who are forced, defrauded, or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. The U.S. government estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each year. Shockingly, up to half of all trafficking victims may be children, who are used as soldiers, camel jockeys, and forced laborers, or engaged in prostitution. The forced labor takes many forms, from backbreaking work in stone quarries, to domestic servitude, to factory and fieldwork.
In response to this egregious offense, the U.S. Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000. The law mandates a yearly State Department report that reviews foreign government actions to prevent trafficking, protect the victims, including children, and prosecute the traffickers. It must report on U.S. efforts in these areas. In 2004, the U.S. government gave more than $96 million in funding for anti-trafficking programs abroad, and we are aggressively working to raise public awareness to the plight of children trapped in lives of bondage.
COOPERATIVE EFFORTS
As a result of our work and that of others, progress is being made to combat the problem on every front. Since 2003, there have been nearly 3,000 convictions of traffickers, and 40 countries have passed comprehensive anti-trafficking laws. There are a number of efforts to warn vulnerable people of trafficking schemes so that slavery can be prevented before it begins. And partnerships between government and nongovernmental organizations have led to successful initiatives that are improving children's lives by freeing them from forced labor and other forms of slavery.
For example, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) is using U.S. funding to rehabilitate children who were abducted and trafficked to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) bases in southern Sudan and northern Uganda. Many of these children were forced to kill friends and family members as a result of their conscription. IRC also works to support children who flee Ugandan villages for towns every night for fear of abduction by the rebel LRA group.
To combat the enslavement of children used as camel jockeys, in December 2004 the government of the United Arab Emirates opened a shelter, managed by the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust, to care for trafficking victims. The shelter serves many boys who have been trampled by the camels they were forced to ride. As of March 2005, this shelter had rescued and cared for as many as 50 children, at least 16 of whom have been repatriated.
The International Organization for Migration, in partnership with the Department of State, relevant Ghanaian government ministries, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and local nongovernmental organizations, works to identify and provide documentation to children who have been trafficked to Ghana's Lake Volta region to work in the fishing industry. To help stop the trafficking of children in this region, this program provides counseling for the child victims, family reunification, and activities to help reintegrate children into daily life. Togbega Hadjor, paramount chief of Ghana's Bakpa Traditional Area, was honored as a hero in the State Department's 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report for his work with this project and his efforts to raise awareness in the region.
We are also working with Free the Slaves to shut down fishing villages in the Bay of Bengal region of Bangladesh that use child slaves. Since October 2004, Bangladeshi police and coast guard have rescued 129 children.
As part of President Bush's initiative to combat all forms of human trafficking, Catholic Relief Services is working with Brazilian law enforcement to identify the routes traffickers use to exploit their victims. They are also working to improve coordination between law enforcement and labor inspectors in order to detect and investigate these activities so that more children can be free.
"NO ONE DESERVES TO BE A SLAVE"
Even with all of the efforts under way, we know that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children remain enslaved, and this is a challenge we must face fully and without delay. We must fight government corruption, which allows trafficking to flourish and destabilizes economies. We must step up law enforcement to rescue child slaves and deter traffickers. And we must improve our prevention efforts so that children are not vulnerable to this terrible crime.
The movement to forever abolish the trafficking and enslavement of children continues, and I am proud the United States has taken a leading role to create a world, as President Bush said in his 2005 inaugural address, where "no one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave."
From the May 2005 edition of eJournal USA
