17 January 2008
Modern Abolitionists at the U.S. State Department
How the U.S. government fights human trafficking
Washington -- After recruiters painted a beautiful picture of foreign job prospects, Aye Aye Win, a Burmese national, and some 800 Burmese migrants willingly traveled to a shrimp-farming and -processing factory and were forced to work day and night, were never paid and were forbidden to leave the remote barbed-wire-fenced compound.
When she tried to escape, she was tied to a pole in a courtyard, beaten and denied food or water. She was freed by Thai police in 2006.
Reflecting on Aye Aye’s story, Mark Lagon, head of the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, asked: “Beaten and tortured, starved and humiliated: Is this not slavery?”
The U.S. government estimates that some 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders annually and millions more are trafficked within their own countries. They are coerced into indentured servitude or bonded labor, bought and sold into prostitution, domestic servitude or farm labor and captured to serve as child soldiers. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are female, and up to 50 percent are minors. Most females are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.
The State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, with a staff of 31 people, now is recognized widely, not the least because of its annual report on trafficking. In operation only since November 2001, the office was recognized by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as “one of the most effective units in the U.S. government.”
THE TIP REPORT
The office emphasizes what it calls “the three P’s”: prosecuting traffickers, protecting and assisting victims and preventing trafficking from occurring or continuing. Its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report ranks 164 countries into one of four categories (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 3) based on their compliance with the minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking. Much of the report’s information is collected during on-the-ground visits by office representatives, who venture into isolated regions to uncover hidden routes and trafficking tactics.
In part because of the report:
• Cambodia shut down a red-light district where 10-year-olds openly were sold and prostituted and “cheap girls” were advertised on the Internet;
• Japan slashed the number of entertainment visas issued to certified Filipina dancers, singers or other entertainers because traffickers were forcing many of these women into prostitution;
• The United Arab Emirates eliminated the exploitation of South Asian boys as camel-racing jockeys and paid for the repatriation of more than 1,000 boys to their home countries;
• Jamaica pledged to step up prosecutions this year;
• Saudi Arabia said it intended to adopt the 2000 U.N. Trafficking in Persons Protocol; and
• Taiwan vowed to strengthen its antitrafficking laws.
From the report’s release in June through the following February, office representatives engage foreign governments on antitrafficking objectives in the report and collect fresh information. The most important destinations are Tier 3, Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 2 countries deemed at risk of falling to lower categories in the coming year.
FORGING PARTNERSHIPS
The office manages a variety of grants, ranging from $25,000 to more than $1 million. One such grant provided partial funding for a Journal of the American Medical Association study on the link between sex trafficking and HIV incidence. The study found that HIV prevalence among women trafficked from Nepal and prostituted in India is 38 percent and exceeds 60 percent among girls prostituted prior to 15 years of age.
The office also creates new models for rescuing, rehabilitating and repatriating victims. It partnered with the International Finance Corporation in 2006 to provide counseling, job training and employment opportunities for human trafficking victims and at-risk women in developing countries.
The office partners with U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the International Justice Mission, Free the Slaves, World Vision, the Protection Project, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and the Polaris Project. A recent collaboration with the Polaris Project studied the migration of Washington pimps and traffickers from the streets to online outlets following police crackdowns.
Worldwide, the office has partnerships with grantees from India to Mexico, governments from Sweden to Ghana and international entities such as the International Labor Organization.
The office also has consulted on movies, television shows and books, including the Lifetime Network’s film Human Trafficking, screened in more than 80 U.S. embassies worldwide.
ACTION AT HOME
Addressing trafficking in the United States, Lagon said, “In addition to offering advice to other governments on how to live up to the basic standards of the U.N. Protocol on TIP, efforts at home are invaluable to our diplomacy.” He added, “These actions show we have a problem, are trying to make strides, hold ourselves to account and have models to share as partners.”
“This campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking to find more victims is a quintessentially American response,” Lagon said. “It’s an exceptionally important effort because we are helping the most degraded, most exploited, most dehumanized people in the world.”
The author is a public affairs specialist in the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. This article was adapted from a longer piece that appeared in the January 2008 edition of State Magazine.
