“Lives Are For Sale In Europe”, Warns UNODC

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VIENNA, 16 October (UN Information Service) - In the run up to EU anti-trafficking day (18 October), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has issued a report showing that trafficking in persons is an under-detected crime in Europe.

The report, based on UNODC's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (launched in February 2009), says less people (1 in 100,000) are being convicted for human trafficking in Europe than for rare crimes like kidnapping. Only 9,000 victims were reported in 2006 - around 30 times less than the total estimated number. "Perhaps police are not finding the traffickers and victims because they are not looking for them", said the UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.

The report shows a high degree of internal trafficking, both domestically within European countries and regionally within the European Union (predominantly from South-eastern to Western Europe). At the same time, European victims represent just a fraction of the total number of victims detected in Europe. Recent trends show a steady decline of flows from traditional sources, and a marked increase in victims from China and Central Asia.

Most identified victims of human trafficking in Europe are young women, trafficked for sexual exploitation. Around 10 per cent of trafficking victims in Europe are children. There are also detected cases of men in forced labour, like construction and agriculture. "Lives should not be for sale or for rent on a continent that prohibits slavery and forced labour, and prides itself on upholding human dignity", said Mr. Costa.

Most of the prosecuted traffickers are locals, predominantly men. Where foreign traffickers are present, they are often of the same nationality as the victims. Curiously, for a crime where most victims are women, the number of prosecuted female offenders is higher for human trafficking than for other crimes. "We need to better understand why people traffic their kin, and why women exploit other women", said the head of UNODC.

On a positive note, the report shows that in the past six years since the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children came into force in December 2003, most European countries have criminalized trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and forced labour.

It also highlights the progress that has been made to improve collection of data on human trafficking within the European Union.

* *** *

A full copy of the report is available at:
http://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/Trafficking_in_Persons_in_Europe_09.pdf

The Asia Foundation : Report - Combating Human Trafficking in Vietnam

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Combating Human Trafficking in Vietnam

Lessons learned and practical experiences for future program design and implementation. 2002-2008. The report features an overview culled from The Foundation's experience in implementing program interventions in collaboration with an expanding network of local and international partners that share our commitment to bettering the lives of trafficking victims and protecting those at-risk of being trafficked.

BBC - Six jailed for Vietnam baby fraud

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Six Vietnamese have been sentenced to jail for arranging more than 300 fraudulent adoptions, an official said.

The six were jailed for two to four-and-a-half years for "abuse of power", court official Nguyen Tien Hung said.

Among those convicted were two heads of provincial welfare centres, doctors, nurses and local officials.

They were found to have filed false papers to allow babies from poor families to be adopted, many by parents in France, Italy and the US.

Ten other people received suspended sentences of 15 to 18 months.

They came from the province of Nam Dinh, south of Hanoi.

The falsified papers said the babies had been abandoned, making them eligible for adoption by foreign parents, the prosecutors said.

The group was operating from 2005 to July 2008, when the two key suspects were arrested.

The case came to light last year after the US embassy in Hanoi accused Vietnam of failing to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud and baby-selling to flourish.

The US report led Vietnam to end a bilateral adoption agreement.

UNICEF - Resources on child protection in Southeast Asia

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Reversing the Trend : Child Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia
This report is a regional assessment of UNICEF’s efforts to address child trafficking, drawing on country assessments conducted in China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam in early 2008. It also highlights trends, gaps, lessons learned, promising and good practices across the region. Despite varying contexts and different experiences across these countries. Click to download the report.

Everyday fears: A study of children’s perceptions of living in the southern border area of Thailand
The study found that the children suffer anxiety and stress associated with the ongoing threat andanticipation of violence, as well as their own violent experiences and their proximity to places vulnerableto violent attacks. Their everyday experiences...

Someone that matters: The quality of care in childcare institutions in Indonesia
A joint report released by DEPSOS, Save the Children and UNICEF is the first ever comprehensive research into the quality of care in childcare institutions in Indonesia. The report provides a detailed assessment of 37 childcare institutions across 6 provi

Officials to Close Calais Camp of Migrants Headed to Britain - NYTimes.com

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By NADIM AUDI and CAROLINE BROTHERS

CALAIS, France — French officials this week will shut down a camp on the northern French coast where hundreds of Afghans, Pakistanis and other illegal migrants have gathered for years in the hope of making clandestine journeys across the English Channel.

The camp, labeled “the jungle” by migrants and this city’s residents alike for its location among the thorn bushes and sand dunes of Calais, has been a source of tension since late 2002, when migrants started to camp out around the port after the closing of a Red Cross center in nearby Sangatte.

The move to eliminate the tents and ramshackle housing around the port is designed to halt migrants without papers from getting into Britain, and to crack down on the smuggling networks that assist them.

“Smugglers will not lay down the law,” France’s immigration minister, Eric Besson, said last Wednesday, adding that the camp would be closed by the end of this week. He first announced the plan in April, responding to complaints from local businesses.

The closing of the camp, which may begin as early as Tuesday, is taking place as European countries increasingly use force to crack down on unwanted migrants. On July 12, Greece eliminated a makeshift camp in the port city of Patras; in May, Italy struck a controversial accord with Libya allowing it to turn back migrants’ boats in the Mediterranean. The European Union estimates that 500,000 people cross its borders without papers each year.

In an interview on Monday, Pierre Bousquet, the prefect for the Pas-de-Calais region, who is directing the operation to shut the camp, said a riot police contingent that rotates permanently through Calais had been reinforced, giving him some 500 officers to ensure that the clearance operation went smoothly.

“I hope to end this situation in a dignified and honorable manner,” he said.

The number of migrants in the camp swelled to around 1,400 in August, according to Vincent Lenoir at Salam, an aid group whose volunteers have operated a soup kitchen for the migrants over the past seven years. But the number of migrants has dropped to under 300 currently, Mr. Bousquet said, in part because officials have swept some of the areas where they gather.

Frustrated at the difficulties of getting to Britain — attractive because of its large communities of Africans and South Asians and its underground economy — more migrants are now trying to reach Scandinavia, according to asylum data from the United Nations refugee agency and national ministries.

On Monday, migrants in Calais said that they were aware of the imminent police crackdown but that they were unsure what they should do. Many said that they had fled strife in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan and Iran, and that they had nowhere else to turn.

Mohammed Bashir, 24, a teacher from Logar Province in Afghanistan, said he had been at the camp for a month. “Let the police come,” he said. “Where are we going to run away? There is nowhere to go.”

Moustafa Tcharminian, a 38-year-old from Tehran, moved from the camp to under a bridge recently. He said that closing the camp would have an impact on the migrants now in Calais because they would be put in detention or deported. But he insisted that it would have little impact on the smugglers. “The smugglers are in love with money,” he said. “They will keep sending people and lying to them, telling them to go.”

Asked whether the closing of the Calais camp would send migrants elsewhere in Europe, Mr. Bousquet, the official, conceded that the issue of how to deal with the migrants was a broader problem. “I am at the end of the chain,” he said.

Interviews with residents of Calais, which has seen migrants flock to the region since Poles came to work the mines in the 1920s, indicated that few believed that a police action would put an end to clandestine arrivals in the port, from which England is visible across the water, about 20 miles away.

“They’re only taking the problem somewhere else,” said Fabrice Lecoustre, 52, a cafe owner in the center of the city. “Where are they going to go now? Downtown? At least in Sangatte they had showers and toilets.”

Nadim Audi reported from Calais, and Caroline Brothers from Paris.

Diplomatic Immunity at Issue in Domestic-Worker Abuse Cases - washingtonpost.com

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By Sarah Fitzpatrick
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 20, 2009

When Lauro L. Baja Jr. returned to his native Philippines in 2007, he had just finished a four-year stint as ambassador to the United Nations that included two terms as president of the Security Council. A storied diplomatic career that began in 1967 culminated with the Philippine president conferring upon him the highest award for foreign service. Then a three-month episode from his U.N. days returned to haunt him.

He was sued by Marichu Suarez Baoanan, who had worked as a maid in New York City for Baja and his wife, Norma Castro Baja.

Baoanan, 40, said the Bajas brought her to the United States in 2006 promising to find her work as a nurse. Instead, Baoanan said, she was forced to endure 126-hour workweeks with no pay, performing household chores and caring for the couple's grandchild. Baja denied the charges, saying Baoanan was compensated. He also invoked diplomatic immunity -- a right that usually halts such cases in their tracks.

But in June, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the former U.N. ambassador could not claim immunity because Baoanan's "duties benefited the Baja family's personal household needs, and are unrelated to Baja's diplomatic functions."

Baoanan's attorney, Ivy Suriyopas, called the ruling "an important shift" in cases involving diplomatic immunity.

"Only one other case involving diplomatic immunity and domestic workers was able to progress this far," Suriyopas said. Baja's attorney, Salvador E. Tuy, called the charges "untrue." The trial is ongoing.

The case highlights what advocates call a longtime pattern of trafficking and exploitation of domestic workers by foreign diplomats in the United States.

"Unfortunately, cases involving diplomatic employers represent a disproportionate amount of the domestic-worker abuse cases we see," said Suzanne Tomatore, director of the Immigrant Women and Children Project at the New York City Bar Justice Center.

A July 2008 Government Accountability Office report identified 42 cases of abuse by diplomats over an eight-year period but emphasized that the actual number was probably higher. "Nobody expected a number this big," said Thomas Melito, GAO director of the section on international affairs and trade. Under the Vienna Conventions, diplomatic immunity provides a shield from prosecution that is "almost absolute," said George Washington University law professor Sean Murphy, who spent 11 years in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser.

Workers have historically had little success with complaints of abuse against diplomats. For example, Mildrate Yancho Nchang said she toiled for three years without pay or a day off and then was hospitalized after being beaten by a Cameroonian diplomat's wife. She sued in federal court in Maryland, but the case was dismissed in 2006 when the diplomat asserted immunity.

Advocates and lawyers say that the U.S. government does little to protect workers or hold foreign diplomats accountable. Local law enforcement is often the first to learn of allegations. However, with a diplomat involved, local authorities must wait for guidance from the Justice Department.

"Federal law enforcement doesn't have the capacity to take on every abuse allegation, and local law enforcement isn't always equipped to do so. Victims of abuse and trafficking find themselves in the gap between," Tomatore said.

Justice Department officials must confer with the State Department, the gatekeeper for all complaints against diplomats. As State Department officials weigh the implications of criminal or civil proceedings, a case can take months to resolve, the GAO said.

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said the GAO may have overstated the delays.

Although Justice declined to say how many probes it had undertaken, the GAO report cited 19 trafficking investigations involving foreign diplomats from 2005 to 2008. No case brought an indictment.

State Department officials say they must balance protocol and worker protections.

Recently, a draft copy of State's 2008 report on human trafficking cited high-profile cases involving diplomats from Kuwait and Tanzania. The reference to the two countries was cut from the final report, according to sources with knowledge of the draft report who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Luis CdeBaca, the ambassador at large on trafficking issues, said that his office takes abuse reports seriously but that the issue presents unique challenges.

"Immunity should not mean impunity to enslave domestic servants on U.S. soil, and we will continue to work to ensure that these domestic workers are accorded full rights and human dignity in our country," CdeBaca said.

But State has yet to deny or revoke a diplomatic visa or implement sanctions as a result of an abuse allegation.

There are signs of progress. In February 2008, State sent pamphlets to all overseas posts to inform incoming A-3/G-5 visa holders of their rights. Consular officials must verify that each applicant has understood the information. The pamphlet is available only in English.

In December, Congress reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, with safeguards for visa holders. The law now requires State to assume greater oversight of complaints and cooperate more closely with Justice.

But the State Department has been slow to implement the policy changes required under the law.

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The New Domestic Order - Nation

by Lizzy Ratner

September 9, 2009

DOMESTIC WORKERS UNION

Deloris Wright has been a nanny for twenty-one years. In the strange class warp of Manhattan's Upper East and West Sides, this places her squarely among the ranks of the invisible, a ministering ghost who is rarely seen and never heard. And yet, there she was on a startling spring Saturday, a 54-year-old Jamaican domestic worker standing at the edge of Central Park, demanding her rights.

"We take care of your children. We take them to school, to French classes, we clean your homes, do your laundry, and we care for your aging parents, right here in this neighborhood," she shouted into a microphone. "Now, with the economic crisis, we are thrown out into the street with no notice and no severance pay, no unemployment, no safety net, no nothing.... Some of our employers treat their pets with more humanity than they would treat us."

Before her, a crowd of several hundred supporters whooped and hollered. They were union leaders, young activists, sympathetic employers and, of course, domestic workers--women from a UN's worth of countries who understood Wright all too well. Patricia Francois, 50, a Trinidadian nanny, had recently been forced to leave her job after her male employer--a documentary filmmaker who lives opposite Carnegie Hall--allegedly punched, slapped and verbally abused her. Mona Lunot, a Filipina domestic worker, had spent her first nine months in the United States all but indentured to an employer who took her passport and denied her a single day off--a situation she endured until she finally escaped in the middle of the night.

Like many domestic workers, these women toiled in underpaid drudgery even during the best of times, members of a profession so devalued it is still excluded from many of the nation's labor laws. But as the economy collapsed, their lot grew even harder. So they headed to the Upper East Side--epicenter of the domestic trade, playground of Wall Street's bailout chiefs--to press their case for their own government rescue plan: the first ever Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights.

This bill, which has been battling its way through the New York State legislature for five years, aims to provide basic protections to many of the estimated 200,000 nannies, housekeepers and eldercare-givers who labor in New York State. Backed by a diverse coalition of labor and religious groups and even employers, it calls for severance and overtime pay, advance notice of termination, one day off a week, holidays, healthcare and annual cost of living increases, among other fundamental rights. By most accounts, it should have passed in June, but an epic power struggle in the State Senate halted all business for a month. Now domestic workers are hoping their bill will pass in September.

"We are fighting for the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, for respect, for recognition, for justice," declared Wright, rousing the crowd before sending it marching past the pre-war palaces of Wall Street honchos like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley co-president Walid Chammah and former Treasury Secretary and ex-Citigroup director Robert Rubin. On normal days some of these women might have turned in to one of these buildings, unseen and uncounted, the real invisible hands of the market. But on this day they sang and chanted: "We're fired up! We won't take it no more!"

Throughout the long history of American domestic work, women have come together to demand rights, respect, a livable wage and, literally, a room of their own (domestic workers have all too frequently been banished to basements, laundry rooms and couches). In 1881, for instance, members of an Atlanta group called the Washing Society successfully organized washerwomen to strike for higher wages. The twentieth century saw at least two extended organizing episodes--one in the '30s and one led by the Household Technicians of America in the '70s--as Eileen Boris and Premilla Nadasen explained in the December 2008 issue of WorkingUSA.

As the fight for the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights suggests, a new movement is rising, with ambitions to take a mortal thwack at the industry's injustices. "We are looking to change the law, we are looking to make history, we are looking to get fair labor standards," says Francois, now a movement leader.

This latest domestic-worker uprising extends well beyond New York, though the Bill of Rights campaign is its most visible expression. In fact, throughout the past decade, nannies, housekeepers and eldercare-givers have been coming together in Florida, Texas, California and beyond--first a few women, then a few more in a rare kind of political parthenogenesis. Together, these women forged a movement that spans ten cities, several thousand members, dozens of nationalities and ever more groups. In 2007 thirteen of these formed the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a multiethnic, multilingual coalition; now it has eighteen member groups. Though they are all still evolving, their efforts have already garnered ecstatic praise.

"It is really a multiracial, multiethnic form of feminism that we haven't seen very often in US history," says Nadasen, a professor of history at Queens College. "Through their activism they are expanding our notion of what feminism means." Ed Ott, former director of the New York City Central Labor Council, adds that the campaign represents "a model project for people who are working under the most brutal conditions."

Others, meanwhile, praise the women for weaving three of our era's most important movements into one: a women's movement, striking out at the stigma against household labor as women's labor and therefore not really labor at all; a workers' movement, defying notions about what kinds of workers can and should be organized; and an immigrants' movement, melding the struggle for rights here with the struggle for rights abroad.

This new movement began stirring in immigrant enclaves during the Clinton years, as the country's rising appetite for domestic labor began increasingly to be satisfied by poor women from far-flung lands. "This generation of domestic-worker organizing really started in the mid-'90s out of the changes in the political economy," explains Ai-jen Poo, 35, the whip-smart lead organizer of New York's Domestic Workers United (DWU). "On the one hand," Poo says, "you had globalization pushing people out of their home countries in search of a means to support their families. And then you had global cities like New York that needed a workforce of low-wage service workers who would meet the day-to-day needs of the sort of white-collar workers who were operating the global economy."

If this sounds theoretical, it has nonetheless had very real implications for the country's growing domestic labor force (estimated at around 2 million). The ranks of domestic-worker activists are filled with globalization's refugees--with women like DWU member Barbara Young, 61, who lost her job as a bus conductor in Barbados in 1992 after the IMF pushed the government to downsize its transit force; and Linda Abad, 57, a Filipina domestic worker and organizer who opted to "join the global surplus labor" supply, as she put it, because the structurally adjusted Filipino economy made survival (and her kids' education) increasingly difficult.

Abad is a taut, quick woman whose story is instructive. When she left her family to find work in this country, she didn't expect a rosy transition, but she didn't expect the "discrimination" and "alienation" either: the New Jersey employer who refused to help with medical treatment after she injured her back on the job; the Park Avenue beauty magazine editor (married to a Goldman Sachs executive) whose building required Abad to ride the service elevator; the editor's frequent screaming episodes, which inspired one of the kids to do the same while hitting her and pulling her hair. "Because they have the economic power," she says, "they think they can do anything with their workers inside their homes." So she joined with other domestic workers to found the Damayan Migrant Workers Association.

Certainly there are instances of benevolence, but the women interviewed for this article cited a breathtaking range of abuses, from denial of minimum wage, days off, holidays and overtime pay to wage theft, verbal and physical abuse, sexual harassment, even slavery. Poo still gets teary when she remembers one of the first women who sought her help, a Jamaican housekeeper and nanny who was brought to this country by an electronics executive and his family at age 15 and held in latter-day servitude. For fifteen years, she raised their three kids and never received a salary because she was told that her mother was getting her checks. But the checks were never sent, and her employers gradually cut off her communication with her family. "Ultimately the way she escaped was that the kids she took care of saved their piggy bank money and gave it to her to run away," recalls Poo. "And she didn't want to press criminal charges because she didn't want to take the parents away from the kids."

Poo and her colleagues managed to win the woman a $125,000 settlement. For several years after that, DWU and other groups focused on the plight of individuals. But before long, domestic-worker activists recognized that if they really wanted to change the industry, they had to organize--an awareness that seems to have happened almost simultaneously across the movement. The members realized that "for every single case that our legal department might be able to resolve, there's always going to be another one or another ten coming through," recalls Alexis de Simone, 27, the former women's organizer at CASA de Maryland, a Latin American immigrants' rights group.

Put differently, they realized that they had to begin attacking the roots of domestic-worker exploitation, which extend at least as far back as slavery--in many ways the structural antecedent of modern domestic work--and touch on everything from the devaluation of women's work to the ravages of neocolonialism to the very institution that's supposed to protect people's rights. "The government is in this, very much so," says Abad.

The government has been an active player in the exploitation of domestic workers for years, but the cardinal example belongs to the 1930s: that's when the architects of the New Deal, when doling out labor rights, explicitly excluded domestic and agricultural workers (both predominantly African-American) from such landmark laws as the National Labor Relations Act. Arguments around the government's right to regulate the private sphere played a role in the decision, but skin color was clearly the defining factor. "It was an exclusion premised primarily around the issue of race, that Southerners would continue to have control over the labor force of the South," explains Nadasen.

Seventy years later, some of these wrongs have been partially righted--thanks largely to the last great domestic-worker movement, which managed to win federal minimum wage and other protections in 1974. But enormous gaps remain. "Casual" workers like baby sitters and "companions" for the elderly are still barred from minimum wage protections, and all domestic workers remain excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees the right to organize, as well as the Occupational Safety and Health Act. And because most domestic workers labor in environments with fewer than fifteen employees, they are also excluded from such key civil rights legislation as the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Title VII, which bars most kinds of employment discrimination. Add to this the difficulty of enforcing even the few protections that do exist--particularly for undocumented workers--and for many domestic workers it's still 1934.

All of which raises some weighty questions. How do you begin to undo all these decades of exploitation, particularly without the right to organize? How do you build power where there's been none before?

One increasingly popular answer has been to push for legislation creating rights for household workers. In 2003 New York City domestic workers persuaded the City Council to pass a bill requiring placement agencies to obtain signed promises from employers to respect minimum wage, overtime and Social Security obligations. Five years later, the women of CASA de Maryland led a successful campaign for a bill requiring employers in Montgomery County to provide workers with written wage and benefits contracts. More recently, a number of the groups have gone international, working with domestic-worker unions in South Africa, Trinidad, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Their current goal is to persuade the International Labor Organization to pass a convention protecting the rights of domestic workers by 2011.

Still, by far the biggest effort has been the battle for the Bill of Rights in New York--a campaign that is being closely watched by domestic workers across the country, though particularly in California, where groups have already begun plotting their own 2010 push for a bill. (In 2006 they nearly passed similar, if more modest, legislation, but it was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.) "We know that if it gets passed in New York, it's going to help legislative efforts across the country," said Beatriz Hererra, an organizer with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) in San Francisco.

On a sparkling afternoon, four domestic workers sat in the basement offices of Adhikaar, a women-led Nepali rights group in Queens, discussing the Bill of Rights. Escapees of Nepal's civil strife, they were mostly middle-aged and older, and their tales ranged from nasty, name-calling employers, to seventeen-hour workdays for $4 an hour, to one woman's four-year nightmare toiling for a family that refused to pay her or let her leave. These women know that the Bill of Rights won't solve all their problems; for that they'll need even greater transformations in women's rights, immigrants' rights and global economic policy. But when asked what the bill could mean, they shouted enthusiastically.

"We have to work seventeen hours a day, and hopefully with this we'll have to work less," declared a woman named Basanta. "It will be better than now!" added another named Brinda. "We can get our leave!" "Christmas Day, New Year!" "Minimum wage!" shouted others.

By most accounts, the quest for the Bill of Rights began out of discussions like this--specifically, out of the dreams of some 250 domestic workers who gathered in 2003 to discuss what it would take for them "to feel respect and recognition on the job," according to Poo. The resulting legislative odyssey hasn't always been easy. Even in the absence of any vocal opposition, some legislators (in particular, those whose constituents tend to be employers) have balked at some of the bill's most basic demands, like health benefits and severance pay.

Nonetheless, this past spring, the legislative gears finally began to turn, and after years of lobbying and forging alliances with labor unions, religious leaders and sympathetic employers, a Bill of Rights is close to becoming reality. Governor David Paterson supports the bill and has promised to sign it. On June 23 the State Assembly passed a modified version, a so-called Inclusion Bill that guarantees important rights like overtime, a day of rest per week and inclusion in state human rights and collective bargaining laws (though it leaves out important others). Now all that remains is for the State Senate to pass its version, which organizers hope will strengthen the Assembly version.

"At the end we're going to have what we all hope is protection for domestic workers, with some dignity in their work life, a real degree of enforcement for them, and a change in the discussion of how domestic workers should be treated," says State Senator Diane Savino, the Senate bill's lead sponsor, who has been pushing for a stronger version.

Will it be the dream Bill of Rights? Certainly it will be a powerful initial step, the first time a state has guaranteed domestic workers some of the rights and respect they have been denied for so long. But don't expect domestic worker activists to stop there. "The work has just begun," says Christine Lewis, a Trinidadian nanny and DWU activist. "To say that when the Bill of Rights comes through, that it's going to be a walk in the park--the work will just begin."

About Lizzy Ratner

Lizzy Ratner is a journalist who lives in New York.

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Trafficking on Trial

Friday, 07 August 2009 15:03 Nathan Green

Photo by: Shaju John/UNDP

A victim of human trafficking breaks down during testimony on Thursday at the Court of Women in Bali, Indonesia.

Bali, Indonesia
WITH tears flowing down her face, a trafficking survivor told a court of international jurists how she was condemned to a life with HIV by handlers who repeatedly raped her for refusing to have sex with strangers in a Malaysian brothel.

"I haven't talked to anyone about having the disease at all, except for my doctor," she told the Southeast Asia Court of Women on HIV, Human Trafficking and Migration on Thursday. "Whenever we talk about it, all I can do is cry, but I want to share my story so that if others are facing similar situations, they will have an idea of what to do."

The Cambodian, who uses the pseudonym Wanta and spoke only on condition of anonymity, was barely a teenager when she was forced into prostitution, but officials say she is far from alone in her plight.

Though the exact number is not known, it is estimated that more than 250,000 women and children are trafficked in Asia each year - one-third of the global total.

Caitlin Wiesen, Regional HIV/Aids practice leader and programme coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme, said: "These numbers are staggering and involve forms of violence that are numbing."

Trafficking is not only a "hideous crime" and "gross violation of human rights", but also a major contributor to the spread of HIV, Wiesen warned. "Sexual exploitation is an integral part of human trafficking, and unprotected sex is the major vector for the transmission and spread of HIV."

Wanta appeared with 21 other survivors of trafficking and exploitation, including the woman pictured above, at an emotionally charged 37th sitting of the Court For Women in Bali, Indonesia, set up to explore the links between HIV and human trafficking.

Venezuela's Drug-Trafficking Role Is Growing Fast, U.S. Report Says

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 19, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, July 18 -- A report for the U.S. Congress on drug smuggling through Venezuela concludes that corruption at high levels of President Hugo Chávez's government and state aid to Colombia's drug-trafficking guerrillas have made Venezuela a major launching pad for cocaine bound for the United States and Europe.

Since 1996, successive U.S. administrations have considered Venezuela a key drug-trafficking hub, the Government Accountability Office report says. But now, it says, the amount of cocaine flowing into Venezuela from Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor and the world's top producer of the drug, has skyrocketed, going from an estimated 60 metric tons in 2004 to 260 metric tons in 2007. That amounted to 17 percent of all the cocaine produced in the Andes in 2007.

The report, which was first reported by Spain's El Pais newspaper Thursday and obtained by The Washington Post on Friday, represents U.S. officials' strongest condemnation yet of Venezuela's alleged role in drug trafficking. It says Venezuela has extended a "lifeline" to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the United States estimates has a hand in the trafficking of 60 percent of the cocaine produced in Colombia.

The report, scheduled to be made public in Washington on Monday, drew an angry response from Chávez, whose government has repeatedly clashed with the United States. Speaking to reporters in Bolivia on Friday, the populist leader characterized the report as a political tool used by the United States to besmirch his country. He also said the United States, as the world's top cocaine consumer, has no right to lecture Venezuela.

"The United States is the first narco-trafficking country," Chávez said, adding that Venezuela's geography -- particularly its rugged 1,300-mile border with Colombia -- makes it vulnerable to traffickers. He also asserted that Venezuela had made important gains in the drug war since expelling U.S. counter-drug agents in 2005, a measure the GAO says made Venezuela more attractive to Colombian traffickers.

"Venezuela has begun to hit narco-trafficking hard since the DEA left," Chávez said, referring to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "The DEA is filled with drug traffickers."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) commissioned the GAO study in February 2008, asking the nonpartisan agency to determine whether Venezuela was "in the process of becoming a narco-state, heavily dependent [on] and beholden to the international trade in illegal drugs."

In a statement about the GAO report, Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the findings "have heightened my concern that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with the United States on drug interdiction is related to corruption in that country's government." He said the report underscores a need for a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

The release of the report is expected to provide ammunition to some Republican lawmakers who have criticized the Obama administration's efforts to reinstate the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, a close ally of Chávez. U.S. diplomats have said that despite his ties to Chávez, Zelaya should be returned to power to serve the six months left in his term.

A Democratic aide in Congress who works on Latin American policy issues suggested that the call for a review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela could interfere with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid to improve relations with Caracas, which were badly frayed during the Bush years. "The administration inherited a messy bilateral relationship and deserves a chance to put it on a more even keel," the aide said.

The GAO report describes how cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled into Venezuela via land and river routes, as well as on short flights originating from remote regions along Colombia's eastern border. Most of the cocaine is then shipped out on merchant vessels, fishing boats and so-called go-fast boats. Though most of it is destined for U.S. streets, increasing amounts are being sent to Europe, the report says.

The GAO contends that corruption in Venezuela, reaching from officers in the National Guard to officials in top levels of government, has contributed to the surge in trafficking.

In September, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated three Venezuelan high-ranking officials, all close aides to Chávez, as "drug kingpins" for protecting FARC drug shipments and providing arms and funding to Colombian guerrillas. They are Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, director of the military's Intelligence Directorate; Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva, head of the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services; and Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, former interior and justice minister.

News of the GAO report came as Colombian officials in Bogota released an internal FARC video in which the rebel group's second-in-command, Jorge Briceño, reads the deathbed manifesto, written in March 2008, by the then-supreme commander, Manuel Marulanda. In the video, seized in May from a FARC operative and obtained by the Associated Press, Marulanda stresses the strategic importance of "maintaining good political relations, friendship and confidence with the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador."

Marulanda's letter also laments that a trove of internal e-mails, many of them compromising Venezuelan and Ecuadoran officials, fell into the hands of Colombian authorities that month. Briceño, reading the letter to a group of guerrillas in a jungle clearing, announces that among FARC "secrets" that were lost is information about the "assistance in dollars" to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa's 2006 presidential campaign.

Venezuela did not immediately respond to the video. But on Saturday, Correa, an ally of Chávez, denied receiving campaign funds from the FARC and suggested the video was a "setup."

"There is a setup to damage the image of the country and the government," he said in a radio address.

Drug-Cartel Links Haunt an Election South of Border

By JOEL MILLMAN and JOSE DE CORDOBA

COLIMA, Mexico -- The candidacy of Mario Anguiano, running for governor in a state election here Sunday, says a lot about Mexican politics amid the rise of the drug cartels.

A brother of the candidate is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Mexico for peddling methamphetamine. Another Anguiano is serving 27 years in a Texas prison for running a huge meth ring. A few weeks ago, a hand-painted banner hung on a highway overpass cited the Zetas, the bloodthirsty executioners for the Gulf Cartel drug gang, praising the candidate: "The Zetas support you, and we are with you to the death."

Mr. Anguiano says his meth-dealing brother was just an addict who sold small amounts to support his habit. He says the man jailed in Texas, reported by local media to be his cousin, may or may not be a relative. "If he is my cousin, I've never met him," he says. Denying any involvement with traffickers, he says the supposed Zetas endorsement was just a dirty trick by his election rivals.

If so, it backfired. In the weeks after the banner made local headlines, new polls showed Mr. Anguiano pulling ahead in the race. He is expected to be elected governor on Sunday.

The reaction suggests how blasé some voters have become about allegations of ties between their politicians and the drug underworld, as Mexico prepares to elect a new lower house of Congress, some state governors and many mayors. This, even as political experts and law-enforcement people worry that violent drug gangs are increasingly bankrolling a wide range of politicians' campaigns across Mexico, in return for turning a blind eye to their activities.
Cartel Turf Wars

The election comes amid President Felipe Calderón's all-out war on drug gangs, which wield armies of private gunmen and account for the bulk of illegal drugs sold in the U.S. The conservative president has deployed 45,000 troops to fight the gangs. In bloody confrontations between his forces and the cartels, and especially in turf battles among the cartels, an estimated 12,000 lives have been lost since Mr. Calderón took office in late 2006. June was the deadliest month yet: 769 drug-related killings, according to a count by Mexican newspapers.

Until recent years, Mexican drug traffickers focused the bulk of their bribery efforts on law enforcement rather than politicians. Their increasing involvement in local politics -- in town halls and state capitals -- is a response, experts say, to the national-level crackdown, to changes in the nature of the drug trade itself and to the evolution of Mexico's young democracy.

Mario Anguiano's campaign for governor in Mexico reveals the problems of power in a country with increasing narcotics trafficking and violence. WSJ's Joel Millman reports.

Starting in 2000, a system of fiercely contested multiparty elections began to replace 71 years of one-party rule, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "In this newly competitive, moderately democratic system, it takes serious money to run a political campaign," says James McDonald, a Mexico expert at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. "This has given the narcos a real entree into politics, by either running for office themselves or bankrolling candidates."

In addition, the gangs have evolved from simple drug-smuggling bands into organized-crime conglomerates with broad business interests, from local drug markets to extortion, kidnapping, immigrant smuggling and control of Mexico's rich market in knockoff compact discs. "There is more at stake than before. They need to control municipal governments," says Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor of law and economics at both Columbia University and Mexico's ITAM University.

Because of the federal crackdown and the warfare between rival cartels the drug traffickers also need more political allies than ever before.

Politicians who won't cooperate sometimes are threatened. On Monday, in the drug-producing state of Guerrero, a grenade blew up a sport-utility vehicle belonging to Jorge Camacho, a congressional candidate from President Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN. A message next to the destroyed car said, "Look, you S.O.B. candidate, hopefully, you will understand it is better you get out, you won't get a second chance to live."

Mr. Buscaglia says criminal groups' one-two punch of bribes and threats has given them either influence or control in 72% of Mexico's municipalities. He bases his estimate on observation of criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing and child-prostitution rings that operate openly, ignored by police.

According to a September 2007 intelligence assessment by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the governors of the states of Veracruz and Michoacán had agreements with the Gulf Cartel allowing free rein to that large drug-trafficking gang. In return, said the report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the cartel promised to reduce violence in Veracruz state and, in Michoacán, financed a gubernatorial race and many municipal campaigns across the state.

In Veracruz, the FBI report said, Gov. Fidel Herrera made a deal with the cartel letting it secure a drug route through the state. In an interview, Mr. Herrera said the allegation is "absolutely false, and has no basis in fact -- it never happened." The PRI politician said he has never had any dealings with a criminal organization and blamed a rival political operative, whom he declined to name, for trying to sabotage his career.

In Michoacán, the FBI report said, "in exchange for funding, the Gulf Cartel will be able to control the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, to continue to introduce cocaine and collect a 'tax'" from other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Control of Ports

Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, the Michoacán governor from the leftist PRD party who was in the office when the FBI said the deal was made, says the allegation is "totally false." Mr. Cárdenas Batel, grandson of the former Mexican president for whom the port is named, said Mexican ports are controlled by federal agencies, so drug traffickers have nothing to gain from bribing state officials in connection with them.

His successor, the winner of the 2007 election, is Leonel Godoy, also of the PRD. He calls the FBI allegation "an infamy" with "not a shred of evidence or any proof," and said he had never met or cut deals with drug traffickers. Messrs. Cárdenas Batel and Godoy both say they had alerted authorities before the elections about the growing infiltration of drug traffickers in Michoacán.

None of the three men -- Messrs. Cárdenas Batel, Godoy and Herrera -- have been charged with any crime. U.S. intelligence documents have occasionally proved unreliable in the past.

Police agents in Mexico City stand guard in May after a group of top officials from Michoacán were detained due to their alleged ties to 'La Familia' drug cartel. Ten mayors and 17 other officials were detained.

The Gulf Cartel doesn't appear to be the only gang with alleged influence in Michoacán officialdom. In May, soldiers and federal police arrested 10 mayors, as well as 17 police chiefs and state security officials, including a man who was in charge of the state's police-training academy. They have been charged with collaborating with "La Familia," the state's violent homegrown drug gang. Those arrested, who have said they are innocent victims of political vendettas, represented all three of Mexico's main political parties. On Monday, three more people, including the mayor of Lázaro Cárdenas, were arrested and charged with the same offense, according to the attorney general's office.

Five hundred miles to the north in the wealthy Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza García, a mayoral candidate from President Calderón's party sparked a scandal in June when he was recorded telling a gathering of supporters that security in the town was "controlled by" members of one of Mexico's most fearsome drug cartels, the Beltran Leyva gang.

The candidate, Mauricio Fernandez, seemed to suggest he would be willing to negotiate with the Beltran Leyvas if elected. "Penetration by drug traffickers is for real, and they approach every candidate who they think may win," Mr. Fernandez was recorded saying. "In my case, I made it very clear to them that I didn't want blatant selling."

Mr. Fernandez has acknowledged the audiotape's authenticity, but says his statements were taken out of context and that he had never met with members of the Beltran Leyva cartel. He says the full tape captures him saying he would not negotiate with the drug traffickers. As the election nears, he leads polls by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, Mayor David Monreal of the town of Fresnillo denied having anything to do with 14.5 tons of marijuana police found months ago in a chili-pepper-drying facility owned by his brother. Mr. Monreal, who plans to seek the governorship next year, said his political enemies planted the mammoth stash.

In the campaign, the state of Mexico's economy appears to trump the drug issue for many voters. The economy is shrinking amid slumps in oil production, in exports to the U.S., in tourism and in remittances from emigrants. Polls give the PRI, the party that ruled for seven decades, an advantage of about six percentage points.

The governing party has made President Calderon's campaign against drug traffickers its main theme, and polls show his policy of using the military in the effort is widely popular. But they also show a majority of Mexicans don't think he is winning the narco-war.

Drugs are certainly campaign fodder in the border state of Chihuahua, where former Ciudad Juárez Mayor Héctor Murguía is the PRI's candidate for a congressional seat. Two years ago, Mayor Murguía named as his chief of public security a businessman named Saulo Reyes Gamboa. Last year, Mr. Reyes was arrested by U.S. law-enforcement agents in El Paso, Texas, after allegedly paying someone he thought to be a corrupt U.S. federal officer to help smuggle drug loads. During the operation, federal agents found nearly half a ton of marijuana in a Texas house, which they say Mr. Reyes had arranged to smuggle from Mexico.

Mr. Reyes, who pleaded guilty and is now serving eight years in a federal prison in Kentucky, couldn't be reached for comment. Mayor Murguía says that he has had no involvement with the Juárez Cartel and that Mr. Reyes never contributed "even five pesos" to support his political career.

Despite the bad publicity, Mr. Murguía is leading in polls and is expected to win Sunday -- not unlike Mr. Anguiano, the candidate in Colima with the supposed endorsement from the Zetas.
Talking Frankly

In Colima, the candidate for governor from President Calderón's party, Martha Sosa Govea, hasn't faced any narco-tie allegations. But there has been plenty of comment about her protegé, national assembly candidate Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, thanks to a tape of him talking frankly about politics and drug traffickers, recorded by members of a rival party he was trying to win over.
[Drug-Cartel Links Haunt Election]

"You don't imagine how many 'nice' people have relations with those drug-trafficking bastards, and through them, the bastards bring things to you," he said on the tape. "They try to seduce you....They got close to me like they get close to half the world, and they sent me money."

Mr. Mendoza declined to comment, but has previously denied he took any money from the cartels. Ms. Sosa said the tape might have been doctored, and in any case, "just because they have him on a tape getting an offer of dirty money, there's still nothing on tape proving he accepted it."

The tape was turned over to federal authorities to determine whether it had been altered. Citing the proximity to the election, the Attorney General's office declined to comment on any of the drug cases.

Colima, though largely exempt from the narco-violence raging in neighboring states, has a reputation as a haven for traffickers, a sleepy place where residents don't ask questions about rich new neighbors. In the 1980s, Colima was home to a gentleman rancher from Guadalajara whom everybody knew as Pedro Orozco. He spent lavishly on schools, gave to charity and hung around with politicians.

In 1991, Mr. Orozco was gunned down in a firefight in Guadalajara, then Mexico's drug capital. It turned out the generous man-about-town was actually Manuel Salcido Uzueta, a top drug capo better known as Cochiloco, meaning the Mad Pig.

Ever since, Colima residents have grown cynical about the influence of drug gangs in politics. "Corruption? Drug ties? They say that about everyone who runs for office. Who can you believe?" says Salvador Ochoa, a local lawyer.

Ms. Sosa has been hammering her opponent, Mr. Anguiano, with claims that he has links to drug trafficking. But, she concedes, the response of many voters is, "Poor guy, why don't they just leave him alone?"

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com and Jose de Cordoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

Homeland Security, Pentagon Clash on Military's Role at Mexico Border

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 28, 2009

A proposal to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to counter drug trafficking has triggered a bureaucratic standoff between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security over the military's role in domestic affairs, according to officials in both departments.

The debate has engaged a pair of powerful personalities, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in what their subordinates describe as a turf fight over which agency should direct the use of troops to assist in the fight against Mexican cartels and which one should pay for them.

At issue is a proposal to send 1,500 additional troops to the border to analyze intelligence and to provide air support and technical assistance to border agencies. The governors of Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico began making the requests in January, drawing support from Napolitano but prompting objections from the Pentagon, where officials argue that it could lead to a permanent, expanded mission for the military.

President Obama has signaled that he is open to the idea, asking Congress for $250 million to deploy the National Guard while also saying he was "not interested in militarizing the border." In the war supplemental funding bill that Obama signed last week, lawmakers appropriated the money for other Justice and DHS border security but said the president could ask again when he reached a decision. The issue has been stalled before a National Security Council policy committee, after which it would go to Obama for a decision.

Neither Napolitano nor Gates has made the disagreement personal, although some of their aides have privately expressed exasperation at what one called an interagency "food fight."

"It should not be that we always rely on the Department of Defense to fulfill some need," said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., head of U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for defending the continental United States.

Border law enforcement agencies should have adequate funds to do their job, he said. If the Guard is tapped, it should be for capabilities "that do not exist elsewhere in government," Renuart said. "When we send the National Guard, they go with specific missions, with specific purposes. And we put some duration on that so there is an end state."

Homeland security officials and governors counter that there is a legitimate need for troops to back up border agencies against the most serious threat to the Southwest and that a deployment would not represent a new military mission. Under a 1989 law, the National Guard assigns 577 troops to help states with anti-drug programs, which "can easily expand," the four governors wrote Congress in April.

Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona prompted President George W. Bush to send 6,000 guardsmen to the border in 2006, has supported the governors.

Brian de Vallance, senior counselor to Napolitano, said she "feels we have an obligation to do whatever we can do to disrupt those forces that are destroying lives in over 200 American cities. . . . It comes down to whether folks want to be as aggressive as we can be against the cartels and take every advantage of this historic opportunity" of cooperation between Mexico and the United States.

The debate goes to the heart of the military's role, which has expanded since the 2001 terrorist attacks, with an increasing commitment of troops and resources to homeland defense, particularly to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe. Deploying new troops to the border would represent a mission the military has not traditionally embraced.

"What we're seeing here is a move toward reframing where defense begins and ends," said Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership. "Traditionally the military looks outward, but looking outward has begun a lot closer to home, and it may involve looking just across the border."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) requested 1,000 guardsmen in January who he later said could form 24 border reconnaissance platoons, support Texas Ranger and parks and wildlife tracking teams, and back up air and marine operations. Perry, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) subsequently asked Congress to add personnel to the National Guard's Counter-Drug Program in their states. Troops provide translators, reconnaissance and administrative support, relaying aircraft surveillance images, for example.

Border states bear "unique and/or disproportionate" costs of dealing with illegal immigration, drugs and violence, Brewer wrote.

"It is abundantly clear that additional resources are needed -- and needed now," the governors wrote in a separate letter.

The fight is largely over money. For two years, Pentagon budget officials have tried to slash funding for state drug-fighting operations, citing the financial strain of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And military officials say governors could pay for their own Guard units.

But governors contend that securing the border is a federal responsibility.

Paul McHale, Gates's assistant secretary for homeland defense until early this year, said the broader worry is strategic. "The real concern is . . . at some point a temporary mission becomes permanent," he said. "Do it four or five times over a decade, and the political and military repercussions are likely negative."

A senior White House national security official said the president is comfortable with the disagreement. "It's the president's view that . . . frankly, that kind of debate among two Cabinet officers like Secretary Gates and Secretary Napolitano, both of whom he holds in high regard, will inevitably lead to a better policy," the official added.

The official noted that the administration has already taken steps, sending 450 DHS and Justice Department agents to the border in March to fight cash and weapons smuggling. And, he pointed out, crime in U.S. border communities and border arrests have fallen.

For now, administration officials are working through differences. Paul N. Stockton, McHale's successor, said the two departments are working closely to resolve their differences. In response to the Pentagon concerns that the troops could become permanent, DHS officials are searching for benchmarks that would end a deployment, such as a drop in cartel violence or improved Mexican enforcement.

When the Bush administration sent Guard units to the border, they went as a stopgap measure, backing up the U.S. Border Patrol for two years while it added 6,000 agents. The troops rotated through non-law enforcement duties.

Trafficking in Persons Report 2009

Source - http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009/index.htm

"The ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report sheds light on the faces of modern-day slavery and on new facets of this global problem. The human trafficking phenomenon affects virtually every country, including the United States. In acknowledging America’s own struggle with modern-day slavery and slavery-related practices, we offer partnership. We call on every government to join us in working to build consensus and leverage resources to eliminate all forms of human trafficking."
--Secretary Clinton, June 16, 2009

The Report
The report is available in PDF format as a single file [PDF: 22 MB]. Due to its large size, the PDF has been separated into sections for easier download: Introduction; Country Narratives: A-C, D-K, L-P, Q-Z/Special Cases; Relevant International Conventions. To view the PDF file, you will need to download, at no cost, the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

-06/16/09 Remarks at Release of the Ninth Annual Trafficking in Persons Report Alongside Leaders in Congress; Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State; Benjamin Franklin Room ; Washington, DC
-06/16/09 Ambassador CdeBaca's Remarks at Release of the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report; Luis CdeBaca, Director ; Washington, DC
-PDF Version: Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009
-Introduction (PDF) [5071 Kb]
-Country Narratives: A-C (PDF) [4074 Kb]
-Country Narratives: D-K (PDF) [3889 Kb]
-Country Narratives: L-P (PDF) [4036 Kb]
-Country Narratives: Q-Z and Special Cases (PDF) [3868 Kb]
-Relevant International Conventions (PDF)