UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
(HELSINKI COMMISSION) HOLDS HEARING HUMAN TRAFFICKING
OCTOBER 11, 2007
COMMISSIONERS:
REP. ALCEE L. HASTINGS, D-FLA., CHAIRMAN
REP. LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER, D-N.Y.
REP. MIKE MCINTYRE, D-N.C.
REP. HILDA L. SOLIS, D-CALIF.
REP. G.K. BUTTERFIELD, D-N.C.
REP. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, R-N.J.
REP. ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, R-ALA.
REP. MIKE PENCE, R-IND.
REP. JOSEPH R. PITTS, R-PENN.
SEN. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, D-MD., CO-CHAIRMAN
SEN. CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, D-CONN.
SEN. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, D-WIS.
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y.
SEN. JOHN F. KERRY, D-MASS.
SEN. SAM BROWNBACK, R-KAN.
SEN. GORDON H. SMITH, R-ORE.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, R-GA.
SEN. RICHARD BURR, R-N.C.
WITNESSES/PANELISTS:
MARK LAGON,
DIRECTOR,
STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICE TO MONITOR AND
COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS
CHARLOTTE M. PONTICELLI,
DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR AFFAIRS,
BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL LABOR AFFAIRS,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
MICHAEL E. FEINBERG,
ACTING DIRECTOR,
OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS,
U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
EVA BIAUDET,
SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE AND COORDINATOR FOR
COMBATING TRAFFICKING IN HUMAN BEINGS,
ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
ROGER PLANT,
SPECIAL ACTION PROGRAMME TO COMBAT FORCED LABOUR,
INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANISATION
KEVIN BALES,
PRESIDENT,
FREE THE SLAVES
The hearing was held at 10:00 a.m. in Room 2226 of the Rayburn
House Office Building, Washington, D.C., Chairman Alcee L. Hastings and Co-
Chairman Senator Benjamin L. Cardin moderating.
[*]
HASTINGS: Good morning, all. I'd like to start the hearing and welcome
everyone, ladies and gentlemen, to this Helsinki Commission hearing on
combating
trafficking for forced labor purposes in the OSCE region, including the United
States.
When we designated the time for this hearing, we did not know the
interventions (inaudible) and one of our more distinguished colleagues passed
last week, and today she's being funeralized in Virginia.
Toward that end, many of my colleagues are attending that funeral, and
some of the commissioners, in addition to the fact the House of Representatives
is not in session. But hey, I am.
(LAUGHTER)
HASTINGS: As matters go, we do have an established record, and I think
that this subject is of such critical importance for the Helsinki Commission,
the OSCE and, indeed, the world (inaudible) I will see to it that the
information is passed on to the other commissioners and the House and the
Senate.
Please bear with me. I have a rather lengthy statement, but I consider
all of it to be of critical import in setting the stage.
Trafficking in human beings is an egregious human rights violation and a
serious transnational crime facing governments all over the world.
According to an International Labor Organisation report -- and we have our
friends here from there -- the 12.3 million victims of forced labor --
approximately 2.4 million were trafficked for forced labor purposes.
Trafficking for forced labor is a major problem in many OSCE countries.
In Armenia, for example, both men and women are trafficked for forced labor
while an International Organization for Migration report asserts that 38
percent
of trafficked persons assisted by the International Organization for Migration
in Belarus were male victims of forced labor.
Although the U.S., like many other OSCE states, continues to be challenged
by limitations in the systems utilized for data gathering in human trafficking
cases, we've seen some progress in our antitrafficking efforts.
There have been significant cases. One of them -- U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, working with the FBI, successfully investigated and
prosecuted organized criminals who were trafficking Eastern European women into
the United States to work as exotic dancers in Michigan.
In his book "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of
the New Global Economy," John Bowe describes three cases of forced labor in the
United States in Immokalee, Florida, which is very close to the district that
I'm privileged to serve, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth
in
the Western Pacific.
Trafficking for forced labor frequently involves physical and
psychological abuse of the victims, generates millions of dollars in illicit
financial profits to the perpetrators, which are often organized criminal
groups, and leads to the thousands of migrants crossing international borders
with fraudulent documents.
Trafficking persons for forced labor purposes is less understood than
trafficking for sexual exploitation, because it has largely remained a hidden
form of exploitation.
However, it is no less serious. In the OSCE region, it has accelerated in
recent years as a result of the economic disruption caused by the collapse of
Communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as well as the wars in
the former Yugoslavia.
Commissioner McIntyre, welcome, sir.
MCINTYRE: Thank you.
HASTINGS: A high worldwide demand for women and children as sex workers,
sweatshop labor and domestic servants has fueled the market for forced labor.
At the same time, increasing restrictions on immigration to many
destination countries, including the United States and Western Europe, has led
many migrants to turn to human traffickers despite the risks involved.
The OSCE demonstrated its commitment to combating trafficking in human
beings in 2003 with the adoption of the OSCE action plan to combat trafficking
in human beings.
Among other requirements, the action plan calls upon members states to
make forced labor a crime by incorporating the definition of human trafficking
contained in the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children.
The establishment of the position of special representative and
coordinator of combating trafficking in human beings has given greater focus to
addressing this critical challenge in the OSCE region.
Since the adoption of these antitrafficking protocols, the OSCE
participating states have made some significant strides in combating the sexual
dimension of human trafficking, but there is a growing consensus that more
needs
to be done to understand the scope and challenge of humans trafficked for
forced
servitude.
Presently, many member states have not adopted legislation to specifically
address trafficking for forced labor purposes.
In addition, much of the resources and early antitrafficking efforts have
been directed at identifying and prosecuting sexual trafficking cases.
The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which was authored by
the Helsinki Commission ranking member Christopher Smith, includes in its
definition of human trafficking the recruitment, harboring, transportation,
provision or obtaining of a person for labor services through the use of force,
fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude,
peonage, debt, bondage or slavery.
Yet we've seen relatively few prosecutions of forced labor perpetrators.
A September 23rd Washington Post article on the subject of human trafficking
raises several questions which are worthy of examination, and perhaps our
witnesses this morning will address some of them.
Are there, in fact, significant numbers of trafficking cases that go
undetected? Ms. Biaudet and I were talking about that earlier, and I'm sure
she
will address it.
Do we simply not have a full grasp of the scope of human trafficking? Or
conversely, how reliable are trafficking statistics?
This morning we examine these issues as we hear from two expert panels on
efforts to combat trafficking for forced labor purposes in the OSCE region.
We look forward to the testimony of three key United States government
agencies represented by Ambassador Mark Lagon from the Department of State, Ms.
Charlotte Ponticelli, from the Department of Labor, and Mr. Michael Feinberg,
from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
We are also grateful to have my friend and a person that has worked
actively in this field and continues her participation, Ms. Eva Biaudet, the
OSCE's special representative and coordinator for combating trafficking in
human
beings.
We have with us Mr. Roger Plant of the International Labor Organisation,
and Mr. Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves.
The witnesses' bios are available at the entrance for those of you that
did not receive them.
We've been joined, as I indicated, by my colleague Congressman Mike
McIntyre, who is a commissioner of the Helsinki Commission.
And, Mike, if there's anything you would like to add at this point, you
have the floor.
MCINTYRE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be brief.
We greatly appreciate those who are here with the panel today and those
who've come to observe this hearing.
This is an extremely important issue. Even though I can only be here for
a short while this morning -- as many of you know, we are not in session this
day -- but I wanted to make sure I could come by this morning for a while,
because this hearing is so important.
This past July, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly -- I sponsored a
resolution to encourage OSCE member nations to establish a hotline for
reporting
the commercial exploitation of persons involved in human trafficking.
And as a sponsor of that resolution, which did pass unanimously this past
July the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I wanted again to show my support for
efforts like that to get our member states involved in reporting incidences
like
this and setting up hotlines and cooperating, because it is such an important
issue and, unfortunately, such a serious one that still must be dealt with.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this hearing.
Thank you all for being with us today.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much, Mr. Commissioner. I appreciate very much
your being with us.
MCINTYRE: Yes, sir.
HASTINGS: Mr. Ambassador, you lost your place when you weren't here at 10
o'clock, so we're going to begin with Ms. Ponticelli, and then we'll come back
to you.
(LAUGHTER)
HASTINGS: So without objection, your prepared statements will be entered
into the record.
Ms. Ponticelli, you have the floor.
PONTICELLI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Chairman Hastings and Congressman McIntyre. I'm very pleased
to be here today on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor. We commend you for
holding this hearing on the trafficking of humans for the purpose of forced
labor, one of today's worst human rights tragedies.
It's an honor to be here today with my fellow panelists, even the ones I
bumped. Of course, all of them are dedicated to the global fight against human
trafficking.
As you pointed out, the U.S. is committed to ending the brutal practice of
human trafficking. As President Bush stated at the signing of the Trafficking
Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in January of 2006, quote, "Our nation
is
determined to fight and end this modern form of slavery," end quote.
In signing that legislation, the president also called upon other nations
to take action. The U.S. government is working at home and with other
governments, such as the 56 countries participating in the OSCE, to eliminate
human trafficking around the world.
Individually, we can all make a difference, but together, we can have an
even greater and more lasting impact.
Across the world, the transnational phenomenon of human trafficking
involves trafficking both for sex and labor exploitation.
Trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation in OSCE countries,
particularly in Eastern Europe, opened the world's eyes to the global problem
of
trafficking, yet, as we know from the ILO's 2005 report, most victims of
trafficking in the world are actually victims of forced labor.
Private agents typically traffic these individuals through coercion,
forcing them to toil in sweatshops and other hidden workplaces under brutal
conditions with no access to legal protection.
In the OSCE region, the trafficking of adults for forced labor in the
construction and agriculture industries is pervasive. And the trafficking of
children for commercial sexual exploitation and labor remains a grave problem.
While the Department of Labor, of course, is adamantly opposed to the
trafficking of any individual, our Bureau of International Labor Affairs has
made a special effort to eradicate the trafficking of children.
Children specifically trafficked for labor find themselves forced into
begging, petty crime, street vending and domestic work, or work in agriculture,
construction or manufacturing. They are often physically abused, underfed,
addicted to drugs or alcohol, and have no access to education and health
services.
The illicit and hidden nature in which human trafficking occurs sometimes
makes the search for solutions seem insurmountable.
Yet as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, significant progress is being made,
especially in research and data collection, which are key tools in this fight.
Together with OSCE member states and other partners around the world, the
U.S. has underscored the need for reliable research and data on the nature and
magnitude of the trafficking problem to help us design and implement effective
policies and programs for prevention, protection and assistance to victims.
At the same time, we recognize that the development of policy and
collection of data should not preclude the immediate and urgent need to rescue
those who have been trafficked for forced labor and provide them with
education,
job skills and economic alternatives.
Our Bureau of International Labor Affairs has been active in combating
trafficking around the world, including in many OSCE countries and has enlisted
the support of several international, non-governmental and faith-based
organizations.
So far, more than one million children have been rescued from the worst
forms of child labor and provided with education and training opportunities
through our DOL-funded projects.
Since 1995, DOL has obligated almost $600 million to organizations
globally to prevent and withdraw children from exploitive work.
Of this amount, the department has set aside more than 40 percent, or $219
million, to combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of labor and
commercial sexual exploitation. This year alone, the department provided $28.4
million to address this problem.
I'd like to offer, Mr. Chairman, just a few examples of our efforts in the
OSCE region to eliminate the trafficking of women and children for labor.
In 2003, DOL funded a $1.5 million regional project through the ILO to
work in Albania, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. This project assisted in the
rescue of almost 3,000 children in those countries.
Children were provided with educational opportunities, skills training and
needed psycho-social intervention.
The project was also successful in advancing legal reforms to protect and
assist child victims of trafficking and in establishing child labor monitoring
systems to document and refer trafficking victims to social service providers.
We funded a second phase of the project at $3.5 million in FY '06 to
include Bulgaria and Kosovo.
Through the president's $50 million antitrafficking initiative, we also
funded a $1.25 million project through Catholic Relief Services in Moldova in
2004.
The project targets young at-risk women and seeks to reduce the incidence
of trafficking and assist victims through a combination of job development,
employment assistance and skills training.
We have found that a root factor contributing to the vulnerability of
trafficking victims, poverty, can be tackled by creating economic incentives
and
employment opportunities that offer legitimate and sustainable forms of income.
We're also pleased to participate in the last two sessions of the OSCE
Alliance Against Trafficking in Persons Conference.
Experts from our wage and hour division shared their unique experience
carrying out workplace investigations and identifying individuals who have been
trafficked into forced labor in the U.S.
It's this type of collaboration and information-sharing that will allow us
to advance our efforts and make a real difference.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, at the Department of Labor we're continuing
to focus on several critical areas in the fight against human trafficking:
Institutional and legal reforms, capacity-building to implement those reforms
and direct assistance to victims and potential victims.
We are proud to be part of the U.S. government's interagency efforts to
combat trafficking, and we would like to commend you and the commission for
holding this hearing today. Many thanks.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much.
Ambassador Lagon?
LAGON: Thank you very much.
Chairman Hastings, thank you for your leadership among parliamentarians of
the OSCE states, and I'm delighted to be here.
So, Chairman Hastings and members of the Helsinki Commission, thanks for
the opportunity to discuss the State Department's efforts to combat human
trafficking for forced labor purposes.
And I'm lucky enough by law to chair an interagency group, so I work with
our colleagues here on this, and I'm happy to speak to our collective efforts,
not just the State Department's.
I'm happy to appear with Deputy Undersecretary of Labor Charlie Ponticelli
and, indeed, to follow her, and Acting Director for ICE, Michael with berg.
And
it's good to be here also with Ms. Biaudet, Roger Plant and Kevin Bales.
Crucial among the 10 principles guiding relations between OSCE nations is
the commitment to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The strength of this commitment is expressed in the combined efforts of
the United States and the OSCE states to protect victims from trafficking,
which
is a violation of basic human dignity and, we all agree, the modern day
equivalent to slavery.
As the State Department continues to increase attention on slave labor in
addition to the dehumanization of sex trafficking, I appreciate the
commission's
hearing this morning on this important aspect of trafficking in persons.
Our 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report sheds new light on the alarming
trafficking in people for forced labor purposes. Every day, all over the
world,
people are coerced into bonded labor, exploited in domestic servitude and
enslaved in agricultural work and in factories.
They are victimized by unscrupulous employers who take advantage of
vulnerabilities, especially among immigrants and especially among young women
and children.
This year in the report, we noted several disturbing global trends which
speak directly to the plight of labor trafficking victims. First is the use of
debt as a tool of coercion.
In labor as well as sexual exploitation, illegal or illegitimate debt is
increasingly used to keep people in servitude. This debt is employed by
traffickers as an instrument of coercion, especially among migrant laborers.
Migrant laborers from developing countries are often legally contracted by
labor agencies or respond to ads to perform low-skilled work in developed
countries.
For this privilege, they are required to make a steep payment up front for
the services of the labor agency arranging the job or a finder's fee that goes
straight to the future employer.
What follows is a terrifying set of circumstances in which unfair debt
captures the indebted worker. For example, a contract labor agency in
Bangladesh advertised work in a garment factory in Jordan.
The ad promised a three-year contract, $425 per month, eight-hour
workdays, only six days a week, paid overtime, free accommodations, free
medical
care, free food and no advance fees.
Instead, upon arrival, workers who were obliged to pay exorbitant advance
fees, had their passports confiscated, were confined to miserable conditions
and
were prevented from leaving the factory.
Months passed without pay. Food was inadequate. And sick workers were
tortured. Because most workers had borrowed money at inflated rates to get the
contracts, they were obliged through debt to stay.
Last year, press reports indicated that in Poland announcements in local
newspapers lured workers to Italy for seasonal jobs picking fruit and
vegetables. They were promised an hourly wage of up to $7.50 an hour, only
after paying a finder's fee and travel costs.
Once in Italy, the reality proved to be quite different. Nearly 100
Polish workers were forced to live in barracks with no sanitation or running
water, fed only bread and water and paid just $1.25 an hour.
With these meager wages, they were unable to pay the room and board and
were pushed into debt. Attempts to resist were met with severe beatings and
torture.
Now, debt bondage is criminalized under U.S. law, and it's included as a
form of exploitation in the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons, as you spoke of, Mr. Chairman.
As noted in our annual report, major source countries must do a better job
protecting their citizens against this exploitation.
They can do so by limiting pre-departure fees to reasonable levels,
negotiating formal labor agreements with destination countries to secure their
citizens' rights while working abroad.
The destination countries for human trafficking should be active in making
foreign workers aware of their rights, assisting workers to exercise those
rights and criminally prosecuting traffickers.
A special case I'd like to make note of is private homes, where often
times exploitation is not visible. In many countries around the world, homes
become prisons of involuntary servitude for domestic workers.
They're cut off from social contact. They work long hours, seven days a
week for little or no pay, no guarantee of even food or an adequate place to
sleep. These workers are particularly difficult to identify because of the
lack
of witnesses to the human rights abuses involved.
They become trapped when they believe that an attempted escape would
result in physical harm to them or their families, and when their employers
deceive them into believing escape would result in deportation or incarceration.
Let me give you a case. A young West African woman I'll call Maggie to
protect her identity went to the United Kingdom with her employers. She looked
after their children every day until late in the evening.
She was paid no wages. Her earnings as a cleaner were confiscated by her
employer. And her employers claimed that she owed them for her airfare --
again, for the privilege of this job.
But she couldn't just run away. She felt trapped because her employers
would not return her passport unless she paid them 4,000 pounds, or $8,000.
Confiscation of passports, identification and airline tickets is used to
gain and exercise control over victims. Without these travel documents,
foreign
workers are literally trapped, vulnerable to arrest, punishment and deportation.
U.S. federal law makes it legal to illegal to seize documents in order to
force others to work. And foreign governments are encouraged to criminalize
this form of coercion as well. I work on that in the diplomacy that I am
engaged in.
As we've seen, trafficking can take many forms and in all cases, whether
for sexual exploitation or forced labor, should receive equal attention and
stringent punishment by governments.
Since the year 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which I
worked on as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer with Mr. Smith and
Mr.
Gaidensen (ph) when he was in the Congress -- it's been amended -- it's amended
federal law to assign equally tough penalties for sexual exploitation and for
trafficking for forced labor.
Though many other governments have enacted criminal antitrafficking laws,
all too often they're limited to sexual exploitation, and they fail to punish
trafficking for forced labor, including recruitment, transferring victims, use
of fraudulent employment terms, physical and psychological coercion.
They fail to assign to those elements of forced labor equally tough
criminal penalties. Punishments resulting in fines and administrative
sanctions
by a country's ministry of labor which may be sufficient for lesser labor
violations aren't sufficiently stringent to deter human trafficking as a
serious
crime.
As head of the State Department's office to monitor and combat trafficking
in persons, I've seen firsthand in my travels the impact of forced labor. I've
met with victims in shelters. I've met with officials.
I've seen the powerful impact when governments, NGOs and individuals stand
up to combat forced labor. No laborer, no migrant, no woman, no man, no child
deserves to be shackled by debt, chicanery and intimidation by fellow members
of
humankind.
At the heart of the U.S. government's victim-centered approach is ending
human trafficking and a commitment to human dignity, a desire to not only
rescue
people but to restore their dignity.
The OSCE and its coordinator for combating trafficking in human beings,
Eva Biaudet, play a key role, and they're to be recognized for their committed
effort in the fight against human trafficking.
The OSCE is among a group of international organizations -- the OSCE, the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Labor Organisation, the
International Organization for Migration -- who collectively work from
Vancouver
to Vladivostok to address slave labor.
Thanks again for the opportunity to come here to talk about the global
struggle to abolish modern day slavery. Steps to mitigate, regulate and
unionize aren't enough. Abolition is the goal, and I appreciate your
commitment
as part of that effort to work with us in partnership.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much, Ambassador.
And now we'll hear from Mr. Michael Feinberg from the Department of
Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Feinberg, you have the floor.
FEINBERG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Chairman Hastings, Congressman McIntyre. As you said, my
name is Michael Feinberg. I am the acting director of Immigration Customs
Enforcement, Office of International Affairs.
It's my privilege to appear before you today to discuss ICE's efforts
against human traffickers who exploit men, women and children in a form of, as
my colleagues have said here, modern day slavery.
I would like to thank the commission for its continued commitment to
combating human trafficking, particularly in the OSCE participating states.
Among the Department of Homeland Security's law enforcement agencies, ICE
has the most expansive investigative authority and largest number of
investigators. We also have more than 300 victim-witness field coordinators,
which is more than any other U.S. agency.
Our mission is to target the people, money and materials that support
terrorists and other criminal activities. ICE accomplishes this by
investigating and enforcing our immigration and customs laws, including laws
related to human trafficking and forced labor.
While the focus of today's testimony is on forced labor trafficking, much
of what I will say applies to ICE's efforts to fight all forms of trafficking,
whether for sex or labor exploitation.
ICE special agents place a priority on rescuing trafficking victims and
investigating allegations of trafficking, regardless of whether the victims
were
made to work against their will or whether they were unlawfully induced into a
sexually exploitive situation.
As part of ICE's victim-centered approach to trafficking, we also provide
the same access to victim assistance to all trafficking victims.
ICE's aim in all trafficking cases is to systematically disrupt and
dismantle the international and domestic operations of human traffickers,
identify and seize assets and illicit proceeds, and identify systemic
vulnerabilities that may be exploited by criminal elements to undermine
immigration and border controls.
ICE has investigative jurisdiction within the U.S. for all human smuggling
and forced child labor cases that have a nexus to the movement of people or
goods across the U.S. borders.
U.S. federal regulations grant both ICE and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation the authority to conduct trafficking investigations.
Internationally, ICE does not have the authority to conduct any
investigative activities without the consent of the host country. These
restrictions vary by country.
Thus, ICE relies heavily on the relationships it is able to form with its
foreign law enforcement partners and non-governmental organizations to
investigate cases with a nexus to the United States.
The majority of ICE's overseas investigative activities occur in
connection with cases that originate within the United States.
ICE builds and maintains strong international relationships through our 50
offices located in 39 countries throughout the world, including 11 OSCE member
countries.
We work with host country law enforcement, NGOs and international
organizations to better coordinate investigations and to fully identify and
pursue criminal enterprises.
Here in the United States we continue to target traffickers. In one ICE-
led investigation conducted in collaboration with the FBI and the Internal
Revenue Service, we targeted a criminal organization engaged in the smuggling
and trafficking of Russian, Czech, Ukranian women into the United States.
The victims were forced to work as exotic dancers at Detroit area strip
clubs in order to pay smuggling and other debts.
The techniques used by the traffickers to control the victims included
confiscating their passports and identity documents, imposing social and
linguistic isolation, bugging the victim's apartment, rough physical treatment
and threats of violence.
Investigative efforts resulted in the rescue of four victims, the
imprisonment of two traffickers, the seizure of two weapons, two vehicles, and
the restitution to victims totaling over $2.5 million.
ICE provides victim services through two full-time victim-witness
coordinators who are stationed at headquarters as well as through its 300-plus
collateral duty victim-witness coordinators in the field.
ICE also provides victim assistance in the form of immigration relief
through continued presence, which is a temporary status that permits a
trafficking victim to remain legally in the United States during an ongoing
investigation or prosecution.
Trafficking victims who receive continued presence are then eligible for
employment authorization and other federally funded or administered benefits or
services.
In addition to our international investigations, ICE focuses much of its
antitrafficking efforts internationally on training and outreach to foreign law
enforcement, governments and non-government organizations.
We also provide a toll-free number or tip line for human trafficking
leads. We have developed brochures and a DVD for law enforcement officers and
human trafficking indicator cards, which have been translated into five
different languages.
And I do have copies here for the commission if you so like.
HASTINGS: Thank you so much.
FEINBERG: ICE also has scheduled a three-day conference this year that
will provide the attache offices with additional training on forced labor,
child
sex tourism and human trafficking.
This training will provide the agents with additional ability to
collaborate with other U.S. government agencies, NGOs and international
organizations that address trafficking issues.
Domestically, ICE works closely with federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies, as well as many non-governmental, community-based and
faith-based organizations to assist victims of trafficking.
In addition, ICE, the Department of Health and Human Services and the
Department of Justice have launched antitrafficking initiatives and task forces
in more than 40 cities across the United States which bring together state,
local and federal law enforcement to attack these criminal organizations.
In conclusion, ICE has the unique ability to use its global reach to
investigate trafficking in persons and to provide short-term immigration relief
to trafficking victims.
We will also continue to expand our outreach and training efforts by
sharing our expertise and employing a victim-sided approach to combating human
trafficking.
I hope my remarks today have been helpful and informative. I would like
to take this opportunity to thank the commission for its support of ICE and our
law enforcement mission.
I'll be glad to answer any questions.
Mr. Chairman, I also have -- ICE is getting ready to roll out a new public
service announcement on victim-witness -- going out to the community and
helping
us identify victims who have been trafficked.
And this has not been officially rolled out, but this is the thing we
have, and we'd like to present it also to the commission as well as the...
HASTINGS: All right. I certainly thank you in that regard, and hopefully
we will have a few for distribution among our audience participants. It's
deeply appreciated.
Let me ask Congressman McIntyre if he would like to ask a question or two.
And then I'm going to try something a little different, if you all don't mind.
Proceed, sir.
MCINTYRE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, since I'm going to be departing
shortly.
Mr. Feinberg, if you would just clarify for us exactly how you decide who
is the lead agency between the FBI and ICE on trafficking investigations. I
know there's some overlap.
Do you have to deal with turf war issues, or who makes the decision as to
which is going to be the lead agency?
FEINBERG: Mr. McIntyre, in the trafficking cases we really have a
collaborative effort with the FBI.
There's a Human Smuggling Trafficking Center located in the State
Department that the FBI, ICE, the State Department, intelligence communities
are
all a part of. And that is kind of a -- set up to be a deconfliction center to
help deconflict on cases.
And then as I mentioned in my opening statement, we have over 40 of these
human smuggling task forces throughout the country, and so it's basically who
brings the case to the task force. The task force collaborates on the case,
and
then the case is moved forward.
This is too severe of an issue to have turf battles. And we have worked
out with the FBI in this particular case we're not going to have turf battles.
So it's working very well in the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center as well as
these task forces.
MCINTYRE: All right. Thank you, sir.
And would you say whether or not -- there have been some reports as to
whether victims in the United States are undercounted.
I know there have been some reports that as many as perhaps 62,000 victims
have not been included in some of the official government reports. Can you
address that?
FEINBERG: Well, I can address from our perspective, sir. Through our
victim-witness coordinators and through our investigations, we have a certain
amount of cases that we work, and so those are what we know.
And through our outreach, we're trying to get the message out more to see
exactly what we have out there. So our victim-witness coordinators I think
last
year did 200-plus interventions or talking to victims and witnesses of
trafficking cases.
So that's what we know. The unknown is -- we don't know that. And so
we're -- through our aggressive outreach, through trying to promote the program
more, we're trying to see how much is out there.
We really don't have an answer to what the report -- the numbers are and
how we can address the specific -- I'll maybe leave that to my other colleagues.
HASTINGS: Mr. Lagon?
MCINTYRE: If I could follow up.
HASTINGS: Go ahead.
LAGON: Yes, sir. This is a very good question. Of course, it's an
inherently difficult thing to find victims of human trafficking.
Why? Victims don't tend to identify themselves because they're afraid.
They're afraid of being treated as criminals. They're afraid of being treated
as illegal aliens.
It's actually one of the great innovations of the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act, is to have a visa status for the migrants, so that you
determine
someone's a victim.
And it doesn't matter precisely the circumstances that they came into the
country. The most important thing is they should be protected and can stay in
the United States.
I think there are many more, as -- I was reported in that Washington Post
story as saying that there are many more victims out there than we have found.
But I've taken part myself in the roll-out that the Department of Health
and Human Services has done in communities to try and raise the awareness of
non-government organizations, medical care providers and so on, to look beneath
the surface and try and find those people who, you know, might look like a
migrant worker but, in fact, you know, are confined in the workplace, those
people who don't move around unless a company -- or those people who don't seem
to know where they are, or are completely debilitated by lack of language.
And that effort to reach out should build up numbers over time. I am
modest when I go to other nations, including those of the OSCE, and say, "Your
government should work better on victim identification protocols," because I
share our experience over the last seven years in the passage of our own
comprehensive legislation on trafficking.
MCINTYRE: If I may follow up, Mr. Chairman.
HASTINGS: Sure.
MCINTYRE: I know my time may be short here.
HASTINGS: That's OK.
MCINTYRE: How do you distinguish between trafficking and alien smuggling?
LAGON: It's quite different. I mean, under U.S. law and under the U.N.
protocol, trafficking in persons includes several qualities, one of which may
be
crossing an international border.
But despite the word trafficking connoting movement, in fact, under U.S.
law and the U.N. protocol it's the extreme exploitation and the control over
the
person that's the defining quality.
Alien smuggling is moving people across the border. And those people who
do cross the border as victims of human trafficking -- sometimes it's
voluntarily, but they think the job is going to be different from what they get.
Sometimes it's not, but indeed, sometimes the circumstances are such that
someone is so defrauded and so coerced that they become a victim of
trafficking,
and it's an enlightened policy of the United States that they should be given a
visa status to protect them, and then maybe they can become a valuable witness
in the prosecution.
MCINTYRE: All right. Well, then one quick follow-up question on that.
Do the migration restrictions and increased border security put would-be
migrants at risk for trafficking?
LAGON: I don't think so. I mean, I think a policy that combines more
serious border security with, as the president imagines, a guest worker program
is exactly the humane kind of program that we should pursue.
I don't think there's a likely increase of victimization. It's all part
of a bigger picture in which we need to realize that migrants are people, too.
The human trafficking story is one in which we find women, people in
prostitution, migrant workers who, in country after country, are not being
treated like real human beings.
We need to look out for the rights of those.
MCINTYRE: Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much, Congressman McIntyre. It's deeply
appreciated.
Mr. Lagon, Ms. Ponticelli and Mr. Feinberg, I have several questions, and
some of them I would like to submit to you in writing and, in keeping with the
practice that I have, ask you in follow-up if you would, your time permitting,
answer those questions, and then we can place them on our Web site and allow
that the public be informed in an increased and enhanced manner.
I've been trying to get away -- thanks, Mike. I appreciate you being here
with us.
I've been trying to come up with different formats to make these hearings
have more life, and I consider me sitting up here and you out there and the
audience -- and where I've been reaching out is in the participants.
In the audience, regrettably, what winds up happening for two hours is
they sit there, and many persons in this room are experts in this field, and
never have an opportunity to express an idea or to say anything.
Now, typical of Congress and its glacial manner in which it changes
anything, folks don't want to do anything different, so I attempt to do some
different things.
And with your permission, what I would like is rather than me asking
questions -- and I'd ask staff if they would pass out to those who may have an
interest -- we have a questionnaire, and if you could write legibly.
Even if we don't have your question asked and answered here today, I can
send it along to our witnesses, and we can then, in turn, try to get a
follow-up
answer.
Additionally, many times -- and I don't know what your time constraints
are, and I certainly respect them. If either or all of you have to leave, I
readily understand.
But if you can stay, it would be appreciated. And let me invite you, this
panel, to come to this table. And I'm sure that these other experts, some of
whom you all don't interface with on a regular basis -- you would be interested
in what they have to say.
So if you all could come up here, and if my next panel could take their
place.
So, Ambassador Lagon, over here.
Ms. Ponticelli -- I appreciate it.
I think we'll probably -- and then maybe we can just have some dialogue
without me playing big-time congressman.
Yes, right there, please, sir. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Ms. Ponticelli, if you have -- if anybody has to go, and at any time if
you have to leave, I understand.
Thanks a lot. OK. I think you'll find it a little interesting, because a
lot of times the first panel has to leave and don't know what the second panel
has to say. So now I feel better. I have more people up here with me.
Now we are privileged to have with us -- and grateful for their
participation -- Ms. Eva Biaudet, the OSCE's special representative and
coordinator for combating trafficking in human beings; Mr. Roger Plant of the
International Labor Organisation; and Mr. Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves.
And, gentlemen, if you don't mind, we'll begin with Ms. Biaudet.
BIAUDET: Thank you, Chairman Hastings. I'm also very happy to be here
with you today, and I'm very happy to be in this distinguished company and with
honorable experts from the U.S.
I think it is clear, given the existence of all multilateral instruments,
there can be no confusion among states that trafficking for forced labor has to
be addressed as an issue of priority.
The U.N. Palermo Protocol has provided the catalyst and guiding framework
for the development of antitrafficking legislation and supporting mechanism
that
we also advocate for, for many OSCE participating states.
The OSCE has worked with a number of states to confirm their legislation,
to comply with the Palermo Protocol. The Palermo Protocol is supplemented
further by the OSCE action plan, as you already mentioned earlier, but also of
the Council of Europe Convention and the E.U. action plan.
Our main challenge is actually to get countries to enact at least these
minimum standards and instruments. Unfortunately, as has been said already a
few times today, not all countries have criminalized labor trafficking and
still
define trafficking as for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
And even when legislation (inaudible) it does not always apply to cases of
internal labor trafficking. The result of this, of course, is that potential
front-line responders will not identify these cases and traffickers go
unpunished and, of course, victims unprotected.
Another challenge is to examine how provisions operate in practice when
viewed through a victim-centered lens. One example is the length of
reflection/recovery period. The appropriate length is not an arbitrary number
of months, as has been shown in recent research.
Another example is the common practice of conditioning a victim's
receiving assistance on testifying at trial against the traffickers, or at
least
assisting in the investigation.
Such procedures are problematic. For government and law enforcement
officials to require this of recently trafficked victims removed from a highly
abusive environment should be questioned as inherently objectionable.
From an international perspective, when looking at how political will to
fight trafficking has been generated in the OSCE region, U.S. efforts, of
course, have been strong.
U.S. antitrafficking efforts reflect a broad interagency approach, which
is a very good thing. Also, the TIP report, I believe, have been and still is
of importance.
However, we should not underestimate that the driving force for
antitrafficking activity among OSCE participating states, such as passing
legislation, has probably been a result of obligations voluntarily embraced by
countries, for example, in connection with the U.N. Palermo Protocol and, more
recently, the Council of Europe Convention, not, of course, to forget the
prospect of future E.U. membership.
So far, few antitrafficking projects in the OSCE have addressed labor
trafficking directly. Research confirms that available assistance is geared
toward a very stereotyped trafficking (inaudible) a young, poor, uneducated
woman trafficked for sexual exploitation for long periods of time, having been
exploited and exposed to extensive and perhaps millions of forms of abuse.
At the same time, assistance frameworks, the real work on the ground, has
not been set up to respond to other kinds of victims (inaudible) any other kind.
Given the lack also of systematic anti-labor trafficking activity and data
collection, it is so far impossible to comment on the issue of overall
effectiveness of efforts to reduce labor trafficking.
Further, on the project level, a meaningful analysis of effectiveness is
hindered because programs -- regardless, actually, of the nature of the
trafficking project -- almost never include independent components by
independent expert evaluators.
Honorable Chair, so far neither the U.S. nor other states have elevated
the risk of being prosecuted for labor trafficking to a level that is even
close
to serve as a deterrent.
A concerted effort to identify labor trafficking cases is needed but will,
of course, not alone ensure success. As we know, a primary criticism that has
been raised regarding U.S. efforts is the discrepancy between the level of
identified cases and the official estimate.
The reasons for this have not been clearly ascertained. However, it is
probably a combination of underestimating the difficulty of identifying the
victims and at least some identification methods utilized that are not properly
targeted (inaudible).
With victims, of course, for labor exploitation we also face the issue of
lack of self-identification. It seems a desperate situation and a sense of
hopelessness gives few alternatives but to accept so-called contracts more or
less with knowledge of their exploitative character.
OSCE-supported research show that states need to focus much better on a
victim-centered approach. Still victims are requested to become involved in
criminal proceedings too early, without proper time to reflect on the
consequences.
Still victims tend to be treated as violators of immigration law rather
than as victims of trafficking. Still temporary residence permits are not
available or are only conditional on cooperation in legal proceedings. And
still protective measures are not available or they are insufficient.
We have to start creating environments which do not foster or make it easy
to abuse powers against people in vulnerable situations. It means not giving
up
on the idea that our region is a region for respecting human rights and human
dignity.
It means not giving up on our social conscience. And it means an openness
to search for solutions on migration, border control and employment that are
not
abusive to these principles.
We need also to recognize that labor exploitation is linked to employment
issues in general. Special attention has to be given to improve the general
working conditions in sectors where we know exploitation occurs.
The increased use of (inaudible) contractors, for instance, is a problem
because it brings more anonymous employers and employees and less transparency
to (inaudible) working conditions.
We need provisions addressing corporate and contractor accountability for
the (inaudible) of subcontractors.
Also policies such as linking visas or work permits to a single employer,
including the employer having the sole responsibility for extensions and
renewals and a worker not having a possibility to change employers easily leads
to situations where the worker either stays with an abusive employer or is
likely to face deportation.
Most U.S. antitrafficking projects are categorized by the State Department
as dealing both with sex and labor trafficking.
The numbers from the 2006 TIP report also show substantial increase in
(inaudible) convictions in countries enacting legislation as well as thousands
of victims receiving services.
Nevertheless, this information is of limited value in aiding our
understanding of the adequacy and effectiveness of resources utilized against
labor trafficking since it is not disaggregated by form of trafficking.
Also the ultimate yardstick should, I would say, be the impact in reducing
labor trafficking. Since there is no evidence or sign yet of diminished labor
trafficking, it is not possible to make a finding about the adequacy or
effectiveness of current funding.
A second key point is that no reasonable assessment is possible of whether
or not adequate funding has been dedicated to any particular antitrafficking
effort because there is so little independent evaluation about what has been
done and the connection between activities funded and the results.
Also, the U.S. General Accountability Office has pointed out some of these
challenges and has requested U.S. government agencies to strengthen evaluation
of projects and their impact.
In addition, a recent USAID-sponsored study found that very little useful
data is collected and few concrete facts are known to inform policy makers
about
the relationship of root causes and contributing factors to human trafficking.
Hence, we will not be able to fight effectively against labor trafficking
unless we start fully to use action-based research and analysis that helps
transform policy into practice regarding the specific issues presented by labor
trafficking.
And finally, there is much work that still needs to be done regarding
child trafficking both for labor and sex trafficking. Approximately half of
all
human beings exploited for labor purposes are children.
The awful truth is that there is a high demand for exploitation of
children both for sex, labor and illegal activities, also in the OSCE region,
primarily, of course, because children are cheap and obedient.
We need to take a look at how to invest in responses to child trafficking
in more effective ways. Children need special protection.
And to enable earlier intervention, much earlier than the destination
exploitation takes place, it is necessary to have more accurate information on
the patterns of child trafficking.
Distinguished commission, in conclusion, current efforts against
trafficking for labor exploitation still seem to be in their infancy.
It is apparent that all of the challenges that exist in responding
effectively to sex trafficking -- they also exist with developing responses to
labor trafficking.
Prevention, training awareness, assistance and criminal justice responses
tailored to the different requirements of labor trafficking are all needed.
Unfortunately, it can, however, be anticipated that the challenges that
have been faced in creating these responses for sex trafficking may be
increased
in the context of labor trafficking, as it may not garner committed political
will without more effort, and it may become embroiled in confusion with issues
involving economic migration.
For overcoming this, political leadership and political will to find new
solutions, to address vulnerabilities and decrease demand is very much needed.
Concerning the important question about adequacy of resources dedicated to
identify victims of labor trafficking compared to those of sex trafficking, I
want to stress here that even if it's clear that too few resources are
allocated
fighting trafficking for labor purposes, I cannot advocate to solve this by any
shift of resources between different forms of trafficking in persons.
Better identification of victims still is the main challenge. This is
true for labor trafficking but also for sex trafficking and trafficking in
children.
Finally, I want to thank the commission for holding this important hearing
and I kindly request to submit my full written statement into the hearing
record.
I also have some added material. We have had two labor conferences on
labor trafficking the last two years which have gathered hundreds of experts,
also from the international organization, with a report on conclusions and
recommendations on efforts that could be done.
And of course, and also a few agendas on more recent conference just for
you to see the practical way we've tried to work together. Thank you.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much, Ms. Biaudet.
Mr. Plant, you have the floor.
PLANT: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the possibility to testify
at this hearing. It's a great honor and a pleasure for us.
I'd also like to thank the members of the administration for their support
to the ILO and its activities.
When you are the fifth of six speakers at a hearing like this, a lot has
already been said. I think we know a lot about the basic facts and the
challenges before us.
You, Mr. Chair, have talked about a number of 12.3 million victims of
forced labor, of which 2.4 are victims of trafficking. We know also there are
360,000 cases of forced labor in the industrialized countries, (inaudible) the
OSCE countries, of which 270,000 are victims of trafficking.
And this tells us that trafficking for forced labor as well as sexual
exploitation is a global problem. It's a challenge for every kind of economy.
We all of us have things to do as either sender or destination countries.
Trafficking in forced labor are violations of not only fundamental human
rights but fundamental labor rights.
And to address these effectively (inaudible) prosecution, victim
identification or prevention and the rehabilitation of victims must be
addressed
with full attention to the core labor standards: Fighting discrimination,
fighting child labor, fighting forced labor and promoting freedom of
association.
Of course, it is essential that the vulnerable migrants who are the main
victims of forced labor and trafficking do have the right to organize and the
trade unions in both sender and receiving countries organize them in defense of
their rights.
The ILO has a particular mandate, role and responsibility on the forced
labor dimensions of human trafficking. In the six years since I've been
heading
the ILO's special action programme, we've accepted this responsibility when
very
little was known six years ago.
When there was only anecdotal information about exploitation in
construction, garments, textiles, and it was only anecdotes, only a few
journalistic statements, we began to promote very detailed and systematic
research on this issue.
And I'm glad to say that we've now produced very well received reports in
a range of countries -- in Russia, in Germany, in France.
And just last week, the government of Portugal, during its E.U.
presidency, had a major conference on trafficking and released the report we
conducted with them on forced labor and trafficking in Portugal.
So I would say that the information base is there. We're beginning to
know what we're talking about. I don't think anybody's in denial mode now that
trafficking is as serious a problem for labor as the sexual exploitation.
I would commend very heartily Ambassador Lagon. I commend his office for
the June 2007 antitrafficking report. I think it's an absolutely outstanding
report. We're very glad to have contributed to this.
And I think it really sets out all the forms of coercion and exactly why
these challenges are before us.
I'd also like to commend the OSCE. I had the honor to be invited to
address the 2005 and 2006 meetings where we really did place trafficking for
forced labor high on the agenda of the OSCE countries.
So this is where we stand. But where do we go? And that's what I would
like to set out for you in the few minutes I've got available today.
I've got a written statement. It's set out in much more detail. But I'm
just going to mention five things or six things that the ILO is doing and why I
think these are very important and why I think they need to built on more.
Firstly, we have heard about the vital importance of surveys and data
collection. This is not easy. It's incredibly difficult to capture these
issues which are so hidden.
So what we're doing now in a number of countries, after our global
estimate, we are helping OSCE and other countries develop national estimates of
forced labor, which has never happened before.
And we're doing it in Georgia, in Ukraine, in Moldova, just to give three
examples -- we're also doing it outside the OSCE region -- by helping
departments of statistics, bureaus of statistics to have the relevant questions
on forced labor and trafficking and labor market surveys and migration surveys
and others.
It may not be completely accurate, but, my goodness, it's going to help,
because unless we take this much more seriously, unless we really help
governments to try and capture what is a totally hidden thing, we're never
going
to have the good idea, and we're never going to place this on the radar screens
of the governments in countries where these problems occur.
Secondly, we're beginning to hear a lot about national action plans. You
need very good legislation, and after that you need the policy mechanisms, the
coordination mechanisms and the action plans.
So we're working particularly in the framework of the European Union-
supported projects in countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia,
Georgia and others.
We're actually helping to make sure that labor partners are involved in
the design and formulation of action plans and that they're very heavily
involved in the implementation of these action plans.
Just one example. Ukraine, the national action plan is excellent. But
how do you implement it? We have a project which is addressing five regions of
Western Ukraine from whether (inaudible) migration mainly to the European
countries.
And we're helping a whole range of labor partners, including employment,
job placement agencies, labor (inaudible) and others, to actually implement the
labor aspects of this plan, and we feel this is certainly going to help with
prosecution as well as prevention.
But the resources are limited. Here's one example. We can't touch the
Eastern Ukraine where there are massive problems affecting trafficked Ukrainian
workers going through to the Russian Federation. We've documented this very
carefully. So this is a pilot on which one needs to build.
Thirdly, you must bring together -- you must combine the efforts of labor
inspection and criminal law enforcement. This is absolutely essential, both
because labor inspectors are often the first people to be able to catch the
problems which have to be prosecuted later by the police, the prosecutors and
the criminal law enforcement, but they have to understand what they're talking
about.
So we have come up with a number of manuals, like we have one manual here.
It's called "Trafficking for Forced Labor: How to Monitor the Recruitment of
Migrant Workers." I'm delighted to say that this has been very well picked up.
Just last year, the Czech ministry of interior asked for permission to
publish a Czech version. There are now versions in Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian
and other languages.
So this has really helped -- helping these people to -- how do you capture
these forced labor situations in practice? It's one thing to have a general
law, but you need very, very detailed guidance for your labor inspectors and
your law enforcement.
We had a very innovative E.U.-supported project between 2004 and 2006
which brought sender and destination countries of Europe together. This has
created the groundwork for future cooperation.
And next month, we will have a meeting of chief labor inspectors to
validate a training manual. So I'm glad we're moving forward.
A fourth thing is judges. Judges are absolutely essential. We've heard
there are practically no prosecutions. We've heard there are practically no
convictions.
But it's very difficult for judges in either common or civil law system to
understand the precedent. When you've got a new law, how do you apply it? How
do you relate it to other laws, peonage, involuntary servitude, et cetera?
So we are preparing a rather detailed book of case law which will be
validated later this year, and this, I believe, is really going to help move
forward on getting the judges more extensively involved.
And the final point -- I could go on much longer, but you're going to have
to read it in the written statement -- I think we've begun to hear of the
importance of involving trade unions and business organizations.
They both have an absolutely essential role to play -- trade unions in
monitoring conditions, in organizing workers, in making sure that you cut out
the debt bondage that Ambassador Lagon heard about and ensure that the
remittances are channeled back to countries of origin; and of course,
employers,
business actors, in preventing the emergence of forced labor in their company
supply chains and a host of other things.
So I'm glad to say that we have been working extensively with employers'
organizations. An example is the Russian construction industry where, together
with the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, we have now held a
survey, had a number of meetings. And I hope we'll be completing a self-
regulation handbook.
More generally, we are promoting a business alliance against forced labor
and trafficking. We've put forward 10 principles for business leaders.
We have been working very closely with the International Trade Union
Confederation at the global level on promoting a workers alliance against
forced
labor and trafficking.
But we've had some very successful experiences at the country level,
first, working with trade unions between the Central Asian countries and
Russia,
helping to organize the migrant workers, helping them channel remittances back
to communities of origin.
We've just started a similar exercise in Kazakhstan with the first pilot
projects under way. And I think this is going to be a very important way
forward.
One must have multistakeholder initiatives involving government and all
government agencies together with the business partners and the worker partners.
And I think this is where the ILO has a tremendous value added, a
tremendous contribution to make, as a tripartite organization with these
networks across the globe, not only in the OSCE countries.
So in conclusion, Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank you once again. I'd like
to say that I have had the opportunity myself to address meetings organized by
the Department of Justice, Department of State and Department of Labor, as well
as this Congress.
And I've been able to appreciate over the last two years how much more
commitment there is, every day more commitment, from this government as well as
from the OSCE.
So we hope we can continue to cooperate with you. We just had a large
mission last month discussing how we can cooperate more with regard to the
protection and promotion of international core labor standards.
And this is part of our Decent Work Agenda. And I would say that forced
labor is the absolute antithesis of the Decent Work Agenda for which the ILO
stands.
And while we're not easily going to get consensus, as Eva Biaudet said,
over some difficult aspects of migration policy here and everywhere in the OSCE
region, nobody -- nobody -- is going to tolerate forced labor, slavery and
human
trafficking.
So this is where we really can move forward through very concrete and
practical action along the lines I've been mentioning. Thank you very much,
indeed.
HASTINGS: Thank you very much for your stimulating comments and
intervention, and your full statement, of course, will be made a part of the
record.
As we prepare to hear from Dr. Bales, if anyone has any question and you
would pass it to (inaudible) to the lady in pink over there, then we, after Dr.
Bales, will go to some questions.
And also, I don't know whether members of the press are here, but I have
instituted a policy of at least allowing a couple of members of the press to
state a question.
As to whether or not those who are our witnesses are interested in
answering, that's a different subject. But at least it can stimulate added
discussion.
Dr. Bales, you have the floor.
BALES: Thank you so much, Mr. Hastings. It's a great honor to be here
before the commission. I appreciate so much that we're the only NGO that's
been
asked to speak.
I want to explain briefly -- I saw some puzzled looks -- that our
organization, Free the Slaves, is, in fact, the American extension and sister
organization of Anti-Slavery International in Britain, and that we are, in
fact,
the organization that formed in 1787 to initiate the very first antislavery
campaign and human rights organization on earth.
We continue that work today. We haven't ceased in those more than 200
years.
I appreciate what Roger was saying about being the fifth of six speakers.
But when you're the sixth of six speakers you are, in fact, more like the
person
who sweeps up after the parade of great luminaries wrought down the
thoroughfare.
But I'm going to use that fact that I get to be the sweeper to not spend
so much time on recommendations that we would bring forward that would very
much
repeat those of the previous speakers.
And I want to also follow your lead, Mr. Hastings, and be a little bit
more provocative in terms of some of my comments, because I think there's a
great coherence and agreement about the kinds of recommendations. I have a few
I want to highlight.
I want to also, from my sweeper position, note that Ambassador Lagon
highlighted the tricking of debt, the trickery in debt, in overseas worker
exploitation and finder's fee and danger.
And I just want to highlight that for the past two years our organization
has been pressing for compensation for families of exactly such victims who
had,
in fact, been killed in one such example of that trickery and exploitation.
The shocking fact that underlies this is that, in fact, their exploitation
and death occurred when they were recruited from Nepal to work within the
United
States Green Zone for American contractors in Iraq. This has been brought
forward several times and it's been mentioned in the TIP report and so forth.
But there remain families in Nepal who contracted large debts to pay those
finder fees. The men of the families were killed by a roadside bomb in an
attack in Iraq, when they were told that they were, in fact, going to be
working
in a different country, and so forth.
It's particularly shocking, I think, for all of us who are American
citizens to find that it's been flowing into our own efforts to bring democracy
and freedom to a country and then, in fact, we somehow facilitated the
enslavement of workers in that country.
I want to touch a tiny bit on the definitions -- earlier there was a
question about smuggling and trafficking -- and say that I think we should be
very clear that human trafficking really is simply the movement of a person
into
a situation of enslavement.
The definition of human trafficking rests upon what happens to someone
when their journey, whether it's internal or across a border -- when that
journey ends and forced labor begins.
If the forced labor of whatever sort is not the end result, then it's not
called trafficking. It could be called migration. It could be called
smuggling, or so forth.
And again, as Ambassador Lagon highlighted, the emphasis on one type of
trafficking, that for sexual exploitation, in the laws of several countries I
believe requires a very invidious comparison that says one kind of enslavement
may be more serious than another type of enslavement.
And I just want to be a little provocative and say to my mind that's as
illogical as saying that one type of murder leaves the victim more dead than
another type of murder. Slavery is slavery.
And I want to go on to reinforce that idea by saying that it's been in my
work for 15 years now that when we try to meet our desire to divide the crime
of
enslavement into categories and trafficking into categories, I just want to say
that I've met and spoken to at length, and even become close friends and
colleagues, with men and women and children who have been enslaved.
And I want to tell you that not one of those people -- not one who has
lived the experience of enslavement -- has ever claimed that their slavery was
worse than that of another person or deserved some sort of special emphasis.
Across their different cultures and continents and ages and religions and
experiences, ex-slaves recognize in each other the pain and the violation of
their shared experience.
They don't attempt to draw tidy lines of demarcation, and not least
because virtually all slaves and ex-slaves know this fact, that whatever type
of
forced work they face, if they are women and girls, it will include sexual
exploitation as well.
Now, to think a moment about the estimations, because of the very hidden
nature of trafficking crimes, I think it's important to remember that no
country, not one, knows the actual distribution between the different types of
criminal exploitation for forced labor.
In a study that we conducted with the Human Rights Center at the
University of California, Berkeley -- and it was, in part, supported by the ILO
-- we made estimates for the distribution in the United States.
We found that exploitation for sexual purposes made up about just over 46
percent of the cases in the United States, domestic service enslavement
accounted for 27 percent, and agriculture just over 10 percent.
Now, I mention this just because I think these figures might be indicative
of the distributions or proportions for other developed economies, not for the
economies of the developing world.
It's important, I believe, to remember that trafficking for forced labor
is very difficult to see for many reasons, but I want to highlight two.
Firstly, it can be spread very thinly through the economy. For example,
in developed economies, in addition to the prostitution, domestic service and
agriculture I mentioned, I want to point out that in our own work we have found
enslavement, forced labor, in restaurants, old folks homes, hair braiding and
hair salons, nail salons, in a factory making cannolis, in a mental
institution,
in plant nurseries and in forestry.
A troop of Chinese acrobats has been enslaved. A boy's choir from Zambia
has been enslaved. Slaves beg on the street -- have begged on the street in
the
United States. They've sold ice cream from trucks in the Midwest. And like
me,
they sweep up after everyone else has gone.
I think we have to remember that criminals can be very clever. They're
often pushed much harder toward innovation than the rest of us, since failure
in
a criminal business can mean prison or death and success can mean huge profits.
The fact is that slavery can be used -- forced labor can be used in almost
any job. And if the door is left open through inadequate enforcement or
inspection or ignorance of its warning signs, criminals will find that niche
and
exploit trafficked people in it.
Now, one of the things that I think could help us to see that forced labor
around us in different forms of -- to see that forced labor are some of the
factors that we have learned support trafficking into forced labor.
And our sister organization, Anti-Slavery International, carried out
research for trafficking into forced labor in the European countries of United
Kingdom, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Portugal.
And that full report has been sent along to be picked up by anyone who
wants it.
In that research, we identified four main factors. And I believe these
factors are important because they give you the points of intervention at which
you might intercede to prevent forced labor or to find those points of
identifying forced laborers.
The most important common factor across those countries -- rather, a set
of factors -- are those of isolation, lack of knowledge, of rights, and
multiple
dependency of migrant workers.
In general, migrant workers lack knowledge of their rights. They feel
responsible because they feel that they've made a wrong choice. They're not
aware of the options that they have under national or international law.
And those that have been selected by dishonest employment agencies,
because of their lack of knowledge of local languages, they are very much
discouraged from learning it, so they're kept in a situation of isolation.
And a special concern there is the exploitation of domestic work, a very
serious problem in the United States, because it occurs in a private sphere
behind closed doors, making intervention and discovery from the outside very
difficult.
The second factor that we found has a very important impact on those who
are caught up in forced labor is the restrictive nature and complexity of labor
and immigration regulations in destination countries.
Now, I have a recommendation that I'll come to in a moment that addresses
this in particular. But these restrictive migration regulations force more
people to look for alternative ways to carry out their migration, using the
services of these agents and intermediaries that we talked about before.
And I think it's very important to remember that most of these economic
migrants are, in fact, doing exactly what we would do in their same situation,
that if they have hungry children, if they have situations where they lack a
chance to have education, if, like many of our ancestors, they sought
opportunity and went to a new place, and at times that process leads to their
exploitation.
The third most important factor we discovered were the threats of
violence, and I won't say more about that, because we understand that violence
is used to control people, to enforce their -- and to force their exploitation.
And of course, it includes the debt, the withholding of documentation and
pay, to create a kind of multiple level of dependency.
And then the fourth is, in fact -- the fourth factor is, in fact, more
structural, and it is that increasing demand for cheap labor. This is in many
of the industries and service sectors across the European Union and North
America.
Even in cases where employers pay a legal minimum wage, the increasingly
widespread practice of subcontracting creates opportunities for agents to
withhold the earnings and take control over the lives of migrant workers.
And if you combine that with the urgent need of many countries outside the
OECD area to search for a better life, it simply means often to provide
additional income for the basic needs of their families. It provides the
circumstances in which people take risks in their migration strategies.
Now, I want to move on to a few recommendations, and Ms. Biaudet has
highlighted the question of adequacy of enforcement.
And I want to offer -- I guess it might be termed a factoid, a small fact,
that I believe very strongly illustrates this, from the experience of the
United
States.
And it's about the fundamental nature of the level of resources that are
brought to bear on this crime. Let's recall for a moment that, in fact, the
State Department has estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into
the United States each year.
In other words, something like -- and let me use the number 17,000 for a
reason that will become clear in a moment -- something like 17,000 people are,
in fact, newly enslaved in the United States each year.
Now, it's an interesting criminological, statistical coincidence that, in
fact, the murder rate in the United States is almost exactly 17,000 per year.
Now, the reason I put those two next to each other is because in the
18,600 police departments in the United States, there is not one police
department without a homicide unit, a homicide detective, a specially trained
homicide officer.
In the 18,600 police departments in the United States, to the best of our
estimation and reckoning, and we've been looking, we have found three officers
trained and ready and who, when they get up in the morning, their only job is
to
work against slavery and trafficking.
Now, I'm going to reiterate that slightly to say 17,000 murders, 17,000
people newly enslaved in the country each year, and -- through trafficking, and
reminding you that trafficking is, in fact, a bundle of very serious crimes,
not
a single crime.
It includes assault, kidnaping, indentured servitude, forced labor, very
often sexual assault, very often rape, as well as a number of crimes like
document fraud and economic fraud and so forth -- a very serious bundle of very
serious crimes, and yet we are enforcing it at a level which is less than one-
tenth of 1 percent of the allocations of resources that we would bring to the
question of homicide.
It was very difficult to determine how much is actually spent on homicide
in this country. I wanted to find that number for comparison purposes. The
closest that I could find was something over $2 billion, but it was unclear to
me what it was.
If we look at all the United States government expenditure on
antitrafficking and antislavery work, it comes to something over $200 million.
So there's a very significant discrepancy in this resource allocation.
And while a number of our recommendations -- and the recommendations that
have gone before I think are very sound. Without the adequate resourcing,
they're not going to reach out to the size of this problem.
The second and, let me say, the end of the recommendations that I want to
offer will actually come from a slightly odd direction.
In 2002 and 2003, I was asked by the United Nations Office of Drugs and
Crime to prepare for the Global Program on Trafficking in Persons an action
plan
for the countries of the economic communities of West African states.
In other words, the ECOWAS countries, the Economic Community of West
African States, knew that they had a situation in which trafficking was going
on
between those countries, and they were hoping to bring together all of the,
first, secretaries of justice and so forth and then, finally, the prime
ministers and presidents to agree a plan of action that would cover all those
states.
Now, the reason I point this out is that the OECD countries have been
working very carefully and cooperating, but they haven't necessarily come
together and said, "We are going to set forward an entire raft of legislation
which would bring our laws into a kind of harmony that recognizes that, in
fact,
this international crime is an international crime and that we must have laws
which continue across borders with a certain coherence and harmony. Otherwise,
criminals will take advantage of that difference, that arbitrage, between one
side of a border and the other."
I point to that, and I explain a number of those provisions adopted by the
ECOWAS countries in 2003 in the written section. And I won't go into any
detail
here.
But it was primarily about bringing those ministries of justice and so
forth together to say how can we make our immigration laws, simply in terms of,
for example, the issuing of passports, the issuing of documents that we can all
recognize, not unlike what has been happening in the European Union, how -- to
make sure that those are -- or make our antitrafficking work at the border more
effective.
How can they make sure that the crime that's punished with a severe
penalty on one side of a border is not, in fact, treated as a misdemeanor or,
in
fact, completely defined in a different way on the other side of a border?
It's a fundamental approach to a global problem with a global solution.
And I think it's one that, in this case, the Economic Community of West African
States has stolen a march on the countries of Western Europe and North America
and can point to a way in which those laws and enforcement practices can be
brought into coherence.
I very much appreciate your time. I guess I wasn't too provocative. I
didn't hear anyone gasp or anything. But we very much appreciate the chance to
speak. Thank you so much.
HASTINGS: Thank you all so very much.
I'm beholden to the persons who helped us to put this together, and I want
to mention by name the staffer from the Helsinki Commission that all of you
worked with, Ms. Winsome Packer (ph).
And she had able assistance, and I thank her personally, of Clair Robondo
Sielkey (ph) from the Congressional Research Service, which most countries
don't
have the luxury of having such a tremendous resource (inaudible) as the United
States does with the CRS.
I wanted to share with all of you, as I listened to you, that -- I think,
Mr. Plant, you highlighted what I feel is something that needs to be addressed,
and that is that -- and all of you in some way approached it -- that this is
really a global situation, and it's interfaced, as all of you put it, with
bundled crimes, so to speak, that register.
But before we do our finger pointing -- and we're very good at that in the
United States, finger pointing all over the world.
But before we get into that finger pointing, if we were to spend
substantial time analyzing how we got to where we are, we would recognize,
among
other things, that different forms or perhaps as we -- not as much sexual
exploitation, but in (inaudible) labor, different forms of exploitation have
taken place in this country.
And while we have had good laws that have assisted in overcoming it, the
simple fact of the matter is that we've had our share of participation in the
kinds of things that you discuss, particularly in the labor area.
Lest I go forward to say that during the second world war, I worked in a
DVT factory in Jersey City putting labels on bottles at nine years old.
And I hear now about the dangers of DVT and what have you, but I was sort
of like the roaches. I absorbed it and got over it and kept going. It didn't
work on them and it didn't work on me either.
(LAUGHTER)
But not only did I but all of my colleagues who wanted to have the little
bitty jobs got it. And then I graduated and became a person that worked in the
migrant fields.
And now I'm fortunate enough -- I'm fond of saying that I go back -- and I
know, Ambassador, that you have a little bit of a Florida background -- and the
best football team in Florida today at South Florida, as it were.
But I have a total background in the state of Florida, and I thought of a
time when I was weighed about 119 pounds, and we were working an agricultural
product, chicory, and we were cutting chicory.
And the man that was the straw boss determined that I was to load at that
time, and I didn't have the physical capacity to lift and throw those bundles
onto a truck.
And so I quarreled with him. And this is in the halcyon days of
segregation. And he informed me that I had to go back to the migrant bus and
wait. And I told him I'm not going to wait, I want my money right now.
And I'll never forget. He slapped me, and I hit him with a shovel, and...
(LAUGHTER)
... I ran all the way home, which was about 12 miles from Umatilla at that
time, and my grandmother sat on the porch with a shotgun awaiting him to come.
They beat just about everybody in the migrant coterie, and none of them
would tell them who I was or where I lived. And I guess that's attendant to
how
I'm here today.
Later I went on to work in Belle Glade, Florida and in Kahulke (ph)
picking beans, especially, and then being on the back of a migrant truck,
coming
up to Connecticut.
And I cite to it only for the reason that now I represent Kahulke (ph) and
Belle Glade, thanks to the laws that developed over time and, of course, went
on
to assist in developing the legal services to migrants program, which I think
has strengthened in some particulars the rights of migrants who still find
themselves substantially taken advantage of in the labor market.
Again, I'm not referencing the sexual exploitation.
And then, Mr. Plant, you'd be pleased to know that my mother, who was an
impressive person, went on, along with my dad, to become domestic servants.
Fortunately for them, they worked at the high end of domestic service for
extremely wealthy families in Queens and in Beverly Hills and in Bel Air,
California.
But I remember my mother talking about wanting to write a book called
"Thursday and Every Other Sunday." And the hours that they were on call during
that entire period of time -- if the boss came home at 1 o'clock in the
morning,
they had to get up and prepare a party.
They were on the job, lived there, and primarily for the reason that they
wanted to assist in me going to college. So these things do have a real tinge
to them.
And my mom wanted to organize me in the United States of America something
that probably still needs to be done, because very occasionally we find not
only
in the field that you all have so aptly described, but we find that people are
taken advantage of.
That's my little story that I wanted to share.
Ambassador, I did have for you a question. Ms. Biaudet and I were talking
about -- and I have heard rather repeatedly, including recently the chief of
staff of the Helsinki, the young fellow over here on the right -- Fred Turner
and I were in Slovenia for the fall and Mediterranean conference of the
Parliamentary Assembly of OSCE.
And while there, I had an opportunity to talk with Marc de Brichambaut,
who is the secretary general. And of course, he has been here.
I don't know whether he has met with your good offices, but he has been
here on numerous occasions meeting with officials at the State Department.
And a concern that's being expressed by him and others -- and I add my
voice to that -- is that there is considerable talk about cutting the budget of
the OSCE, which, if that were to occur, would cut the mission in the OSCE,
which
if that is to occur would cut the projects that allow for Ms. Biaudet and
others
to feed into trying to address this enormous problem in the OSCE sphere.
What, if anything, should we be doing or can we do? And not because
you're at crosshairs with your superiors at State, but you get my drift.
LAGON: You bet. I've been in this job for four months, and I come to it
from having been the deputy assistant secretary for international organizations.
So funding issues and international organizations is something I've
thought about a good deal.
We need to make sure that when we look at fiscal responsibility and the
overall budget line that those functions that are most vital, like helping
those
who are victims of human trafficking not get undercut.
I think the United States needs to use its substantial voice to make sure
that's the case within the OSCE budget. I can't speak to the overall funding
level, although I think it's important that if we are careful and cautious and
conservative about funds that we not (inaudible) the most important (inaudible)
function.
HASTINGS: Yes. I appreciate that very much.
One of the participants in the audience submitted this question, and it's
directed to you, Mr. Feinberg -- said although ICE provides entry into the
United States via visas, et cetera, and federal jobs or other work
opportunities, does ICE provide any kind of medical treatment for physical
and/or mental diseases resulting from their abuse?
And if they do, is this treatment free or discounted? And how will the
victims be treated upon rescue? And how will they continue treatment if their
work does not afford it for them?
FEINBERG: Thank you, Mr. Hastings. First of all, I just want to -- for
the record, ICE is a law enforcement organization. We do not issue visas.
That's the State Department.
We do have a little bit of oversight on the issuances of visa, but the
U.S. State Department is the one that issues visas.
Our job in what we're talking about here is strictly trying to identify
victims and then work with them and organizations, NGOs, to help them.
We're looking at it from using them as witnesses to prosecute
international and domestic organizations that are exploiting men, women and
children for these crimes.
And then we will help -- we will work with Health and Human Services and
faith-based organizations and other NGOs to get them the help that they need.
We also, because of our immigration authority, can give the victim a
continued presence into the United States so they don't have to worry about
their immigration status if they're brought in -- either smuggled in or brought
in in a way that they're not legally here.
So we have a few weapons in our arsenal. We can help them as well as
working with the organizations to help them recover from their violation.
HASTINGS: We also had a question from the audience, I guess, that was
directed to all of you -- is how do you respond to Mr. Markon's -- and I stand
to be corrected as to the pronunciation.
I read some of the series -- the Washington Post article of September
18th, quote, "Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage and Little Evidence," unquote.
Do either of you have any response?
LAGON: I would be happy to start. And I tried to address that through
Mr. McIntyre's good questions, in part.
I think it's right that we don't have an exact idea of the scale of the
problem. We're quite clear that to be able to pursue prosecutions and to help
victims, you have to find them first.
And when I share with other countries our experience about how we try and
build cooperation between governments; national, local law enforcement; social
services, with NGOs, that's essential.
In particular I've got to emphasize that civil society organization, non-
government organizations, are the ones who have to help find victims. They
often times are the least threatening.
When victims believe that they're just going to be treated as (inaudible)
disposable people, they're going to be treated like criminals, they're going to
be seen as just a mere prostitute -- this is only a migrant worker, sadly --
they are hard to find.
So the numbers aren't what the estimates had said, but those estimates are
just that, estimates. I strongly agree with Ms. Biaudet's suggestion that we
need kind of actionable research.
If we get hung up on what is the global number, and we don't take finite
funds and look at particular migration patterns, particular sectors of the
economy, to reverse engineer the profitability to traffickers, we're not taking
the right first steps.
HASTINGS: In your interagency approaches, are you all producing reports
or...
LAGON: Yes. I chair something called the Senior Policy Operating Group
on Trafficking. We have a subcommittee on research, and we made this very
decision that to devote a lot of resources to getting the overall global number
would be a mistake.
But devoting resources, just as our colleagues in the Department of
Justice and some other places are, to specific problems -- for instance, the
National Institute of Justice is looking at particular flows from Mexico and
Central America or from East Asia, and what the exact textured circumstances
are.
I think that's the way to go.
HASTINGS: Yes, Kevin?
BALES: Mr. Hastings, if I may, because I've stated my previous
incarceration was as a professor of social statistics and research methods --
and I was very dismayed to read that article in the Post, not least because he
used only federal prosecutions as listing the number.
And yet we know from the research that only about one-third of all
trafficking cases that are found reach law enforcement, much less federal law
enforcement. The others come through social service providers, hospitals,
medical -- so forth.
And yet all of that information was out, easily available, and he seemed
to be unable to find the fundamental research that's out there.
HASTINGS: (inaudible)
BALES: Now, if I could say that that doesn't answer the question -- solve
the problem.
And I think one of the things that's very important to highlight -- and
Ambassador Lagon has, in a sense, raised it -- which is that we actually have
within the federal government and some of the related agencies and
international
organizations a series of very large-scale data sets which are held in
completely watertight compartments from each other.
And I've met with a number of the agencies that hold these data sets, and
I've asked and pointed out that normally at this point in the development of
research agenda, particularly, say, in the area of epidemiology, you conduct
what's called a meta-analysis by combining a whole series of existing data sets
to discover the epidemiological, if you will, of this particular illness of
trafficking.
At the moment -- and this is why I wanted to say this in front of the
ambassador -- is that the decision to open the doors of those data sets to each
other across the bureaucratic lines has to come from the top, from the Senior
Policy Operating Group.
I've attempted to speak to the people who work with those data sets, the
computer nerds and analysts who work those data sets, but they say it's above
my
pay grade, we can't begin to share information.
If we could reach that point of sharing that information, we don't know if
it would be great results or not, like much blue sky research is. But I
suspect
that we'd find many new things to help us make the best of...
HASTINGS: Right.
Ambassador, you were going to follow up with something?
LAGON: That is a good idea and, in fact, our interagency group meets at
the cabinet level on October 25th. Secretary Rice is the chair, so we should
look to discuss it.
HASTINGS: Yes, sure.
LAGON: Just one other thing. I was just going to say another way another
way that the Markon piece doesn't capture all of reality is the difficulties
found in -- we have a formalized way that the identified victims who are
foreign
nationals -- we certify them for benefits and we give them (inaudible).
We have the sense that there are victims who are American citizens -- are
getting access to social benefits that they have rights to, but there isn't a
formal certification process.
HASTINGS: I follow you.
LAGON: Very important that we not only split -- we avoid splitting sex
trafficking from forced labor, but we also serve all victims, foreign nationals
and U.S. citizens, without any zero sum games.
HASTINGS: Yes. Mr. Markon was here earlier. I don't know whether he's
still here or not.
MARKON: I'm right here.
HASTINGS: You are? Reaction?
MARKON: I'm sorry, I can't.
HASTINGS: Question?
MARKON: I'm just here to take notes.
HASTINGS: Oh, OK. That's the first time we shut a journalist up.
(LAUGHTER)
I'm sure that he'll have a reaction.
But I wanted you all to interact with each other.
Ms. Biaudet, if you don't mind, in the interest of time, I know you want
to ask each other some questions, and I want to give each of you about 30
seconds to wrap up, since we are running out of time with this room.
But Ms. Ponticelli was taking copious notes, and so my formula or at least
this new paradigm is working a little better than some of this other stuff I've
seen, and she might have a few questions that she wanted to put to you that
might be useful for all of us.
Yes.
PONTICELLI: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think it's very -- first of all, on the collection of data -- and I
think the really global challenge for all of us -- identifying the victims. I
think it's a global -- it's not just a U.S. challenge. It's a challenge, I
think, for every country around the world trying -- working hard to deal with
this problem.
And I think that one aspect of the complexities and sometimes the apparent
insurmountability of this problem -- and I think it's a dimension we haven't
had
a chance to really discuss that much today, Mr. Chairman -- and that has to do
with what I mentioned in my statement, one of the key root causes, poverty and
lack of economic opportunity.
So I would say that if someone were to ask me where do we need to devote,
perhaps even increase, attention, additional attention, I would say two areas,
particularly for the main focus of our bureau, which is to prevent children
from
entering and to rescue them from what we call the worst forms of child labor.
One is education, the key. And secondly, of course, education writ
broadly -- job skills, access to alternative livelihoods.
You mentioned from your personal story, which I really commend -- and I
felt that was very, very moving -- there are other forms of bad labor,
exploited
labor, that children -- we all know about the situation, of course, of child
soldiers.
We know about children in other kinds of bondage. We know about children
that are taken into prostitution, into hazardous occupations, as you mentioned.
And I think that this is where the United States, if we look at total
numbers -- I think the problem is so complex and so multidimensional -- how
many
children may be in a hazardous working situation, how many children may be in
another kind of forced labor situation that might not be classified as per se
trafficking.
And I think this is where our partnership -- certainly within the
Department of Labor -- our partnership with the wage and hour division which
inspects workplaces, which secures compliance, which stands up for labor
standards and workers' rights, whether that person is someone born here or
someone who comes from abroad.
It's a tremendous partnership that we have, and to work with that bureau
and with the Employment and Training Administration, which has some excellent
models of success that we've been sharing with other countries -- the one-stop
career centers, which can be a rescue and education tool as well.
So I just want to kind of (inaudible) a long way of saying I think that...
HASTINGS: Are you going to put a question to her?
PONTICELLI: I would like to know perhaps in the context of OSCE, or
perhaps ILO as well -- we are the largest, of course, contributor to the ILO's
efforts to eliminate forced labor and child labor.
What should we be doing more in terms of addressing those root causes of
economic opportunity -- lack of economic opportunity, lack of access to quality
education?
HASTINGS: Ms. Biaudet?
BIAUDET: Well, I think one very important thing is, of course, also to
look at -- you all know that when children are not in school they are very much
at risk of getting into anything -- I mean, not only becoming victims of
trafficking, but they can -- many, many horrible things can happen.
So I think this, of course, is crucial. But we know also that many, many
countries don't allow undocumented children to go to school in practice.
So I think there's a lot of easy practical issues that could be addressed
if there would be political will to address these issues that would put these
children less at risk.
We also know that I think -- or I don't know really for sure, but I think
there's more than 8,000 children coming unaccompanied at the borders of the
U.S.
every year. What happens to those? Do we really know?
We know that there's a lot of missing children in Europe. Nobody knows
where they are. They come from China. They come from different places.
They are not recognized as trafficking victims, which is interesting when
we have this numbers question, because when they come unaccompanied, usually
they are just sort of smuggled or (inaudible) but they have been -- you know,
they are (inaudible).
And research show that it's very likely that they might be trafficked, but
they are, of course, not in the destination so the intervention, the
protection,
has to come much -- it's not so important if there is a definition of
trafficking or not, because the child needs the protection.
So there's a lot of practical issues we can do, but it sometimes mean that
we have to change our system a little bit. It doesn't always mean that we have
to compromise our other interests. But we just have to think a little bit out
of the box once in a while, perhaps, and create these and take them into
account.
Of course, also, as a multilateralist, I think the U.S. efforts in the
OSCE are very important. Sometimes, though, I think if the multilateral
approach would be stronger politically, it might be beneficial also for having
results in other countries, because I think this is how it has to be.
And there is a lot to show of experience and a lot of lessons learned from
each other but also from the U.S.
HASTINGS: Mr. Plant?
PLANT: Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to use my time to compliment what
Ms. Ponticelli has just said. I think it's tremendously important to see the
linkage between the fight against forced labor and slavery and overall poverty
reduction approaches.
It's really essential to mainstream this on development, antipoverty
agendas, with the World Bank, et cetera. Kevin Bales and myself -- I know
we're
going to be participating together with the World Bank in a couple of months in
this, and I believe Ambassador Lagon as well.
And I'm glad I've got meetings with both of you later today, because I was
working very hard trying to map out -- think of a strategy on that.
The only thing I would add to what you're saying is yes, education for
children, but please remember that in the current state of affairs the most
vulnerable people are going to continue to move.
It's going to be a long time before they can earn their livelihoods at
home. We're going to have to accept contract labor and migration, which is why
what Ambassador Lagon said about contract labor is so important.
Think of how much remittances contribute to poorer countries. Let's think
how much more the poorer people would get if the profits were not siphoned off
by abusive labor contractors, et cetera.
So let's remember that when we're thinking of adequate antipoverty
strategies, we've got to think of labor market, government, operating all of
these systems.
You're not going to -- we've always got to think that this is a question
of movement, and we've got to empower people to get better earnings when
they're
traveling abroad, better protection, as well as getting education, livelihood,
vocational training at home. They're all important.
HASTINGS: Ms. Biaudet, former Senator Robert Graham and I introduced
legislation dealing with unaccompanied minors and it did not see the light of
day in the U.S. Congress.
I would end at the time, as I'm required to for use of the room, but I
would like to say, in closing, that these kinds of hearings are particularly
helpful to those of us that are policy makers.
And, Ambassador Lagon, you had the good fortune of working in some of the
developmental legislation and now you see it from an executive capacity.
You would know that former Congressman Sam Gaidensen (ph) and Chris Smith,
who is the ranking member of the Helsinki Commission, did extraordinary
foundational work in this arena.
And Chris has really no peers in dealing with the subject of human
trafficking. Much of his work is still ongoing. But what we need from you is
empirical data and the collecting of that data put in some form so that we can
address it.
One of the things that I think that we did -- and, Dr. Bales, I don't
accuse you of naivete, but I do suggest, to be provocative, that you think
outside the Western confines. Many of these countries don't give a happy hoot
about what we're talking about, and their leaders have rubber stamp
parliaments.
Mr. Plant spoke about developing the judiciary. I can't tell you the
amount of time that I spent discussing with my colleagues that when we are
talking about going someplace and trying to cause democracy to take root, it
has
as a component not just free and fair elections, which are critical, but the
rule of law.
And if you don't have an established rule of law, then you're not going to
be able to do the things that are vitally necessary. Just to flag for all of
you all, Ms. Biaudet and I were talking earlier before this hearing -- I have
legislation that I've developed.
And it's astounding to me that so few of my colleagues, commissioners
included, on both sides of the aisle are not ignoring but choosing not to
address the significant number of Iraqi refugees that have been caused by
virtue
of the intervention.
I'm not talking ideologically whether we ought to be there, who got there,
what we went there for. The simple fact of the matter is a significant number
of people have been displaced externally and internally, burdening other
countries, not necessarily in the OSCE sphere, but certainly (inaudible)
important to the United States.
And yet we don't have a true mechanism for accepting and dealing with
those refugees. State is beginning to address it. Ms. Aubray (ph) and others -
- Dan Fried and I have had discussions about this.
But that's going to be an enormous problem that's going to feed into, in
another form, the same kind of thing we are talking about, although it's in
another part of the world.
I guess we could go on and on and on, but I had the last word.
(LAUGHTER)
[Whereupon the hearing ended at 12:03 p.m.]
END
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