US department defends human trafficking report

April 15, 2011
ABC Radio Australia

CDEBACA: One of the problems that we have in the entire region, whether it's in Cambodia or in other countries is that the good work of police forces, prosecutors, national coordinators who work with the non-government organisations to come up with ways to attack human trafficking are then undercut by official corruption. We have a high ranking police official who owns the bar where the women are being held as slaves, when you have a government official who owns the plantation where the people are being made to cut down the palm oil and things like that. It totally undercuts what we're trying to accomplish, so not just in Cambodia, but in other areas of the region we see corruption as being an anchor that drags behind the effort.

Each year the US State Department puts out a report detailing the human trafficking situation around the world and grading countries on how well they are addressing the problem.

The report separates nations into categories or tiers, and the rankings can cause diplomatic friction. For example Singapore was furious last year when it was placed on the Tier Two Watch List for countries that don't meet the standards of a US law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and are not doing enough in the eyes of the State Department to reform.

US Senator Jim Webb has recently criticised the rankings, saying the method for compiling it lacked clarity and that it caused "confusion and resentment" among Asian nations. Tier One lists countries that meet the standards of US legislation called the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Tier Two is for countries that don't meet the US standards but are trying. The Tier Two Watch List is for those that aren't considered to be trying hard enough. In Asia that includes Bangladesh, China, India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka plus newcomers Afghanistan, Brunei, Laos, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. And Tier Three, the worst perfomers on combating human trafficking, includes Papua New Guinea, North Korea and Burma.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane

Speaker: Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large, State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking In Persons

CDEBACA: Well the United States has been issuing the anti-trafficking report now for ten years, the passage of how anti-trafficking law in the year 2000. Our anti-trafficking law passed about a month before the United Nations acted in Palermo in the modern updating of the slavery conventions and what that did was it focused not on the movement of people around the world, but rather on the slavery and exploitation. And so the United States rather than waiting for the United Nations or any other multilateral organisations to an assessment or an evaluation, again 200 taken evaluation. It guides our diplomacy, it guides our programs and it guides the training and technical assistance that we're able to give countries around the world to fight modern slavery.

COCHRANE: And that diplomacy is ruffled at times with the release of the report and the various tiers of the list. Do you think that the trafficking report should be balanced against wider diplomatic sensitivities?

CDEBACA: Well, we think that the trafficking report actually is balanced against wider sensitivities and that it is naming the problem and then working both as a diagnostic and to the degree that there's the shame factor that moves governments in to work on this and that's something that again comes into the diplomatic world.

Secretary Clinton said that countries come very forcefully and talk about not wanting to be dropped in their category and report and we hear them out and we talk to them and we then work with them to make a difference and if you don't have results that speak for themselves at the end of the year, then the ranking can be something that a country doesn't want to see.

We don't get very many complaints from the countries that get upgraded or they get ranked highly on the report as to how the report works. So we think that it's working, because a number of countries are moving up on the report.

COCHRANE: One of those countries that went in the opposite direction, Singapore, was apparently not too happy about being placed in the Tier Two watch list last year. What were they doing wrong and have they taken steps to improve in the interim?

CDEBACA: One of the issues that was reported in the annual trafficking persons report about Singapore last year was the problem of labour trafficking as many people in the Pacific region know Singapore has a very large number of guest workers. There's been very high profile cases in which they've been abused by their employers as well as a host of women in prostitution. The report in 2010 was very concerned about, for instance, the notion that 7500 women were arrested and deported for prostitution and only a handful were identified as trafficking victims and we're also very concerned that this issue of domestic servants, this issue of foreign guest workers, that the Singaporean government would not even accept the notion that these people could be abused or whether they could be covered under the international norms of the UN protocol.

COCHRANE: Did the shock of being placed into the watch list make them more ready to address the reality of the situation?

CDEBACA: Well, we've had a lot of dialogue with the Singaporeans. This year I was in the region, in the Fall, I was in Malaysia and then Singapore and one of the things that we've seen with both countries. The reason I've lumped them together is not because they're next to each other. It's because you will recall in the 2009 report, Malaysia was put on Tier Three and it was equally unhappy with that.

In both cases, we've had the months after the report, after the initial shock and the initial discomfort with this ranking, we then have increased engagement. I've been to Singapore, I meet regularly with the Singapore ambassador to the United States. We've seen increased dialogue between the Singaporean government and US law enforcement with what is a what we think is an open and serious desire to learn more about the cutting edge techniques of fighting modern slavery. No longer do we see Singapore simply refusing to admit that there is a problem of enforced labour on the island.

COCHRANE: One of our major audiences is Indonesia. How are their efforts going in terms of human trafficking? We know there's a massive people smuggling operation that goes on. What about in terms of human trafficking?

CDEBACA: Well, Indonesia is a country that we've seen historically as having a big problem as an offending country in many ways, but there's also problems of people enslaved in Indonesia itself, whether it's in the eastern part of the country on New Guinea or some of the eastern islands, on Borneo itself. We've got a problem with agriculture, mining, fishing, forestry as well as sexual slavery.

But what we've seen is and again they were historically very low on the report. They take a look at that and worked to improve their law. They worked to improve their structures and as a result, we've now seen I think last year there was more than 80 traffickers who were convicted, which is, when you compare it to their neighbours, which is a very serious number of cases being brought. So we've seen Indonesia as a success story in the region. It doesn't mean that there's no trafficking in Indonesia anymore. It simply means that the government is actually acting against it.

COCHRANE: And Cambodia has also been seen as making positive moves in passing a 2008 law against human trafficking and sexual exploitation. There are still things that need to be done though and a long way to go in Cambodia. The report last year detailed with some very specific references corruption amongst police and amongst government officials. Would you like to see more done to stamp out corruption amongst the government and police?

CDEBACA: One of the problems that we have in the entire region, whether it's in Cambodia or in other countries is that the good work of police forces, prosecutors, national coordinators who work with the non-government organisations to come up with ways to attack human trafficking are then undercut by official corruption. We have a high ranking police official who owns the bar where the women are being held as slaves, when you have a government official who owns the plantation where the people are being made to cut down the palm oil and things like that. It totally undercuts what we're trying to accomplish, so not just in Cambodia, but in other areas of the region we see corruption as being an anchor that drags behind the effort.

COCHRANE: The new report is out is due out mid-year. Are there any new trends in the movement of human trafficking within Asia that are concerning you?

CDEBACA: Well, one of the big trends that we see and it's not necessarily new for 2010 is that the feminisation of modern slavery that we pointed out in last year's report. Indonesia, for instance, has within five years gone from having a majority of men as the economic migrants who leave Indonesia, to having a majority of women as the economic migrants and it's a big swing and I think it was 20 or 25 per cent of the migrants historically were women and now it's more than 70 per cent. Those women are going into more exploitable situations. They're travelling to be maids, working by themselves in a home in countries with very few worker protections and so this national of the feminisation of modern slavery, not just in the sex industry is something that I think is of great concern.

The other trend that we see frankly is when you look at jurisdictions like Taiwan or the Philippines or even in Malaysia is that some of the work that we saw five years ago in Indonesia is spreading throughout the region.

COCHRANE: What sort of work are you referring to?

CDEBACA: Well Taiwan for instance, now has victim care. The Taiwan authorities are letting victims not locking them up in shelter. They're letting them leave, go work during the day when they're in Taiwan, even if they had come illegally, even if they had engaged in prostitution. Once they're rescuing them, they're actually trying to rehabilitate them.

In the Philippines, we're seeing a willingness of the Philippine government to prosecute the labour brokers who are sending people overseas to be abused and the supreme court has issued a ruling that is going to clear the back log of trafficking cases by having a certain number of days. I think it's 180 days in which trafficking cases have to go to trial. These are things much like Malaysia where you see a new willingness of the government to work with the non-governmental organisations that really give us hope in the region and these are problems that were first pointed out in public in the trafficking in persons report. So we think that we're not going to take credit for what these governments did. But the first time these inconvenient facts were talked about in public were in the American report and we want to make sure that we work with these governments to address the recommendations, address those concerns. We don't want to just accuse countries of things then run away. We want to be in there with those countries working on the solution.