By Kelsey Cary, Truthout

Human Traf­fick­ing is a global indus­try that tran­scends bor­ders, regions, and cul­tures. Within the West­ern Hemi­sphere traf­fick­ing is an impor­tant issue that arguably helps to shape rela­tions between Latin Amer­i­can and the United States. In June 2010, the State Depart­ment Report on Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP) included, for the first time, in its ten year exis­tence, a rank­ing allo­cated to the United States as well as 177 other coun­tries. The TIP report helps sub­stan­ti­ate the claim that the United States and Latin Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments must strive to improve the lives of mil­lions of inno­cent peo­ple who increas­ingly are vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing. The restaveks, Hait­ian youth forced into domes­tic labor with­out com­pen­sa­tion, exem­plify the lack of pro­tec­tive mea­sures against child traf­fick­ing who usu­ally turn out to be the chief vic­tims of trafficking.

The plight of these chil­dren, in Haiti and else­where through­out the region, reflect both the obvi­ous and more sub­tle weak­nesses in efforts to reduce human traf­fick­ing in Latin Amer­ica. The traf­fick­ing of chil­dren is an immensely seri­ous prob­lem that regional gov­ern­ments paired with Non-Governmental Orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) must address. More­over, the United States must actively engage with both the gov­ern­ments of other coun­tries as well as for­eign NGOs to facil­i­tate this improvement.

Dif­fi­cul­ties in Def­i­n­i­tion: The Palermo Protocol

Defin­ing human traf­fick­ing is quite con­tro­ver­sial. Although human traf­fick­ing is uni­ver­sally con­demned by the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, indi­vid­ual nations strug­gle to imple­ment mea­sures that meet the stan­dards under the United Nations Pro­to­col to Pre­vent, Sup­press, and Pun­ish Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Espe­cially Women and Chil­dren, more com­monly known as the Palermo Pro­to­col. It defines traf­fick­ing in per­sons as:

the recruit­ment, trans­porta­tion, trans­fer, har­bor­ing or receipt of per­sons, by means of the threat or use of force to other forms of coer­cion of abduc­tion, of fraud, of decep­tion, of the abuse of power of a posi­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­ity or of the giv­ing or receiv­ing of pay­ments or ben­e­fits to achieve con­sent of a per­son hav­ing con­trol over another per­son for the pur­pose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a min­i­mum, the exploita­tion of the pros­ti­tu­tion of oth­ers or other forms of sex­ual exploita­tion, forced labor or ser­vices, slav­ery or prac­tices sim­i­lar to slav­ery, servi­tude or the removal of organs… The con­sent of a vic­tim of traf­fick­ing in per­sons to the intended exploita­tion set forth [above] shall be irrel­e­vant where any of the means set forth [above] have been used.

Though the above def­i­n­i­tion dis­cusses the ille­gal­ity of both sex traf­fick­ing and labor traf­fick­ing, two sig­nif­i­cant weak­nesses remain. An arti­cle pub­lished by Human Rights Quar­terly stip­u­lates that the Palermo Pro­to­col fails to acknowl­edge the traf­fick­ing of per­sons within bor­ders, and instead may focus too heav­ily on the trans­fer of per­sons from one state to another. How­ever, domes­tic traf­fick­ing exists in many Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, such as Haiti and Brazil. A sec­ond con­cern regard­ing the Protocol’s def­i­n­i­tion is its inclu­sion in U.N. Con­ven­tion on Transna­tional Orga­nized Crime. Its place­ment there seems fit­ting, as much of human traf­fick­ing comes as a con­se­quence of the actions of orga­nized crime groups; how­ever, indi­vid­ual actors and small groups also are respon­si­ble for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of trafficking.

Human Traf­fick­ing Defined by the U.S.

Even though the U.N. insti­tuted the Palermo Pro­to­col, many Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries use the United States’ def­i­n­i­tion of human traf­fick­ing. The Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing and Vio­lence Pro­tec­tion Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines traf­fick­ing as:

sex traf­fick­ing in which a com­mer­cial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coer­cion, or in which the per­son induced to per­form such act has not attained 18 years of age; or…the recruit­ment, har­bor­ing, trans­porta­tion, pro­vi­sion, or obtain­ing of a per­son for labor or ser­vices through the use of force, fraud, or coer­cion for the pur­pose of sub­jec­tion to invol­un­tary servi­tude, peon­age, debt bondage, or slavery.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment allots for­eign aid in part based on the grade a coun­try receives in the Traf­fick­ing in Person’s Report, thus explain­ing many regional gov­ern­ments’ attempts to adhere to the U.S. def­i­n­i­tion rather than the one given by the United Nations.

The TIP Report

The U.S. State Depart­ment releases the TIP Report annu­ally. It dis­cusses each coun­try elab­o­rat­ing on improve­ments or regres­sion and gives coun­tries a grade: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2-Watch or Tier 3. Tier 1 coun­tries are those deemed to com­ply fully with the min­i­mum require­ments pro­vided by the Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing and Vio­lence Pro­tec­tion Act (TPVA). Tier 2 con­sists of nations that do not fully com­ply with the TPVA, but are mak­ing sub­stan­tial attempts to do so, while Tier 2-Watch nations make these efforts as well, but still have a sig­nif­i­cant increase in absolute num­ber of traf­fick­ing vic­tims. Tier 3 coun­tries, such as the Domini­can Repub­lic, do not ful­fill the min­i­mum stan­dards nor are they mak­ing attempts to do so. Some crit­ics of the TIP report argue that some coun­tries in the region attempt to meet TIP require­ments out of fear of receiv­ing a low rank in the compilation’s annual report and there­fore do not imple­ment mea­sures spe­cific to the nature and dimen­sions of the tempo of traf­fick­ing that is occur­ring within a given country.

Oth­ers spec­u­late that the sta­tus of diplo­matic rela­tions between the U.S. and Latin Amer­ica serves as the dri­ving force behind the grade each coun­try receives. Oppo­nents of the U.S., like Venezuela unques­tion­ably per­ceive a lower grade, than a coun­try like Colom­bia which is rewarded for sup­port­ing U.S. inter­ests in the region. For exam­ple, the United States ranks Cuba (a coun­try with which the U.S. lacks basic diplo­matic rela­tions) as a Tier 3 coun­try while Colom­bia receives the rank of Tier 1. More­over, in 2005, Latin Amer­ica had a higher per­cent­age of Tier 3 coun­tries than any other region in the world.

Even though it is dif­fi­cult to pro­duce a com­pletely unbi­ased account of gov­ern­ment efforts against traf­fick­ing with­out being swayed by for­eign pol­icy objec­tives, the TIP could at least try to find a bal­ance between eth­i­cal con­cern and broader U.S. geopo­lit­i­cal goals and inter­ests. This equi­lib­rium is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant with regards to Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries because the con­cept of migra­tion and human traf­fick­ing are closely related to one another. Ille­gal immi­grants who travel up through Mex­ico and Cen­tral Amer­ica lack legal pro­tec­tion and are there­fore more vul­ner­a­ble to becom­ing vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing. More­over, strict immi­gra­tion poli­cies, such as those in the United States, pro­vide only lim­ited oppor­tu­ni­ties for legal migra­tion that would go to pro­tect immi­grants. Restric­tive human traf­fick­ing mea­sures imple­mented by other coun­tries in the region are likely to reduce the amount of traf­fick­ing in the United States.

The TIP Report as a Tool

In an inter­view with COHA, Mark Lagon, For­mer Ambas­sador to Com­bat Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons and cur­rent Senior Advi­sor of Cor­po­rate Respon­si­bil­ity for Lexus Nexus, uses the case of Venezuela to refute some crit­i­cism of the TIP report: “I advo­cated for rais­ing Venezuela to a bet­ter rank­ing. The integrity of the report requires acknowl­edg­ing improve­ment because all in all, there is no rea­son to give coun­tries any­thing but an objec­tive assess­ment.” In this capac­ity, Lagon con­tributed to global anti-trafficking pol­icy and directed the com­pi­la­tion of the TIP report. Venezuela, a nation with which the United States has strained ties, had a Tier 3 rank in 2007, but in 2008, it was moved down a level to Tier 2-Watch class. Lagon views the TIP report as a con­struc­tive tool for improv­ing rela­tions between the U.S. and Latin America.

He describes the improve­ment in US-Mexico rela­tions with regards to human traf­fick­ing as a “quiet suc­cess,” which in part is due to the State Department’s deci­sion to assign the U.S. a grade for the first time. Fur­ther­more, Lagon con­tends, “Mex­ico con­tin­u­ally hated any report where it was given a grade, but by includ­ing the U.S. in the TIP report we admit­ted, weak­nesses in a way that we had not done before. Con­se­quently, this dia­logue has led to a more con­struc­tive rela­tion­ship, fos­ter­ing coop­er­a­tion in regards to pre­vent­ing human trafficking.”

He went on to clar­ify that “the heart of human traf­fick­ing lies in exploita­tion; it’s not always about migra­tion. Forty per­cent of traf­fick­ing vic­tims in the U.S. come from Latin Amer­ica. It is every bit as much for labor as for sex­ual exploita­tion.” A Con­gres­sional Research Report high­lights the case of Mex­ico because it accounted for twenty-three per­cent of rec­og­nized human traf­fick­ing vic­tims in the U.S. in 2008 alone. Thus, increased col­lab­o­ra­tion between the U.S. and Mex­ico regard­ing immi­gra­tion and traf­fick­ing leg­is­la­tion will only yield pos­i­tive out­comes. By exam­in­ing the case of Mex­ico it is evi­dent that a deep­en­ing of rela­tions between the U.S. and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries could be facil­i­tated by engag­ing in dia­logue regard­ing human rights, espe­cially trafficking.

The Nature of Child Trafficking

Coun­tries that do not pro­vide pro­grams to com­bat child traf­fick­ing often receive more con­dem­na­tion and higher rank­ings in the TIP report. One of the most unset­tling aspects of human traf­fick­ing is the exploita­tion of chil­dren used for sex tourism. A sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­ancy exists in the legal age of con­sent for females in Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries. Aver­ages range from four­teen to eigh­teen years, the legal age as pro­vided by the Palermo Pro­to­col. These dis­par­i­ties make vic­tim iden­ti­fi­ca­tion more dif­fi­cult. A 2008 arti­cle pub­lished in Human Rights Quar­terly reports that “other forms of traf­fick­ing include using chil­dren as pan­han­dlers, news agents, garbage recy­clers (i.e. those who sort through the pub­lic dumps for recy­clable mate­ri­als), domes­tic help, min­ing, agri­cul­ture, ille­gal adop­tion and child sol­diers.” These types of forced labor jobs fre­quently occur within the bor­ders of one coun­try, as with the restaveks in Haiti and child sol­diers in Colombia.

A Focus on the Restaveks

The term restavek comes from a French word mean­ing “to stay” and refers to Hait­ian chil­dren who are forced into domes­tic labor with­out pay or guar­an­tee of decent liv­ing con­di­tions. Accord­ing to the TIP report, there are 230,000 restaveks in Haiti who epit­o­mize the con­cept that traf­fick­ing is not based solely on sex­ual exploita­tion. The United Nations Human Rights Coun­cil esti­mates that there are between 150,000 and 500,000 restaveks. Either fig­ure still leads to the same con­clu­sion: this form of exploita­tion should be of real con­cern to the island nation. Hait­ian soci­ety has his­tor­i­cally been char­ac­ter­ized by class strat­i­fi­ca­tion whereby author­i­tar­ian and hier­ar­chal fac­tors largely influ­ence stan­dards of liv­ing. In the most impov­er­ished coun­try in the hemi­sphere, adults reg­u­larly view chil­dren as eco­nomic com­modi­ties, which make them highly vul­ner­a­ble to the per­ils of traf­fick­ing. Death of par­ents, run­aways, and local sources of demand for child labor in urban cen­ters and free trade zones are all fac­tors that leave Hait­ian chil­dren open to exploitation.

Haiti has a long his­tory of eco­nomic des­ti­tu­tion. Sev­enty per­cent of the Port-au-Prince pop­u­la­tion was liv­ing in abject poverty even before the Jan­u­ary 12thearthquake. Mark Lagon explains that this dis­tress per­pet­u­ates human traf­fick­ing in that “the rule of law is lack­ing in Haiti and eco­nomic des­per­a­tion only exac­er­bates the already dire sta­tus quo. Poverty is the dri­ving force here. It leaves peo­ple vul­ner­a­ble and it’s likely to take decades if efforts are lim­ited to fight­ing traf­fick­ing.” Con­se­quently, par­ents, if pos­si­ble, will send their own chil­dren to stay with other fam­i­lies in urban areas based on the rea­son­ing that these new care­tak­ers will pro­vide a bet­ter life than they them­selves could. Unfor­tu­nately, this is not the case, as most end up sub­jected to lit­tle bet­ter than inden­tured servi­tude and then may have to work for their “own­ers” from birth to adult­hood. Often these chil­dren must work from the early hours in the morn­ing until the last house­hold adult goes to bed. When dis­cussing traf­fick­ing in Haiti specif­i­cally, Mark Lagon com­mented, “Restaveks suf­fer the most acute form of domes­tic servi­tude. In Haiti there’s a per­ma­nent under­class locked in homes, paid lit­tle or nothing.”

In order to improve the lives of Hait­ian restaveks as well as those of traf­fick­ing vic­tims in gen­eral, a moral imper­a­tive must be present as well as the main­te­nance of a polit­i­cal sys­tem where every­one has equal access to jus­tice, not just the wealthy elites. Addi­tion­ally, traf­fick­ing usu­ally occurs as a con­se­quence of cor­rup­tion that per­vades all lev­els of soci­ety, from law enforce­ment to the judi­ciary. The United States has the capac­ity to assist other coun­tries in the region to make laws become real­ity by help­ing train enforce­ment agen­cies, pres­sur­ing gov­ern­ments, to con­duct them­selves with rec­ti­tude and coop­er­at­ing with NGOs that have proven them­selves wor­thy of respect.

UN Per­spec­tive on the Restaveks

Gul­nara Shahin­ian, Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Con­tem­po­rary Forms of Slav­ery, also artic­u­lated the manip­u­la­tive nature of the restavek sys­tem in a BBC arti­cle in June 2009. She con­tends that it is equiv­a­lent to slav­ery through the ways in which it “deprives chil­dren of their fam­ily envi­ron­ment and vio­lates their most basic rights such as rights to edu­ca­tion, health, and food as well as sub­ject­ing them to mul­ti­ple forms of abuse includ­ing eco­nomic exploita­tion, sex­ual vio­lence, and cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, vio­lat­ing their fun­da­men­tal right to pro­tec­tion from all forms of vio­lence.” This ‘mod­ern form of slav­ery’ has proven dif­fi­cult to sup­press for a num­ber of rea­sons. First, a law exists in Haiti stat­ing that employ­ers must pay peo­ple for their ser­vices, start­ing at the age of fif­teen. This almost guar­an­tees restaveks being thrown on to the streets at that age, adding to the chronic cycle of poverty in the coun­try. Although Haiti is a sig­na­tory to the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child, it has no laws to pro­tect restavek chil­dren and the like­li­hood of any law’s effec­tive­ness today would be lim­ited. The Jan­u­ary 12th earth­quake has only made the sit­u­a­tion worse, as both the Hait­ian National Police and NGOs have reported an increase in alleged cases of forced labor and forced pros­ti­tu­tion of chil­dren and adults since the dis­as­ter. Haiti’s inabil­ity to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble soci­etal demo­graphic —children—reflects a prob­lem ram­pant through­out the region and the world.

The Impor­tance of NGOs

Increased coop­er­a­tion between the U.S. and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries regard­ing laws as well as puni­tive mea­sures will be cru­cial to coun­ter­ing the efforts of traf­fick­ers in the region, but the legal can­vas is not nec­es­sar­ily the only area of con­cern. Lagon pointed to the prob­lem of cor­rup­tion among law enforce­ment offi­cials who “tend to blame vic­tims instead of help them.” In order to assist vic­tims not only in Haiti but also those to be found within the region, it is cru­cial that Wash­ing­ton step up its assis­tance to NGOs. For exam­ple, the Polaris Project is an NGO that focuses on vic­tim iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and then pro­vides social ser­vices and tran­si­tional hous­ing as called for by advo­cates of stronger fed­eral anti-trafficking leg­is­la­tion. Another NGO, Inter­na­tional Jus­tice Mis­sion (IJM), works in many loca­tions, such as Guatemala, Peru, and Hon­duras, to res­cue vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing, par­tic­u­larly chil­dren, and bring jus­tice to their per­pe­tra­tors. Lagon explains that “We need to move the nee­dle by extend­ing the capac­i­ties of NGOs. They are often seen as an irri­tant, but are an essen­tial part of civil soci­ety. By assist­ing NGOs finan­cially, we can help build the capac­ity to decrease human traf­fick­ing.” It is not merely a coin­ci­dence that Colom­bia which has a flawed human rights rep­u­ta­tion, nev­er­the­less received a Tier 1 rank­ing and is the largest recip­i­ent of U.S. aid in the region as well as being among Washington’s pri­mary mil­i­tary allies in the Caribbean.

Work­ing Towards a Brighter Future

Human traf­fick­ing is a wealth-generating indus­try in which the risk to reward ratio even­tu­ally per­pet­u­ates the prob­lem. A per­son can be exploited repeat­edly, whereas drugs bear a one-time use restric­tion. This makes traf­fick­ing a lucra­tive mat­ter for those involved. Ten­sions over def­i­n­i­tion and desen­si­ti­za­tion on the traf­fick­ing issue have only weak­ened efforts to pre­vent it. Con­se­quently, the United States and gov­ern­ments in the region need to work together and thrust human traf­fick­ing into more of a spot­light. This must be done not merely once a year when the State Depart­ment releases the TIP report. Progress in the fight against human traf­fick­ing in the region will not come to fruition until the United States is will­ing to not only assist the gov­ern­ments of the Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, but also help NGO’s iden­tify as well as lib­er­ate vic­tims. Wash­ing­ton must also resist any temp­ta­tion to politi­cize the mat­ter, as has been seen in the eval­u­a­tion of Venezuela.

http://www.truth-out.org/combating-human-trafficking-western-hemisphere61796