[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE STATE DEPARTMENT 2013 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 11, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-80
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
or
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
81-872 WASHINGTON : 2013
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC
area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC
20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESS
The Honorable Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large, Office to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of
State.......................................................... 9
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Luis CdeBaca: Prepared statement................... 12
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 38
Hearing minutes.................................................. 39
THE STATE DEPARTMENT 2013 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11 o'clock a.
m., in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.
Christopher H. Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order. Good
morning, everybody and thank you for joining us today for the
second in a series of hearings on the Trafficking in Persons
Report and U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking. In April,
our subcommittee took a close look at the records of six
countries which had exhausted all of their allotted time on the
Tier II Watch list and must, by law, be moved to Tier II or
Tier III in this year's Trafficking in Persons Report. One of
those who testified, Ambassador CdeBaca's predecessor in the
job was Mark Lagon and we heard very, very insightful
testimony, from him and others, about why countries including
China, Russia, and Uzbekistan ought to have been put on Tier
III. An upgrade to Tier II would have been completely unmerited
and would have damaged the credibility of the Trafficking in
Persons Report.
The TIP Report was released late last month, and I was
pleased to see that it is one of the best and that it
faithfully reported and graded the records of China, Russia,
and Uzbekistan, which had been skirting accountability for far
too long. Now, the administration is faced with next steps
including what sanctions might be imposed to press these
nations to reform.
When I wrote the law, the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act of 2000 that created not only this report, but also the
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca's position in the U.S. Department of
State, and several other provisions to prevent both sex and
labor trafficking, protect victims, and prosecute traffickers,
it was sincerely hoped that this report would become the
international gold standard and primary means of
antitrafficking accountability around the world. I am happy to
say it has. From the halls of Parliaments globally to police
stations in remote corners of the world, this report is today
being used to focus antitrafficking work--a search light on the
work that is occurring or not occurring in some 186 countries.
But with the power of this report to improve situations
came the risk that it could also be used to whitewash the truth
about a country's trafficking record. It could fail to report
accurately and inadvertently give cover to negligent or
complicit governments.
I am very happy to say that the 2013 report is one of the
best ever produced. Special thanks are especially in order for
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca and his very dedicated staff for
faithfully highlighting the good, while exposing the bad and
the ugly. The TIP Report is faithful and reflects the hard,
meticulous work and leadership of the Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons. This office not only analyzes
whether a country is complying with the minimum standards for
the elimination of human trafficking, but also sets specific
recommendations as to how that country can move forward.
With this report, countries should have no question
whatsoever about where they rank, as well as how they can
improve. Many countries have publicly or privately credited the
report as the impetus for real improvement in their trafficking
laws and policies. Since the TIP Report's inception, more than
130 countries have enacted antitrafficking laws, and many
countries have taken other steps required to significantly
raise their tier earnings.
I just returned from Istanbul on Saturday from the OSCE
Parliamentary Assembly and offered a resolution there on
trafficking and specially on some of the best practices that
Ambassador CdeBaca and I have been talking about where flight
attendants can be trained as to how to spot a trafficking as it
occurs, while victims are being moved and transported. Not only
did it pass unanimously, but many of the heads of delegation
have made it very clear that they are going to go back to their
capitals and take up that idea.
I also talked to many of the heads of delegation and
members of Parliament about the TIP Report. Many of them knew
about it, some of them were unhappy that our country takes it
upon itself to hold them accountable, but as I told each and
every one of them, not only do we rate ourselves, but even more
importantly, borders are no excuse for human rights abuse. And
if we really want to end modern-day slavery, what is contained
in this all-important book, helps them, and helps all of us, as
a guide to help improve our efforts.
This year, China, Russia, and Uzbekistan finally have to
confront their records. The report tells it like it is. For
instance, the TIP Report states that, and I quote in pertinent
part:
``The Chinese Government's birth limitation policy
and a cultural preference for sons, created a skewed
sex ratio of 118 boys to 100 girls in China, which
served as a key source of demand for the trafficking of
foreign women as brides for Chinese men and forced
prostitution. Women from Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, and
Mongolia are transported to China after being recruited
through marriage brokers or fraudulent employment
offers where they are subsequently subjected to forced
prostitution or forced labor. Traffickers recruited
girls and young women, often rural areas of China,
using a combination of fraudulent job offers,
imposition of large travel fees, and threats of
physical or financial harm to obtain and maintain their
service in prostitution.''
Because tens of millions of girls have been systematically
killed by sex-selection-abortion over the past three decades,
resulting in an unprecedented number of ``missing'' women and
girls in China, demand for prostitutes and so-called ``brides''
is absolutely exploding in China. And it is not getting any
better any time soon.
As a direct consequence of the barbaric one-child-per-
couple policy in effect since 1979, China has become the global
magnet for sex traffickers. Women and young girls have been and
are today being reduced to commodities and coerced into
prostitution. Without serious and sustained action by Beijing
and the international community, it is only going to get worse.
The TIP Report also makes clear that ``Chinese law remains
inadequate to combat all forms of trafficking. and the
Government of China's efforts to protect trafficking victims
remained inadequate.'' In addition, China's ``Government
continued to perpetuate human trafficking in at least 320
state-run institutions.''
I, along with Congressman Frank Wolf, visited one of those
state-run institutions in the early 1990s, Beijing Prison #1.
We were shocked to observe the horrific conditions imposed on
inmates including more than 40 Tiananmen Square human rights
activists. The report makes clear that state-sponsored forced
labor is part of a systemic form of repression known as
``reeducation through labor. The government reportedly profits
from this forced labor, and many prisoners and detainees . . .
.''
With this report, we have done right by the millions of
trafficking victims in China. With this report, we are holding
China to account for its complicity in profits off of modern-
day slavery. It is my sincere hope that the truth will turn the
tide in China.
However, I am disappointed and I would say this with all
respect to my friend, Ambassador CdeBaca, we were disappointed,
many of us, to see that Vietnam was not downgraded to the Tier
II Watch List or Tier III. Vietnam's labor export companies,
most of which are owned by or affiliated with the Government of
Vietnam, have been engaged in practices that lead to debt
bondage and forced labor. The Government of Vietnam has yet to
pay millions of dollars in damages to Vietnamese labor
trafficking victims found in the United States and its
territories, as ordered by U.S. courts.
Vietnamese trafficking victims in other countries report
that the Government of Vietnam sides with the traffickers to
keep them in bondage when the victims seek help. Other reports
indicate that the Vietnamese Embassy in Russia, and we had a
hearing on this, is actively working with organized crime to
enslave Vietnamese nationals in sweatshops and brothels, and
the TIP Report itself notes reports that officials at border
crossings and checkpoints accept bribes from traffickers.
Some notable trends in the 2013 report include: Tier I, 30
countries as compared with 33 in 2012; Tier II, 92 countries as
compared with 93 in 2012; Tier II Watch List, 44 countries as
compared with 42 in 2012; and Tier III, 20 countries as
compared with 17 in 2012.
The Africa region increased its prosecutions by 45 percent.
According to the report, labor prosecutions by 500 percent, its
convictions by 16 percent, and its victim identification by 13
percent. The African region, however, is the region with the
greatest number of Tier III countries, and does not contain any
Tier I countries.
The East Asia and Pacific region saw a 23-percent decrease
in prosecutions, but a 28-percent increase in convictions and a
slight increase in the number of victims who were identified.
The number of victims identified remains alarmingly low,
however, at 8,521 in a region where the International Labor
Organization believes there are nearly 12 million people
enslaved. The number of labor convictions, 103, also remains
extremely low in the region of the world most plagued by labor
trafficking.
The European region saw a slight drop in prosecutions, but
a 13-percent increase in convictions and a 17-percent increase
in victims identified. I would note parenthetically that that
in 2008 in the European space, some 54,000 victims have been
identified. So there is a robust effort underway there to find,
identify, and help victims.
The Near East region saw a 19-percent increase in
prosecutions in 2012, and more than doubled its conviction
rate, largely due to efforts in the United Arab Emirates. The
Near East region also more than doubled its number of victims
identified. This region has the greatest relative proportion,
however, of Tier III countries.
The South and Central Asia region saw slight, but
appreciable increases in its prosecutions, some 7 percent;
convictions, 5 percent; and number of victims identified at 13
percent. India, one of the first countries to be moved off of
the Tier II Watch List under the TVPRA of 2008 2-year rule,
remained a questionable Tier II ranking for a second year. Out
of nearly 2 billion people, only 4,415 victims were identified.
Finally, the Western Hemisphere region, in which the United
States, of course, is included, prosecutions increased by 72
percent, and convictions increased by 44 percent, including a
650-percent increase in labor trafficking convictions. However,
victim identification, sadly, decreased by 15 percent. Eight
countries in this region improved their antitrafficking laws in
2012. Cuba is the only country in the region to be Tier III.
Colombia and Nicaragua share Tier I status with the United
States and with Canada.
I look forward to the testimony by our very distinguished
witness, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, but before that will yield to
my friend and colleague, the ranking member, Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Mr. Chairman, once again, I want to thank you for
your on-going efforts to combat human trafficking. I always
appreciate your focus and your steadfast commitment and I look
forward to continuing to work with you to develop smart
policies that protect victims and prevent human trafficking
globally and domestically.
I also want to express my deep gratitude to Ambassador
CdeBaca. And I especially appreciate your inclusion about what
is going on in the United States in the report. I know that is
always there, but you had a slightly different focus this time.
The United Nations defines trafficking in persons as the
recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of
persons. While we hold this hearing annually, this definition
of trafficking reminds us that efforts to end human trafficking
are needed more today than ever before. The International Labor
Organization estimates that human trafficking generates well
over $30 billion annually, a figure that rivals some nation's
gross domestic product. The 2013 TIP Report clearly indicates
that far too few victims have been identified and my fear is
that if we don't quickly identify more victims they will be
lost to organized crime, pimps, johns, and others that care
little about their well-being or physical, mental, or emotional
safety.
With social scientists estimating that 27 million women,
children, and men are trafficked, the fact that only 40,000
have been identified is woefully inadequate and frankly
disturbing. We can and must do more to assist nations
everywhere with helping identify and protect victims and not
treating them as criminals.
I am pleased that this year's TIP Report is themed Victim
Identification.
Ambassador, once again, I commend your leadership on this
issue, working through the interagencies as well through your
direct foreign government engagement to ensure that a
comprehensive response to fight trafficking includes thorough
enforcement, alongside compassionate care for vulnerable
communities including runaways, foster youth, disabled,
stateless, ethnic minorities, and migrants.
As I look at this year's tier ranking map of Africa, there
appears to be progress in nations like Madagascar, Sierra
Leone, Senegal, and the Republic of Congo, yet other nations
have not progressed and have fallen backwards. The good news
however, is that prosecutions, convictions, victim
identifications, and new legislation across the continent
appear to be at an all-time high.
I am eager to hear what new efforts can help increase focus
on issues of child soldiers, sexual exploitation, as well as
forced servitude and labor throughout Africa. The TIP Office
should be congratulated for efforts to work with the South
African Government to advocate for and advise on passage of
legislation that prohibits all forms of trafficking in persons.
I am pleased that the TIP Report continues also to evaluate the
United States' efforts to address human trafficking. In this
section, the TIP Report highlights the critical needs to
strengthen efforts to serve and protect domestic populations
vulnerable to trafficking including the nearly \1/2\ million
children in foster care. Sadly, the instability and traumatic
experience of foster children make them particularly
susceptible to commercial exploitation. Worse still, recent
headlines indicate that pimps are now targeting foster youth
group homes as hubs to recruit vulnerable girls right here in
this city as well as around the country.
Across the country, data shows that between 65 and 85
percent of domestic minor trafficking victims are current or
former foster youth. In Los Angeles County alone, my home
county, hundreds of domestic youth are commercially exploited
each year. In 2012, the Los Angeles County reported that at
least 60 percent of youth identified as victims of sex
trafficking were in the foster care system. Estimates by local
authorities indicate that the actual numbers are much higher,
but there is a lack of available data to confirm these
statistics.
As an advocate of our nation's foster youth, I am pleased
to see that the TIP Report urges the United States to increase
training to case workers and other professionals who serve
children in the child welfare system, similar to as the chair
mentioned with the airline industry. We need to train our own
service providers here. The report specifically notes that the
Federal Government should issue official guidance to provide
child welfare agencies with specific tools and information to
better identify and serve foster youth who are trafficked or at
risk of being trafficked.
Furthermore, the TIP Report outlines the need for enhanced
data collection to better understand the scope and scale of
domestic human trafficking. In order to address these very
gaps, I am proud to have introduced the Strengthening Child
Welfare Response to Trafficking Act, along with my colleague on
the subcommittee representative, Tom Marino. This bill will
direct the Department of Health and Human Services to issue
guidance to child welfare agencies with appropriate tools to
identify, document, educate and counsel child victims of
trafficking and those at risk and require child welfare
agencies to report the numbers of victims of trafficking in
foster care as well as their plans to combat trafficking to the
Federal Government. I don't know and perhaps we can get into it
in questions, I don't know if you work with Human Services
here, but it would be great to have that collaboration going.
In closing, Ambassador, I want to urge you to continue to
pursue an interagency process that calls on all relevant
departments and agencies to address this issue, like I
described a minute ago. I have been generally impressed by the
work of the Interagency Task Force to develop a comprehensive
strategic action plan on victim services here in the U.S. to
ensure that our limited resources are being maximized. The
decision to include a public comment period to incorporate the
input of broader civil society including survivors of
trafficking into the plan increases its chance for success to
increase awareness, identify more victims, and improve
services.
I look forward to posing some questions later on in this
hearing. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. I now yield to the
distinguished chairman of the full committee, Mr. Ed Royce of
California.
Mr. Royce. I thank Chairman Smith for holding this
important hearing. I just want to also take a moment and thank
Chris Smith for all he has tried to do to drive this issue as
well as our former Speaker of the State Assembly, Karen Bass, a
member of this committee for everything that she is attempting
to do to stop human trafficking, especially trafficking of
children. And the definition of a civilized world is one that
comes to the aid of those who are most defenseless. And when
you look at the situations around the world of children sold
into slavery, sold into trafficking, or these situations that
Karen has been talking about in terms of the group homes, we
have girls as young as 13, 14 years old, these Romeos are sent
there, these girls never have any idea the end goal that these
men have for them. They think they are being rescued. But what
is about to happen to them is a very, very horrendous situation
followed by a very short lifespan for most of these young
children.
We want to thank Ambassador CdeBaca for his work and for
being here today with the Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking of Persons.
We had a hearing earlier this year on this subject, prior
to the report, and this modern-day slavery is what it is, is
something that affects the lives of so many millions around the
world, but also as we heard in testimony, also the lives of
people here in the United States. And the commitment of the
Foreign Affairs Committee as Chris Smith will attest is deep,
it is longstanding, it is fully bipartisan, and our goal is to
put a whole lot of more pressure on governments around the
world to get engaged here.
Earlier this year, I supported the Violence Against Women
Act reauthorization, but I have concerns that cuts to the TIP
Office and other aspects of the trafficking reauthorization
contained in that bill might harm the important work of the TIP
Office. I know that Chairman Smith is working hard to make
certain that at the end of the day we do more to lean in on
these governments. And against this background all of us were
closely watching this country's peer rankings to see how the
State Department would handle the statutory limit on how long
countries could stay parked on the Tier II Watch List. And so I
was somewhat encouraged that for the first time in memory, this
year's TIP Report accurately ranks certain important countries
such as China and Russia, based on the facts on the ground. And
based on their lack of significant efforts to address the
problem.
I do wonder why other countries were not similarly treated.
For example, I am very concerned that the Government of
Cambodia remains part of the problem. My chief of staff spent
her vacation in the past working with children in Cambodia who
had been sold, who had been trafficked with the knowledge of
local police, with the knowledge, full knowledge, of the local
government. But I do believe that these new Tier III downgrades
are well deserved. And I think that increased the credibility
of the TIP Report, but at the end of the day I want to see more
done across the board, especially with governments like
Cambodia.
The Report also underscores the broader challenges we face.
Twice as many countries slip backwards in this year's report
than have been improved since last year.
And finally, in terms of this global issue, hitting close
to home, just yesterday, the Orange County District Attorney,
Tony Rackauckas, filed human trafficking charges against a
Saudi princess accused of exploiting a Kenyan victim in
California, so we will be following that case with interest.
I thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Royce, for your
leadership and for your very eloquent comments today.
Dr. Bera.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass.
Again, this is an incredibly important series of hearings and
even one case of human trafficking is one case too many, but
when you are talking about millions, this is an epidemic that
requires all of our resources. And again, I applaud this
committee for taking it up and making it a priority and we have
to make it a priority for the entire population in America. It
goes to our core values of human decency, human respect, and
dignity.
We certainly have to focus in on what is happening
internationally, but we also have to look at the supply side of
this as well. We have to raise our standards of values. So when
we are shopping someplace, when we are buying our goods and
services, we know we are not spending resources at places that
are engaging in human trafficking.
We also have to hone our conversation. Ambassador CdeBaca,
you pointed out the importance of just basic education so that
our first responders can recognize and report potential cases
that our healthcare providers, that our teachers, that everyone
in this country can recognize it, so we stop it here
domestically as well and stamp that out. And you identified a
case of a police officer in Sacramento who just with a single
day of training really raised his awareness. So this is an
epidemic that has to stop and again, it goes to our basic
values as just human beings.
So again, I applaud the efforts of this committee. Again,
this is a bipartisan issue that just is about human decency and
what we stand for. So we look forward to working with you and
you clearly have the full support of all of us. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Dr. Bera. Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Ambassador, for being here to testify. As most of us in this
room know, this annual Trafficking in Persons Report is one of
the best tools that we have in terms of identifying human
trafficking and reports on some 186 countries, utilizes U.S.
Government research, foreign government statistics, NGO
information, evaluates really whether a country is meeting, and
may I stress minimum standards to eliminate human trafficking.
But really none of that matters. We have had a number of
hearings here, none of that matters if the Report is not acted
on. And for me, I think that is what I look forward is how can
we make sure that if a bad report is presented, that it has
consequences that comes with that. We look over and over and we
have heard testimony in this very room how if there are no
consequences or if there is not a consistent standard, what we
find is is that human trafficking really doesn't change.
The State Department has not let us know if they will put
on sanctions for any Tier III countries. And yet, they have the
law and the capability to do that and we seem to resist that.
There is obviously some very encouraging statistics we have
seen here in this report, some that are not quite as
encouraging, but what we all know is that this will not improve
unless there is an incentive, a real incentive, not just empty
words and empty rhetoric, but a real incentive to make sure
that we stop this. It is bipartisan. Both the chairman and the
ranking member have said it so well that we have to place an
emphasis on this, not just abroad, but here in the United
States. My daughter has been involved in human trafficking
issues in the United States for a long time to highlight that
and what we have happening also in our neighborhoods, in our
communities around us must be stopped.
So with that, Mr. Ambassador, I thank you for your heart
and what it represents.
Chairman Royce pointed out one other thing with regards to
VAWA. When it passed, I was deeply concerned about reduction in
some of the emphasis in human trafficking both from a reporting
standpoint, a jurisdictional standpoint, and a funding
standpoint that I look forward to working with the chairman and
the ranking member to hopefully correct. I look forward to
hearing your testimony on that.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Meadows. Now we turn to our
distinguished witness and thank him for being here. Ambassador
Luis CdeBaca coordinates U.S. Government activities in a global
fight against contemporary forms of slavery. He serves as
senior advisor to the Secretary of State and directs the State
Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons which, as we all know, assesses global trends, provides
training and technical assistance, and advocates for the end of
modern-day slavery.
Ambassador CdeBaca formerly served as counsel to the House
Committee on the Judiciary, whereas his portfolio included
modern slavery issues, among many others. He also served as a
Federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice where he
prosecuted and successfully convicted dozens of pimps and
abusive employers and helped liberate hundreds of victims from
servitude.
So Mr. Ambassador, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LUIS CDEBACA, AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE,
OFFICE TO MONITOR AND COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ambassador CdeBaca. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Bass, and other members of the committee. Thank you for the
invitation to testify today about the 2013 Trafficking in
Persons Report. But most importantly, thank you for your on-
going concern and leadership in our country's effort to combat
modern slavery.
Since I became Ambassador-at-Large 4 years ago, a lot has
changed in the antitrafficking movement for governments are
living up to their responsibility to fight this crime. More
stakeholders are contributing expertise and resources. And more
individuals are aware of the way that modern slavery affects
their lives. But one thing that has not changed is the
partnership across the United States Government when it comes
to fighting human trafficking, in both the administration and
on Capitol Hill, in both the House and the Senate and in both
sides of the aisle.
It is a partnership that secured the renewal of the
antitrafficking law earlier this year, a partnership rooted in
the idea that we as a nation need to stand up for universal
values, values of freedom, justice, and dignity of all people,
here at home and around the world. These are the values that
drive our work to fight modern slavery. These are the values
that drive our imperative to deliver on the 150-year-old
promise of freedom made by President Lincoln.
At the same time, we also make combatting trafficking in
persons a priority in domestic and foreign policy because doing
so is in our country's strategic interest. Trafficking persons
is a crime that threatens rule of law. It feeds on the
vulnerability of marginalized populations, creates further
instability and damages communities, corrupts labor markets and
global supply chains, the very things that are essential to a
thriving global economy.
So it is not only the right thing to do, but the smart
thing to do. And as President Obama made clear in this speech
of the Clinton Global Initiative meeting last fall, the United
States will continue to be a leader in this global movement.
President Clinton said something right after that. He said that
``the foundation world and all of us in public life have not
necessarily done enough to deliver on that promise.'' And so
that challenge that was put down not just by President Obama
that day, but by President Clinton as well, is a challenge that
should ring out for all of us. It is the challenge that Mr.
Bera suggests. What am I doing? What are we doing in our own
lives as consumers, as policy makers, as Americans?
We ask ourselves that question each day at the State
Department. And what we do is we try to press forward through
assistance to organizations working on the front lines,
providing aid to victims and helping governments build up their
capacity. We bring more stakeholders to the table through
partnership efforts, harness civil society, the resources and
innovativeness of the private and the commitment of groups and
individuals who, like us, reject slavery in the 21st century.
And through diplomacy, we urge governments to fully embrace
their responsibility to deal with this crime and we will work
with any government that takes this problem seriously.
One of our most important tools along this line is the
annual Trafficking in Persons Report. I would like to say a few
words about our major findings this year. My prepared testimony
goes into greater detail, and Mr. Chairman, you gave us a very
good overview as well of some of the trends that we are seeing
out there.
Once again, this report tells us that trafficking in
persons affects every country in the world. And it also tells
us that there is no government in the world that is doing
enough to fight it.
Our major focus this year is the importance and challenge
of effective victim identification. When done well, victim
identification opens the door to the support and services
trafficking victims, trafficking survivors need. Victim
identification leads to more investigations and prosecutions
and allows survivors the opportunity, if they choose, to share
their experiences and have a voice in the way that we shape our
antitrafficking policies and practices. It is the critical
first step in stopping this crime.
And yet, only about 47,000 victims were brought to light in
the last year, compared to that 27 million people living in
slavery. That massive gap represents the millions who toil
unseen and beyond the reach of law and it shows how far we have
to go in this effort. At the same time, we do see modest gains,
more victims identified, more countries adopted modern
antitrafficking laws, more countries moving toward a whole of
government approach so necessary to confront this crime.
Now beyond the global trends, the report includes the
assessments of the countries and territories on their
government's effectiveness in combatting this crime. And we
have seen an unfortunate reversal of the trend over the last
few years. More countries were downgraded this year than were
upgraded by a margin of nearly two to one. This year, 30
counties, including the United States are on Tier I in the
report, meaning the governments of these countries are
complying with the minimum standards set by Congress. And I
would like to be clear and I would like to repeat what Mr.
Meadows has said, these are only minimum standards. A Tier I is
not a perfect score. A Tier I is merely a passing grade. Every
country, every government, can be doing more to deal with this
challenge.
This year, 92 countries are in Tier II. Those governments
don't meet all the minimum standards, but we are seeing some
serious efforts there. And 44 countries are on the Tier II
Watch List, countries that despite making some efforts aren't
getting positive results or the situation may actually be
getting worse. An example I think that reflects Chairman
Royce's concerns, Cambodia, the downgrade of Cambodia to Tier
II Watch List this year very much reflecting a downward trend
in that country.
And then, of course, Tier III, those countries where the
governments aren't doing much at all to deal with this crime
and this year there are 21 countries.
This report doesn't pull any punches. It is thorough and
candid and as Secretary Kerry said at the rollout of the
report, this report is tough because this is a tough issue and
it demands serious attention. It is tough, but it isn't
necessarily punitive, we are not claiming to have the answers
because we don't. Know that the better information that we have
about modern slavery, what works there and what works here, the
more we are able to share those best practices, that we are
able to learn from our partners, and we are able to share what
we are doing correctly, the better we all will be in
confronting it.
So we are not just pointing a finger. We are extending a
hand to anyone who agrees that this is a problem that we need
to grapple with. The Trafficking in Persons Office's 60 staff
members are committed abolitionists, subject matter experts,
and experienced diplomats and they work with their colleagues
in the field with ever-intensifying expertise across the U.S.
Foreign Service and across civil society. One of those staff
members, Senior Coordinator for Reports and Political Affairs,
Mark Taylor, is leaving us next week for an exciting
opportunity in Southeast Asia. We all owe him a debt of
gratitude for his decade of leadership because under his
command, the Reports and Political Affairs Section has seen a
report that has shone a light in the dark corners of the world
and driven policy change for the better for the vulnerable
around the world.
So this report is a guide for ourselves, for governments,
and for everyone who shares our goal of a world without
slavery.
Thank you all for your commitment and your partnership.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador CdeBaca follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Mr. Ambassador, thank you again for your
testimony and again, thank you for your extraordinary
leadership.
Let me just begin with a couple of questions. Nigeria was a
Tier I country in 2010 and 2011. I actually visited Nigeria and
met with their JTIP, their equivalent of our office to combat
trafficking. They seem to be very, very focused. I visited two
shelters. They were inadequately housed, but it was a
resourcing problem. And I am wondering if you might speak to
why they are Tier II? Of course, they are not Tier III and they
are not a Watch List country, but when Nigeria was put on Tier
I, it was cause for celebration that one of the most populous
of the African countries had made such progress. What has
happened?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Mr. Smith, I am glad you asked about
Nigeria because to us there is so much promise in NAPTIP, the
Nigerian antitrafficking structure. The very structure of
NAPTIP and the way that they are staffing their offices to us
is an innovation that all countries in the world should look
to.
This notion of bringing together police officers,
prosecutors, and social workers assigned to the same case on
the same day, it is not police officers work a case for a year
and then they maybe take it to a prosecutor who turns it down
because they have never met the victim. It is not social
workers as an afterthought. It is actually integrating those
three things. And that was I think one of the things that drove
us in 2009 as far as the upgrade was concerned.
There has been leadership changes in NAPTIP over the last
year or so and I think that those are also things that we are
looking at that will have a very positive effect. The new head
of NAPTIP is energetic, she is innovative, and she is serious.
And we think that that is putting them on an upward trajectory.
I can't say what the tier rankings would be for Nigeria in any
given year. We have to look at the evidence for those 12-month
periods. But we do think that there is positive movement in
Nigeria.
Nigeria as a model, I think one of the things that we have
seen is whether a country is a Tier I country or a Tier II
country. If there is an innovation, we need to call people's
effect to that. And I, on the Senate side, was in front of an
Asia Subcommittee that was perhaps a little more skeptical
about Nigeria and skeptical about the fact that we would think
that much wealthier or other high-status countries in the Asia
region could learn from a Nigeria on a law-enforcement issue.
And frankly, that was something that we took back and we went
straight to those governments and said Nigeria is doing this
right and we all need to look at them as a model.
Again, each year we look at the rankings and we will see
where we go. But we are heartened by some of the innovations
that we see out of NAPTIP.
Mr. Smith. A few weeks ago, Mr. Ambassador, the chairwoman
of the Foreign Affairs Committee for China, Madame Fu, sat
right where you are sitting, but facing the other way and we
had a dialogue, members of our committee. I brought up the
trafficking issue and the nexus with the one-child-per-couple
policy and the gendercide that has occurred systematically over
the last 30 years through sex-selection, abortion, and the fact
that tens of millions of girls and now young women are missing
simply because of sex-selection abortion. And as I pointed out
in my opening, straight from the TIP Report, you point out that
the skewed sex ratio of 118 boys to 100 girls in China has
served as a key source of demand for the trafficking of foreign
women. And I would also add for domestic women moving in
country around in China.
Madame Fu was indignant that I even brought it up. When I
mentioned to her that 600 women, just under 600 women per day
commit suicide in China, it is the only place in the world
where the numbers far exceed male suicides, directly
attributable to the one-child-per-couple policy and now this
horrible consequence of trafficking, she said I was making it
up. But I pointed out that our State Department's country
reports and human rights practices makes very clear that that
number came from their Chinese Government's equivalent of the
Centers for Disease Control. And she looked at it and walked
away in a huff.
My question is what was the Chinese reaction to being
placed on Tier III? If you could maybe elaborate on how this
demand is only getting worse, especially for the ASEAN
countries where women are being trafficked, and that goes for
North Korea as well, into China because of the scarcity of
women. They don't exist relative to the number of males in that
country, so demand has been skyrocketing. If you can speak to
that as well.
And thirdly, where do you think the administration may go
on enforcing or implementing a sanctions regime on the PRC?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Perhaps I will take those backwards.
Mr. Smith. Sure.
Ambassador CdeBaca. Once the Trafficking in Persons Report
comes out, there is then a 90-day period in which we look at
the possibility of sanctions for the Tier III countries. And we
work with our colleagues in the regional bureaus. We work with
the White House and others in looking to see to what extent
there is aid to those countries that we would then be having
impact on, to what extent there are things that we would want
to preserve the working relationship around, especially things
like law enforcement training and other things that go directly
to the human trafficking issue. Because, of course, you don't
want to cut off the way that you can make change with a
particular country, and so trying to figure out what the
universe actually is as far as U.S. foreign assistance that
would be subject to sanctions. And that is the process that is
going on right now. I can't speak to where that is going to end
up. I can certainly tell you though that we are taking it with
all seriousness and not just in China's situation, but in all
of the Tier III countries. And there are some new Tier III
countries. There are also countries that have been in Tier III
in the past. And each year we want to look at those with a
fresh slate because we want to make sure that the sanctions
regime is tied to the rankings, but also tied to the situation
on the ground. And that typically, I think we are usually
talking about a mid-September date as far as the sanctions
decision by the President.
As you point out, Mr. Smith, the Trafficking in Persons
Report does not shy away from recognizing the interrelationship
between the one-child policy, the sex ratios, and the demand,
especially for women, not just for bride trafficking, but for
sex trafficking as a whole. That notion of the disposability of
women that we see, as Kevin Bales calls the situation of
trafficking the problem of disposable people. I think that that
is something that we have raised with the Chinese, not simply
in the context of the report, but when I am sitting down with
my counterparts talking about human trafficking, it should come
as no surprise that this is one of the concerns that we have.
And we certainly communicate that to them.
Their response this year without necessarily getting into
the middle of particular diplomatic conversations, and I think
just as we had had a fruitful visit a few months ago to China,
we feel that there is some room to work with the Chinese. The
ratification of the Palermo Protocol, finally, the new Plan of
Action, these are very positive things. The new Plan of Action
came out after the reporting period closed and so it is not
something that is necessarily reflected in this report. But the
new Plan of Action for the first time actually says let us look
at unofficial work. It had been that trafficking could only
happen officially in China if you had an abuse within a labor
unit. And if you weren't in an official labor unit, you weren't
employed and so therefore you couldn't be held in forced labor.
So all of the underground economy was exempted from the
application of the law. So the notion of them closing that
loophole, the notion of them looking with the All-China Women's
Federation so that you could have the screening of people who
were found in prostitution as a matter of course, these are all
things that we are enthusiastic about when we look at that
action plan. That action plan is a future promise and future
promises under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act are Tier
II Watch List criteria. And so when we look at that action
plan, when we look at what may come from it, we are going to be
working with the Chinese and I think that their response to the
report and the discussions that we are going to be having with
them coming out of their response shows that there is, I think,
a lot of places that we can work together on this, rather than
being at loggerheads.
Mr. Smith. I do have many other questions, but I will yield
to my friend, Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.
I actually want to ask you a couple of questions, but not as
Ambassador, in your prior role, thinking about the U.S. and
giving your years of experience as a prosecutor, so we are
grappling with a couple of things. I mean right now we know ten
states have passed safe harbor laws to protect children from
being criminalized and charged with prostitution when I don't
believe a person under the age of consent could be considered a
prostitute.
So my question would be what would you advise Congress to
do in order to encourage or incentivize states to enact strong
safe harbor laws? And then until those laws are passed, I am
also concerned about girls that have already have that on their
record. Then they try to turn their life around and they have
soliciting. So how do we address that? And I want to know if
you are familiar with any states that have been successful in
eliminating charges related to sexual exploitation. California
has led the way in one area, but----
Ambassador CdeBaca. Well, this is actually part of my
ambassadorial hat as well because of the senior policy
operating group which I chair is a way in which we bring the
entire interagency together to wrestle with these. I think I am
probably unique among the ambassadorial corps in that I have
the domestic responsibility as well. We try to do that as
collaborators and with a relatively light touch across the
administration, getting everybody moving in the same direction,
especially as the President has, I think, shown such leadership
on this over the last 8 months or so.
What we have seen is a very exciting set of legislative
sessions this spring. There are some states in which this was
the only session because they are on 2-year cycles. And so we
have seen an explosion in not just laws being passed and sent
to the governor for signature in places not just in your states
that have done a lot on this over the years like California and
New Jersey, but also in places like West Virginia and even
Wyoming finally passing their state antitrafficking statute.
But that notion of safe harbor and the notion of expungement we
are starting to now see that.
And something that my office has been working with the
States' Attorneys General and the National Conference of State
Legislators on, it is something that our friends over at DOJ
and HHS, especially, have been working with.
Ms. Bass. Can we get that information from about the states
and all, get that information?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Very much so. I mean I think a lot of
that ends up being kind of the normal type of intergovernmental
work, the phone calls of encouragement and things like that. I
have testified by phone, for instance, in the West Virginia
legislature. We don't have a product that we are sending out to
them, etcetera, but we can certainly get you some more
information about what we have been doing. And I think that
part of it is that again, the bipartisan effort of the National
Attorneys General Association led by Martha Coakley last year,
but then really pushing out now as not just a 1-year
Presidential initiative, but something that is going to sustain
itself. I think that is one of the things that we have seen.
When you hear the stories of these women who have been able
to get their records expunged, they are able to get a
cosmetology license. They are able to move on with their lives.
[Additional information follows:]
Additional Written Information Received from the Honorable Luis CdeBaca
to Question Asked During the Hearing by the Honorable Karen Bass
According to the 2013 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, all
states and all but one territory have enacted modern anti-trafficking
criminal statutes in recent years. All 50 states prohibit the
prostitution of children under state and local laws that predate the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act; however, the application of these
laws continues to result in some trafficked children being treated as
criminal offenders. By the close of the reporting period (FY 12), some
states had passed additional protections such as asset-forfeiture
provisions, access to civil remedies, and training for law enforcement;
14 states had enacted ``safe harbor'' laws to ensure that children are
treated as victims and provided services rather than being prosecuted
for prostitution; and eight states had enacted laws to allow
trafficking victims to petition the court to vacate prostitution-
related criminal convictions that result from trafficking. While these
laws reflect an increased effort by state legislatures, observers
report that state anti-trafficking laws generally lack uniformity and
consistency across jurisdictions.
Since our reporting on ``safe harbor'' laws in the 2013 TIP Report,
five additional states have passed some form of this type of law.
States have also improved upon and implemented existing ``safe harbor''
laws including, but not limited to, New York and Minnesota. The state
of New York amended their ``safe harbor'' law to protect 16- and 17-
year old trafficking victims in addition to those aged 15 and younger.
The Minnesota Legislature approved $2.8 million in funding to implement
their ``safe harbor'' law enabling the state to hire a statewide
director of child trafficking prevention and six regional coordinators,
to train law enforcement and prosecutors, and to provide shelter and
housing to child victims.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Ambassador, let me just ask you with regards
to Vietnam which is one of the disappointing parts. I know you
don't make all of the decisions, the regional bureaus certainly
have input to say the least and there is very often, I have
heard this from the previous Ambassadors, including Ambassador
Mark Lagon, that it is a battle, fighting to ensure that the
right tier ranking occurs.
I recently introduced and got passed in full committee, the
Vietnam Human Rights Act. This will be the third time that I
tried to get that bill enacted into law and held a hearing on
it. There were actually two hearings. Vietnam is deteriorating
when it comes to human rights at breakneck speed. There have
been more show trials in Vietnam in 2013, in the first 3 months
of 2013, 40, than there were in all of 2012. As a matter of
fact, it was pointed out by Human Rights Watch that there has
been a huge deterioration across the board when it comes to
human rights in Vietnam.
When it comes to trafficking, as well as designation of
CPC, country of particular concern, I think there has been a
missed opportunity on our part to so designate Vietnam such a
country because on religious persecution they have also been in
a race to the bottom. But when it comes to the TIP, Vietnam
certainly, both labor and sex trafficking, I believe, has
really deteriorated. The TIP Report acknowledges that Vietnam's
anti-TIP law has not been implemented because criminal
penalties have not been established. Prosecution is limited to
two provisions in the existing penal code, Article 119 on
trafficking of women and Article 120, but none of the labor
trafficking activities committed under the government's labor
export program involving government-owned or sanctioned labor
export companies have been prosecuted.
And I am wondering, given that record and that you were
personally involved with the first case to be prosecuted under
the law that I wrote, the TVPA of 2000, concerning Daewoosa in
American Samoa and they still have not been forthcoming with
the judgments that were rendered in that decision either. So
that is 13 years old. But that pattern continues, and as I said
before in my opening, we heard from a woman who testified right
where you sit whose sister was trafficked to Russia, forced
into a brothel, and at least three people in the Vietnamese
Embassy tipped off the brothel owner when the Russian
Government was going to send in police to liberate those women.
So they are complicit. It couldn't have been more clear. And
she told the story of her sister who had been so ill-treated
and to this day others who have spoken out in Vietnam fear for
their lives. She said she feared for her life and her family
members who are still in Vietnam.
It would seem that the government has done an awful job and
if you could speak to that issue because it seems to me that
Vietnam should be, it seems to me there ought to be, they
deserve to be, on Tier III just like China.
Ambassador CdeBaca. I think one of the things that we have
seen in Vietnam over the last year or so is that there have
been some of the structural activities on the part of the
government, the decrees that put out guidance on victim
identification; a new policy on people who are arrested for
drug offenses, not immediately being put into those re-
education camp, detention facility-type things where they were
facing forced labor, but as the report this year sets out, this
is a situation which is very much as you recognize, a mixed
bag. We see almost 500 offenders being sentenced. That is a
positive. On the other hand, we also see these situations with
the labor export. We see a good track record of identifying
almost 900 victims, but when you look at that it is 900 victims
almost all of whom who are of internal sex trafficking cases as
opposed to looking at the forced labor, whether it is external
or otherwise. And I think that that is where we see kind of
this mixed bag situation. There is something good that is
happening and then there are these kind of bigger overarching
structural issues.
And so it is certainly something that we are taking into
account as we now switch over to kind of the diplomatic phase
after this initial report situation. And I think it is
something that as you mention, I have had personal experience
with the overseas labor issues on Vietnam and it is something
that we are continuing to look at. We are continuing to
monitor. And especially our Embassy in Moscow because that
seems like this pipeline has opened up, garment factories east
of Moscow, whether it is in service industries or light
construction, that notion of the Vietnamese and Russian guest
worker situation has always been present, but it seems to be
perhaps if not intensifying, it is being reported on more when
the abuses are coming out in the Russian press.
And so it is one of those things where we have to look at,
not simply what are we monitoring that is happening within
Vietnam, but starting to look more at where the Vietnamese are
being sent and what is happening to them once they get there.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask you, has the Vietnamese
Government initiated charges against labor export companies or
against traffickers involved with the Russian case?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Not to my knowledge, but I would have
to check back.
Mr. Smith. If you could get back to us on that that would
be helpful.
[The information referred to follows:]
Written Response Received from the Honorable Luis CdeBaca to Question
Asked During the Hearing by the Honorable Christopher H. Smith
It is our understanding that Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security
(MPS) last year concluded an investigation into allegations that more
than 80 Vietnamese workers were recruited to work in textile factories
in Moscow and subjected to forced labor. The MPS investigative unit for
trafficking publicly recommended that the Government of Vietnam charge
the Vietnamese labor export company in the case--Hanoi Investment and
Construction Joint Stock Company 1 (HICC1)--with human trafficking.
However, the Supreme People's Procuracy rejected the recommendation to
bring trafficking charges due to ``lack of evidence'' and returned the
case file for further police investigation. Our understanding is that
the case is now under additional investigation. According to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), on international labor trafficking
cases, Vietnam's criminal justice system requires extensive legal
assistance from the police forces of the countries where the
exploitation occurred in order to successfully prosecute on human
trafficking charges.
Mr. Smith. And again, I would just say that Vietnam did a
very good job of fooling people when the bilateral agreement
was coming forward that they would make serious efforts on
religious freedom and other human rights abuses and even people
who signed Block 8406, similar to Vaclav Havel's Charter 77, a
great human rights manifesto, they have become targeted in a
very systematic way. So what I am suggesting is that the
backdrop of decrees being promulgated need to be looked at like
a grain of salt when that is exactly what they did with
religious freedom.
I remember our Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom
under the Bush administration thought that he had what he
called deliverables when it came to religious freedom issues
and not one of them was acted upon and it got them off the CPC
designation. And they never went back on it as they ought to
have. So I think they are very good at gaming the situation and
talking a good game, but they don't walk the walk. So I would
hope that you would take that back and I know you care about
this deeply so take a good, hard look at if you would on
Vietnam.
The report also indicates that the Government of India
provided no information on investigations or prosecutions of
trafficking offenses or on convictions or punishments of
trafficking offenders. So my question would be many of us, I
remember vividly Gary Haugen who you know and I know so well,
10 years ago sat where you sat at one of the hearings I had on
trafficking and showed a video of police being tipped off in
Mumbai when these young, 13-, 12-, 11-year-old girls had been
hidden. They had the video of these little girls who were
hidden and they were brought up out of a cellar. They could
barely see because they were in a dark cellar, but the police
had been tipped off and that seems to be the modus operandi in
many situations in India. And certainly police are under the
minimum standards by definition, are considered part of the
government, because I am the one who wrote those minimum
standards with a great deal of assistance from my colleagues.
But we made sure that government complicity was inclusive of
police.
And I am wondering again how India can qualify as Tier II
and not Tier III or at least Tier II Watch List?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Well, India is certainly a country that
has a very serious trafficking problem, I think certainly the
scope of the problem. Also, the way it manifests as you
mentioned the brothels with children, the folks on farms and
rice mills and brick kilns and other factory-type settings. It
is a multi-faceted trafficking problem in one of the largest
countries in the world and manifests itself differently in
different states and different regions.
I think one of the things that we have seen that is
important over the last few years in India is that notion of
the--especially the Interior Ministry coming together around
this issue, the leadership from the ministers themselves and
some of the high-ranking staff that is showing that kind of
political will that it takes to fight human trafficking, the
creation of the antitrafficking units out in the field. And we
recognize that some of those are a work in progress, the notion
that you have got about almost 500 antitrafficking units and
the police and some of those are clicking along and especially
if they have relationships with the non-governmental
organizations, and not just the international non-governmental
organizations from the U.S. or from Europe, but the Indians who
are working on this. A number of those organizations played a
key role in the passage of the trafficking legislation this
last year in India. And that is something that we can't
overstate. India had been going in a different direction than
the rest of the world over the last 10 years on human
trafficking legal regime.
Their Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act actually was
something that applied to the persons in prostitution as much
as it did to the pimps and traffickers who were abusing them.
And so one of the reasons why we were suspect of the numbers
that one would get historically from India was that many of
those numbers were very probably women and children in
prostitution who had been prosecuted under the Immoral
Trafficking Prevention Act.
Now we finally have a modern anti-slavery, antitrafficking
law that aims at the abusers, not at the victim. That came in
right at the end of the reporting period. It came in because
of, we think, that new relationship between the Ministry of
Interior and civil society responding, of course, to the
horrible tragic gang rapes that were being reported upon this
spring. But it was, I think, a situation where we look at kind
of where we are in India this year. What have we seen over the
last 12 years? I think especially the work of the HTUs which is
a rebuke of sorts to those who had claimed in the past that the
Indian Government could not have a centrally-managed
antitrafficking effort because of their constitution. The home
ministry has proven them wrong and I think it is something that
we want to continue to support the home ministry and as they
continue to do their work.
Mr. Smith. That obviously happened before the report was
published or before the time closed. Have you been pleased with
the progress they have made in enforcing their new law?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Well, I think it always takes some
months for laws to get out of the blocks, as it were. It is not
a drag race. And so I think it is something that we are going
to be really looking to see as to how that law comes out.
One of the things we saw in a similar----
Mr. Smith. Does it treat the dalits equally?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Excuse me?
Mr. Smith. Does it treat the dalits equally?
Ambassador CdeBaca. The dalits, it applies to them as well
as everyone else in India. Now the proof is in the pudding and
I think that that is what we are going to see is is the
enforcement then done in the same kind of neutrality that the
text of the law itself would have.
Mr. Smith. The report shows that the victim identification
in the Western Hemisphere decreased by 15 percent. Is there a
reason for that?
Ambassador CdeBaca. You know, I don't think that we have
enough to really go from that as to speculate as to exactly
why.
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Ambassador CdeBaca. I think one of the things that we are
seeing is that there is a little bit of a double-edged sword
without increased attention to the data collection efforts in
that we are really interrogating the data which sometimes means
that we end up looking at claimed victims identified by
government and we will say now what you are actually telling us
is about alien-smuggling cases or those are people who you
prosecuted for prostitution offenses. So by interrogating the
data, in some countries will end up having a circumstance where
it looks like there are less victims identified than in prior
years, when in fact what was happening is those prior years
victim identification claims may have not been as accurate as
this year's.
So I think it is something we are working through,
especially with a lot of the Latin American governments as we
are bringing them into the modern definitions of human
trafficking.
The OAS Plan of Action and some of the work that UNODC has
done in the Western Hemisphere is getting more and more
countries to be able to differentiate between alien smuggling
on the one hand and human trafficking on the other. And so I
think that we are going to be seeing much more accurate
reporting as far as victims identified, but it all comes back
to that definition whether in the Indian context, whether in
the Western Hemisphere context.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Ambassador, let me ask you about Cuba which
is the only Tier III country in the Western Hemisphere.
According to the report, Cuba still does not prohibit
prostitution of children age 16 and older. This is of great
concern, given the administration's effort to open tourism
between the U.S. and Cuba. And over the past several years, I
have read many reports about the abuse of children in Cuba for
child sex tourism, particularly to Europe and to Canada. I
remember I was in Geneva when it was still called the U.N.
Human Rights Commission before it became the Council and there
was one report that some activists had that clearly showed that
this a big money maker for Fidel Castro. And the man that had
it was actually hit by some of the Cuban--he was out running, a
van stopped. He was cold-cocked in the head by some of these
thugs because he was raising this issue among delegations,
including the U.S. delegation, in Geneva.
I read the report and it was horrible how children are
exploited in Cuba. And I am wondering if you might want to
expand upon that and whether or not sex tourism prosecutions
might be included in the report to give a further sense of just
how bad it is. Parenthetically, I remember I was in Brasilia
some years ago meeting with parliamentarians there on
trafficking and learned just how many child predators make
their way to Brazil. And they were fully aware of it, were
trying to combat it and they did a Plan of Action that was
wonderful, but it is still a problem. But Cuba, obviously, is
not visited by predators from this country, at least not in
large numbers, and not yet. But that could become a major
problem. If you could expand upon that?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Well, I think with Cuba, obviously,
there are challenges not only as far as doing the type of law
enforcement that would be necessary. As you rightly point out,
the fact that the U.S. travel to Cuba is as limited as it is, I
think that you have seen other countries in the region that
have had more of a destination status for U.S. child sex
tourists, whether it is the Dominican Republic or some of the
Central American countries.
I think that one of the things that we have seen though is
that this issue of child sex tourism, this issue of child abuse
is traditionally an area that we are able to work on with
countries around the world no matter how the relationship may
be on other issues. And it is something that just as with the
migration talks and other things that we hold with Cuba, it is
something that we would want to continue to try to have
dialogue on with the Cuban Government.
We all have a shared goal of protecting our children,
whether those are our citizens or children here in the
hemisphere and it is something that we will work with any
government in the hemisphere or around the world that is
willing to work with us in protecting children.
Mr. Smith. Just let me ask you, when do you expect action
on the sanctions regime as prescribed by the TVPA 2000 and all
the subsequent authorizations? Soon? Is it being looked at
country by country to ensure that there is a second shoe to
drop?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Indeed. That is what we are doing right
now, the sanctions regime starts now. We are a little bit of
walking and chewing gum at the same time in that we are also
out demarching governments, talking to governments. The Tier II
Watch List countries, especially the ones that are on the auto-
downgrade provisions for next year are places where we are
going to be spending a lot of our time and attention. We are
doing that and working on the sanctions and restrictions
analysis right now and we typically have had that out the door
in the September-October area. So I think we are looking at a
couple of months as far as getting that out and getting that up
to you.
Mr. Smith. Madagascar, since the coup in 2009, the country
has been excluded from AGOA as well as the Millennium Challenge
account and the report on Madagascar places it on the Tier II
Watch List and points out that trafficking has increased there.
And of course, we need to follow our own laws and when there
are serious human rights abuses, and in this case a coup, we do
have to implement the law. But something I am wondering about--
there is mention made in the report that parents are forcing
their own children into various forms of prostitution. Could
you just perhaps focus a bit on Madagascar and what we might do
to help mitigate a worsening problem there?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Well, I think it is several things.
Obviously, post-coup, post-March of 2009, fighting trafficking
has just not been a huge priority, but we did see increase in
law enforcement efforts by folks at the working level and I
think that that is one of the things that this year's ranking
reflects is the fact that maybe not at the policy level, maybe
not at the central level, but the folks out in the field are
doing this.
We have been, I think, positively struck by how many good-
hearted law enforcement folks there are in countries that have
otherwise abysmal records on whether it is human rights or
access to justice and rule of law. And somehow those people end
up finding out about and working on human trafficking. I think
it shows that there are people we can work with across the
board on a lot of these governments.
One of the things that we have seen is this notion of 30 or
so prosecutions that have been brought, a couple convictions
obtained. That is not insubstantial in a country that had not
been doing anything basically.
I think that one of the things though that we really look
at going forward is what are the shelter opportunities? What
are the ways that we can go after the complicit government
officials and we are starting to see the same trend, the very
worrisome trend as in other parts of East Africa which is
Malagasy women who are now ending up in the Persian Gulf as
domestic servants. I think that that is something especially as
we look at the Africa situation, the notion of whether it is in
Lebanon, for instance, in a case of the Malagasy women, whether
it is in Lebanon, whether it is in the Gulf countries, other
parts of the Near East region where traditionally the servants
were coming from Indonesia, were coming from the Philippines,
etcetera. How we are starting to see in this situation folks
from Madagascar, but also from Kenya, from Ethiopia, from
Uganda. And they are coming into a situation where there is not
the same type of robust presence in their countries' Embassies
as the Indonesians and the Filipinos perhaps have. There is not
the way to call and get help or a place to flee to. And we are
very concerned as we look at that situation. If you look at
many of the narratives in that part of Africa, I think you will
see that reflected in something that we are going to have to
look at more carefully, especially because it is cutting across
a couple of our regional, the way that we separate up the
world.
The case that Chairman Royce mentioned today, I think is an
example of that. The woman who was liberated yesterday, the
charges were brought against her abusers in California was a
Kenyan woman who had initially been trafficked to a Middle
Eastern country and then brought to the United States. Luckily,
when she left the Middle Eastern country where she was working
for that family, she was given a pamphlet by our consular
officer, the Wilberforce pamphlet, that comes directly out of
the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Act that you sponsored.
And I think because of that, that was one of the reasons why
when she flagged down the bus and asked for help, as she ran
away the other day, she actually said I think I might be one of
these trafficking victims, according to press reports.
Obviously, this is a case that is under development and we
don't have any inside information. But we have been able to
look at this briefly just this morning and it sounds as though
one of the things that let her know that there was a
possibility of freedom was that she got the Wilberforce
pamphlet from our folks at the Embassy before she came to the
U.S.
So I think it shows that we think about the Africa
Subcommittee. We think about the AF region or the NEA region or
United States, we have all of our bureaucratic silos and we
tend to think of those as all separate. I think this case, for
us, shows how it really is actually interconnected and we have
to be able to, whether it is as Congress or whether it is as
the State Department, we have to figure out how to make those
interconnectiveness to help these people because it reflects
the interconnectiveness of their lives.
Mr. Smith. As the TIP rollout occurred, and I want to
applaud Secretary Kerry for his leadership as well, as well as
your own, I headed over to the African Center for Strategic
Studies, organized a forum with African security officials
including several chiefs of staff and others. Not only did I
give them a copy of the TIP Report, every one of them, and
thank you for the carton that you gave me as I left the State
Department, but over the course of about 1 hour, it became very
clear how hungry they were for information on best practices
for their own militaries to curb abuses by their soldiers.
Similarly and parallel to that is the U.N. peacekeeper
problem. The report indicates that in 2012 there were 59
allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse lodged against
U.N. peacekeeping personnel. Fifty percent of the allegations
were against non-uniform personnel; 30 percent involved
children under the age of 18; most occurred at the U.N.
missions in the DR Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Haiti, and
Sudan. According to the report, no information is available
regarding disciplinary action such as suspension, dismissal,
censure, demotion, and referral to employers. However, the U.N.
itself claims to know the outcomes in 27 of those cases.
So my question would be why after 7 years of addressing
this issue in the DRC, for example, is this still a crisis? I
would note parenthetically that I chaired three hearings. Jane
Holl Lute, who was at Homeland Security was number two under
Kofi Annan and they had a zero tolerance policy for the U.N.
And she tried to do her level best to make sure that when it
got to the field level this terrible complicity and actual
abuse by U.N. peacekeepers was ended. But now we can't
seemingly get information about this and I know that some of
the investigators were moved out of Nigeria or I should say out
of Gombe, and I actually met with them when they were there to
places elsewhere which makes it harder for investigators to
look into what peacekeepers might be doing.
But it seems troubling in the extreme that we can't get
basic information from the U.N. as to what becomes of a U.N.
peacekeeper who rapes a 13-year-old in Gombe, who is then
either sent back to his home country or what happens to him?
And we don't know. I wonder if you might want to speak to that.
Ambassador CdeBaca. Well, we share your frustration. The
baseline on this is that notion of what we have been able to do
whether it is with trying to have pre-deployment training for
our own folks when they are going out or working through NATO
structures and others, but we recognize that it is not always
folks that are going out through the NATO structure. These are
not U.S. service personnel who we are dealing with. And so
while it has been helpful to point this out and to include it
in the narratives, I think you are right that the road does
lead back to U.N. headquarters. And that is something that we
need to continue to press. It is something that just as we see
the idea that there should be a zero tolerance policy across
government procurement and other standards of conduct for say,
for instance, diplomats and other government personnel, that
the peacekeeper issue continues to have to be examined. And not
simply examined in saying that this is a problem, but needs to
be dealt with a little bit more head on.
So I think at the end of the day, this is a shared
frustration that we have. There is no reason why the very
people who are supposed to bringing stability to an area should
be engaged in this type of activity.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask you briefly on the issue of
juicy bars in South Korea, the report states that despite
increased regulations on the E6 entertainment visas, some
foreign women and they are mostly Filipino women who enter the
country on this visa are forced into prostitution. We know from
the past that many of these women, like I said are Filipino
women and they are forced to prostitute themselves in these
bars. If they don't meet their quota, they don't get paid or
they are forced to make it up with prostitution.
We know for a fact, as a matter of fact, I held hearings on
that as well, that the U.S. has tried to put these places off
limits, yet there still is a problem and it seems to have made
a comeback as is in the report. And I have heard independent
analyses, too, some in Stars and Stripes and some of the other
newspapers that have reported on this as well. It continues to
be a problem.
What can we do both in countries like the Philippines to
try to ensure that these women are not lured in under false
pretenses; and South Korea which obviously has done a fine job
with its own legislation and its own policy and our own armed
forces there to make sure that this issue ends?
Ambassador CdeBaca. I do think that as you said the
legislative framework in South Korea is certainly adequate for
this. It has only been now a few months in which we have had
the new antitrafficking law and I think that that is something
that again, as with some of these other countries that have new
laws, we are hoping that that will end up having a good effect
on some of these situations.
Frankly, the 2004 antitrafficking law was cumbersome. It
really wasn't something that was as useful as a number of the
modern antitrafficking laws around the world. While I haven't
specifically had a chance to talk to our South Korean
counterparts about is that one of the things that was getting
in the way of prosecuting the juicy bars, I do know that that
was getting in the way of prosecuting all of the forms of both
sex trafficking and labor trafficking. And so it is something
that we think will have kind of a lifts all boats, that type of
effect on this area of the economy as well.
I think we all look at the last 10 years as far as U.S.
armed forces in Korea and trying to clean up some of the
situations there as a success. It seems as though, however, our
overt nature of the sex industry that we saw at the beginning
of the last decade with easily exposed child prostitution and
other things just by having folks with hidden cameras walking
down the street, that those things have now kind of passed from
the stage. And so we see that notion of the juicy bars, for
instance, as being something that is more difficult to
investigate and prosecute, because you have to really peel back
what is going on. It is not the overt brothel type of situation
that we saw in the past. But it is something that as we work
with our Korean counterparts, we have seen a lot of intensive
engagement on their part in the last year, very encouraging and
I think that with this new law hopefully that will provide the
tools that are necessary to go out and investigate these cases.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you with regards to the Roma, which
most people in America are probably unfamiliar with, but they
are the largest most discriminated group in all of Europe.
There was a report done by the European Roma Rights Center, as
a matter of fact, I offered a resolution at the OSE
Parliamentary Assembly focusing on the Roma and the
disproportionality of how many Roma women are trafficked into
sex work. And I am wondering what our country is doing, while
Roma are not a problem here in any large numbers, to encourage
our European friends whether it be Romania or any other nations
where they are trafficked to really take a serious effort to
enfranchise the Roma, to work on education opportunities, job
opportunities, to go after the systemic problems that lead to
the trafficking and the statelessness that they so often suffer
from?
Ambassador CdeBaca. Indeed, I think that some of the
broader issues that you raise with the Roma are things that our
counterparts in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor deal with more directly. But for our part in the
Trafficking Office, the Roma are always on the agenda when we
are dealing with the European countries. I think that we have
seen as a result of that, especially the uptick in cases being
done to protect the children that are in the child begging
situation. Five years ago, you would see even after I started
as Ambassador-at-Large, you would have those conversations with
our European counterparts and the response was those are a
bunch of little criminals or oh, well, that is just a child
protection type of situation that they should be in school
rather than out begging.
Now we have seen, especially in the last 2 years, a
recognition on the part of a number of European governments in
the ways that matter by arresting the gang leaders and helping
the children, that the children, the Roma children and the
begging rings are not little criminals. They are actually
victims. I think that that is something that anything that we
can do to make that more of a compassionate rather than an
immediate rejection on the part of Western European law
enforcement toward Roma community, opens up that space in which
they can treat the Roma with the respect and dignity that we
are looking for on our broader human rights response to Roma
issues.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Bass?
Ms. Bass. Just switching subjects a little bit, there is
this case of a Nigerian woman who was in a European country who
cooperated. She was a sex trafficking victim. She cooperated.
She testified. The trafficking folks were put in prison. And
then they decided to deport her and my question to you is what
are we doing? I know we have those cases here occasionally. But
what are we doing with other countries? It was Denmark. Are we
working with other countries to get them to--and for this
specific case which is one that is going on now. I don't know
if there is a way for us to----
Ambassador CdeBaca. I think one of the things that as we
look at the situation, what you described, unfortunately,
especially after the 1996 Immigration Reform Act, became the
norm for a few years because we didn't have a way to keep
trafficking victims in the United States. There was 1 year
where I think I used, when I was a prosecutor, I used the full
allotment of the visas that were created by Congress for people
who flipped against their organized crime counterparts. I just
went out and used them for trafficking victims because nobody
told me not to. I think that what we see in the European
context is that that ability to freelance a little bit, that we
see on the part of innovative law enforcement folks here in the
U.S. is not kind of within the cultural DNA of European law
enforcement. It is very much you only do something if there is
a law that authorizes you to do it and then you apply the other
law. So there is kind of two systems of law, authorizing and
otherwise.
What we see in the European context, I think, though is
that starting with the Italians in 1998 and then moving across
Europe, that notion that trafficking victims should not be
jailed and deported and it starts off with the idea of a
reflection period, time to stabilize, time to be able to have
social services. But on the back end, that notion that you
should have the opportunity to stay in the country and work and
be a productive member of the society that you had tried to go
to but then were abused in. And I think that that is something
that as we look at the European context, the European Directive
which is their piece of legislation on trafficking that now
applies to the entire European Union, it has in it that notion
of non-deportation-based remedies for the trafficking victims.
It is the one reservation, as I understand it, that the
Danes when they signed the European Directive, they actually
reserved that and so they chose to not be governed by that
provision.
We have seen the effect of Article 4 of the European
Directive even just in the last few weeks when the High Court
in London issued an order saying that the children who were
being found in drug manufacturing factories in Britain could
not be deported and cannot be jailed and deported because they
were victims. That certainly is the type of response that we
would like to see on the part of Denmark. It is the type of
response that the rest of Europe seems to be moving toward
organically and we hope that as colleagues, as folks who have a
good human rights background on other issues and folks who want
to be with the rest of us on kind of the cutting edge of victim
care, that we can prevail upon our friends in Denmark to look
at the situations like the one that you described perhaps from
a different angle. We have got a new Ambassador going out this
fall and I think it is something that hopefully we will be able
to talk with him about what the priorities could be. Thank you,
Ms. Bass.
Mr. Smith. Just a few final questions and then we have
another vote. On the Demmick case. I was just in Istanbul and
did a side meeting with the lawyer with two of the exploited
boys by the former Justice Minister Demmick from the
Netherlands. The newest information is that he was there,
according to the Turkish Government in 1996. He had denied that
he was there and I am wondering, I know you had looked into it
when you, too, were in Turkey. If you might be able to shed
some light on that case.
And if you could speak to Egypt. I have actually chaired
three hearings and I am so frustrated that we have been unable
to get any kind of traction with the administration. And I
don't mean you, but with Ambassador Patterson or with the DRL
Office on the forced abduction of Coptic Christian girls who
are then forced into Islamic marriages and they can never go
back because if they go back they are accused of apostasy and
subjected to a horrible potential fate. And yet, Michele Clark,
the former number two at the ODIHR in the OSCE worked on
trafficking, investigated it herself and said that this is a
very serious problem and it has gotten worse under the Morsi
regime. Although he is not there now, it did get worse during
his time in office. And I am wondering if you might shed some
light on that terrible cruelty of again abducting children and
then forcing them into marriages in Egypt.
Ambassador CdeBaca. One of the things that we have seen
with especially in the Egyptian context in the forced marriages
and the thing I think that there has been more widespread
reporting on is the other half of that, the abduction and sale
of girls for what has been called the summer marriages. It is
something that we have seen as an on-going problem and
something that we are starting to be able to get our hands
around.
As far as the forced abduction of Coptic girls, whether
that is forced abduction for the bringing in of marriages or
for conversion, it is something that we continue to look at. I
think you are correct, Mr. Smith, the notion of the changes in
the government have made it harder to have our hands around.
One last thing and for the record with Mr. Smith having
left, it is good to hear that there is some new information on
the Demmick situation coming out of the chairman's trip to
Turkey and it is something that we will certainly be wanting to
follow up with as far as making sure that we have the most
current information about what your steps to investigate that
case are so that we are able to inform ourselves in our
discussions with the folks over in the Netherlands and in the
Turkish Government. So it is something that we will follow up
on with staff as well.
Mr. Meadows [presiding]. I thank you and the chairman is
stepping out for votes. This has been one of those days where
nothing goes according to plan, so I appreciate your
flexibility.
If you could perhaps share a little bit about the
encouragements or discouragements with regards to Russia and
Uzbekistan, what are some of the things we need to look at or
highlight and help with you to work on?
Ambassador CdeBaca. You know, I think one of the things
that we have seen this last year with Russia as part of--
obviously, we have got the six countries that we are facing the
auto-downgrade provisions of the TVPA. So that was Iraq,
Azerbaijan, Congo-Brazzaville, Russia, China, and Uzbekistan. I
think it is illustrative when you are looking at the three
countries that ended up going down to look at the countries
that went up because it is kind of--by looking at the negative,
we can see what could have happened.
Even a country with as little capacity as Congo-Brazzaville
was able to investigate and bring prosecutions for the first
time. Iraq, being able to pass antitrafficking legislation,
sending people into the women's prisons to sort folks out who
had been arrested for prostitution offenses and identifying a
handful of women to let out of prison saying these were
actually victims rather than perpetrators. Azerbaijan doing the
first cases against people who were holding men in forced labor
in the construction industry. All of those countries then being
able to look at them and bring them up to Tier II on the
report.
If you compare that then to Russia, Uzbekistan, and also
China, especially I think in the Russian context you have got a
country that is in a different trajectory, a situation where
while there are some sex trafficking prosecutions that were
being done and there are some very good folks both at the
Health Ministry and even some of the police guys who are out
there doing the cases, systemically we don't see the creation
even under their own Action Plan, the Commonwealth of
Independent States Action Plan. Most of the other signatories
to the CIS Action Plan have gone out and brought together the
kind of interagency working group that that plan calls for. The
Russian Federation has not.
Victim care, shelters closing for lack of government
funding as opposed to opening. So it is just a different
trajectory than we saw with some of the other countries that
were on that Tier II Watch List auto-downgrade six.
In Uzbekistan again, there are some things that were done,
especially around sex trafficking cases which were laudable,
but they are eclipsed by the notion of the cotton harvest and
all of the problems with the state enforcing the labor of its
citizens out into that annual exercise without bringing in the
folks from the international community and others to really
look at whether or not that practice was being brought to an
end. So I think that we have seen in both Russia and Uzbekistan
the need for continued support from not just having the State
Department out there talking about this, but we see the
Europeans, we see even the business community talking to
Uzbekistan. This is not simply the TIP Office going to
Uzbekistan, it is properly our partners around the world, our
partners in the interagency and you here in Congress as well.
So I think it is that kind of the big voice that all of us
speaking together can take out into the world and I think it is
starting to have an effect in some of these countries.
Mr. Meadows. Do you see some of this--is there any
correlation with regards to demographics in terms of a younger
population? Is that something that will exacerbate the problem?
Are you looking at that correlation or not?
Ambassador CdeBaca. I do think that we have some concerns
and it is concerns that when we were working with the Russians
on the U.S.-Russia Presidential Bilateral Commission under
President Medvedev and President Obama, it was something that
very much in the work of my subcommittee which was looking at
migration and issues as well as human trafficking that notion
of a population in Russia that is kind of emptying out, the
notion of a country that is so far below replacement rate,
where are the factory workers coming from? Increasingly, they
are coming from Vietnam and it was interesting to be in a
garment factory, east of Moscow where there was actually a
mixed group and to see Vietnamese workers who had learned
Russian and were working side by side with their Russian
counterparts. That would be, I think, a model of how you have a
guest worker situation as opposed to all Vietnamese factories
with guards and exploitation and then Russians who would be
looking for a job in their own hometown and not being able to
get a job down at the garment factory.
So we saw one of the good factories when we were there as
part of the Bilateral Commission. But you could tell from
talking to our Russian counterparts and others that the
demographic shifts in Russia, the weakening of the next
generation is of great concern.
Mr. Meadows. So you can see the problem potentially getting
worse from a human trafficking standpoint? Because I know in
this room we have heard testimony with Vietnam in particular in
terms of what we have seen with the trafficking of girls and
men, to Russia with a really systemic problem from just the
magnitude of what it is. So do you see that continuing to get
worse without a concentrated effort to curtail it?
Ambassador CdeBaca. I think one of the things that we have
seen in the Russian context is that notion of an economy that
still wants to grow very much and especially in the building
trades. Both from Vietnam and Central Asia, the notion of just
how powerful of a magnet the Russian economy is for foreign
guest workers. So it is a Vietnamese problem, but it is also a
Kyrgyz problem, an Uzbek problem, a Tajik problem. The
estimates that were reflected in the report this year from some
of the academics in Russia are that there are upward of 1
million people being held in forced labor in Russia. This is a
country of about 140 million people. This is not a country of
350 million or this is not an India or China where you are
talking in billions.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ambassador CdeBaca. So the notion that that high of a
percentage already within their workforce is in these
circumstances indicative of forced labor, I think is a really
warning shot for everyone.
Mr. Meadows. And you mentioned earlier about ID and I know
that we have ID'd, I guess, 40,000 victims of human
trafficking, and yet the problem is probably 27 million,
according to your testimony, 27 million people involved in it.
How do we do a better job of identifying those victims? Because
when we do identify those and we can apply pressures, either
diplomatically or through one-on-one exchange, how do we do a
better job of identifying that? Is that a resource problem? Is
that a strategic problem? You have gone, as you mentioned, 60
people within your organization that I would assume have a
heart for these victims. And I recognize that. And what I am
saying is I want to give you the tools to make sure that we
just don't have these hearings that continue to go on. And we
turn the other way. If Members of the Congress have to be
heavy, we are willing to do that, I think because of this. We
understand that you are in a tough situation, but I want to
take the compassionate heart of your 60 employees and say how
do we give you the tools to identify the victims and then make
sure that we take the appropriate actions, put some teeth to
the TIP Report?
Ambassador CdeBaca. I think that in many ways, Mr. Meadows,
the situation often comes down to not just the structures, not
just the resources, etcetera, but it comes down to political
will, that notion of if you have got the head of a ministry or
the head of a government who really wants to see numbers of
victims who have been helped, then typically the bureaucracy
will respond to that in a positive way. And if they don't, it
is not going to happen. It is something that about 1\1/2\ years
ago when we were in the process of the changing relationship
with Burma, about 3 weeks or so after Secretary Clinton was
there, I was able to go in to Rangoon and I met with Aung San
Suu Kyi in the house where she had been held for so many years.
And she had a copy of the training manual for the Burmese
Police and they have a pretty good little antitrafficking unit
even before we opened up the relationship.
And she asked the most important and most inconvenient
question that anybody could ask about that training manual. She
said of the 84 people that went to that training last month
were any of them now being assigned to work on human
trafficking cases?
Mr. Meadows. Wow.
Ambassador CdeBaca. And I think that to me really showed me
kind of what is that next question. We don't always ask. We
look at whether it is in State or USAID, we will often be
muttering how many people were trained? How much training
materials did we get out? Did we get a new, good curriculum?
How many laws have been passed around the world? And those are
all very important, but then that question that Aung San Suu
Kyi asked is the one that can undo all of those other data.
And when we come to you, whether it is in a report like
this or telling you how we are spending the money that you guys
are able to appropriate to us, we are often not able to answer
that last question. And to me, that is one of the most
important things so that the work of not just my 60 people, but
all of the people around the world who want to work on human
trafficking is meaningful. I think that that is probably, if I
had to say one thing, that is the key. It is not simply
providing the training, providing the technical assistance, all
of the things that we can and do do, but then providing the
expectation. Now that we have trained you, are you going to be
able to go out and do it? Maybe you call that mentoring, maybe
you call that follow up, monitoring and evaluation. There are a
lot of things you can call it, but at the end of the day we are
looking at what are the results that we can tie back to the
training that we are able to provide. I think that when we are
able to answer that question better, we are not going to be
stuck at 47,000 victims.
Mr. Meadows. Right. Let me ask one other question and I
will yield back to the chairman as he has come back. When we
look at sanctions, when we look at enforcement, what I have
found because we have a unique position of bipartisan support
with a strong leader like Chairman Smith who is willing to
articulate it, even in times when it creates a very
uncomfortable situation with people from either Ambassadors or
people in leadership of other countries, but we have a
bipartisan support that will not only talk about sanctions, but
will go to action. And without naming names, the chairman had
mentioned about a sanction on a particular country and about
putting forth some legislation to support that and resolutions
to support it.
It got the attention, as it should because it was not a
bluff. It should have gotten the attention, but it got the
attention of that particular nation. And because of that we
have got a meeting coming up that will start to address some of
the human rights violations in this particular country.
Can we do that and working with the State Department in a
more effective where it is again, not the words of somebody
with a mic on a hearing, but it is really the actions that are
backed up by that? Do you think that would be helpful?
Ambassador CdeBaca. I think that type of engagement is
always helpful. I think the details of any particular--whether
it is a sanctions package or whether it is a particular
diplomatic approach, we have to look at the context in a
particular government, but I think that that notion of lashing
up as much as we can and more than we have been doing, I
realized the other day when I was talking to my staff that we
have been so busy on a lot of these things that we haven't
necessarily been suggesting or supporting congressional travel
and so a lot of members have not been to the shelter. They
haven't met with the antitrafficking police unit out there. And
it is something that we know that we need to step up so that
you guys can see that when you are on the road, whether it is
part of a previously scheduled trip or something specific to
this. I use that only as an example of that notion that we need
to perhaps look at how we are doing this and how that lashes up
with the work of the committee and the work of the individual
members so that we can make sure, especially in a time of
shrinking budgets and challenges around the resources that we
have, that we are making up for those things by having not just
the 60 people in my office, but 535 others and their staff who
can go out and help get this message out around the world.
Mr. Meadows. Well, if you would take the message back to
your staff and to all of those that are there that we
appreciate the effort that they are putting forth on behalf of
this unbelievable just blight on our world. And with that that
we appreciate it. It is very easy when you look at 27 million
people to start looking at them as numbers that are too big to
handle. But every little girl that is trafficked is someone.
They have a dad. They have a mom that cares individually about
that person. We have heard just unbelievable testimony on this
who are parents who have talked about their children where
people have been sold into slavery as wives twice and it just
breaks my heart. And so there is a tendency to look at it as
big numbers.
I want to say that every single one of those is an
individual case and I want to encourage those to not look at
budget cutbacks and anything else as an indictment on their
work. It is a sign of the times, but we are willing to work
with you in a real way to make a real difference.
I yield back to the chairman. I thank him for his work.
Mr. Smith [presiding]. Thank you very much, Mr. Meadows.
Thank you, Ambassador CdeBaca, for your testimony, your
leadership. Is there anything you would like to say before we
close?
Ambassador CdeBaca. One last thing I would like to say, Mr.
Smith, if you look at this year's report, there is a lot of
ways that people read the report. The first day a lot of people
from the press they read it for ups and downs and what the
horse race aspect of it are. A lot of folks, they will read it
just as what does it say about the country that I am from or
the country that I care about, etcetera. The reason that victim
identification as a theme of the report this year, I think had
some resonance. If you look at the introduction of the report,
it really sets out that notion of kind of what is victim
identification? What is best practices, etcetera. And I think
it all flows back to this point that Mr. Meadows just made,
that notion that every one of these is a person. We are doing
this because people are being enslaved.
We all have to work on big, important issues that are more
kind of policy issues where we are dealing with the ebb and
flow of international commerce or geopolitics or things like
that, but at its heart human trafficking is evil because
individual people are being victimized. And that is something
that I think that this committee and you through your
leadership, but I think everyone in the U.S. Government has
come to realize. And so it should be no surprise when folks
look at the last page of the report, the note from my staff
that what we focus on is that notion of the victim. There is
many ways to read this report, but we hope that people take
away are not the tragedies that are in it, but on that last
page the picture of those nine or ten victims who have now
become survivors, who have become advocates. It shouldn't be
their tears that we think about or that we say that defines
them, it should be their smiles and their determination because
they know that they have a voice and that this is a room where
it can be heard.
Mr. Smith. On that, thank you very, very much. The hearing
is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:11 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
RAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT>