A state-of-the-art global report

This week Secretary of State Clinton and my successor as anti-trafficking ambassador, former anti-slavery prosecutor Luis CdeBaca, rolled out the annual Trafficking in Persons Report. The rollout embodied the bipartisan and inter-branch support of the anti-slavery issue which I experienced as ambassador. This report is an invaluable tool to nudge and prod other governments to improve their records fighting slavery. Whether they had a welcoming or grousing response, governments focused on their anti-trafficking efforts after reading the report. At the UN world conference on human trafficking in Vienna in February 2008, I heard dozens consider it rightly the state-of-the-art global report, like no other.

This year’s report has some very frank assessments. Ireland (Tier 2), United Arab Emirates (sliding back to Tier 2 Watch List), Iraq (Tier 2 Watch List), Pakistan (Tier 2 Watch List), Sri Lanka (Tier 2 Watch List), and Malaysia (Tier 3, lowest) all got tough rankings despite the turbulence it will cause in our relationships. That’s very much to the credit of Secretary Clinton and the Department she leads.

Despite some emphasis on the worsening situation for human trafficking due to the fragile global economy, there are deep continuities in trends identified in this year’s report and the two previous reports I helped publicly and diplomatically deploy.

The situation around the world remains this: many countries, constructively pressured by the U.S., have passed anti-trafficking laws. Passing laws is the easier part. Implementation is the rub. That’s the hard part; governments need to be on the hook to get it to happen. And it doesn’t happen enough (despite U.S. diplomacy and a good bit of targeted foreign assistance to facilitate it).

In implementation countries are pursuing too few prosecutions or serious punishment to hold an enslaver fully to account, but even fewer for forced labor than for sex trafficking. This report and the last one painted a picture of only a small fraction of the prosecutions around the world being for labor slavery as opposed to sexual slavery – some 10 percent. Where there has been a law enforcement focus for sex trafficking, too often it’s been a bit too much of “law enforcement only” approach. Sometimes victim services have been lagging, or anemic, as in Mexico. At its worst, a law enforcement approach has led prostituted women to be treated as criminals and undocumented migrants to deport.

Governments, including our own, need a victim-centered approach not just in word but in deed.

Having mentioned the slightly different patterns for sexual and labor slavery identified in the report, I have one admonition. I devoted myself to equal emphasis of both types of slavery as moral and policy imperatives. The State Department released statistics from the International Labor Organization as benchmarks: 12.3 million in forced labor and sexual servitude, and 1.39 million national and transitional victims of sex trafficking. Both of these estimates are too low. Kevin Bales estimates nearly twice as many slaves exist in the world – 27 million, and 10 million in bonded labor in South Asia. The truth is no doubt higher than 12.3 million. But more importantly, 1.39 million sex trafficking victims is misleadingly small, especially if one counts prostituted minors who are human trafficking victims under the law and UN treaties. There must be at least that many sex trafficking victims in South Asia alone.

There may well be more victims of labor slavery than sexual slavery in the world. But both phenomena deserve significant focus. To forsake one or the other – the sin of omission – would be a serious mistake. When I was asked before the November election to volunteer a memo of transition recommendations, this was the single biggest piece of advice I had for the incoming Administration. I hope they take it. A bipartisan movement generally believes in a balanced approach.