The Summary

Who’s up?
23 countries:  Belize, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Gabon, Guatemala, Guyana, India, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lesotho, Macedonia, Moldova, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Philippines, Portugal, Senegal, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago

Who’s down?
22 countries: Algeria, Angola, the Bahamas, Belarus, Burundi, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire (given Special Case designation), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Micronesia, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen

The Details

The Analysis

The Tier 2 Watch List (2WL) was designed to be a temporary status based on a lack of full compliance with minimum standards set by the US government, or other failing of the government. The “watch list” designation represents the hope that states would change their behavior to avoid public scrutiny for being bumped down to the lowest tier: Tier 3. By design it serves as an unstable category that promotes movement either up or down in the subsequent year.

The majority of the shifts from 2010 to 2011 demonstrate some movement for a 2010 2WL country to either Tier 2 (19 countries out of 23) or Tier 3 (12 countries out of 22). The countries that remained on the Watch List from 2010 to 2011 received a waiver from Secretary of State Clinton. Therefore, the more interesting and significant shifts are up from Tier 2 to Tier 1 (3 countries) and down from Tier 2 to Tier 2 Watch List (9 countries).

There is no set formula for movement—each country is assessed on a case-by-case basis. But perhaps to better understand what a tier shift means, we should consider the extremes.

There was only one country that moved up from the very bottom (3 to 2WL), signifying the beginning of efforts to come into compliance with the minimum standards to end trafficking: the Dominican Republic (D.R.). This promotion was catalyzed by improvements in victim identification and protection. The D.R. identified 88 victims over the course of the year and had an increase from 1 investigation last year to 35 in this reporting period. The lack of effort to fulfill prosecution initiatives is purportedly what kept D.R. on the Watch List instead of moving up to Tier 2.

The definition of Tier 1 implies countries have to “demonstrate appreciable progress in combating trafficking” from year to year to maintain that highest level. Only one country slipped down from the very top (1 to 2), meaning it fell out of full compliance with efforts to uphold minimum standards to end trafficking: the Czech Republic. This demotion was made due to two “high profile cases of labor trafficking” which “revealed serious problems in the government’s response” mechanisms. Particular weak spots: the Czech government’s limited victim identification capacity, resulting in fewer prosecutions and investigations, and its tacit and probably inadvertent acceptance of forced labor of migrants enabled by minimal regulation of employment agencies.

As countries continue to make efforts (or lack thereof) to comprehensively combat human trafficking the numbers will continue to shift around in the constant shuffle up and down.

2011 TIP Heroes at Polaris Project office

We’ve learned from leaders such as Charimaya Tamang, a Nepalese women and a survivor of trafficking who filed the first human trafficking case in Nepal’s history.  She now runs an NGO dedicated to human trafficking prevention. “It is better to prevent than it is to cure,” she says. Another was Bridget Lew Tan, a woman from Singapore who spent her own retirement money to establish an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of migrant workers. In Singapore, she said, there is significant prejudice against this demographic. People need to see migrant workers as humans first, not those who are in the country merely to do the dirty work, but “people just like us.” “Our color for the organization is maroon red,” she tells us, “to represent the color of human blood, which binds us all together. We are all the same.”

Eva Biaudet, a women from Finland appointed to be the National Rapporteur, has spent years dedicated to preventing the exploitation of men, women, and children. She highlighted the importance of recognizing the myriad of other factors that contribute to human trafficking. She points out that combating trafficking is, at its root, about vulnerability. To provide adequate protection to victims, we must not forget the host of contributing factors like poverty, autocracy, or abuse, which hinder prevention. “Trafficking is the same everywhere,” Biaudet says, and when you listen to eight different people share their similar struggles and exhibit similar strategies for fighting trafficking, it’s hard to disagree with her.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Amela Efendic manages one of the largest shelters in the country for trafficking victims. As head of office for the International Forum of Solidarity-Emmaus (IFS), Ms. Efendic works tirelessly as an advocate and caregiver. During her visit to our office, she expressed concern over the lack of severity of prison sentences given to traffickers in Bosnia, citing an example of a man who trafficked 37 girls, to be given only nine years in prison and allowed to escape because the Bosnian judicial system does not consider human trafficking a serious enough crime to warrant strict prison supervision.

These are only four individuals, but all have experiences equally compelling. Nevertheless, each of the Heroes was humble and appreciative. All of them emphasized the fact that they could not have accomplished so much without the help of others. In the wake of the TIP report release, it is satisfying to recognize the impact the report has on commending the incredible efforts of these Heroes. Their inspiring achievements demonstrate how compassion, partnered with dedication and collaboration, can make a real difference in the lives of individuals.

For a full list of the 2011 TIP heroes, visit this page.

The U.S. State Department’s Annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report was released on Monday, June 27, 2011. It is compiled each year to analyze 184 governments’ efforts to combat human trafficking within their own borders. Governments are ranked into one of three tiers based on their attempts to meet the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” in Section 108 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).  It is useful as a tool for diplomatic pressure and incentives, a map of trafficking streams and trends, and an update on status quo practices and implementation of anti-trafficking efforts globally.

For each country, the report covers 3 Ps to end trafficking: Prosecution, Protection, and Prevention. This year there were a total of 23 countries that moved up and 22 countries that were downgraded in their efforts to combat human trafficking.

Here are a few fact sheets from the 2011 TIP Report

• Prevention: Fighting Sex Trafficking by Curbing Demand for Prostitution
• Protection Checklist
• Trafficking in Persons: Moving Toward a Decade of Delivery
• Victim Protections: Principles for Progress

Follow us over the coming days and weeks for an in-depth review and highlights from the 2011 TIP Report release. Here are just some of the blogs that we currently have in the hopper for your reading enjoyment:

1. The TIP Report: Who’s keeping track of what’s happening at home in the U.S.?
2. Talking with TIP Heroes
3. TIP Report and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act – Bridging the Connections
4. Movin’ on up! And those that moved down in the 2011 TIP Report
5. Protection checklist and the principles for progress
6. Polaris Project Japan and the 2011 TIP Report
7. The next decade and moving towards a tier zero approach

My last blog was about the 9th annual global Trafficking in Persons Report rolled out this week by the Secretary of State.   One of the most important aspects of the rollout is not the Report.  It’s the concurrent Report on the fight against human trafficking within the United States compiled by the Attorney-General.

As Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons I found that a crucial complement to handing other nations frank assessments of their performance – with grades no less – was to speak transparently to U.S. efforts at home.   Admitting what we weren’t doing well was as important as what we were.

My predecessor John Miller used his State Department office’s funds to print hardcopies of an annual assessment to Congress compiled by the Attorney-General on U.S. governmental efforts to fight human trafficking.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) just posted it on the web, and didn’t publish it.  Miller tried in vain for three years to get the DOJ to time the release of the Report to coincide with the global report coming out of the State Department.   Nations naturally think and sometimes ask whether we graded ourselves, and a concurrent report would help answer.

Then when I came on board, as chair of the inter-agency committee created by Congress to fight human trafficking, I pushed the DOJ again, mentioning the need at Congressional briefings.   Last year, the DOJ wisely agreed, and a Report came out shortly before the global report.

The report listed areas the U.S. needed to improve, self-critically.   But that self-criticism was admittedly a bit thin.

This year, DOJ released a bound report the very same day as the State Department global report came out.   (Secretary Clinton said we might expect the entry on the U.S. in the global report in the future to start being accompanied by a tier ranking.)

The recommendations are striking.  Polaris has been calling for and acting upon a number of these ideas for a few years.   They include:

- DOJ human trafficking and FBI child prostitution task forces coordinating better despite turf.

- Intensive case management to help both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens who are traumatized victims navigate the bureaucracy and get the services to which they have rights on paper.

- Ensuring that diplomatic immunity doesn’t shield diplomats enslaving domestic servants.

- Getting opinion leaders to help deglamorize sexual exploitation and the demand for it.

- Better state and local laws and their enforcement, involving wider training of law enforcement.

It isn’t self-loathing to admit the truth about what we need to do at home.   This self-criticism immensely advances the credibility and impact of the U.S. global diplomacy to urge other nations to change too.

Indeed the need for it is precisely the reason I came from the State Department to Polaris Project – matching my admonitions with my job.   Join that cause.

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.

In a few days, a group of non-government organizations will be meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about a serious human trafficking matter: the veritable enslavement of some domestic servants by diplomats.  On our soil.The meeting was requested in a letter organized by the American Civil Liberties Union co-signed by an array of NGOs and lawyers.  I was proud to sign myself.

Until January I was heavily involved in this issue as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large assigned by Congress to combat human trafficking.

I argued vociferously that the ranking the U.S. assigns in its Annual Report on other countries must account for the treatment of domestic help by their diplomats.  That is the very complicity of government officials the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) directs the State Department Report to address.

Diplomats in embassies in Washington or at the United Nations in New York bring domestic help from third countries into the U.S. under A-3 and G-5 visas.  Many diplomats treat their maids and nannies decently.   But in a number of cases domestic servants have been subject to classic characteristics of human trafficking: passports seized, pay withheld, work literally day and night, confinement to the home and physical violence.

Raziah Begum came to the United States looking forward to the promise of a good job with the Bangladesh mission to the United Nations.   Instead, she worked for the Bangladeshi diplomat for 16-19 hours a day and was compensated with the $29 a month sent to her son in Bangladesh.  She was forced to sleep on a hardwood floor with no blanket, denied the freedom to leave the apartment, speak to or be seen by house guests, all the while having her passport illegally confiscated by the diplomats.  “For two and a half years, [they] kept me as a prisoner in their house and made me a slave to their demands.  They tried to take from me my dignity and humanity, and they got away with it because of diplomatic immunity.”

Both the State Department Office I headed and a report by the Government Accountability Office counted approximately the same number of cases in recent years.

When the Justice Department gets enough evidence (difficult given these acts  are hidden in homes behind the bubble of diplomatic missions) it will ask through the State Department for the country to lift the diplomatic immunity of the accused diplomat in order to prosecute.  The diplomat is always withdrawn rather than the request being honored.

Diplomatic immunity becomes impunity.  Yet there’s nothing in treaty law that clearly says treatment of hired help is part of one’s shielded diplomatic duties.

When I was Director of the State Department Trafficking in Persons Office, the ACLU hosted a meeting for me in New York with women victimized by the family of a diplomat of a U.S. Persian Gulf ally.   Even after visiting over 28 countries in two years, a woman at this particular meeting said one of the chilling remarks I’ve ever heard from a victim of trafficking.  This woman was from Goa in India.  She said that when she worked for the family back home in the Gulf country, she wasn’t treated as badly.  But when she came to the U.S. to work for that family, they felt free to treat cruelly.  This was abuse in our country.

Women and migrants are known to be poorly treated in Gulf states.  A number are victims of human trafficking.  I’ve met some – like one in the very same Gulf country whose photos revealed bite marks all over her body from a female employer.

Some diplomatic families feel they have license to abuse someone – like the Goan woman – in the United States, where we are proud of freedoms not enjoyed in the Gulf.

That’s why the latest TVPA reauthorization, named after British abolitionist William Wilberforce, directed the State Department to take action — from tracking which third country nationals are working for which embassies, to backing serious investigations of diplomats.

The reflexive desire not to rock the boat in our relations with other countries given misplaced concerns about constant whining from their ambassadors or fear of backlash against U.S. diplomats must end.

Yet diplomats are not the only ones subjecting domestic servants to human trafficking on our soil.   More on that in a future blog.

Political prisoner in North Korea

The world rightly is concerned about how the North Korean regime continues to threaten its neighbors with its nuclear capability and, more recently, missiles to deliver them.  However, it is no less urgent to consider how that same regime threatens the security of its own people.  It is all a piece of a North Korean government threatening people’s welfare.This week, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea released Lives for Sale, a comprehensive report on North Korean human trafficking victims.  It tells the sobering personal stories of 53 North Korean women trafficked into China.  In the words of a 54th victim at the National Press Club press conference on the report I took part in, these women were “sold like beasts” into Chinese families.

North Korean victims of human trafficking have the ultimate form of leverage held over their head by their exploiters – the threat of being turned in to Chinese police and immigration officials.  These Chinese officials will, as a matter of policy, ship them back to North Korea, where they will face violent punishment in North Korean gulags as “political traitors.”

This is a story of people potentially thrice victimized: victimized by their own government forcing them to run from North Korea, victimized when exploited abroad, and victimized in political prisons if deported home to North Korea.

I led the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.  The most recent annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report rates North Korea “Tier 3,” the reports worst rating – and China “Tier 2 Watch List” in large part because of this story.  When the 2009 report comes out in six weeks it is likely to make a similar assessment.  The surprise is not so much North Korea’s inhumanity, but China’s.

China’s human rights record is already poor on a number of grounds — constrained freedom of speech and assembly, brazenly tightened during the Olympics; repression of Tibetans and Uighurs in the name of counter-terrorism; and religious persecution, to name a few.

As North Koreans flee their country for survival and freedom, the Chinese government fails a basic “humanity test” by refusing to treat them as refugees.  It violates its own commitments under international law to protect North Korean asylum seekers from the threat of violent persecution if returned to their country of origin, and has refused the UN High Commissioner for Refugees access to determine their status.

China’s own policies exacerbate the problem.  Women fleeing North Korea are highly vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced marriage in the context of the intense demand for women as a result of China’s gender imbalance.  A one-child policy, or a slightly softened one-child policy, and a strong preference for boys cause many girls to never to see the light of day because of sex selection abortion.  This has created a high ratio of men to women throughout China.  The national average is 118 boys to every 100 girls, and in some regions (Guangdong, Hainan) a 130-100 ratio.  This dangerous gender imbalance has created an enabling environment for human trafficking.

North Korean women trafficked as “wives” into Chinese homes frequently find themselves trapped in situations of forced labor and sexual abuse.  But it is not just women who are exploited in China.  North Korean men are trafficked into various forms of forced labor, especially in farm work, the logging industry, and in mines.

While South Korea, like the United States, is by no means perfect on human trafficking, it has been given a Tier 1 ranking by the State Department TIP Report.  Although South Korea relies too heavily on NGO and foreign-run shelters, Seoul is actively expanding its network of shelters to provide quality aftercare for victims of trafficking.  Last year, The Ministry of Justice has also expanded Johns Schools educating some 15,000 male offenders who purchased commercial sex.  Above all, in South Korea, North Korean survivors of human trafficking are welcomed and treated properly as victims, unlike in China.

However, since North Koreans are legally citizens of the Republic of Korea (ROK), South Korea has a responsibility to defend the welfare of North Koreans in China.  China values its diplomatic relationship with the ROK, and South Korea should speak up on their brethen’s behalf.

Lives for Sale offers a sobering look inside 53 of the estimated 20,000-40,000 Korean refugees in China.  This report offers just a sampling, but an eye opening sampling it is.  Just think if China gave greater access to the international community to hear their stories.

This spring is an exciting time at Polaris Project and at many of our partner organizations in the anti-trafficking field because we feel that the movement against human trafficking is gaining momentum.  There’s an increasing sense that more people are becoming aware that modern-day slavery is present in our communities.  It’s great to see when people are motivated to fight against human trafficking once they learn about it.  Learn, get outraged, resolve to take action…and do something.  That’s how movements are built and sustained.

Yet despite this growing sense of excitement, I don’t want to get my hopes up too high – just yet.  Doing this as a full-time job, it’s easy to get swept away within the anti-trafficking movement in a series of meetings, trainings, conferences, research reports, and breaking cases.  Yet, the broader reality is that the majority of people in America still don’t know about the prevalence of human trafficking in today’s world.  They think that slavery is behind us as a past chapter in history.

A key first step of raising public awareness and social consciousness is still dearly needed.  This is where films come in because of their unique ability to touch people’s hearts and minds with visual images of the reality of modern-day slavery.

In the past few years, new films on the subject of human trafficking have hit theaters, film festival circuits, and college campuses.

Here are a few titles that have been released:

• Very Young Girls, a documentary playing on Showtime about girls recruited into the sex trade by traffickers in the U.S. and the efforts of an organization called Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) based in New York City.
• Holly, a powerful story of child sexual exploitation in Cambodia.
• Call and Response, an upbeat “rockumentary” featuring artists and musicians lending their voice and their talents to fighting slavery.
• Trade, a feature film starring Kevin Kline about one boy’s journey to find his sister who had been sold to a trafficking ring in the United States.
• Human Trafficking, a Lifetime movie starring Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland
• Dreams Die Hard – A movie created by Free the Slaves about numerous cases of forced labor in recent years in the U.S.
• Lilja-4-Ever, a Swedish film about sex trafficking released in 2003.

In the near future, a number of exciting new films will surely catapult the burgeoning anti-trafficking movement to new levels of success and impact. Playground Project is a new film about the commercial sexual exploitation of children in America that is starting to generate momentum in the festival circuit and through premieres in various cities.

One upcoming film that I’m particularly looking forward to is Bob Bilheimer’s global documentary, Not My Life.  A preview of this movie was released along with the 2008 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, and many feel that Not My Life holds great promise to replicate the success of Bob’s previous movie A Closer Walk on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

These movies and documentaries are a good start, but the movement needs more.  We need more films to shed light on different forms of modern-day slavery, especially different types of forced labor.  We need more documentaries to make linkages between the common tricks of traffickers in so many countries throughout the world.  And we need more films so that a much broader audience hears our collective message that “Slavery Still Exists.”