[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
A DECADE OF THE TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT
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HEARING
before the
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE:
U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 14, 2010
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COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
SENATE
HOUSE
BENJAMIN CARDIN, Maryland, ALCEE HASTINGS, Florida,
Chairman Co-Chairman
CHRISTOPHER DODD, Connecticut EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia New York
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island ROBERT ADERHOLT, Alabama
TOM UDALL, New Mexico DARRELL ISSA, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
MICHAEL POSNER, Department of State
ALEXANDER VERSHBOW, Department of Defense
A DECADE OF THE TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT
----------
JULY 14, 2010
COMMISSIONERS
Page
Hon. Benjamin Cardin, Chairman, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 2
Hon. Darrell Issa, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 1
Hon. Chris Smith, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 2
MEMBERS
Hon. Laura Richardson, a Member of Congress from the State of
California..................................................... 38
WITNESSES
Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador at Large, U.S. Department of State
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons............ 6
Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, Special Representative and Coordinator
for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe............................. 10
Jolene Smith, CEO & Co-Founder, Free the Slaves.................. 28
Holly J. Burkhalter, Vice President for Government Relations,
International Justice Mission.................................. 32
A DECADE OF THE TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS REPORT
----------
JULY 14, 2010
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held from 10:00 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. EST, SVC
203/202 Capital Visitor Center, Washington, DC, Benjamin
Cardin, Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in
Europe, presiding.
Commissioners present: Hon. Benjamin Cardin, Chairman,
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Hon. Darrell
Issa, Commissioner, Commission on Security and Cooperation in
Europe; Hon. Chris Smith, Commissioner, Commission on Security
and Cooperation in Europe; and Hon. Laura Richardson,
Commissioner, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Witnesses present: Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador at Large, U.S.
Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons; Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, Special Representative and
Coordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings,
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; Jolene
Smith, CEO & Co-Founder, Free the Slaves; and Holly J.
Burkhalter, Vice President for Government Relations,
International Justice Mission.
HON. DARRELL ISSA, COMMISSIONER,
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Issa. Good morning and welcome all to this hearing on
trafficking in persons report. And our testimony today. I'm
Congressman Darrell Issa. Congressman Smith and I did not
expect to running the, initially, the hearing today. So if
you'll bear with me as I kind of limp my way through
introductions and so on, I hope you'll forgive me.
The Helsinki Commission hearing on ``A Decade in
Trafficking in Persons Report, The Link between Revenue
Transparency and Human Rights.'' In the chairman's role as
chairman of the Helsinki Commission, he has worked extensively
with Cochairman Alcee Hastings and Chris Smith, among other
colleagues, to end modern-day slavery. The Helsinki
Commission's lengthy history and contribution to U.S. anti-
trafficking legislation and compliance, coupled with its close
engagement with actors throughout.
And with that, I will turn this over to the chairman. It's
your opening statement.
HON. BENJAMIN CARDIN, CHAIRMAN,
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Cardin. Congressman Issa, great job. Let me just
compliment you first. Welcome everybody. It's nice to see as
much interest in this hearing as it really does deserve. And I
want to compliment my colleagues. I am going to turn the gavel
over to Congressman Smith because there has been no person in
the Congress who has worked harder on this issue of trafficking
than Congressman Smith. He brought this issue to the United
States Congress and to the Helsinki Commission.
And as Congressman Issa was saying, this is modern-day
slavery. It is, I think, the best example of carrying out the
comments of the 1975 Helsinki Final Accords dealing with human
rights, to deal with workable ways. And as a result of the
leadership of the Helsinki Commission, this issue was brought
not only to the attention of the OSCE but to the entire world.
As a result, we were able to get action within the OSCE,
where every country has an action plan to deal with
trafficking, whether it's an origin country, a destination
country or a transit country. All three are involved in the
problems of trafficking. And you cannot hide behind the fact
that there is not a problem in your country if you are a
transit country or you're an origin country or a destination
country.
And the TIP report, which was action passed by the United
States Congress, implemented by the State Department, is the
most effective tool and unique tool for diplomatic actions
against countries that need to improve in dealing with this
issue. So today we really continue the attention of the
Helsinki Commission to make it clear that this is our highest
priorities in dealing with human rights. And we now have a tool
that we think has been improved over time.
As you know, the TIP report this year for the first time
evaluates our own country, the United States, in its progress
on dealing with this issue. Every country can do better,
including the United States of America. The challenges continue
to be difficult, but thanks to the work of the Helsinki
Commission, thanks to the work of Congressman Smith, thanks to
the attention that the OSCE has given to this issue, thanks to
the work of our ambassador, we are making progress and are
affecting the lives of many, many people who otherwise would
have been undetected and we are very proud of that record.
And with that I'm going to turn the hearing over to
Congressman Smith to act as chairman. I have to leave briefly
to go up on the Senate floor to give a speech at some moment,
but I will turn it over to Congressman Smith.
HON. CHRIS SMITH, COMMISSIONER,
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you
for your leadership. It's been a very collaborative effort on
all human rights issues, including human trafficking. And thank
you for your leadership. I think members of the staff certainly
know it and maybe some of the audience--we just returned from
Oslo for the OSCE parliamentary assembly.
And frankly, it was a very productive one. There was not
just one but several supplementary items. I offered one myself
on human trafficking. Much of the conversation, especially in
committee three dealing with human rights and humanitarian
issues, was focused on trafficking. I mean, if there was a
zeitgeist of this conclave, it was trafficking and efforts that
needed to be deployed and employed to mitigate and hopefully
end modern-day slavery.
By way of background--and I know Ambassador Luis CdeBaca
knows this, but Ms. Giammarinaro, welcome. It's so great to see
you, the special rep for the OSCE. The TIP report almost didn't
happen. In 1998 I introduced a Trafficking Victims Protection
Act, held a whole series of hearings at the time. As Chairman
Cardin knows, I chaired both the human rights and
humanitarian--and international ops subcommittee of the foreign
affairs and the Helsinki Commission. And we had a number of
hearings on it.
We heard from victims and probably the most compelling
testimony we heard of all testimony was from the victims who
told us of the degrading, horrific experiences that they
underwent. And these were the brave women who came forward to
tell us. Others were so broken, we went and visited them in
places like St. Petersburg and elsewhere and heard their
stories. And that helped move the legislation, but it was a
bipartisan piece of legislation.
Sam Gejdenson was the principal cosponsor. I was the prime
sponsor. And we rewrote it five times. I mean, we kept getting
new ideas. Holly Burkhalter will remember how many times we got
another idea, we put it into the text. We finally got the
markup, we passed it in the House and then it almost died in
the Senate. It took a full year for the Senate to even take up
the legislation. Then we got into a House-Senate conference
committee that lasted almost to the sine die of that Congress,
the end of that Congress, without being enacted.
There was opposition and support within the Clinton
administration. Some people thought at the State Department we
should not have sanctions that are visited upon countries that
show egregious behavior with regards to human rights--that was
Madeleine Albright's opinion. I respect it, but disagreed
respectfully. But through a left-right, conservative-liberal
coalition, we were able to the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act signed into law. And it has been 10 years now that this TIP
report has been issued and it has gotten better every year in
my opinion.
In addition to the analysis of other countries, we also put
into place up to life imprisonment for those who traffic. The
hardest hurdles we had to deal with on my side of the aisle was
it was those who did not want the T visa. They thought that the
asylum provisions in the bill would lead to an exploitation of
trafficking claims.
We thought it would never happen. If anything, women were
reluctant to come forward and tell their stories. That was the
experience that we thought was reality and certainly it has
turned out to be the case. The T visa is not being implemented
in the way that many of us would like, but hopefully, hope
springs eternal, we'll do more. We also put money in here for
shelters, but we know we have a gaping hole on shelters
domestically.
Last year, Doctor, you'll find this very troubling, Shared
Hope International did an analysis working with other NGOs and
found that about 100,000 American girls, runaways--and Luis
CdeBaca was at that launch when we explained and heard from
Shared Hope International and Linda Smith, former
Congresswoman, who was one of the leaders there, among others--
the average age is 13, 100,000 of our young girls, average age
13, runaways, who are compelled into slavery, sometimes within
48 to 72 hours after their running away. It's a terrible blight
and obviously a waste and a terrible impact on those girls'
lives.
So we're doing more domestically, as we ought to. And in
the '03 act and the '05 act--and you'll find this, I think,
interesting--we focused on peacekeepers. I held a series of
hearings on what the U.N. peacekeepers were doing in the DR
Congo and elsewhere and it was a terrible, terrible situation,
where young girls were being--again, 13 and 14 years old were
being exploited for a loaf of bread or something far less. So
that's another issue that we have included in our analysis, as
well as in our policy.
Let me just say that we have made real, significant, I
think, progress within the OSCE. Twenty-one OSCE countries are
now what we call ``tier one.'' Bosnia-Herzegovina is perhaps
the best example of progress. Having started at tier three in
2001 and attaining tier one just this year. Georgia went from
tier three--in other words, an egregious violator--to tier one
this decade and is completely surrounded by countries that are
either tier three or tier two watch list.
In the OSCE region, we do not have any countries that are
yet officially tier three, but have many who have been on the
watch list for more than two years, which means they must move
up to tier two or down to tier three in the next reporting
cycle. These countries include Azerbaijan, Moldova, Russia,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This year, 2010, is a
pivotal year for these countries and we must make sure they
have all the support that we can offer to help them move up
rather than down this scale. And why do we do that? For the
sake of the victims.
Tier one countries can also get stuck and stop improving.
The point of plateau is often maintained by a consistent demand
for victims, making trafficking lucrative for organized crime
and too prevalent for law enforcement to completely stamp out.
We have many challenges before us in the next decade of
anti-trafficking work, but perhaps one of the most important is
ending the demand that drives trafficking. We must increase
public awareness, not only of trafficking that is occurring
around them, but also of buyer responsibility--women and
children are not commodities--and perhaps add a section to the
report highlighting how a country addresses the demand issue.
Let me finally say that at the conference, I included two
provisions among many in my supplementary item, Mr. Chairman,
as you know, that deal with two best practices that we need to
replicate everywhere and especially, Doctor, within the OSCE
region.
One deals with the airline partners against human
trafficking. We held a briefing/hearing two weeks ago and heard
from American Airlines--which is taking the lead, among others,
but they are the leads--on trying to empower flight attendants
especially, but the entirety of the flight crew, to be aware of
the signs of human trafficking, what trafficking looks like.
And if it doesn't look right, pass that information on to
the captain, who signals law enforcement so that when these
young women--and they're usually women or children--are
deplaning, proper law enforcement can at least ascertain
whether or not there is a trafficking situation.
One of the flight attendants said that there were a half a
dozen Russian women, didn't look right. This man just--it just
didn't smell right. Sure enough, as they deplaned, all six of
those women were trafficking victims and were saved.
The other idea is the international Megan's Law. Megan
Kanka was a 7-year-old little girl who was brutally slain in my
hometown of Hamilton Township, New Jersey, in 1994. This young
girl--didn't know, as did her parents, that across the street,
a convicted pedophile lived and lurked. He got her into the
house, raped her, and brutally murdered her. And that led to
the enactment of in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,
of Megan's Law. We now have a registry of about 700,000 sex
offenders.
And in one of my bilaterals with a Thai delegation, I
remember asking them--this was four years ago--if we told you
that so-and-so, who has been convicted of pedophilia, is
heading out to your country, what would you do? They said, no
way that person gets a visa.
We began working on Megan's Law that day. It is out of the
Foreign Affairs Committee, has been waved on by the Judiciary
Committee. We understand Justice has some problem and whatever
it is, we'd better work it out or we'll have this Congress end
again without Megan's Law being enacted. Notice and information
does empower and it will have the ability of ending the secrecy
and the impunity that these people operate in.
And finally, working with Holly, we do have a very
important compact piece of legislation--well over a hundred
cosponsors. We're trying to get that out of committee as well
to provide significant amounts of money with Congress that
enter into a compact, work out best practices and they will get
enhanced funding to put into place a strategy to end
trafficking within their country.
So we've got a lot of things on the burner. If they sit on
the burner, shame on us that we have not moved them forward to
end this cruel practice. And thank you again for both of your
tremendous leaderships.
Mr. Cardin. Let me just observe something that Congressman
Smith stated and that is, we, the U.S. delegation has regularly
brought the issue of trafficking up at the parliamentary
assembly. But this year was a little bit different. We found
that many other delegations brought up the issue of
trafficking, which means this is clearly a priority in many
countries, which is a very healthy development and one that we
think will yield great results in protecting those victims.
Congressman Issa?
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'll be brief. I'd
like to hear the testimony as soon as possible. When I came to
Congress 10 years ago, trafficking tended to be looking at
Thailand and the sex vacations and so on. And as time went on
and we began looking around the world--and I'm getting to the
TIP report--it became obvious that perhaps the least excusable
offender of human trafficking is the United States. And until
this year, we were not on the report.
Inexcusable because of the 12 million people from outside
our country who are here outside our laws, almost all of them
came at least based on a promise of a better life, came on the
promise of good things to the richest country in the world. And
yet a great many of them were deceived. And in my own district,
many of them never made it here because coyotes abandoned them
in the desert, sometimes out of fear of apprehension, sometimes
as part of a plan.
So concentrating around the world should never be to the
exclusion of taking a country that is probably the most
unconscionable country not to deal with all forms of
trafficking, including the importation either for sex or for
general labor. And the United States is certainly a magnet of
people who come with promises and often those promises are
incredibly false.
So as I look forward to the testimony and I look forward to
working on areas around the world in which the countries have
not paid attention yet, I hope we always remind ourselves that
we have been the source of the dollars often for bringing
people and encouraging trafficking from all kinds of countries
around the world.
And Congressman Smith was talking about a flight attendant
who said it didn't look right with one Russian man and six
Russian women, no surprise that often we are the magnet for
that kind of activity. And so although they are the victims, we
have to take some of the blame if we're not more comprehensive
in our thwarting those attempts.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back and look forward
to the testimony.
Mr. Cardin. Well, our first panel consists of two
individuals whose positions were part of the effort of the
Helsinki Commission not only to make sure these positions exist
but to have the resources and support necessary to accomplish
their important work. The bios of our two witnesses are
included in the information that has been made available, so
I'm just going to introduce them with their titles so we can
proceed. And after that, I will turn the gavel over to
Congressman Smith and I regret I do need to leave to be on the
Senate floor.
The first witness is Luis CdeBaca, the director of the
State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons. And our other witness is Dr. Maria Giammarinaro, who
is the OSCE special representative and coordinator for
combating trafficking in human beings. Ambassador CdeBaca, glad
to hear from you.
LUIS CDEBACA, AMBASSADOR AT LARGE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
OFFICE TO MONITOR AND COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS
Mr. CdeBaca. Thank you, Sen. Cardin. And also to
Representative Smith and Representative Issa on behalf of all
the members of the commission. We'd like to thank you for your
leadership and your commitment to ending modern slavery. The
last 10 years has, as you've set forth, seen many successes in
this fight.
With more cases and more victim care has come a deepening
of our collective understanding of this crime, both as far its
scope, as far its type, as far as whose doorstep it should be
attributed to. No longer simply being seen as the business of
the trafficker and their victim but instead how, as Mr. Issa
suggested, we ourselves often find, through the demand and the
policies that we have in place, things that puts government and
civil society on the hook as well.
I'd like to highlight some of these understandings that 10
years' worth of report have given us. And in first doing it, I
think that taking us back to those early days may be
illustrative. I think that when many of us started working on
this in the 1990s, trafficking in person was a little-
understood crime that was perpetrated in the shadows.
And if people thought of it at all, they thought of migrant
women trapped by false promises only to find themselves in
brothels and strip clubs, whether in Thailand, whether in
Western Europe. The notion of the victim as a kidnapping victim
as opposed to the victim as someone who had found themselves in
a situation that they could not get out of. Victims who were
enslaved in their own countries were largely left protected,
such as it was, simply by exhortative international norms that
had little if any reach inside of their national borders.
As Ann Gallagher writes, ``In the 1990s, the discourse
began to look at human trafficking per se, not just as an
incidental consideration when dealing with other issues.''
Typically it was seen as an adjunct to migration policy, the
legal or illegal regulation of prostitution or the work of
human rights mechanisms around the world.
Instead the understanding of the crime in the mid-1990s and
since then has developed such that, again, quoting Ann
Gallagher, ``The concept of trafficking international law does
not just refer to the process by which an individual is moved
into exploitation; it extends to include the maintenance of
that person in the situation of exploitation.'' This shift to
the conception of modern slavery, I would say, is the defining
of the last decade of this fight and is reflected in the last
10 trafficking in victims' reports.
I appreciate the nod, Mr. Smith, as far as the constant
improvement. I thought that I would actually bring, for old
time's sake, a copy of the first TIP report.
Mr. Smith. Can you tell if it was done on a selector?
Mr. CdeBaca. It looks like it might have been originally. I
think one of the things that we've seen and it's not just that
the report is perhaps more authored and more comprehensive, but
we also have a more comprehensive understanding of what
trafficking is. Not just this notion of focusing on the
enslavement as opposed to migration or movement, but also what
the solution is--the three-P paradigm that you were so
instrumental in helping us develop: prevention, protection and
prosecution.
I certainly knew as a young prosecutor that unless we had
protection measures for the victims and unless we had
prevention efforts in place that I would never be able to
prosecute our way out of this. I think speaking for my
colleague at that point, as a judge in Italy in the late 1990s,
I know that this was something that Dr. Giammarinaro and I and
others talked about, that we could not simply use law
enforcement tools, that we had to have prevention and
protection.
But so too, we can't simply have an underground railroad
manned by NGOs who help victims and never bring them forward
for the traffickers to be punished. An interlocking paradigm.
And that's the Palermo protocol and that's what the United
Nations brought us as we were able to successfully get that in
place at the same time as the TBPA.
But too often we see a convention ratified, laws passed to
conform and then--what else? To make it real takes coordination
across agency lines, cooperation across governments and the
engagement and leadership of regional fora like the OSCE. And
frankly, it takes oversight and attention by parliamentarians,
whether it's, for instance, Mr. Issa, the resolution on DHS and
DOJ's efforts that I was able to help your staff with when I
was still on the Judiciary Committee staff--or there's so many
things that you've done, Mr. Smith, over the last few years.
What that does is it propels the work of the international
fora. It propels the work of the international fora. It propels
the work of the agencies because they know that it's not simply
going and occasionally dusting off the agency copy of the
Palermo protocol. We've seen too many countries where that is
the norm and I think that as we get more and more
parliamentarians involved, it's less likely for that to be the
only bureaucratic response.
And we've seen results. Trafficking Victims Protection Act
has three reauthorizations, the ongoing attention, the Palermo
protocol, offices such as mine and that at the OSCE. But more
importantly, the action plans and the laws that have come
online in countries around the world. The victims who have been
rescued and the offenders who have been prosecuted.
Without the trafficking in victims report over the last 10
years, I would suggest that we would have no real way to assess
the progress that's been made, no baseline standards, no
information about the number of laws that are out there,
whether they're sufficient, whether there are victim care in
place and no way to have meaningful diplomatic engagement.
I certainly do not subscribe to what some unfortunately
were saying in '98 and '99 to you, Mr. Smith, as far as the
effect of the rankings and the effect of the naming. We have
seen that as one of the most effective tools. It brings
countries to the table in a way that a report that simply
drifts off into the wind like a dandelion seed perhaps to take
root or not does not do.
And so we think that this is something that the secretary
is committed to. As she said in June, the easiest way to get
off tier three or tier two watch list is not to complain or to
try to work the system; it's for countries to act.
Now, we've talked a little bit about--I think you raised
Bosnia and Herzegovina and that is a government that acted. It
acted, but it didn't act alone. It acted because, in many ways,
not just the United States but more importantly the OSCE, the
Helsinki Commission. The partnership with the nongovernmental
organizations in Bosnia, the convictions of the traffickers--I
would lay that not only at the good work of the Bosnian
government, but also for the OSCE's trafficking office,
specifically at the time, the stability pact taskforce, which
was funded and staffed in large part by the United States
through the Helsinki Commission.
It didn't just provide technical assistance, but rather
through the convening authority, the OSCE kept the heat on
Bosnia and other countries in the Balkans to actually do
something. The OSCE made sure that terms such as ``national
action plan'' or ``national referral mechanism'' wasn't just an
international buzzword but instead something that triggered
international and lasting change.
I mentioned some trends and I will try to very briefly
touch on two of them because the heightened understanding of
the problem that we've seen that's reflected in this report is
something that I think we've seen in the U.S. but we're
starting to hear this from our international partners as well.
And one of those trends is the feminization of labor
trafficking. Labor trafficking for many years, either because
we weren't really looking at it or we weren't seeing what was
in front of us or because of various political winds, was once
thought of as the male counterpart to sex trafficking of women.
Labor was for men; sex trafficking was for women. You dealt
with them separately and that was how things got done in a lot
of places. But like their brothers, husbands and sons, women
are trapped in fields, farms, factories, mines, homes and often
suffer the dual demons of both forced labor and rape.
False promises. This is something that we've seen for men
in labor trafficking. The stereotype is the man who is lured
through a false promise of a good job only to have a huge
recruiting fee or to have to pay off a smuggling fee. Well,
we've seen that as well as we looked at this status in the
field--as we look at what's going on out in the enforcement
community--we've seen that as well with women.
And so we're hoping that that new fraud in foreign labor
recruiting crime that was part of the 2008 reauthorization will
not only be used successfully in the case that's going to trial
in Kansas City this fall, but also will become a model that we
can take to the outside world--because that issue of fraud in
foreign recruiting, what those coyotes are telling people, what
those folks in the other countries, should be a crime no matter
where the person ends up enslaved. And if we have to reach out
to South Asia or if we have to reach out to Latin America to
apprehend the people who give those lies and commit that fraud,
then we will do so.
I also want to point out--and I think that this is
something that hopefully will be addressed in some of the other
testimony--the idea that some of the worst abuses occurs behind
closed doors in involuntary domestic servitude. In some ways,
these are the most vulnerable victims because unlike people in
other sectors, they often do not come in contact with anyone
who might take pity on them, who might help them out, who may
get them to law enforcement.
We've seen cases of victims in domestic servitude here in
the United States, within 10 miles of where we said, who have
been held captive for 20 or more years wasting away, resigned
to the idea that they will die in that home, that no one will
come to find them.
I was pleased to be able to participate in the recent
gathering in Vienna hosted by Judge Giammarinaro that brought
experts together to confront this heinous practice. And I'm
glad that last month, the United States delegation to the ILO
was able to get strong language included in the negotiations
over the domestic servant convention that will hopefully come
into force next year.
Going forward, the Obama administration is wholly committed
to combating every type of trafficking, whether sex
trafficking, forced labor, at home or abroad, no matter the
citizenship or immigration status of the victims. And we do
that in continuation of the spirit of partnership and the work
of our predecessors.
I personally, I think, have a reputation for being fairly
impatient. And I think that we should be impatient because we
owe it to the survivors, the brave survivors who testify
against their traffickers, to the NGOs who often put themselves
in harm's way to serve these victims, to the agents that go out
and dismantle these cases.
But we also have to be impatient because of the specter of
those countless people who are currently still in bondage,
waiting and wondering, not even knowing whether or not we're
looking for them. I think we can all be impatient. As Sen.
Cardin said, we can all do better. I thank you for your
support. I apologize for the length of this opening statement,
but it's an important thing that I share your passion on. Thank
you so much.
Mr. Smith. Ambassador CdeBaca, thank you very much for your
testimony and for your leadership. And you could have taken
more time if you'd liked. Dr. Giammarinaro.
MARIA GRAZIA GIAMMARINARO, SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE AND
COORDINATOR FOR COMBATING TRAFFICKING IN HUMAN BEINGS,
ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Dr. Giammarinaro. Thank you very much. I am honored to
testify today before the Helsinki Commission. And I would like
to thank you for your kind invitation, but also for holding
this important hearing and for your dedication to this
challenging issue. This session is mostly dedicated to the
Trafficking in Persons Report and, first of all, I would like
to say that in the daily work of my office, the TIP Report
constitutes an extremely valuable source of up-to-date
information.
We welcome the inclusion of the U.S. as a country of
assessment. And for the first time, we have an overview of what
is going on in one of the largest destination countries and one
of the most active in the fight against trafficking.
I also appreciate the attention the 2010 report pays to
important issues such as labor trafficking, protection of
victims' rights and implications of migration policies, as well
as to preventive actions, such as those addressing loopholes in
labor recruitment, transparency and worker protection
throughout the supply chain. And I'm pleased to see that our
policy approaches are in line with one another.
Since 2000, the OSCE has adopted, as you know, important
political commitments to continually strengthen our efforts to
combat trafficking in human beings. And in 2003, the special
representative was established as a high-level mechanism to
promote the implementation of OSCE commitments in the
participating states. And I'm honored to carry out this task
now and I'm personally committed to make trafficking in human
beings even more strategic in the OSCE commitments in the
future.
I would like to touch upon two issues: my assessment of the
state of play of the anti-trafficking struggle in the OSCE area
and, secondly, the challenges we face.
What is the state of play? It is undeniable that many
efforts have been made by governments during the last 10 years.
There is stronger political will to prevent and combat
trafficking and this is reflected in the works--more and more,
the works of the U.S., of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and
the works of the permanent council. Not only this; necessary
institutional machinery has been set up almost everywhere. And
this means coordination mechanisms. This means monitoring
mechanisms and national action plan, in addition to
legislation.
However, not always these actions, the concrete actions are
consistent with declarations, especially in terms of resources
allocated, capacities developed and actual implementation of
the action defined in the action plans. Despite the progress,
we cannot be satisfied. I tend to belong to the same category
of important people as Luis CdeBaca. And as special
representative, I think it is my duty to promote further
improvement.
And of course, the starting point is to be clear and open
about what is not still going on very well, what we have to
improve. Concerning the protection of victims' rights--and I
start from this important issue because we know very well that
victims bear incredible human suffering as a consequence of
trafficking in human beings. Trafficking for sexual
exploitation, of course, severely undermines and devastates the
freedom, dignity and health of victims, mostly women and girls.
But also, trafficking for labor exploitation--and this is
less obvious--very often causes equal levels of human suffering
as a result of inhuman working conditions and living
conditions, humiliation and starvation. Children are subject to
these and other forms of exploitation and bear scars as a
result of being deprived of education, health care and basic
human nurture and protection.
And I think that, concerning the health consequences--very
often what we see in courtrooms and in shelters, victims of
trafficking, both adults and children, often share a similar
profile to victims of torture. And this is the reason why the
protection of victims' rights remains paramount in the
antitrafficking struggle, as Luis CdeBaca said.
And Joe has advocated for a human-rights-based approach,
which has been reaffirmed by the OSCE political anti-
trafficking commitments since 2000. This approach has
subsequently been endorsed by the Council of Europe and, more
recently, by the European Commission and the CIS Model Law.
However, the rate of victim identification is extremely low
compared to the estimated scale of trafficking. It's still very
low.
Too often, trafficked persons are either not identified as
victims of crime or are misidentified as regular migrants and
deported. Despite the increasing trend of reported cases, the
criminal-justice response is still largely inadequate. And not
only in terms of the number of convictions: Often, prosecution
only reaches individual, final exploiters.
And in the meantime, trafficking proves mostly a business
of organized crime and mostly run by flexible criminal groups
which are connected at the international level. Corruption,
reinvestment and money laundering remain largely undetected. It
is, therefore, imperative to handle every single case with the
aim of dismantling the entire transnational criminal network
and hit the proceeds of crime.
We have to admit that, although commitment and action have
been taken, trafficking in human beings is not still
considered--and this is my assessment--not very optimistic. It
is not still considered a strategic issue and does not raise
the same level of concern as other human rights issues such as
torture or other transnational treats, such as drug
trafficking.
I'm convinced that in my capacity I have to promote a
different perception of trafficking in human beings.
Trafficking should not be considered as a marginal phenomenon
concerning only sexual exploitation or involving the profile of
certain victims only. This is still the current perception, the
common perception of trafficking.
On the contrary, trafficking for any illicit purpose is a
massive phenomenon of modern-day slavery, an organized crime
business and therefore a threat for national and international
security. It is imperative that anti-trafficking legislation
and policy established over the past years now work on a much
larger scale, especially in the field of labor exploitation. I
think this is the real challenge we have to face. We have the
tooth, but we have to use that in a more effective way.
My office concerning labor exploitation is dedicated to
facilitate deeper knowledge of this side of trafficking in
human beings. We have conducted work on trafficking in the
agricultural sector and, more recently, trafficking for the
purpose of domestic servitude. And I'm really delighted that
domestic servitude was addressed by the TIP report of 2010 as a
crucial issue.
Before concluding, I would now like to touch upon three
crucial areas where, in my view, substantial improvement is
needed. And these areas concern, of course, the three P's:
protection of victims' rights, prosecution and prevention.
Protection of victims' rights: Over the last decade, the OSCE
approach to promoting human-rights-based responses to
trafficking through the national-level mechanisms has received
increased recognition. Such mechanisms, however, have not been
universally established or have not proven really effective.
I therefore strongly advocate for early identification of
and unconditional assistance to trafficked persons. In other
words, a victim must receive immediate assistance and support
as soon as there is the slightest indication that she or he
might have been subject to trafficking. This approach has
recently been confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights.
In the recent case of Rantsev vs. Cyprus and Russia, the
court established an obligation to protect not only victims,
but also persons that might have been trafficked or are at risk
of being trafficked. And this means that we have to lower the
threshold of identification and granting of resident status.
Without that, assistance is not even possible.
Another challenging area is the protection of victims'
rights in criminal proceedings. Victims should receive free
legal counseling and representation in criminal, civil and
labor proceedings to be able to claim their rights. In
particular, the right to compensation is a crucial element of
an empowerment strategy enabling trafficked persons to gain
ownership of their lives and their destinies.
The second challenge is prosecution. A priority is to deal
effectively with trafficking as organized crime by enhancing
national capacity and international cooperation in
transnational cases. And my office is really committed in
capacity--in working with governments, especially concerning
capacity-building and training for law enforcement, prosecutors
and judges.
Furthermore, trafficking cases, especially for labor
exploitation, are rarely qualified as such. Prosecutors and
courts often apply related minor offenses, such as the
withholding of wages or harboring of aliens. A real challenge
for law enforcement, prosecutors and judges is to understand
that a person, although she or he has not been locked up in an
apartment or in a workplace, could nevertheless be coerced to
stay in an exploitative situation because she or he has no real
and acceptable alternative.
Finally, the third challenge is preventing. And I would
like to touch here only on one aspect, namely, awareness-
raising. Trafficking is modern-day slavery and it is a
widespread phenomenon. Awareness-raising should therefore aim
to build something similar to an antislavery, abolitionist
movement in which intellectuals, parliamentarians, artists,
educators and students, private sector, the media and members
of the general public should feel committed. And I thank you
for your attention.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Dr. Giammarinaro. Thank you very much
for your testimony, for your leadership within the OSCE. Let me
just ask, first: Kazakhstan, obviously, is the chair-in-office
this year. I was one of those in the minority view, as it
turned out, who felt they should not get the chair-in-office
until they had attained at least a minimal respect for human
rights, including trafficking.
They have been downgraded, as Luis CdeBaca will tell you,
this year, to a watch-list status because there has been
deterioration. And I'm wondering, you know, what your contacts
have been with Kazakhstan.
I mean, if you're chair-in-office, you should be setting
the standard. You're up there, you know, in neon lights, saying
we're the leader. When it comes to human rights, they have been
clear laggards, but sadly, actually getting worse in the
trafficking area. So what's your sense on Kazakhstan?
Dr. Giammarinaro. The chairmanship-in-office, the Kazakh
chairmanship, has identified child trafficking as a priority,
so we feel committed to work with them because of course, it is
important to keep trafficking high in the agenda.
And this means that Kazakhstan is ready to work with us to
improve the situation, the internal situation.
Actually, we are now carrying out a country assessment in
Kazakhstan and a visit--I will pay a visit in the fall to have
direct contact with the authorities because of course, our
country assessment is part of the work we carry out, together
with governments, to promote the implementation of the
commitments. So it is important that Kazakhstan, you know,
accepted to submit the data, the figures and all the
information available to carry out this country assessment. So
we look forward to work with them to promote further
improvement.
Mr. Smith. Ambassador CdeBaca, your sense on Kazakhstan,
why they were demoted?
Mr. CdeBaca. Well, I think it's important to applaud and
encourage the kind of work that Kazakhstan has been doing at
the OSCE, while at the same time making sure that we work with
the Kazakhs as to what they're doing back home. This is not
unusual, to have a country that may have leadership, say, for
instance, in the U.N. system or the OSCE system, through their
ministry of foreign affairs.
But then you have to look at what the home ministry, the
interior, the police, et cetera are doing. You know, one of our
big concerns on Kazakhstan is the need for victim protection
and identification. And we do think that the visit of the
special representative is going to have a salutary effect on
that.
I think at the end of the day, Kazakhstan is a destination
country, as well as a source country. And yet you only have
three foreign victims identified last year, only 12 Kazakh
victims of forced labor. And one of the big things that's a
problem in Kazakhstan is not simply the cotton harvest--which,
I think, a lot of people have paid attention to in all of the
Central Asian republics--but even, you know, forest work and
other things like that.
So I think that's, at the end of the day, sharpening their
victim identification--there are a lot more sex-trafficking
victims out there than the three foreign victims that they were
able to identify. And we hope that with the work in the OSCE,
that they'll--much like we saw with the Balkans--that the
Central Asian republics will start that upward trend.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask Dr. Giammarinaro again a couple
of questions to you. In our TIP Report, Holland is a tier-one
country. And I, for the last 14-or-so years, have had an
ongoing disagreement with the Dutch especially as to the number
of women who are, I believe, trafficked into Amsterdam.
Two-part question: One, your sense of the number of women
who are sold like commodities in Amsterdam, although there've
been some changes, I know, in their policies. Many of them are
foreign women. And their own rapporteur some years back
suggested that there were elements of coercion--with regards to
force, fraud and coercion--with their presence there.
I go to many countries around the world and go to shelters
and meet with their parliamentarians and their executive branch
on trafficking. I was in Brasilia, I guess it was four years
ago. I spent a week there talking about these kinds of issues.
I made a trip one day into Rio de Janeiro and, of all things,
it turned out that there was a woman who was rescued--a
Brazilian woman--who was there, who was on her way to
Amsterdam.
And in a like manner, I was in Lagos a couple of years ago,
and Abuja, but in Lagos, I went to a trafficking shelter and
met with a number of trafficking victims who had been rescued,
both from African countries, but also from Italy. And in Rome,
I went to a series of shelters there and met a number of
Nigerian women.
And I guess the question would be, with regards to your
mandate, you know, obviously the OSCE region is not
hermetically sealed. There are people coming in and out from
all over the world. How much do you expend effort, or do you
think your vision should be, to talk to countries like Nigeria,
or talk to the Brazilians or others, which are supplying--
again, I hate the sense of the commodity called a woman--to
their sex exploitation? Do you have those kinds of
conversations?
Dr. Giammarinaro. At the moment, my first commitment is to
deal with OSCE area, which is an area in which the floods of
trafficking are enormous. And of course, we have to deal also
with relatively new phenomena such as internal trafficking,
which has been underestimated everywhere.
And now we have reports from, for example, in Germany, in
the U.K., in the Netherlands, in Belgium, cases of internal
trafficking for sexual exploitation are more and more reported.
Internal trafficking for labor exploitation exists in many
countries of the OSCE area and, in particular, in Central Asia.
Of course, a further, you know, development of our activity
could be to have an improved and enhanced dialogue with
countries of origin of floods of trafficking coming to the OSCE
area. And of course, some countries are particularly important
because Nigeria is a source country for sexual exploitation of
victims that are trafficked everywhere in the OSCE area. So I
look forward to this further development.
Mr. Smith. I appreciate that. And let me ask you, with
regards to the police--Holly Burkhalter will be speaking in the
second panel and she works with the International Justice
Mission. And we were writing the first law and established the
minimum standards by which a country is judged--including our
own--tier one, tier two, tier three and now watch-list as well.
He was emphatic in testimony, as well as when we were in
drafting sessions, that you've got to include the police.
You've got to keep that focus on the police. If there's an
Achilles heel, it's not necessarily a lawmaker or somebody in
the foreign ministry, although they can be weak links and
enablers. It is usually in the police.
And I'm wondering if you find in your work, as well as with
the work with the Strategic Police Matters Unit. Do you focus
on the fact that the police--you know, they're the ones who can
be bought off? They're the ones on the scene. I remember Gary
Haugen from International Justice Mission--a tape and he showed
these little girls--it was India--but he showed how the police
had just enabled the whole thing. They're on the watch for the
pimps and the traffickers.
And one anecdotal that our commission dealt with a few
years ago: We got actionable information from Montenegro that,
at a brothel, there were six Ukrainian women. And the NGO that
called us said, please, don't send in the local police. They're
part of the problem. So we called the President of Montenegro.
He sent in his special police. They rescued all but one, who
was unfortunately trafficked to another place.
But it underscored for me, forever, that if you don't get
the police right, you don't get any of it right. And I'm
wondering what your sense on the police is.
Dr. Giammarinaro. Yeah, absolutely. I can forward the data,
if you like, but I can say that we pay a lot of attention to
the training for the police. And there are activities going on
in many countries of the OSCE area.
Together with the specialized unit for the police and the
secretariat, we are carrying out different training, various
training in different countries. And also, the field operations
have projects, which focus, again, on capacity-building and, in
particular, the training for law enforcement.
And this is because identification of victims very much
depends on the skill of local police, of the normal police
officer, which in every unit should be able to identify
indicators of trafficking. And this is, you know, the main
goal. Of course, this takes time because we have started with
the high-level officials and now, the next challenge is to
reach in a more general way the front-line law enforcement.
But absolutely, this is a priority. And we are trying now
to involve more prosecutors' offices because law enforcement is
largely on board. Prosecutors have not been so active in the
field of trafficking human beings and it is true that there is
still a big problem of interpretation and implementation of
criminal law.
Because as I said, one of the problems is that prosecutors
and the courts try to find evidence of coercion. And they
should simply understand that coercion could be exercised by
subtle means; for example, by means of abuse of a position of
vulnerability. And this concept needs to be more, understood.
And therefore, the criminal law should be implemented in a more
wide and correct way.
Mr. Smith. Let me just conclude with--and I know we'll be
meeting later and I'd like to take this up with you further--
but if you could consider at least looking at this Megan's Law
concept, which I know the U.K. has. We have it.
It's not perfect, but it goes to the demand side. It goes
to the secrecy of individuals who have already shown
themselves. They've been convinced of this terrible crime and
they recommit these crimes again. So for the sake of children
and vulnerable persons, the Megan's Law, at least, is a good
crime-watch tool. And most European countries don't have it and
it seems to me they should.
The second would be on the issue of the military: In 2002,
President Bush issued a zero-tolerance policy. We worked very
closely with them on that. But as we saw with the U.N., when
they did likewise, I actually had a hearing in which several of
our witnesses said zero compliance. It is an open question
whether or not militaries are training, making their recruits
and everybody up the line of command knowledgeable about what
is happening here.
And we just had another problem, as Luis CdeBaca knows,
where we thought we had the issue in South Korea under more
control that these so-called juicy bars, as they call them,
seem to be a conduit for selling women, especially Filipino
women. So the military is always a problem.
The real laggard, in my opinion, in the OSCE is Russia.
They've always been a problem with regards to their military.
They have been reluctant at OSCE conferences to talk about, you
know, buy-in with best practices for that kind of exploitation.
Maybe you might want to speak with the Russian--whether or not
their military's doing anything to try to combat human
trafficking.
And I'll never forget, I visited a trafficking shelter in
Sarajevo. A nice shelter, good shelter, but when I mentioned
any kind of faith-based component--either a visiting clergy, a
Muslim imam or a priest or anyone--it was like a foreign
concept. I mean, they weren't really against it. They had never
even thought about it.
Your predecessor and I had many arguments about the
importance of faith-based shelters. And I've been in shelters
all over the world. I do think those that aren't faith-based do
a wonderful job, but those that are faith-based also meet a
deep wound, especially in a woman, that might be helped with a
spiritual component.
At least it ought to be included and not excluded, which,
again--your predecessor was adamant. We had arguments many
times with regards to that. And I'm wondering what your feeling
is on faith-based shelter.
Dr. Giammarinaro. Concerning the demand, the demand side
should be absolutely addressed, both for the demand of sexual
services and the demand of cheap labor because these are
drivers of trafficking. How?
I'm very much convinced that one thing is education and
culture. I think that if we want to really address prevention
in the long term--prevention of trafficking--we have to promote
a culture of equality and respect for relationship between the
sexes because this is the real problem behind.
Concerning further action, I think that the suggestion--it
is not a binding provision, but it is included in the Council
of Europe convention on trafficking in human beings, concerning
the criminalization of users that knowingly use services
accepted from a trafficking person, can be a useful tool to
address the demand. Of course, one aspect that should be
addressed, more and more address, is the demand of cheap labor
because this is also one thing that we should look better into.
Concerning the military, the code of conduct of the
military, we have just started to develop, to think about that.
We have commissioned a study because we want to understand what
actually happens on a daily basis and if the zero tolerance and
the code of conduct are really effective. It is, of course,
something that is absolutely crucial and it is on our agenda,
so we will take action in this field.
Concerning the shelter, frankly speaking, I'm a bit
hesitant concerning the idea of a faith-based shelter.
Personally speaking, I have a high appreciation of some faith-
based organization, including the Italian Catholic nuns with
whom I have worked a lot. And they do a fantastic job, for
example, in Nigeria because as you know, Italy is one of the
countries of destination of Nigerian girls.
In my view, it is clear that every shelter, whatever it is,
be it a government shelter or a shelter run by an NGO the
rights of victims should be respected. Their freedom of
religion should be respected. And they should be offered all
the services concerning the possibility, the actual
possibility, of practice of their faith or their religion.
So I think that we should pay attention to this problem
because it is one aspect of victims' rights. So I think that
from this point of view, I would certainly, you know, pay more
attention than in the past to this aspect.
Mr. Issa. Doctor, I'd like to follow up on that by
rephrasing the question. Do you support that if there are
multiple NGOs offering shelter, that faith-based, or NGOs who
are faith-based is maybe a better way to put it, should be
included in the opportunity--or another way of putting it, not
excluded from consideration. This is something we deal with
even in the United States, which is, in many cases we have
faith-based organizations who are not fighting to proselytize.
They're simply fighting not to be excluded from being
equally eligible to, if you will totally secular organizations.
In our case, Catholic Charities simply wants to have the same
opportunity to offer homeless people shelters. They're not
trying to convert, but they do want to be included.
So in that way--because you did seem to give Mr. Smith a
little bit of the same answer that your predecessor did,
perhaps more diplomatically. I just wanted to know, do you
support that they not be excluded simply because they come from
a faith-based background?
Dr. Giammarinaro. Definitely, yes. I think that no
organization should be excluded or discriminated on the basis
of their cultural identity. So definitely, I think that faith-
based organizations should not be excluded or discriminated.
But I think that they have to ensure the same level of respect
of victims' rights.
In other words, what is the reason why I don't like the
expression faith-based shelter? Because this suggests the idea
that all the people that are in the shelter should be selected
or subjected to a certain cultural or religious approach. If
every organization ensures to victims the same level of respect
of their rights, I think that this is, you know, the basic
requirement for admission to funding. And of course, we
couldn't tolerate any discrimination from this point of view.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. The problem of, for example, Mr. Smith
mentioned Kazakhstan. And I noted that when you look at
Kazakhstan and you look at Russia, they look very similar. And
as you go through each of the former Soviet satellites and
assets, they all look very similar.
Would you say that we're dealing with a culture in which
you're really not dealing--even though you're dealing with
individual countries and trying to get them to break away--
you're dealing with, to a great extent, post-Soviet Russian
influence in the region?
Dr. Giammarinaro. The legacy, of course, is there. It is
undeniable that there are commonalities. But there are also big
differences. And actually, according to my mandate, I have to
work with every government and try to achieve the best results
I can in a cooperative setting.
Mr. Issa. And the reason I was asking is, if we don't
succeed with Russia--and we have not succeeded with Russia--
isn't it, in a sense, a ripple effect, that by not getting
Russia to improve--and I've been to most of the 'stans. Most of
them, along with most of the other countries, have deliberately
implanted huge amounts of Russians during the Soviet period who
are, in many cases--in some cases, ostracized, but in some
cases, very much still in control.
Isn't the linchpin to this whole thing getting Russia to
make a material change so that the culture that they created,
particularly as to prostitution, can be, over time, justified
for a change? And conversely, if you don't change Russia, don't
you, in a sense, have to peel off each of these with a much
greater effort?
Dr. Giammarinaro. If we don't succeed, we will think about
that.
Mr. Issa. Ambassador? I saw your head shaking, so I'm
guessing that the Russia-centric is part of your radar.
Mr. CdeBaca. On several levels. I think that, first of all,
just as we have to deal with the Commonwealth countries in a
particular way because of a shared understanding of how much a
judge can do, as opposed to the prosecutor or the legislator,
in the British legal system, the post-Soviet legal system and
updating that, I think, has had some very particular impacts in
the antitrafficking fight.
A few countries have tried to take steps to consider what
we'd consider a more European or a more American-style
antitrafficking law. But it's the context of a Russian legal
tradition.
Mr. Issa. Russia's gift included this curse.
Mr. CdeBaca. Well, the gift of the legal tradition, one of
the things that it did is it kind of stamps out entrepreneurial
behavior on the part of what we would look to as the leaders in
the fight. Typically, it's your up-and-coming police colonels
or your up-and-coming folks in a ministry somewhere.
And yet, especially in the policing and the prosecutor's
office, if they don't have the authorizing legislation first to
allow them to go out and act upon the penal code, then it's
illegal for them to do so.
And they also don't have discretion. They have to charge
the crimes that are in front of them. And so you don't have a
situation like here in the United States, where a prosecutor
can use their discretion to not charge the victims with a
prostitution offense, knowing that they were enslaved by their
pimp. In a lot of the former Soviet states, that's one of our
first hurdles, is to try to teach prosecutorial discretion.
So I think that there's a lot of remnants. Certainly, we
also see in all of the 'stans, the cotton harvest--which is,
again, one of the big problems there as far as labor
trafficking--is because of how the Russians, when they were in
control, would staff the cotton harvest, taking all the kids
out and sending them into the fields.
Mr. Issa. Let me follow up on that. In many cases, in my
understanding, in all of those regions the people who are doing
that--the children who are doing that--it's actually not
illegal for them to do it. Isn't that true? We face the problem
that unlike forced prostitution, denial of human rights,
kidnapping--all the things that are either implied or literally
occurring in most human trafficking--child labor is a concept
that we have here at one level. And in India, it's a very
different level, isn't it?
Mr. CdeBaca. To some degree. I think that there's a
gradation. Child labor, you know, has many different facets. I
think that even those who work almost wholly within that
paradigm, the child labor paradigm, under the ILO conventions,
will admit that at the end of the spectrum is the prohibition
against enslavement. In the trafficking office, we tend to put
all of our time and effort into that portion.
Mr. Issa. Right, but in this report, it appears as though
you don't differentiate as to whether the use of child labor up
to 17.
So is one of the shortcomings in the TIP Report, perhaps,
which we can't say in every case, you know, that 900 people
were taken out of school between seven and 17 in violation of
their law? I didn't find that as I scanned through a number of
those. And it concerned me only that if it's in their violation
of their law, then they have made the effort to say, our
standard is X. And then they certainly should be judged
harshly. But it didn't appear to be there. Is it there, but
just not written?
Mr. CdeBaca. It's there but not written. And I think that's
something that we can look at. There have been--some of the
teachers and some of the school administrators have been
punished in various of the 'stans for doing this. So it is
punishable. It is just not usually punished. So it does violate
their law. They're not supposed to be doing it. And we take
great pains to try to differentiate the kids that are sent to
the fields without threats versus the ones who are----
Mr. Issa. Yeah, and I realize you have a limited amount of
words that you can put into each of these, but that would be
helpful. Let me ask you just two more questions that are more
about initiatives. What efforts, particularly for the State
Department, can we bring to bear for harmonization?
It appears as though, as I look through the TIP Report--but
just in general, as I've traveled throughout the years on
foreign affairs and so on--the first thing we have to do is
define things in a way in which a violation of our law and a
violation of their law become both the same violation.
I remember when we were dealing, early on in my life here,
with Thailand and creating a situation in which we could charge
somebody who got an airplane ticket to go have sex with a child
in Thailand and we could charge them here in the United States.
And that wasn't that hard, except that it was alien to our
historic.
And so we created it. But my understanding is a great many
countries have not signed on to that. So how can we make that
protocol to where anyone who gets on an airplane for sex
tourism is equally in violation and the like?
Mr. CdeBaca. I think there's a couple of things, both as
far as the substantive law--the Palermo Protocol gives us a
good hook for that. The minimum standards pushed countries
toward it. One of the things that we often get from tier-three
and tier-two watch-list countries is, you know, that they
passed a law that they thought would comply with Palermo in,
maybe, '03, but they just took the Palermo language and just
slapped a penalty on it.
I was a prosecutor for a long time and that's not really
how you do it. Our criminal laws, in the federal system, are
actually thought out as to what the prosecutor needs to prove
in front of the jury and in front of the judge.
Mr. Issa. And sometimes what the judge's jury instructions
must be.
Mr. CdeBaca. Exactly. And the jury instructions are
certainly a challenge, but we have the common law that fleshes
that out. So it's knowable; it's provable in court. The Palermo
Protocol was not negotiated for that purpose. So a lot of
countries are not coming back to us because they've seen the
number of cases that the U.S. has done.
We've done more cases than any other country in the last 10
years, under these involuntary-servitude statutes, as updated
by the TVPA. And so countries that are doing countries under
other laws that don't really match, they look at that and they
say, well, how can we get a law for that? So we're working with
those countries to get the substance.
As far as some of the procedural issues, especially
extraterritorial jurisdiction, this is something that we're
certainly raising. We're getting more traction, frankly, with,
again, the common-law countries, but we also get some traction
with a number of the other source countries. So it's a
discussion that we have with Germany, with Switzerland, et
cetera. We're starting to see more and more countries step up
and punish their folks when they commit crimes in other
countries.
I think it really is the wave of the future when it comes
to slavery and involuntary servitude because the trafficking--
especially after this European Court of Human Rights decision
in the case against Russia and Cyprus--it really shows that
this is a responsibility of the state, to protect trafficking
victims. And I think that that responsibility goes with your
nations, no matter where they are.
Mr. Issa. Doctor, in the United States we often talk, do we
have a nexus? Do we have a hook that gives us jurisdiction? The
federal government talks about it. The states talk about it.
When there's an interstate activity, often the challenge is
that part of the crime is in one state, but it's not a crime
fully and another part's in another state. So we have a federal
umbrella.
However, when it comes to things like the Holocaust, we
made a global decision that crimes against humanity would be
triable virtually in any country on earth, that no country
would lack the ability to try, nor would there be, in most
cases, an absence of extradition capability. We don't seem to
have it in human trafficking. Is there a path you can see,
particularly with the European Union and the new entrants and
the wannabe new entrants, like Turkey and so on?
Do you see the opportunity to create a global or a near-
global alliance, where any person who is in any way involved in
human trafficking--even if it's not fully a crime, but over
multiple countries would be a crime--would create enough nexus
for any signatory to be able to attempt to prosecute or to
extradite, as we would with crimes against humanity?
Do you see that as something that we should be looking at
in the long run, so that no one could run; no one could hide?
The norms of a country, if you ignore a crime, wouldn't change
the fact that evidence gathered could then be ultimately used,
if that person or anybody involved left that country and went
to a third country more sympathetic or more willing to
prosecute?
Dr. Giammarinaro. I'm absolutely in favor of the
enlargement of the extraterritorial jurisdiction. I don't know
if it's feasible, the idea of a universal jurisdiction, but I
can say that I will continue to advocate at least for an
enlargement of the extraterritorial jurisdiction in cases in
which the crime is committed abroad, by a national or an
habitual resident, or the victim is a national.
Because my idea--and I have been--and until three months
ago, I was seconded to the European Commission and I drafted
the new proposal of the European Commission, where this
principle is reflected and I issued an opinion. The European
parliament is even more onboard on this idea of enlarging the
extraterritorial jurisdiction.
But just to say that something is moving on, on this field,
it is true that there is a reaction from governments, of
course. For good and bad reasons they resist to the idea of an
enlargement of extraterritorial jurisdiction.
But in the case of trafficking, I think it is absolutely
necessary because we have to face, for example, the phenomenon
of criminal groups that move from a country to another country
and commit horrible crimes. And these groups, for example, have
established the center of their criminal interests in a country
which is not the country of nationality. And this country where
the most important part of the criminal activities takes part
because the organization is there should take responsibility
for prosecuting these people even when they commit the crime of
trafficking abroad.
So for trafficking, there is even specific reason why
extraterritorial jurisdiction should be enlarged. I try all the
time to support that trafficking is one of the most serious
crimes in the international arena. It's a crime against
humanity in the International Criminal Court statutes. This
deserves universal jurisdiction. We could start to advocate
this. Of course, we know that this will be a long, long wait.
Mr. Issa. Well, I'm going to close by just saying because
of my primary ongoing conversations with the European Union and
its members, I, for one, would think that if we cannot have, if
you will, a Geneva Convention-equivalent, as it is on war
crimes, if we can't have that between members of the European
Union and the North American alliance--at least Canada and the
U.S.--then you're right, we won't achieve it.
But it would seem almost impossible that we wouldn't be
able to get a trans-Atlantic agreement that would at least
allow for the concept of you-try-or-you-deport, and that the
extradition improvement, or greater ability to extradite, would
be a great impetus for prosecutors including here to say, oh
no, it's too much trouble to do that, and there are all these
questions.
So before the State Department endlessly gets into it, the
answer is, well, you have the ability to prosecute. If you
prosecute, the State Department is out of it; if you fail to
prosecute, then extradition could be inevitability.
And my goal would be at least to have a dialogue and
hopefully that can be taken back to the secretary that it seems
like we could start it between the U.S. and the European Union
and then take it and expand it to countries who are not as
likely to be tier one.
Mr. CdeBaca. Mr. Issa, if I may.
Mr. Issa. Yes, Ambassador. Are you saying the
administration listens?
Mr. CdeBaca. Well, we'll see. I think--not having looked at
this in that depth, but I will when I get back and we will
raise this as far as the dialogue--it's very interesting
because the two primary founding principles of international
law were slavery and piracy. And the United States and Britain
with the 1808 Slave Trade Act actually declared that we had--
and Britain declared that they had--extraterritorial
jurisdiction to prosecute those who they caught moving slaves
across the Atlantic.
And we see that in Somalia with the pirates right now. We
see that, potentially that's something that we could look at as
far as the trafficking situation.
Mr. Smith. Let me just conclude with a couple of very quick
questions. First, we're trying here in the United States to
energize the corporate world with both carrots and sticks. In
2003 with our first reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act, we put in provisions that would hold to account
those companies that get U.S. contracts, whether it be a DOD,
State Department or any other, that they have to certify that
they are not enabling or complicit with trafficking.
And nothing sharpens the mind of a CEO or a CFO knowing
that they could lose, not only will their employees be held to
account, but they could lose the money itself, the contract.
That has worked to some extent.
And Mark Lagon, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca's predecessor in
his job as ambassador, is working with LexisNexis and some
other corporate entities to try to put together an effort on
human trafficking to get the corporate world fully engaged in
combating this modern-day scourge. And I'm wondering if you
have seen any like-minded effort in Europe.
Dr. Giammarinaro. Actually, what we are trying to do is to
bring together employers' organizations, trade unions, migrant
workers' organizations and enlarge the partnership. As special
representative, I chair the Alliance Against Trafficking in
Persons, which includes international organizations and the
most active NGOs.
And now we are trying to enlarge this partnership and
include trade unions, employers' organizations and migrant
workers' organizations because the idea is that the labor
dimension of trafficking should be addressed also involving the
private sector and the organizations that are active in the
field of protection of workers' rights.
In addition, we have commissioned a study to build a sort
of code of conduct for employers because the idea is that in
terms of prevention, we should have as main actors the
employers in the sense that they should put in place good
practice and that preventing all the situation in which
trafficking flourishes. So this is something which is on our
agenda.
Mr. Smith. I appreciate that. And one final question with
regards to involuntary domestic servitude. If you might
elaborate on the tenth Alliance Against Trafficking conference,
some of the findings especially as it relates to that.
And to Ambassador CdeBaca, one of the more obscure parts of
our original Trafficking Victims Protection Act, title V was
called, ``The Battered Immigrant Women Act'' and that
legislation, which doesn't get, I don't think, the kind of
enforcement that it deserves, is designed to help battered
women, many of whom would be undocumented or illegal aliens,
who are fearful to come forward out of the thought of being
deported. And that's held over their heads, so they endure the
battering and the exploitation so they won't be deported.
And this legislation--and I did it--was designed to provide
the Violence Against Women Act protections over them as well,
in addition to staying any kind of deportation proceeding. And
I'm wondering how that's being enforced.
Dr. Giammarinaro. Concerning the outcome of the conference,
I could say that one first outcome is the general concept that
trafficking for domestic servitude flourishes in a situation in
which a domestic worker is not protected enough in terms of
regulation or labor law, et cetera. And so we welcome the
initiative of the ILO for this convention to better protect
domestic worker in general. And this in terms of prevention.
Another issue addressed by the conference is intersection
between trafficking for domestic servitude and migration
policies in particular concerning the possibility for the
workers to change their employer because if the worker is
linked and his visa or her visa is linked to a particular
employer, this means that this person becomes immediately
vulnerable to the worst forms of exploitation because she or he
has no alternative, has to stay with the same player. So this
is something to be looked better in terms of the regulation of
migration policy.
Another challenge is identification. Of course, these
victims of trafficking are completely isolated. So we have to
think about regulation that enables these people to have direct
contact with the authorities which are in charge, for example,
of the renewal of their visa. The situation now is that all the
relationship with the authorities are normally mediated by the
employers themselves that take care of the renewal of the
documentation, keep the passports, et cetera. So we should try
to find the way to reduce as much as possible the social
isolation of these people.
Finally, the conference addressed the very difficult
problem of the domestic servitude taking place in diplomats'
households. And this is, of course, as you know very well, a
big problem. And in these cases, it is difficult to--it is
impossible, of course, to prosecute at people that have
diplomatic immunity unless there is an initiative of the state
of the nationality of the diplomat.
In general terms, I think that the most important thing is
that every government take responsibility for their own
diplomats but also for what happens in their territory because
this is a focus, a sort of attention that itself is a form of
prevention. In addition, we have good practices in some--in a
few, actually--a few European countries, including Austria and
Belgium. And these practices consist of specific procedures
that enable domestic workers to be more autonomous, more
independent, to have a direct relationship with the authority,
the immigration authority.
Of course, it is also to be explored the possibility of
declaring a persona non grata people that are suspected of
carrying out domestic servitude in their households. But the
most important is that governments take responsibility for this
phenomenon that so far has been completely forgotten.
Mr. CdeBaca. Before I address your question about the
battered immigrant women, I would like to slipstream for a
moment on the references that the special representative has
put together on the diplomats because one of the things that
we've done just in the last few months is we have issued formal
guidelines for the United States diplomats and employees
working overseas and their chief of mission authority as to how
they can treat any domestic workers that they have, including
the fact that they can face removal from employment and federal
prosecution were they to abuse workers overseas.
So again, that's one of the places where we're making sure
that our jurisdiction to prosecute here in the United States
something that one of our diplomats does in another country is
clear to everyone. And there was a case several years ago that
had been done with a returned diplomat in the Northern
Virginia, in the eastern district of Virginia as well. So it's
something that we take very seriously not just through our
diplomacy but in the secretary's role as the head of this
particular organization.
As far as the Battered Immigrant Women Act, portions of the
TBPA, as you mentioned, Mr. Smith, the U visa is a very
important part of the TBPA. It's not limited to trafficking,
although there is--the word ``trafficking'' was included in
there, kind of belts and suspenders. Unfortunately, there is
much more domestic abuse and other generalized crime against
women than just trafficking, human trafficking, kind of the
equivalent, as I think Congress declared in the '96 immigration
act, human trafficking being the equivalent of kidnapping and
extortion. So luckily there is not as much of it as there is of
some of these other crimes.
The battered immigrant women, much larger numbers and many
more visas have been issued--over 10,000 in the last 10 years.
Unfortunately the DHS doesn't disaggregate the U visa as to
what crime it was issued for and so I can't tell you how many
of those was domestic violence versus a different type of crime
that the victim may have suffered.
One of the things that I think is exciting about this year
is that the Department of Labor has now issue guidelines to
their wage and hour investigators as coming into line with the
EEOC. Our civil partners, those who are not the FBI or INS or
ICE--our civil partners actually looking to see whether or not
they should be getting those letters out saying you're entitled
to a U visa, et cetera. So we think that having DOL at EEOC
brought online is going to be a very positive step.
But the other trend is something that is pointed out in
this year's report and I think that it needs, frankly, needs
some work. And that is, as more and more state and local law
enforcement are participating in the 287(g) enforcements under
the immigration act that allows them to do local enforcement of
immigration laws, they have very limited training on T and U
visas.
The training that they get, it's unclear as to whether
there has been an impact as far as the state and local cops
bringing women forward in order to get the U visas. So that's
something that, again, it's in our recommendations this year.
DHS was very forthright when we went to them and said, we think
that we need to put this in the report. And I think that that
puts us in good stead; we may be coming to talk to you about
it. Thank you.
Mr. Cardin. Well, let me thank both of you for your
testimony. I do have just one question for the special
representative. And that is, you have indicated in your
testimony the importance of having the position at a high level
within the OSCE as the special representative.
My question is, basically, do you have the adequate
resources and access within the OSCE to accomplish your mission
as effectively as you would like to? Are there concerns that we
should be aware of in the U.S. Helsinki Commission to assist
you within the OSCE network so that you do get the type of
access and the type of resources necessary to carry out your
mission?
Dr. Giammarinaro. Of course, we have an office. We have 10
people, very committed and skilled people. So we have a good
basis to work. And we have a budget which allows us to carry
out a number of good initiatives. But we are now thinking about
the fact that we should raise fund to be more active in terms
of projects because it is true that so far projects have been
carried out by ODIHR and by the field operations.
But in order to make the action of the special
representative office more effective, we need more funds. So of
course, we have the possibility to ask for extra budgetary
funds, but this procedure is particularly difficult because for
every project, we have to call for donors, we have to try to
interest a number of donors, et cetera.
We are now thinking about the fact that probably it would
be much easier and better for us to have a sort of program, a
sort of fund financing a program, for example, for prevention.
And according to this mandate concerning the program, we could
carry out projects without every time raising fund for this
particular project. A system not different from the ODIHR,
ODIHR financing of projects concerning trafficking.
Of course, we don't want to promote any competition with
ODIHR. Of course, we have different features and these
resources should be additional resources. But I suggest the
same structure, the same functioning of this program funding
because it has proven particularly effective in the case of
ODIHR. So this is something I would like to advocate with
participating states to make our action easier and more
effective.
Mr. Cardin. The reason I raise the question is that a
special representative is the special representative of the
chair, which under the OSCE structure, of course, the chair
changes every year, which is a healthy thing for OSCE. However,
the predictability and permanency of our commitment in this
area goes beyond any one chairmanship or the interest of any
one chair. And that's why there is the office of ODIHR to make
it clear that the human rights commitment of OSCE is one that
has a permanent presence.
And I think we need to take a look within the structure as
to whether moving forward there is a need for a more permanent
type of operation dealing with trafficking. And the budgeting,
of course, is the key factor. So we will solicit your input as
we take a look at ways in which we can make it clear that our
interest here is not just with one chairmanship but is one
that's institutionalized within the OSCE.
Dr. Giammarinaro. Yeah, this could be an interesting
development, especially because the special representative is a
sui generis structure because it is true that I belong both to
the secretariat and to the chairmanship. So as coordinator, I
belong to the secretariat because, of course, I'm the head of
the office. As a representative, I belong to the chairmanship.
But in fact, this is not a bad situation because this ensures
continuity and ensures also a direct contact with delegations,
which is the added value of being a representative of the
chairmanship.
Of course, there is also this bad side, which is linked to
the fact the chairmanship in office changes every year. But the
good side is that the special representative work together with
the governments and I have direct access not only to the
chairmanship but to all the delegations. And so this makes this
mandate particularly effective, especially concerning advocacy
and technical assistance because this implies a close
relationship.
Of course, another scenario could be that the special
representative becomes an institution. But of course, this is a
different perspective, and I wonder whether it is a good idea
to have, you know, all the tasks concerning trafficking in one
single--under one single umbrella.
Because, after all, the idea that an institution--ODIHR--
with autonomy dealing with human rights can take action maybe
more freely in the field of human rights is, you know, a good
way of complementing different angles of the anti-trafficking
struggle, because we need to work with governments and because
ultimately, the real results and improvements in anti-
trafficking policy depends on the political will of
governments. So we need to work with them.
But we need, also, to speak openly about a certain number
of issues. This is something to be discussed, to be thought
about. But for the moment, I think that the feature of the
special representative is effective. And if we have more
resources and the possibility to act more, you know, in an
easier way on our daily basis, I think that our action can be
effective. At least, we hope so.
Mr. Cardin. Our commission has had the opportunity to meet
with the chairs in office, and the subject of trafficking is
always on the agenda. And quite frankly, as almost always
brought up by the chair in office, so I think that it has had
the attention of the chair of office, which is important.
So I didn't meant to imply, by the question, that there's a
concern of the current effectiveness of the structure, but as
you raised budgetary issues, this is something that we want to
take a look at to make sure that it does continue to have a
high priority in the OSCE, particularly during tough budget
years. These are not easy years.
I know in the parliamentary assembly, we just froze our
budget, which is going to cause some very difficult judgments
to be made. Let me, again, thank our two witnesses and
appreciate the work that you're doing and invite you to work
very closely with our commission. If there are ways that we can
help either your efforts, Mr. Ambassador, or your efforts,
Madame Special Representative, please let us know.
Dr. Giammarinaro. Thank you.
Mr. Cardin. We'll move on to the second panel, and I know
we do have a time restraint in that, I believe, this facility
is only available to a certain hour. So we will try to move as
efficiently as we can, understanding the time commitments.
Jolene Smith is the cofounder and CEO of Free the Slaves, a
Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization
dedicated to eradicating modern slavery around the world. And
Holly Burkhalter is the vice president for government relations
of the International Justice Mission, a U.S.-based human rights
organization that provides legal services in 14 overseas
offices to victims of human rights violations and works to make
public justice systems accessible to the poor.
It's a pleasure to have both of you here. Thank you for
your patience with the first panel. And we welcome your
testimony. Your entire statements will be made part of our
record. And you may proceed as you wish. Ms. Smith?
JOLENE SMITH, CEO & CO-FOUNDER, FREE THE SLAVES
Ms. Smith. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Congressman
Smith. It's an honor to be here today in the presence of so
many who made this report and the reporting process possible
for the last decade. In our experience as a non-governmental
organization, we have found that it has truly helped strengthen
and shape efforts of antislavery work around the world,
including the efforts of the United States.
Free the Slaves, as you may know, is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization dedicated to ending slavery worldwide.
We are engaged in constant, on-the-ground liberation and
rehabilitation/reintegration of people through partnerships
that we have with grassroots organizations in seven countries.
And this is in addition to our efforts in the United States.
Informed by these local partners and by our overseas staff,
I would like to highlight one of the major benefits that this
report, and the reporting process, has brought about, and also
one example of how we think there might be an enhancement to
this process. So first, what is working? And that is law
enforcement emphasis with civil society collaboration and
partnership.
For Free the Slaves, we knew things were changing when the
death threats started. And I know that, that's a common
occurrence among many people in this room. Fortunately, it
doesn't happen all that regularly for Free the Slaves--we're
fortunate in that manner--but with the mission of ending
slavery, we all, together, need to accept that, that's going to
happen, not least of which because any time any of us succeeds
in our work, criminals lose power and money. It's going to keep
happening.
This particular threat was an indication that Ghana's
trafficking law, and actually, the threat of using that law,
was having an impact. So while it was a horrible occurrence and
we raced to make sure that everyone was going to be safe while
they continued their work, we also knew that this was a success
factor. And this is the case in every case where the rule of
law is used to benefit antislavery work. It is felt as much by
the slaveholder as it is felt by the two boys, in this case,
who became free.
So in, roughly, 2007, two brothers--ages 6 and 8--were
trafficked by a woman named Comfort Sam in Ghana. They were
brought to the Lake Volta region. And as you've probably
guessed, they were forced into the fishing industry. These boys
were forced to spend more than 12 hours a day out in the boats,
usually with no food during that time. When the nets got
tangled, the slaveholder threw them overboard so that they
could go down and untangle the nets. The boys lived in fear, as
one might imagine, of getting tangled in the nets themselves
and not being able to come up for air and drowning.
Our local partner, Challenging Heights, uncovered the
situation and went immediately to the slaveholder, Comfort Sam,
actually, and her husband, Sammy and demanded that the boys be
released. But they would not budge. Actually, moral suasion, in
many cases around Lake Volta works when community organizations
will put enough pressure on the slaveholders and their
neighbors to make them relent. But in this case, they would
not. The field workers then did what they always do in these
situations: go to the local police. Now, this didn't always
work, but in recent years, it has been working better. And in
this case, it did.
The local police said to Comfort Sam and Sammy, you must
bring these boys to the police station tomorrow. And this is
when Comfort Sam started taking even more missteps. That night,
she had her husband bring the boys to a faraway village and
just dump them alone. The next morning, because of the
community outreach that this group had been doing, a community
worker--good Samaritan--noticed the boys, figured out what was
going on and called our partner, who got the medical car and
brought them to police so that they could give their statement,
and then brought them to a child slave rehabilitation center.
So after three years of this, the boys were free.
It was really a turning point when there was the real
threat of law enforcement. And that is the big lesson here, for
us. This is really where the value of the United States State
Department emphasis on national anti-trafficking laws and on
prosecution is really visible, and especially where there's a
successful partnership between civil society and law
enforcement. Because this trafficker would not be behind bars
today, for nine years--the first trafficking conviction in
Ghana under this 2005 law for the fishing industry--if it
hadn't been for the civil society. And likewise, the boys
wouldn't be free if there wasn't that real threat of use of
police.
So in looking to the future, understanding that we have
this solid base to build upon, what is next? There are two
common criticisms of the TIP reporting process and the related
diplomacy that perhaps point to how to help maximize the use of
the process itself. The critical truth is that there's not
enough funding and there's not enough influence for our common
fight against slavery. There's just not.
There's a reasonable argument that's made sometimes that
the countries that need the most drastic improvements are also
the countries that need the most technical assistance and
funding in order to get there. Without this assistance will
there really be significant improvements? Even if the funding
was not an obstacle, there remains the serious challenge of not
enough influence in some areas of the world with the highest
incidences of trafficking.
How can the United States government and other governments
have an impact in these countries where diplomacy is simply not
effective, or is not working quickly enough? For example, what
about the countries that remain on tier three and consistently
do not improve? Are we simply damning those people inside that
country to slavery for those who are enslaved? Also, what about
the countries that simply are not responsive to U.S. pressure?
We know that there are no easy answers, but the U.S.
government has already pointed the way and taken the lead in a
possible way forward that actually addresses both challenges,
to a certain extent. The 2008 TVPRA includes a mandate to
incorporate what is called a slavery lens throughout U.S.
international assistance. And this is to ensure that assistance
programs in the United States do not run counter to U.S. anti-
trafficking policy.
If you're unfamiliar with the slavery lens, recall the
profound and positive impact that the gender lens had,
implemented with international development in the 1980s. It's
simply adding the perspective of human trafficking and modern-
day slavery into the common work of human rights, democracy-
building, education, et cetera. And these are all inextricably
linked, and of course, we have to deal with them all together,
and really harnessing the power of international aid
organizations is one way to do that.
At best, incorporating the slavery lens within
international development assistance can have that same money
do double duty. We have antislavery outcomes at the same time
as those funds are achieving their other aims. At the very
least, the development dollars with the slavery lens
incorporated can prevent funds from inadvertently being used in
ways that cause people to fall into slavery. And sadly,
tragically, this is happening today.
For example, last week alone, I received a communication
from our Nepal director who reported this tragic situation.
There's a lovely, well-meaning lone community program in a
village in Nepal. And this was designed so that villagers could
take out a low-interest loan and then use it for income-
generating activities. However, a couple of the members of this
group used that money to follow specious job opportunities
overseas, which were actually trafficking ruses.
So this donor, unfortunately, had to learn that their hard-
earned dollars actually had not gone into community incomes,
but had gone into the pockets of traffickers. And it had an
insidious twist, of course, in that human beings were enslaved.
And this situation takes additional law enforcement, takes
additional social services, economic empowerment to make right.
In contrast, Free the Slaves tested the implementation of
the slavery lens in Nepal--actually, in other communities. And
this is through working with the World Bank in their Nepal
program and the U.K.'s forestry program there. And these are
large anti-poverty and environmental programs that were already
existing. What we've done is simply make sure that all the
workers are trained in antislavery and trafficking and they
conduct anti-trafficking, antislavery training along with
whatever else they're doing. They also keep an eye out to be
able to detect trafficking and slavery cases.
These efforts alone, even though this is just a pilot for
us, are reaching 600,000 households in Nepal over the next
year. And these are already the families that are most
vulnerable to slavery and trafficking, because they had already
been detected as being the poorest of the poor in these
communities. And this is all with minimal additional cost to
the core programs.
Free the slaves is beginning to work with USAID in a
similar way to implement this slavery lens mandate. Other donor
governments, many of the OSCE states, could join the United
States and the U.K. in implementing the slavery lens. And this
really does help harness additional aid. If only the world's
top four donor countries, all of them OSCE states, were to
implement the slavery lens throughout all of their programs, it
would affect more than $50 billion in aid each year.
Some of these benefits are directly quantifiable. For
example, when a family is detected to be in slavery and they
are enslaved, they become something that is quite different in
their community. They become a consumer. That sounds odd to us.
Many of us are fighting against consumerism. However, when a
person comes out of slavery, what they mean by being a consumer
is suddenly being able to buy two meals a day, instead of
eating the one that the slaveholder gives them, or three meals
a day; buying schoolbooks for their children. And where are
they buying these things? From the local shops. They don't have
transportation to go out to the larger communities. They're
buying them right there in those communities that are the
poorest of the poor.
Ironically, some of those shops are owned, of course, by
the wealthiest people in the community: the slaveholder. So
we've actually found cases where slaveholders are making more
money after their slaves are freed. In addition, there are
other sought-after development outcomes--decreased domestic
violence when people are freed sustainably, because it also
involves training about gender equality and such;
anticorruption measures because people are no longer willing to
see their police be corrupt.
We call these added benefits the freedom dividend. And in
some, we're really finding that doing antislavery work can
actually bring about some mainstream development aims that we
all want anyway. However, what may be even more critical than
the funding is access and influence. And this is precisely in
the regions with very high incidences of slavery. Often,
slavery is taking place in locations at great distance from
power, from government, even from multinational corporations.
It thrives in places where law enforcement and basic government
services are almost insignificant and where they are
desperately corrupted.
In such places, countries' tier ratings make very little
difference. They may make a difference in the capital city, and
that is a very good step that we fully support. Are they making
a difference in the communities where most slavery is
happening? And I think we all have to answer that, that is no.
So in the farm field, the mine, the brothel, the home where
slavery is occurring, we need to find a different way, an
additional way.
Often, the only outside presence with the resources and the
potential to bring about positive change in these communities
are small organizations that are funded by international
development agencies. For all of these agencies' limitations,
their reach is virtually unparalleled. No other institutions
are reaching them. The mandate of the State Department is to
rank countries based on the extent of government action to
combat trafficking according to minimum standards defined by
Congress.
In future years, Free the Slaves urges Congress to consider
whether a minimum standard for donor governments should include
incorporating the slavery lens throughout their assistance
programs so as to prevent unintended consequences, as well as
to leverage additional resources for antislavery aims without
adverse effects to development programs. And what we found is
actually to the contrary; it's to the benefit of development
programs.
The U.S. government has taken that step. Free the Slaves
believes that other donor governments should be similarly
responsible. To this end, Free the Slaves encourages the State
Department and its continued forward progress in the TIP
reporting process in the countries where it wields action-
inducing influence. Where it does not, Free the Slaves urges
Congress to enact additional minimum standards or other
incentives that help achieve more influence, resources and
impact for the most needy. Thank you.
Mr. Cardin. Well, thank you for your testimony. We've been
joined by Congresswoman Richardson. It's nice to have you with
us today. Ms. Burkhalter?
HOLLY J. BURKHALTER, VICE PRESIDENT FOR GOVERNMENT RELATIONS,
INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION
Ms. Burkhalter. Thank you for inviting International
Justice Mission to join you, Chairman Cardin. It's a pleasure
to see my old friend, Chris Smith. I'm delighted to be here on
behalf of our organization. I had hoped to bring you as a
witness the head of our investigations department, who is
responsible for all of our undercover work abroad in our 14
overseas offices, investigating not just the crime of
trafficking and slavery, but also, we work on sexual violence
and property-grabbing--property expropriation from widows and
orphans.
But he's just back from about a month in the field working
on police training programs with some of our partners and I
could not drag him up here, as jetlagged as he was. So now you
have to put up with me. But it gives me a chance to thank you,
all three of you, for your interest and your leadership on this
important issue.
And just waxing slightly nostalgic, it being the 10th
anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, it
allows me to say that after 30 plus years in the human rights
field, there is something unique about this human right
violation. And I want to dwell on it just for a moment. I've
worked, in my many, many, many years with NGOs, including Human
Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and my current work
with International Justice Mission, as well as my seven years
on Capitol Hill.
I've worked on many, many, many different kinds of
terrible, terrible crimes--genocide and war crimes, some
torture and rape and blood diamonds, and we've done a lot of
that work together, Chris. But there's something interesting
about the crime of trafficking and slavery, whether it is labor
trafficking or sex trafficking--and my organization does
casework on both kinds.
What's interesting to me about this crime, and gives me a
sense of particular urgency, is that it is truly and, sort of,
uniquely stoppable by law enforcement. And the reason why is
because it's an economic crime, fundamentally. Certainly, for
the victims, it's a crime of gross violence and degradation.
And I was very touched by the previous witness describing the
sequela of trafficking and slavery to be very much akin to that
experienced by torture victims. I think that is correct. That
is what we see among our thousands of clients of both kinds of
slavery--sexual exploitation, as well as labor slavery.
But in terms of the perpetrators, it's an economic crime.
And it is thus uniquely, I think, stoppable by effective law
enforcement in ways that, say, child rape or other crimes that
are very common, but how do you create a deterrent against
that? Of course, you need law enforcement, but what will deter
sick individuals from certain kinds of crimes, or how do you
deter a genocide when a whole government is involved are
baffling. This is not baffling. We actually know what stops
economic crimes. What stops them and what deters criminals is
when they see a very real possibility that they're going to go
to jail for what they're doing.
And then that makes the profits to be had from selling
human flesh to be just slightly less impressive. And the higher
the likelihood that, that supposed customer is actually an
undercover agent from a government or from an NGO working with
a government, the less likely or the less secure they're going
to be offering that victim out to the public, if she or he is a
victim of commercial sexual exploitation, for example. If the
customers can find them, the police can find them.
So really, the Rosetta Stone, amongst all the things that
need to be done, first and foremost, countries' laws against
both labor slavery and commercial sexual exploitation of minors
and those forced have to be enforced. And what IJM does in our
14 overseas offices is literally try to make countries' laws
work for the poorest. And we work with governments, not against
them. We collaborate--we have to collaborate. You cannot create
a deterrence against the crime of trafficking by going in and
buying slaves out of a brothel, as tempting or as much as you
might want to do that.
That does not create deterrence. The trafficker simply goes
out and gets another one. But if you work with local police,
you help them with undercover work, you bring these cases to
their attention and then train them and work with them and
identify the good actors--and there always are some, no matter
how corrupt a police force is. There's always people you can
work with. And then you go out and the police do their job with
your assistance to rescue that victim and, simultaneously,
arrest the perpetrators. Victim relief without perpetrator
arrest and accountability is important--you get the victims--
but another victim will take her place.
So we strongly feel that programs that provide police
assistance that's not just a one-off training at a nice hotel
somewhere, but that engages with police so that you know who
the good guys are and who the bad guys are and you work with a
specially trained anti-trafficking unit, which has been very
helpful to us, so that you just literally do an end run around
police that have been accommodating the trade for all these
years. So we've learned a lot in the field. And if I had about,
you know, six days--or 20 hours--I'd tell you all about it.
But what I'm going to do, right now, instead, is turn from
IJM's work and talk a little bit about this interesting
creation of Congress, and that is the trafficking in persons
office at the State Department. Because I think this unique
crime that is so vast, but that is also uniquely vulnerable to
pressure from effective law enforcement and from public justice
systems that work, and from local NGOs like those that Free the
Slaves work with, this effort has been aided immensely by this
extraordinary creation of Congress.
I have worked on lots of human rights law. I've written a
lot of it. But there's never been anything like the TVPA of
2000 and its improvements over the years, because you created
unique capacities within the government that we don't have for
other kinds of human rights violations. We don't have this for
genocide. We don't have this for rape--and I wish we did. But
what we have here in one agency, staffed by a very small number
of people, I might add: diplomatic expertise and monitoring
expertise. Look what they did. Look at that. That's about six
peoples' work.
And they work around the clock, and they are the unsung--
Mark Taylor and his team are the unsung abolitionist heroes of
our day. And they use that to make it a living document. It
saves lives because they are in dialogue with counterparts
abroad about the individual victims, about the perpetrators,
about the gaps and infirmities in local justice systems. And
they know it cold because they're providing this kind of ever-
more-excellent reporting and monitoring so that we have this
diplomatic and monitoring function that you created in the 2000
act.
We also have a grant-making function, which I think is
very, very important. It's often overlooked because it's very
small. The TIP office has about $22 million to spend this year,
and Congress always boosts up the numbers. The executive
branch--Republic and Democrat alike--lowball it and Congress,
which likes the TIP office--and for good reason--brings those
numbers up. But we really--$22 million in the world we live in
over the dozens and dozens of countries where they're making
grants to NGOs, including IJM, is not a realistic way to face
the coming decade.
They have proven to be good stewards of their grant money,
and they need more of it. And it's for two reasons. One, I
think even though the United States provides other anti-
trafficking systems through USAID and other spigots, I have to
say that the trafficking in persons office gets the resources
closest to the victims and the perpetrators. And they know it
best, because they link it with our diplomacy that you see
reflected in that report. And to have a grant program that will
help governments deal with the very problems the TIP diplomats
are identifying is just strategic, and it's smart.
And I think it's important that we have more carrots for
them to use. A, the developing country governments need it. But
B, I think TIP is seen as the kind of in-house nag at the State
Department. And with resources to help fix the problems they
identify, I think we'll get more buy-in from our regional
representatives and the powerhouses at the State Department,
which, all too often, I'm afraid, are on the opposite side of a
disagreement and are more likely to defend the record of a
country with whom we have an important relation than join our
friends at TIP.
We can have TIP doing the diplomacy alone. They need to
have the fulsome support of the rest of the State Department
bureaucracy. We have a secretary of state who is deeply
committed to these issues. But the TIP issues need to be
shared. The trafficking office is on point, but we need to have
resources so that they aren't seeing--the TIP diplomats--aren't
seen as some kind of a skunk at the garden party when we deal
with our overall relationships, particularly with important
countries.
As we look towards equipping the TIP office for the next
decade and reflect on the excellent job that they have done,
it's worthy of note that, unlike any other human rights issue
I've worked on, there has never been congressional oversight of
the work of any administration. It's a bipartisan and
nonpartisan issue--as there has been on slavery and
trafficking. And that's a credit to Mr. Smith and to many
others in Congress. But the more interest you have, the more
interest that the executive branch has. And I think one of the
reasons that the TVPRA implementation has been so successful is
because of these oversight hearings. And there hasn't been one
for a couple of years and I'm very happy that there's one
today. And I thank you for it.
You'll get a chance to look deeply into these issues
because the TVPRA will again have to be reauthorized in 2011.
And I think it would be great if we could really look to the
future and be more visionary about abolishing slavery and
trafficking and equipping this office to do it well. That means
giving them more money and more staff. That goes without
saying. I'd like to ask you to keep an eagle eye on the foreign
aid reform process.
Foreign aid reform needs to happen. There's good work being
done. But I've been hearing some rumblings about consolidating
TIP's function at USAID, consolidating the Trafficking in
Persons Report with the regular human rights report. There's
a--that's a reasonable and rational recommendation, but please
don't do it. Do not do it. It is precisely the standalone and
expert nature of both the reporting and the grant-making that
has made this office such a success.
And it has been such a success that women working on
violence against women want to have one just like it. You know,
they want to pull the issue out--and with good reason--pull
that issue out of USAID and get that focused grant-making in
the area of gender violence. It is something that people want
to emulate. Please don't change one of the things that has been
such a success.
So watch that space, both of you, in your respective
perches at Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign
Affairs Committee. And in closing--and forgive me for going
over time on a busy day--I want to just direct your attention
to these countries that are on, for the second year, on the
tier two watch list. As you know, that watch list area was
created by Congress to bring special scrutiny to countries,
including some very good friends of the United States, that
aren't quite bad enough to be beyond the pale on tier three, or
we don't feel, diplomatically, like we're ready to put them
there.
But they are supposed to get special attention, and it has
kind of turned into a parking lot for certain countries that
have been on there six, seven years. And Congress put an end to
that in the last reauthorization of the TVPA in December, 2008,
and said, okay, two years and then it's up or down or out. And
there are some important countries on that tier two list for
the second year. And that means this year is a banner year for
effective diplomacy. Because those countries don't know whether
they're going to tier three or they're going up to tier two.
And this will be the time to lay very important issues
before them. Let's take the case of the Philippines, where IJM
has two offices. It's a government that has a terrible
trafficking problem, have terrible sexual exploitation of
children. We have good working relationship with the
government, but they have a terrible problem in their courts.
It takes, on average, five years to get a conviction for a
trafficking case. That is not a deterrent. They had exactly
eight convictions on sex trafficking last year in a country
where there are thousands and thousands of victims.
This is the year for the Philippines, with the new Aquino
government, which has expressed an interest in really getting
on top of this problem--this is the year for lots of diplomacy,
lots of help, but also, lots of seriousness. Because there's
many things that need to be done, and the Filipinos know what
they are. They need to eliminate corruption throughout the
court process, within the police, get specialized police units
up and working well, and start arresting perpetrators on a
regular basis and closing down establishments permanently that
offer children. That problem's not even going to begin to go
away.
And I'm only using the Philippines as an example because I
know it well, but it is the second year on tier two watch, so
it knows and we know that something needs to happen. So I
really would urge you to urge your colleagues to keep an eye on
India, the Philippines, Russia--other countries with problems
that are friends of the United States, but that need a boost
and maybe also need a nudge in this area. Well, I've got lots
more to say, but I welcome the chance to be here with you.
Mr. Cardin. Well, let me tell you, both of your testimonies
were extremely important. And I did not want to interrupt your
presentations because I think they were extremely valuable to
our oversight function. I'm going to ask our colleagues to try
to limit this round to five minutes so that we can be out at
the planned time for the use of the room. And let me make one
observation first, and that is, it's important to put a face on
this issue, so I really appreciate, Ms. Smith, your testimony
about the two boys.
We hear numbers, but unless you see the people--I've been
to victim centers and we had a chance to talk to the people
who've been victimized--and understand how this is affecting
families and people--you've got to personalize it a little bit
more. And as important as the TIP report is, you've got to
personalize this. So I encourage you to continue to do that.
Both of you raised the issue of the importance of foreign
assistance in the soft power and the reauthorization of our
foreign assistance programs. Clearly, the United States is
putting a higher priority on foreign aid today, as a major tool
for diplomacy. The lens that you talk about--the slavery lens--
of looking at foreign assistance is an interesting barometer.
It would be interesting to see how that could be incorporated
into the TIP report for the donor countries.
My guess is, we'll get some resistance on that. And I say
that in conjunction with the fact that there are a lot of
requirements on government agencies for reporting. None are as
visible or as well-documented as trafficking or the human
rights reports, generally. And I agree, Ms. Burkhalter, with
your point about preserving what is right, and that is the TIP
report. We will be under challenge, though, as other well-
intended groups want to get this type of visibility by
government efficiency experts saying let's combine everything
into one. So I think it's something we really do need to be
very careful about.
So I guess my question or comment to you is that I think
you really need to concentrate on the current efforts on soft
power and foreign assistance, as it will give new opportunities
for us to enforce antislavery efforts through our aid programs.
We certainly don't want to see our economic assistance to help
small businesses being used to promote slavery operations. And
that's something that we have to demand accountability.
So I welcome your suggestions as to how this can be done
effectively, working with the human rights advocates, but not
allowing us to diminish the importance of the separate report
on TIP. So that's an open-ended invitation, not necessarily to
respond to a question, but an open-ended invitation to work
with us as we move forward. Congressman Smith?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank our two very distinguished witnesses for their passionate
commitment to ending modern-day slavery. You really are an
example, and I know Holly has helped, as she put it, write some
of our laws and has provided totally timely and very valuable
guidance, not just on this, but also on torture victims relief
and other issues from the past--14 years with Human Rights
Watch, nine years with Physicians for Human Rights and all of
the advocacy with IJM now is been tremendous what you've done,
so I do want to thank you.
Ms. Burkhalter. Just getting old, Chris, the long and the
short of it.
Mr. Smith. You did bring up the in-house powerhouses within
the State Department. I'm glad you so lifted up the TIP office
and its employees, beginning with its ambassador, Luis CdeBaca,
for the valiant effort they wage against very powerful in-house
interests, who do not want their diplomacy in any way
complicated with this issue of human trafficking.
And I find it--I know Chairman Cardin finds it as he
travels, I'm sure we all do. You know, human rights is an
irritant to many. They like to have the low-level foreign
service officer who handles the portfolio of human rights--he
can handle it, or she. Now that has changed with some of our
ambassadors who have done extraordinary work, so you can't
broad-brush it. But in the beginning, you could. There was such
pushback on the TIP effort. It was very slow, even after the
law was enacted, in getting put into place.
I actually chaired a hearing--an oversight hearing--and the
Bush administration was--it said ``shall''--you shall do this,
you shall do that. And they didn't want to do it, or whatever
the reason was. So we had an oversight hearing and said, you
will do it. But they were very upset because, we were getting
in their face. That has to be done. It's benign in your face.
And you do it so extraordinarily well.
You know, you try to work with the offending governments,
find the good police, as you said. There are good apples in
every police force. There's also a whole lot of bad ones. But
you know, nine countries--eight countries were sanctioned, nine
were waived. There are six in the OSCE region--Azerbaijan,
Moldova, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan--who
are in that parking lot--or used to be parking lot. They're
watch list countries that will move up or down.
And I think your point is very well taken that, that's
where we provide maximum pressure right now to say there are
sanctions--sword of Damocles--hanging over your head and we
will look to impose it. So more just a comment, and then a
question. But do you find--and you might want to answer this--
pushback? I know Luis CdeBaca wages a tough fight, as did all
of his predecessors, against DCMs, ambassadors, people in the
hierarchy of the State Department, who say, don't put that
country on the list. Leave China off. Leave Vietnam off. Leave
country X, Y or Z off. Put them on the watch list. Is that your
sense, too, that they're getting better, or is it as bad as it
has been in the past?
Ms. Burkhalter. I'd have to let him answer that one because
we are in-country and a service organization and we are not a
public critic or--of the countries where we work. Yeah, I'll
let Lou answer that one. Excuse me, Chris.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Again, I just want to thank you so much
for your work. Ms. Smith, did you want to answer, or no?
Ms. Smith. We certainly have been in conversations with
diplomatic officials who are really struggling with these
questions and about their own recommendations over this,
especially with trading partners. And that's one of the reasons
why we feel that collaboration among trading partners is going
to be more and more important, and especially ensuring that
trade agreements are actually antislavery instruments, as well.
I think we've all got a lot more work to do on ensuring
that, but especially where there is a trading relationship, we
all know, of course, that there are going to be extra
sensitivities. We need to turn those sensitivities in the favor
of people in antislavery work and of people in slavery today.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Cardin. Congresswoman Richardson.
HON. LAURA RICHARDSON, A MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA
Ms. Richardson. Thank you, Chairman and Senator. Let me,
first of all, say that I want to thank you for allowing me to
participate in today's hearing, and also to allow me to go to
the OSCE parliamentary meeting that we had back in February.
And unfortunately, I was not able to participate with you this
last week.
I also wanted to acknowledge--and I know she just stepped
out, but I do want to note her for the record--Dr. Jama
Rinaharal. And I'm sorry if I butchered her name there, but I
first met her when I attended the OSCE meeting, and I think her
work in this issue and her passion to work with us in a
collaborative way, speaking about partnerships and what we can
do for diplomacy--I think she's leading in that effort. And so
I was inspired by meeting her and look forward to working with
her.
A couple things regarding the TIP program, which you
mentioned in your testimony. When we had appropriations, I did,
in fact, support increasing it by three times, and
unfortunately, the administration did not have the level that
many of us would like to have seen. But I think various of us
have weighed in on that issue and hope to see the improvement,
and appreciate your comments, in terms of recommendations of
what to do, of consolidating.
To Congressman Smith, of course many of us have watched
your very heroic efforts that you had just in this last year,
and it has been commendable and I think brought to the point
that we've heard much about the sexual trafficking and the
slavery that's being done, but the custodial battles are
equally offensive and have not had the legal push that's needed
to change that. And so I commend your efforts and look forward
to working with you.
Finally, what I want to say: I think much focus--
television, you know, articles, movies and so on have talked a
lot about the sexual exploitation that we see of women and
children. For me, I represent an area in Long Beach where we
have the largest ports in the United States, and the third
largest in the world. And not to minimize those issues, but
what I hope to spend my time in the partnership with Sen.
Cardin, and also, Congressman Smith, is really looking at some
of the labor-trafficking issues.
And it is encompassed in the report, but I think we're
going to have to get at more of it. Because when money is
behind it, it allows the others to fall in the shadows. And so
we have to go beyond the agriculture, which we've spent some
time on. We're doing some of the manufacturing, in terms of
textiles.
But really, when you look at building of the televisions,
assembling video games, you know, making tennis shoes and so
on, that is really the money, I believe, that drives some of
the other issues that we're seeing. So I'm kind of the new kid
on the block, but I look forward to joining this team and
helping in any way that I can. Thank you very much.
Mr. Cardin. Well, we welcome you to the team. We need all
the help we can get, so it's nice to see your interest in this
area. Let me again thank our two witnesses. I'm encouraged by
your testimonies, particularly the cooperation you're receiving
in countries. I must tell you, I've traveled to a lot of
countries where we've had serious issues with law enforcement
even to acknowledge that trafficking exists.
And as Congressman Smith points out, frequently, in many
countries, we have a hard time with the local police
authorities to recognize those who have been trafficked are
victims, rather than criminals. So that's been a continuous
problem, so I'm very encouraged by your testimony about their
being receptive in countries to work with you--maybe not
collectively, but you can find, at least, elements to work with
you to help rescue those who have been victimized.
And we certainly want to promote those best practices, so I
encourage you to give us the information so we can showcase
those countries or those communities where they have taken this
issue with the type of attitude that it requires to identify
those who have been victimized. This will continue to be a
major issue of interest to the Helsinki Commission and, as you
have acknowledged, this is an oversight hearing that was long
overdue, and we're glad that we could have the quality of the
witnesses here today to help us in our responsibility on this
very important subject. And with that, the Helsinki Commission
will stand adjourned.
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