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Criticism of the State Department's report on trafficked persons, issued on 16 June, should be rife. The language describing US allies' efforts to combat the problem seems undeserved, especially when one examines the nearly 320- page report and observes the minuscule efforts of these governments. Also, it was hardly surprising to find that Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria -- Washington's foremost foes -- languish in the report's Tier 3 category, i.e. countries where the problem is most grave and least combated. Offenders in Tier 3 are subject to US sanctions, while governments of countries in Tier 1 are perceived as vigilant in fighting human trafficking.
One could also question the US government's own moral legitimacy; classifying the world into watch lists, congratulating some and reprimanding and sanctioning others, while the US itself has thus far (and for nine consecutive reports starting 2000) been immune to self-criticism.
Undoubtedly, the political hubris and self- righteous underpinnings of the report are disturbing, but that hardly represents an end to the argument. The fact remains that the report's rating of over 170 countries is thorough and largely consistent with facts as observed, reported by the media and examined in other comprehensive reports on the same issue. Indeed, the UN's own Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, launched by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in February 2009, affirms much of the State Departments' findings regarding patterns of abuse reported around the world, most notably in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.
The report examined governmental responses to the exploitation of people, including children, for the purposes of forced labor, sex and stolen organs. At least 12.3 million adults and children are used to sustain the thriving business of modern-day slavery, though the real number is probably much higher given that human traffickers have little interest in divulging exact data.
The global financial crisis has fuelled the demand for cheap labor, making the exploitation of the most vulnerable people part and parcel of the economic recovery plans of many companies, and even countries. Under these circumstances, there should be little doubt that the UN's once promising campaign to eradicate much of the world's hunger by 2015 is already a pipedream.
One of the testimonies cited in the State Department's report was that of Mohamed Selim Khan, who "woke up in a strange house and felt an excruciating pain in his abdomen. Unsure of where he was, Khan asked a man wearing a surgical mask what had happened. 'We have taken your kidney,' the stranger said. 'If you tell anyone, we'll kill you.'"
Khan's experience epitomizes the nightmare of millions of people around the world, as they struggle to provide for hungry families. Their plight is no secret. It can be seen on the streets of many cities around the world, from Europe to Asia and Central America to the Gulf, where worn out, haggard looking men in dirty uniforms are working long hours for little pay, trapped between pressing needs at home and the merciless demands of their "recruitment agencies".
But cheap or forced labor is not the only form of human trafficking. According to the UN's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, based on data collected in 155 countries, "the most common form of human trafficking [79 per cent] is sexual exploitation".
IRIN News, affiliated with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported on 18 June that "women from the former Soviet Union and China are still being trafficked across the border with Egypt into Israel for forced prostitution by organized criminal groups". Israel has been identified as a "prime destination for trafficking by both the State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime". One Israeli gang alone, according to the report, has trafficked over 2,000 women into Israel and Cyprus in the last six years.
One has to wonder the wisdom of international conferences and global efforts aimed at cracking down on Gazans smuggling food and medicine across the same Egyptian border to survive the Israeli siege when almost no efforts have been dedicated to ending the stark exploitation and abuse of thousands of women enriching Israel's sex industry.
Dare I say that while human trafficking is itself an apolitical issue, recognizing and combating, or failing to combat, the problem is very much political. Think of the banking crisis, which fuelled a global recession, and the way astronomical amounts of money have been dedicated to solving it, trillions of dollars in global bailouts ultimately rewarding those who caused the crisis in the first place. Compare these efforts to the pathetic attempts at halting the disgraceful commercialization of humans, their organs, their sexuality, their very humanity.
The problem is now compounded. UN food officials declared on 19 June that hunger around the world has passed the unprecedented threshold of one billion, that is one in six people. The alarming increase of 100 million hungry children, women and men from last year's estimates is blamed on the economic recession. While international institutions are efficient at recognizing such problems, proposed solutions often lack sincerity, or any sense of urgency.
"A hungry world is a dangerous world," said Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme. "Without food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate or they die." They also become products in markets ready to exploit those whose very survival is at stake.
When Julia, from the Balkans, was eight years old, she was taken along with her sisters to a neighboring country, where she was sold to beg. She was beaten every time she failed to return with her fixed quota of money. Once she became a teenager she was forced into prostitution. After escaping she was placed in a government orphanage from which she also escaped, returning to the streets. According to the State Department report, eventually "Julia was arrested on narcotics charges".
Can this injustice be any more obvious?
10 Comments so far
Show AllThe June 18th IRIN News article on trafficking of people into and within Israel is the following, a copy of the original.
"ISRAEL: Still a destination for human trafficking",
by IRIN news, June 18, 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=55261
QUOTE:
TEL AVIV, 18 June 2009 (IRIN) - The latest US State Department report on trafficked persons, released on 16 June, says Israel is still a destination for men and women trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation.
Women from the former Soviet Union and China are still being trafficked across the border with Egypt into Israel for forced prostitution by organized criminal groups.
According to local NGOs, such as Isha L’iash and Moked, each year several hundred women in Israel - many of them foreigners - are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation, according to the report.
In 2006 Israel was put on the US State Department’s Tier 2 watch list and has been described as a "prime destination for trafficking" by both the State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
However, the State Department report recognized Israeli efforts in the past three years: Although the government did not fully comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, it had made significant efforts to do so, with law enforcement, police activity against traffickers, and the provision of assistance and shelter to victims of sex trafficking.
In 2008, the Israeli government gave US$1.25 million to a local NGO, Ma’agan, which provides shelter to foreign victims of sex trafficking. The funds were used for rent, utility bills, security and medical care. During the year, the shelter assisted 44 women.
Forced labour victims
The report said the Israeli government did not provide most of the forced labour victims with protection services (safe shelter or medical and psychological aid) and recommended that it begin to do so.
Israel lacks a shelter for victims of labour trafficking, including migrant workers who come to the country voluntarily. However, the authorities referred six female victims of forced labour to the Ma’agan shelter during the reporting period.
Workers from China, Romania, Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India migrate voluntarily and legally to Israel for contract labour in the construction, agriculture, and health care industries. Some subsequently face conditions of forced labour, including the unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical intimidation.
Many recruitment agencies in the workers’ countries of origin and in Israel require workers to pay recruitment fees ranging between US$1,000 and US$10,000. This makes the workers highly vulnerable to trafficking or to becoming victims of debt bondage once they arrive in Israel.
The director-general of the Ministry of Justice, Moshe Shilo, told reporters on 16 June he was satisfied that the report had noted the efforts made by the government and the Justice Ministry.
Attorney Adi Vilinger, human trafficking force coordinator at the Hotline for Migrant workers, a local NGO working for the rights of migrant workers, refugees and trafficked persons, told IRIN: "We recognize the great progress the government has made in the past three years on the issue of trafficked women from outside Israel, but regret to see that the government has yet to make sufficient progress on the issue of trafficked foreign workers and local Israeli women trafficked inside Israel for sexual exploitation. We still have a long road ahead of us."
In March 2009, Israeli police uncovered the largest human trafficking gang to have ever operated in Israel.
The suspected traffickers are accused of smuggling hundreds of women from the former Soviet Union into Israel to work in the sex industry. According to the police, they trafficked over 2,000 women into Israel and Cyprus over a six-year period. They are now on trial.
td/ar/cb
END QUOTE
There are a number of linked resources in the above article, including for the U.S. State Department's report (a PDF), and the March 2009 article referred to in the second-to-last paragraph about the "largest human trafficking gang ...".
It is important to remember that for 6000 years human slavery has been THE "E" ticket to wealth, power, and "Private Law" (aka Privilege) over "The Muck" (aka us) - Just ask Thomas Jefferson. Without that dowry of 200 human slaves HE WAS NOBODY going nowhere in a society based on inherited wealth called the Colony of Virginia and he would have never been able to systematically rape and sodomize a 14 year old girl with TOTAL Impunity. Her name was Sally Hemmings. That Impunity is, after all, what being supremely rich means, doesn't it?
What is also important to remember is that his father-in-law was SOOO RICH he could give away 200 human beings in chains - and not miss them. What the Wall Street Boys call "Real Money" and they were part of the game then and will be when we first reinstate "debt-bondage" and then permanent slavery, just like we did back then. It's an American Tradition, we just forgot who we were for a little while, that's all...we forgot that we never really meant The Declaration, The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Those were just useful lies to vomit like like a stream of ash into the eyes of our critics before we conquered their people...The Roman Slave Republic before the Gracchi Brothers was the model our kiddie raping, slave holding, richfilth patrician "Founding Daddies" used for the creation of their own Slave Republic, with the language of the Enlightenment and the "Rights of Man" as a triple fudge icing on the shit cake. Of such things are Empires made.
Peece.
When people have no income anymore they will turn to any opportunity to make a few bucks. And although the righteous people are right to deny them those forbidden businesses, you can hardly expect them to simply die. The only hope is that things are going pretty fast by now. Already this coming winter we could see third world desperation in large parts of the western world. Perhaps we should try to remember what we had before the meltdown started, to later redistribute what any person minimally needs to maintain a reasonable standard of living. Meanwhile, stay cool and keep your money in your pocket.
There are various ways to chip away at some problems hoping to keep them to a more manageable size to be dwelt with later. For example, the chocolate industry is known to use child labour to keep costs down. If I refuse to buy chocolate that is not certified as "fair-trade" chocolate then I am sort of voting against the practise. A small, miserly contribution perhaps, but a contribution. More important would be if I were to push for a ban on the import and marketing of any products that are made using slave labour, it being obscene and short-sighted for free men to ignorantly and callously purchase the less-expensive products produced using slave labour.
An interresting thing happened not long ago. A group wanted to hand out "fair trade" chocolate bars at a Hersey's event to highlight the child labor situation. Unfortunately, after they had purchased the chocolate, they asked to visit the plantation where the cholcolate had come from. The producer of the chocolate could not supply that information, so the protest hand out did not occur. The problem is, even when labeled as such, the consumer has no guarantee that the claim is true. The same goes for "organic" in some instances. Certain suppliers have learned that they can charge more for the same product just by adding a phrase to the label and that the buying agent never questions.
The ultimate solution I suppose is to buy only local, and to forego any "exotic" foods not grown locally. I can be done, but would inconvient for most people. Your efforts however, are still better than doing nothing at all.
Am trying to buy local products as much as possible.
In Canada many of the regulatiing agencies appear to function fairly well for the most part and we take them for granted. We assume that the scales measure weight correctly, that products meet CSA standards when so labeled, that employers will provide workers with a safe working environment, and so on. It is not perfect but functions well enough that when we see a "fair trade" certification on a chocolate bar we assume that to be true. We allow the retailers to charge us a premium on this assumption though I suspect that the middlemen take the much larger share of that premium.
I did some skimming on the fair trade certification. It is interesting reading. There are many issues involved and I will return to it on another day when I have time.
Another topic that I need to read up on is the history of slavery and on the social and political dynamics that mostly ended it. It is a scary thought that this scourge may make a comeback after all the progress made in eliminating it. To my mind when we allow the products of slave labour to be sold in our countries we are condoning slavery and often at the same time depriving ourselves of jobs. There must be some other way that we can help the desperate than buying products from the parasites who feed on their desperation.
This a logical extreme to which capitalism cannot help but extend.
If the poor can eat only by selling their labor for a fraction of its worth and the apologists for the system shrug "They don't have to work if they don't want to. It's their choice."
A slave has a choice too---he can choose death.
I believe the accumulation of excessive wealth will turn even the most gentle person into an arrogant, thieving, cruel monster.
An obsession with the bottom line leaves no room for humanity.
At the risk of stating the glaringly obvious, people have been for sale since the invention of money.
The functions of overpopulation are numerous.
The US State Department is just another piece of our lie based hypocracy.