Governing Justly and Combating Human Trafficking: The Linkages

This is more than just an educated guess. An analysis of the 2007 Freedom in the World and annual Trafficking in Persons Report that my office produces, found a direct correlation between governments lacking in basic freedoms and those failing to take sufficient action to combat human trafficking:

• Of the 43 countries in the Freedom House Freedom Index ranked below 3 for civil liberties and also ranked in the annual TIP Report, 65% (28) are in Tier 2 Watch List or Tier 3 (the two lowest rankings).
• Of 22 countries in the Freedom House Freedom Index that are classified as “not free” and also ranked in the TIP Report, 77% are in Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 3.

Of course there are exceptions. India is a success story of democracy and development and yet India has a significant sex trafficking, child labor, and bonded labor problem. India draws into stark relief the complexity of what must be considered in an effective governmental approach to combating human trafficking, and indeed for an already vital democracy to fully realize freedom for all its people.

America’s own national experience illustrates this very point. In fact during a visit to India I shared with government officials that in order to promote civil rights and try to overcome the legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination, we too had to surmount federalism’s deference to state and local authorities. The words of our Declaration of Independence espoused the theoretical equality of persons—man and woman, black and white—but in fact our Constitution viewed slaves as less than fully human. A bloody civil war ensued where we sought to reconcile the lofty words and ideas which birthed this republic and the brutal reality of a largely agrarian society fueled by the blood and sweat of human bondage. The same lie which underpinned the transatlantic slave trade of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, namely that some people are less than human, is the very lie that fuels modern day slavery or human trafficking.

Today only the most repressive countries—like Burma and North Korea—engage in such activities with state sponsorship, but the slavery is no less real for those exploited and held captive in brothels, factories, and even homes; for the roughly 800,000 trafficked internationally each year; and millions more are enslaved in their own countries.

The United Nations estimates that human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, and among the top three revenue sources for organized crime. Today, men, women and children are still bought and sold as commodities.

In order to fight human trafficking we need rights accorded to all: males, females, minorities, citizens, foreigners alike. We need a clean, independent judiciary and rule of law so that officials “on the take” all over the world stop enabling exploiters; and, we need healthy and free civil society working in partnership with government to identify and help victims. These are the markings of governments that are governing justly and they are central to the success of modern day abolition efforts. There is a growing recognition in policy-making circles that a government’s ability to govern justly is paramount: this is reflected centrally among the apt pillars of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and of the new U.S. foreign assistance framework, or "F Process."

Four paramount principles are pertinent to how freedom is essential to fighting human trafficking. First, a vibrant democracy affords full dignity and rights for women, prostituted people, and foreign migrants. This must be true for vulnerable populations in a society, and for victims of trafficking who seek protection under the law. Under U.S. law for example, trafficking victims have legal rights, they are not going to be treated as criminals, or as illegal aliens, and, in fact, have special visa status and access to social services.

The rights of women are of particular concern because they are prime targets of trafficking’s yoke. Plainly speaking, democracy can not flourish in countries in which the voices of half of humankind are silenced and basic liberties are compromised. In so many countries around the world increasing women’s empowerment is central to democratization. Human trafficking is in fact the most acute form of disempowerment of women. To have democracy in full for men and women, human trafficking must be abolished.

Migrant workers too, a population of 120 million according to the International Labor Organization, are particularly vulnerable to the evils of slave labor and sex trafficking and are susceptible to the use of debt as a tool of coercion—a trend we noted in the 2007 TIP Report.

The Burmese people represent a case study of repression at home and then vulnerability abroad. Facing a cruel regime, bleak economic conditions and the prospect of forced labor at home, millions of Burmese have had to flee. Among these most vulnerable are girls and women from Burma's ethnic minorities. Rape is widespread in Burma. Shan, Karen, Chin, Mon and other ethnic minority women and girls live in daily fear of sexual violence by their military oppressors. After successfully escaping slavery in Burma, another cruel fate awaits too many Burmese. They are preyed upon by traffickers and exploitative employers. They are pushed into the sex trade or into highly predatory economic sectors in neighboring countries. Fleeing literal enslavement at home, they face extreme exploitation in neighboring countries—these women, migrants and refugees are regularly dehumanized.

In many countries in the Persian Gulf region too, to be a woman or a migrant often means less than equal treatment under the law and in practice, but to be a woman migrant leaves you in a really tough spot. Recently I met a 24 year old woman from Nepal who worked as a domestic in Kuwait. She’d been beaten and had numerous bite marks all over her arms and back from a sadistic woman who felt impunity to treat her as NO human should be treated. She was, simply, a slave in her employer’s house.

As for a second principle: Another indicator of a healthy democracy is justice under law—specifically, a government’s ability and will to hold exploiters (recruiters, traffickers and pimps) to fullest account, notably in the form of harsh sentencing reflective of the severity of the crime they have committed. In many countries there is official indifference in the face of labor slavery, which is too often considered a civil, regulatory offense, rather than being criminalized.

Another trend we noted in the 2007 TIP report is the use of debt as a tool of coercion. In both labor and sexual exploitation, illegal or illegitimate debt is increasingly used to keep people in servitude. Debt bondage, deceptive promises of a better life, people held against their will—this is outright exploitation and control. These are instruments used by the exploiters, pimps, brokers, recruiters and traffickers to prey upon the vulnerable and they are indicative of the insidious nature of the crime. Ultimately these are not minor labor infractions deserving a slap on the wrist or a fine, but rather this is the most heinous of crimes in the 21^st century—human slavery—and should be treated as such under law.

Third, government cooperation with NGOs is also an essential part of a healthy democracy, and critical to effectively combating human trafficking. Last year, Freedom House noted a disturbing global trend, namely the "pushback" on NGOs. This pushback has been rife with consequences including a growing suspicion and hostility to civil society organizations. Government ambivalence or even hostility to NGOs and other civil society actors hinders victim identification and thereby limits their ability to effectively combat human trafficking. It is not surprising illiberal governments don’t trust NGOs or work with them. But some efficient governments uncomfortable with civil liberties don’t partner well with NGOs either, take Singapore.

Some longstanding major democracies which I’ve prioritized in my work and visited are uncomfortable working in partnership with civil society, and are only slowly making progress, although we are seeing a promising trend in Mexico of greater willingness, particularly at the state level, to take the concerns of NGOs into consideration—a trend which has mirrored an increasingly competitive political environment.

While carbon copies of the American polity are not feasible or necessarily desirable, the partnership of government and civil society actors characteristic of “democracy in America” is instructive. If there is anything we have learned from our efforts in this regard here at home, it is that victims don’t identify themselves. The Department of Health and Human Services launched a campaign called “Look Beneath the Surface,” because victims often don’t come forward for fear of being treated as criminals or illegal aliens. Or, in the case of child victims, who constitute half of the human trafficking victims worldwide, they have often been taught by those who traffic them to fear government officials. The “Look Beneath the Surface” campaign is targeted to frontline health care professionals, law enforcement and social service providers. Ultimately we must encourage greater partnership of this sort between government and civil society.

Similarly, our own Justice Department has produced an entire guide for domestic NGOs on human trafficking which educates them on everything from what is TIP, to what types of services are available to both foreign and domestic victims of TIP. This close collaboration between our own government and the NGO community is commendable and it is something which I share in my meetings with foreign officials.

Finally among the four principles is the absence of corruption or even complicit government officials is critical to this fight and indeed evidence of a healthy democracy. Too often, victims seeking protection under the law from police, judges and immigration officials, find that those who should be their advocate are in fact furthering their degradation. The 2007 TIP Report found that in Thailand for example, a source, transit, and destination country for men, women and children trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor, “corruption is still sometimes a problem, with local police or immigration officials protecting brothels, fishing and sweatshop facilities from raids and occasionally facilitating the movement of Burmese, Cambodian, Lao and P.R.C. women and children into and through Thailand.” It is noteworthy that no public officials or law enforcement officials were arrested in Thailand for trafficking related crimes in 2006.

In closing, while democracy does not guarantee the absence of slavery—autocracy and even weak or "emerging" democracies are less equipped to tackle this horrific human rights challenge—ultimately, there is a nexus between healthy, vital democratic pluralism and effective anti-trafficking efforts. It is a nexus which intuitively we know to be true, for slavery is the very antithesis of freedom. There is a “virtuous circle” at work here: Democracy, freedom and governing justly require an assiduous effort to expunge human trafficking; and it is equally true that human trafficking will only be defeated in these contexts.

Two of these four principles I’ve discussed today involve the pluralism essential to freedom. Treating women, people in prostitution, and migrants as having full rights as human beings, and engaging the many actors in civil society as partners in the fight against trafficking and the care and rehabilitation of survivors are examples of pluralism.

More importantly, three of the four principles comprise “governing justly.” Treating women, people in prostitution, and migrants as having full rights, holding traffickers and exploiters fully to account, and expunging corruption as the catalyst of human trafficking are matters of “governing justly.” That often-invoked term in current American statecraft could not be better illustrated or better served than in the effort to eradicate modern day slavery. It’s what freedom is all about.