Out of the Shadows: Global Human Trafficking

Testimony

Luis CdeBaca

Ambassador-at-Large, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Statement Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Washington, DC

September 30, 2010


As prepared

Good morning, I am Lou CdeBaca. I am the Ambassador charged with directing the U.S. Department of State's efforts to combat human trafficking and coordinating the Obama Administration's interagency response to this global phenomenon. I would like to thank Chairman Berman, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen, and the Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee for convening this critical hearing on human trafficking. Thank you for inviting me to speak on our efforts to address modern slavery over the last decade, and particularly in the last year.

As we all know, modern slavery comes in many forms. People are held in involuntary servitude in factories, farms, and homes; bought and sold in prostitution; and captured to serve as child soldiers. This is a crime that impairs human rights, degrades public health, corrupts government officials, and weakens rule of law. Modern slavery is a fluid phenomenon that responds to market demand and operates in zones of impunity that are created by vulnerabilities in laws, weak penalties, natural disasters, and economic instability. It is a crime that is not limited to one gender, faith, or geographic area but impacts individuals and societies across the globe. And the universality of this crime is reflected in the bipartisan consensus around this issue.

This is not a new crime. What is new is our ability to recognize it, and our determination to wage a sustained fight against it. Since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 a decade ago, we have seen both appreciable progress and new trends. For instance, we have come to understand that men comprise a significant number of trafficking victims. Yet, we have also seen the feminization of modern slavery, with women making up a majority of those trapped in commercial sex as well as in forced labor situations.

We have found women held in modern slavery through deceit and force, picking cotton, mining conflict minerals, harvesting rice, toiling as domestic workers, dancing in nightclubs, exploited for pornography, and offered for commercial sex. We have come to understand the unique vulnerabilities of those who work in the home, with many countries not offering adequate legal protection to domestic workers. This feminization of modern slavery has been aided by growing numbers of women migrating for work and the increasingly unscrupulous and coercive nature of recruiting.

Such fraudulent recruitment practices affect both female and male workers. These practices include: work offers that misrepresent conditions, excessive recruitment fees, written contracts that workers cannot understand, and the switching of terms of employment after the original contract has been signed. In the so-called sex industry, recruiters do not merely make promises of a better life; they weave a tale of love and glamour that is quickly replaced by dependency and the abuse of what has been called "seasoning" – a term that is itself as offensive as the practice it describes. Traffickers are also changing their methods of control: they are using more female recruiters, more subtle forms of exploitation, and greater psychological abuse. And these techniques demonstrate how interconnected sex and labor trafficking are, as more and more cases are being brought around the world involving the sexual abuse – both in prostitution and by their bosses – of women who migrated on domestic worker visas. These migrant women have been raped and threatened with harm by supervisors who control their work environment.

At the same time as these insights have been gained, much progress has been made since the passage of the TVPA and promulgation of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the "Palermo Protocol"). Such progress has been stimulated and promoted through the U.S. Government's leadership and active engagement, where we have partnered with foreign governments and international and civil society to develop and implement strategies, policies, and programs to confront modern slavery. Indeed, there is now a global consensus that all acts of trafficking in persons and all its component parts should be criminalized, including forced labor, slavery, and certain slavery-like practices, even if the crime happened wholly within the country's borders. The three "P" paradigm of prevention, protection, and prosecution is recognized worldwide.

One hundred and forty countries have become parties to the Palermo Protocol and 116 countries have enacted legislation prohibiting all forms of trafficking in persons. In the last year alone, 33 countries have enacted or updated anti-trafficking legislation. As a result, there has been a global increase in rescues and perpetrators brought to justice, with convictions for sex and labor trafficking up from 2,983 in 2008 to 4,166 in 2009 with labor trafficking convictions increasing significantly. New analysis of victim identification data also shows a 59 percent increase over the 30,961 victims indentified in 2008.

Since 2001, the number of countries ranked in the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report has more than doubled to include 177 countries, including – for the first time in the 2010 TIP Report – the United States. The advent of the Report's ranking of the United States, supported by a frank analysis of our strengths and weaknesses at home, has been welcomed by anti-trafficking advocates and foreign governments alike. The TIP Report remains the U.S. Government's principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking and the world's most comprehensive resource on governmental anti-trafficking efforts. It has inspired and prompted legislation, national action plans, and implementation of policies and programs.

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