*EPF313 03/01/00
U.S. Pressing Forward to Stop Trafficking in Women and Children
(Efforts include treaty negotiations, regional cooperation) (1780)

(The following article was released March 1 by the President's Interagency Council on Women.)

On any given day one can find a U.S. newspaper story about the modern-day form of slavery: 60 Mexican immigrants are brought to the United States and enslaved, beaten and forced to peddle trinkets in New York City; Thai women held captive and forced to work as garment workers in California; Latvian nationals forced into the sex industry by threats of violence in Chicago; or traffickers in Miami receiving Asian children brought through Europe by Japanese and Chinese criminal gangs.

U.S. officials from President Clinton to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the staff of the President's Interagency Council on Women and a myriad of government and private agencies are devoting considerable time, attention, and funds to deal with the shocking crimes nationally and internationally.

Theresa Loar, Director of the President's Interagency Council on Women, has characterized trafficking in women and children as "clearly one of the most egregious violations of our time" as well as "one of the fastest growing and most lucrative criminal enterprises in the world."

Trafficking in human beings, predominantly women and children "is a form of modern-day slavery" that involves "abduction, coercion, violence and exploitation in the most reprehensible ways," Loar told a Congressional Committee in September 1999.

"Trafficking in women and children is now considered the third largest source of profits for organized crime, behind only drugs and guns," Loar said. "Traffickers know that throughout the world they can reap large profits while facing a relatively low risk of prosecution."

Trafficking is the recruitment, transport, harboring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons through coercion, force, fraud, or deception in order to get people in situations such as forced prostitution, domestic servitude, sweatshop labor or other kinds of work to pay off debts. It can occur across international borders or within a single country. It differs from smuggling of persons in that trafficking moves people for the purpose of placing them in modern-day slavery or servitude.

Men are also trafficked, especially for forced labor, but the United States has focused primarily on women and children because they are the overwhelming predominant targets of traffickers, U.S. officials say.

Trafficking victims suffer terrible abuses -- rape, torture, starvation, imprisonment, death threats, and physical brutality. Those trafficked into the sex industry are exposed to HIV and AIDS; those forced into domestic servitude or sweatshops are subjected to violence and sometimes are literally worked to death.

The President's Interagency Council on Women estimates that over one million women and children are trafficked around the world each year, with about 50,000 of them trafficked into the United States, primarily from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latin America and Southeast Asia. About half of the 50,000 are trafficked for sweatshop labor and domestic servitude, the Council says.

Traffickers follow the profits and as such often engage in more than one kind of trafficking. For example, traffickers may force some girls lured from a village into domestic servitude or carpet weaving while the more attractive are sold to brothels.

It is a "global issue involving human rights, economics, migration, transnational and local crime, labor, and public health," Loar said.

The United States has developed what officials call "the three P" approach -- prevention, protection and assistance for victims, and prosecution of traffickers.

U.S. officials stress that it is important that all three points are pursued.

"Prosecutions are virtually impossible if the trafficked women do not receive protection and support so that they can overcome their legitimate fears and be witnesses," Loar said.

Characterizing the trafficking of women and girls as a "human rights violation which will continue to haunt us into the 21st Century," First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton used the United Nations observance of International Women's Day in March 1999 to press for support for the U.S.-led initiative for a protocol on trafficking in women and children as part of the Organized Crime Convention now being negotiated.

"This is an international criminal activity with traffickers operating boldly across international borders, but we are finally as a world beginning to address it," she said.

"All of us have a stake in making sure that this new instrument of international cooperation will set standards for our efforts to prevent trafficking, punish traffickers, and protect victims and strengthen the global fight to end this pervasive human rights violation and transnational criminal problem," the First Lady said.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has made trafficking a priority issue. "Our goal, ultimately, is to mobilize people everywhere so that trafficking in human beings is met by a stop sign visible around the world," Albright has said.

Albright, who chairs The President's Interagency Council on Women, established a senior governmental working group on trafficking to address the areas of prevention, victim assistance and protection, and enforcement. She consults closely with private organizations and members of Congress on trafficking. Under her chairmanship the council leads the development and coordination of U.S. domestic and international policy on the issue.

Albright has raised trafficking in many different fora, from private meetings with heads of government and small gatherings of foreign ministers to major multinational initiatives such as the November 1999 OSCE summit.

During official meetings with the leaders of Italy, Finland, Ukraine, Israel and the Philippines, Albright made trafficking a priority. As a result of those discussions the United States has initiated five concrete bilateral working relationships with those countries focusing on the "three P's" strategy.

For example, in July 1999 the U.S.-Italy working group on trafficking in women and children completed its third meeting. U.S. and Italian embassies in Lagos are now working with the Nigerian government to develop a public awareness campaign to prevent trafficking in Nigeria.

Albright has said, that "If we believe in zero tolerance for those who sell illegal drugs, shouldn't we feel even more strongly about those who buy and sell human beings?"

During the latest round of negotiations on the trafficking protocol in Vienna in January 2000, James Puleo, the U.S. chief negotiator, said that the protocol to the organized crime treaty is "an historic opportunity to agree upon an unprecedented instrument of international cooperation that will give us the tools we need to be tough on traffickers and protect trafficking victims."

The text now being negotiated targets the full range of trafficking, whether in the sex industry, domestic servitude or sweatshops that involve force, deception, fraud, and coercion. It will require participating countries to punish the perpetrators and help the victims.

U.S. negotiators want the protocol to adequately address all the ways in which women and children are harmed by traffickers. They want the protocol to encourage countries to offer truly unprecedented protections and assistance to the victims including the possibility of lawful resident status, health care, shelter, restitution, and other tools they need to rebuild their lives.

In addition, the United States is working with several other delegations on language calling on states to take appropriate measures to discourage all prostitution, including efforts aimed at combating the root causes of prostitution such as poverty, and encouraging them to provide women with economic alternatives so that poverty does not force them back into prostitution.

Moreover, U.S. negotiators are also working on language to bolster the law enforcement aspects of the protocol. They are working on text that would encourage states to strengthen their laws against the exploitation of the prostitution of others, sex tourism, and other sexual exploitation and violence against women.

The International Convention against Organized Transnational Crime and its supplementary protocols on illicit firearms, trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants will be negotiated throughout the year and delegations are hoping to have the text completed and ready for signature by the end of 2000.

The efforts have also been supported by many international and U.S. private agencies that work with trafficking victims, including Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, Gay McDougal of International Human Rights Law Group, and Reagan Ralph of Human Rights Watch.

"If we can reach agreement to stand united to fight together against this broad scope of trafficking -- truly among the most heinous crimes that human beings inflict upon one another -- it will be a remarkable achievement," James Puleo said. "We have a unique opportunity to demonstrate to traffickers that the nations of the world are united against trafficking."

U.S. officials say that they have found broad support to get a draft protocol that can be signed. In the latest round of negotiations they say they heard clear indications in all the comments that countries are trying to make this effort work.

U.S. multilateral efforts do not stop with the protocol, however. For example, the United States and the Philippines are co-hosting the Asian regional initiative in March, which will attempt to develop a regional strategy to prevent trafficking, protect victims, reintegrate trafficking victims into society and prosecute traffickers. In July 1999 U.S. and Japanese officials, in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration, conducted a two-week training program on illegal migration and trafficking in women and children at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Bangkok.

The United States also is funding public awareness campaigns in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to warn potential victims of methods used by traffickers. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United States is helping fund a project to put in place mechanisms to provide the orderly and safe return of trafficking victims, in an effort to break the cycle of trafficking and re-trafficking of women who have been entrapped in the sex industry.

The Clinton Administration has also been working with Congress to craft strong legislation to stop trafficking, by providing effective punishment for the traffickers and a wide range of protection for the victims from medical treatment to shelter to the opportunity to become legal residents.

If the United States is going to advance the fight against trafficking, passing legislation is a critical next step, U.S. officials say.

Anita Botti, deputy director of the President's Interagency Council on Women, said that the administration will be talking with U.S. senators to work on "crafting the best comprehensive legislation on trafficking in all its forms, including sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, workshop labor and other forms of debt bondage."

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: usinfo.state.gov)
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