Should the United States do business with nations that tacitly condone human trafficking? According to some critics, the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement will increase the challenge of modern slavery.
According to the End Slavery Now organization, Between 21 and 30 million people are enslaved throughout the world. That averages out to about 1 out of every 280 people on the planet.
The U.S. State Department notes:
“The United States government considers trafficking in persons to include all of the criminal conduct involved in forced labor and sex trafficking, essentially the conduct involved in reducing or holding someone in compelled service. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act as amended (TVPA) and consistent with the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol), individuals may be trafficking victims regardless of whether they once consented, participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked, were transported into the exploitative situation, or were simply born into a state of servitude. Despite a term that seems to connote movement, at the heart of the phenomenon of trafficking in persons are the many forms of enslavement, not the activities involved in international transportation.
Forced Labor
Also known as involuntary servitude, forced labor may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, or even cultural acceptance of the practice. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be forced into labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well.
Sex Trafficking
When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution – or maintained in prostitution through coercion – that person is a victim of trafficking. All of those involved in recruiting, transporting, harboring, receiving, or obtaining the person for that purpose have committed a trafficking crime. Sex trafficking can also occur within debt bondage, as women and girls are forced to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful “debt” purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their crude “sale,” which exploiters insist they must pay off before they can be free.
It is critical to understand that a person’s initial consent to participate in prostitution is not legally determinative; if an individual is thereafter held in service through psychological manipulation or physical force, that person is a trafficking victim and should receive the benefits outlined in the United Nations’ Palermo Protocol and applicable laws.
Bonded Labor
One form of coercion is the use of a bond, or debt. Often referred to as “bonded labor” or “debt bondage,” the practice has long been prohibited under U.S. law by its Spanish name, peonage, and the Palermo Protocol calls for its criminalization as a form of trafficking in persons. Workers around the world fall victim to debt bondage when traffickers or recruiters unlawfully exploit an initial debt the worker assumed as part of the terms of employment. Workers may also inherit intergenerational debt in more traditional systems of bonded labor.
Debt Bondage Among Migrant Laborers
Abuses of contracts and hazardous conditions of employment for migrant laborers do not necessarily constitute human trafficking. However, the burden of illegal costs and debts on these laborers in the source country, often with the support of labor agencies and employers in the destination country, can contribute to a situation of debt bondage. This is often exacerbated when the worker’s status in the country is tied to the employer in the context of employment-based temporary work programs and there is no effective redress for abuse.
Involuntary Domestic Servitude
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Forced Child Labor
Most international organizations and national laws recognize that children may legally engage in certain forms of work. There is a growing consensus, however, that the worst forms of child labor should be eradicated. The sale and trafficking of children and their entrapment in bonded and forced labor are among these worst forms of child labor. A child can be a victim of human trafficking regardless of the location of that exploitation. Indicators of forced labor of a child include situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a non-family member who has the child perform work that financially benefits someone outside the child’s family and does not offer the child the option of leaving. Anti-trafficking responses should supplement, not replace, traditional actions against child labor, such as remediation and education. However, when children are enslaved, their abusers should not escape criminal punishment by virtue of longstanding patters of limited responses to child labor practices rather than more effective law enforcement action.
Child Soldiers
Child soldiering can be a manifestation of human trafficking where it involves the unlawful recruitment or use of children—through force, fraud, or coercion—as combatants, or for labor or sexual exploitation by armed forces. Perpetrators may be government forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are made unlawfully to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls can be forced to marry or have sex with male combatants. Both male and female child soldiers are often sexually abused and are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.”
The web site Human Trafficking Search.net adds another, and terrifying, form of slavery: forcing people to surrender their organs.
The issue of modern slavery has gained more public attention due to the debate following President Obama’s push to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty.
Sister Jeanne Christensen, writing in The Hill, states: “I am deeply troubled by the recent turn of events in the Senate as the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill is debated. Initially, I was encouraged to see the Senate Finance Committee pass the No Fast Track for Human Traffickers amendment when it approved the current TPA legislation, the Congressional Bipartisan Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015.The No Fast Track for Human Traffickers amendment, sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), received overwhelming bipartisan support and stipulates that the United States cannot enter into formal trade agreements with countries that the State Department identifies as Tier 3 in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report…I raise this question because I am disturbed that corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration are now working to push the Senate to water down or completely strip the Menendez amendment. …Are cheap products from unscrupulous governments worth more to us than ending modern-day slavery?”
According to Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ): “ We’re outraged that 36 million women, children and men around the world are subjected to involuntary labor or sexual exploitation. We’re outraged when we hear that over five million of them are children – that forced labor generates about 150-plus-billion-dollars in profits annually, the second largest income source for international criminals next to the drug trade. For the victims of these crimes, the term ‘modern slavery’ more starkly describes what is happening around the world…he Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) requires that the State Department annually publish a Trafficking in Persons – or TIP – Report that ranks each country based on the extent of government action to combat trafficking. Tier 3 is the worst of these rankings. It indicates that a government does not comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards and is not making significant efforts to do so. Tier 3 countries are those that have not even taken the most basic steps to address their human trafficking problem, and have not provided protection for trafficking victims.
“And, in the most recent TIP report published, the State Department ranked 23 countries as Tier 3. Countries like North Korea, Iran, and Cuba have flaunted international legal norms and threatened to upend global security. And I am most disappointed to say that Malaysia, a middle-income country by most standards — a party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations — has the resources and wherewithal to address human trafficking within its borders, but has for years now failed to take sufficient action to warrant an upgrade on the TIP report.”
In 2000, the United States enacted the Human Trafficking Protection Act, described by Rescue. Org:
“The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 created the first comprehensive federal law to address human trafficking, with a significant focus on the international dimension of the problem. The law provided a three-pronged approach: prevention through public awareness programs overseas and a State Department-led monitoring and sanctions program; protection through a new T-Visa and services for foreign national victims; and prosecution through new federal crimes. The TVPA was reauthorized through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2003, the TVPRA of 2005, and the TVPRA of 2008, which included greater protections for U.S. citizen victims, enhanced and enacted new human trafficking crimes, enhanced victim service provisions, and strengthened the role of the Trafficking in Persons Office within the State Department.”
Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) has introduced legislation that would use fines paid by sex traffickers to assist victims. Democrats are holding up that bill, insisting that some of the proceeds be used to pay for abortions.
Also introduced this year in the U.S. Senate is S. 553. proposed by Senator Bob Corker (R-Tn) The “End Modern Slavery Initiative Act,” which would establish the End Modern Slavery Foundation “to work with government, civil society, and private institutions in partner countries and key jurisdictions of other countries supported by the Foundation with a high prevalence of modern slavery to identify and fund successful strategies to combat modern slavery. The U.S. government shall seek other foreign governments providing Foundation support to provide additional support for projects in partner countries.”