Trafficking in Persons Report: Concluding Thoughts

The 2011 report made many good recommendations, as I’ve noted throughout this series (see posts #1, #2, #3, and #4). Actually implementing these will go a long way to eradicating many of the issues I have raised. There does seem to be an effort to genuinely examine our government’s own policies and identify shortcomings. And, of course, overly diplomatic ways of stating certain things is to be expected. But there are some very real shortcomings in U.S. anti-trafficking efforts, problems that may threaten the well-being and even the lives of many trafficked persons, and I hope the U.S. government is really listening to those NGOs whose input the report cites, and that other agencies and branches of government will heed the Department of State’s (DOS) recommendations.

Fixing the problems addressed in this blog series will require effort not just from DOS, but from the Departments of Justice, Labor and Homeland Security as well. Improved labor, immigration and visa regulations, more extensive training of government officials, a stronger engagement with state and local anti-trafficking efforts, and an increase in oversight by agencies over their own officials could all help significantly. DOS seems to recognize much of this.

Congressional action is important too, and at the very least Congress’ reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act later this year will be crucial. Congress will also have the opportunity to address labor and visa issues through the legislative process. Furthermore, legislators could do much to address the shortcomings in the U.S. government’s provision of services to trafficked persons. The DOS report does not give much consideration to legislative issues.

But the most significant omission from the report was an evaluation of the human rights implications raised by the problems DOS identified. Failures of protection or assistance to trafficked persons, abuse or misuse of official power, disparities in state laws, as well as systemic flaws in visa programs that traffickers can exploit can all – directly or indirectly – result in serious human rights violations.

Its good that DOS seems concerned with remedying problems, but their approach looks more at symptoms than at the disease. U.S. anti-trafficking policy is not designed around the goal of protecting the human rights – or even the lives – of trafficked persons. It is primarily a criminal justice scheme, and victim protection and assistance are corollary to that. Since programs are generally not designed with victims’, or potential victims’, interests at the forefront, vulnerabilities get built into the system that only become apparent later and are not always easily or quickly remedied.

Trafficking prosecutions are on the rise, but many trafficked persons remain in danger, impoverished, and without access to justice. Assistance must be available to more than just those who are able to navigate the regulatory obstacle course of the T visa process, or those who are fortunate enough to have the Department of Justice prosecute their traffickers. And improvements in preventive efforts such as those DOS recommends for employment visa programs must be made reality. The U.S. government has long recognized that trafficking constitutes a severe human rights violation, but, perhaps, has not quite grasped that how we respond to the issue of trafficking also has human rights implications.

Human Trafficking in the United States

Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery that, after drug dealing, is the second largest criminal industry worldwide; however, due to the nature of human trafficking, it is often difficult to detect and has thus gone widely unprosecuted. According to U.S. Government-sponsored research, each year, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders into slavery, not including the millions trafficked within their own countries. Victims of trafficking include men, women, teens, and children who are often recruited through forced abduction, pressure from parents, or deception between traffickers and the victim or victim’s parents. Once trafficking occurs, victims are usually transported far from friends and family and kept in isolated surroundings under constant threats of violence or other forms of physical and mental coercion. Traffickers may also confiscate a victim’s visa, passport, or money, making it impossible to leave the situation. Human trafficking may be for the purpose of sex or forced labor: victims often work as prostitutes, domestic servants, or workers in restaurants, sweatshop factories or agriculture for little or no pay and under inhumane conditions.

Although human trafficking has been denounced by several international conventions as a violation of human rights and international norms, no federal law existed on the subject until October of 2000 when the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) was passed. The TVPA makes trafficking of humans a federal crime and was enacted in order to prevent human trafficking overseas, to protect victims in the U.S., and to prosecute traffickers under federal law. Further, the 2003 reauthorization of the TVPA created a civil remedy allowing survivors of trafficking to collect damages from their traffickers in order to better punish and deter traffickers and compensate victims.

Since 2000, over half of the world’s governments have enacted laws making human trafficking a crime. Despite these efforts, human trafficking often goes undetected and under-prosecuted; however, more attention and publicity has been given to the issue in recent years. In the international arena, Haitian officials have expressed concern over allegations of human trafficking involving children and the sale of human organs following the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010.

Human trafficking is just as large of a concern in the United States. In South Florida, a concerned citizen’s tip of unusual activity at a suburban house helped uncover a prostitution ring operating out of a network of homes in which trafficked women were forced into the sex trade. In Hawaii, farm owners recently plead guilty to forced labor of workers illegally imported from Thailand. In an effort to toughen state laws against human trafficking, a bill was recently reviewed by a Kansas Senate committee that would make coerced employment a crime punishable by time in prison and would allow police to seize assets of human trafficking rings.

These are just some of the most recent stories involving human trafficking in the news. The problem is ongoing and though it has received more attention recently, we must also act to help rehabilitate victims, punish traffickers, and end the practice of human trafficking. In an effort to compensate trafficking survivors for the violations of their human rights, Human Rights USA is working with the George Washington University Law School International Human Rights Clinic to seek civil damages for victims of human trafficking.

-By Shilpa Deshpande, Legal Intern, Refugee & Detention Project