Protecting Migrants From Trafficking and Forced Labor

The U.S. Government estimates that approximately 800,000 people are trafficked internationally each year; millions more are enslaved in their own countries. Every day, all over the world, people are coerced into bonded labor, exploited in domestic servitude, and enslaved in agricultural work and in factories. Migrant workers, a population of 120 million according to the International Labor Organization, are particularly vulnerable to the evils of slave labor and sex trafficking.

In the 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report, we noted several disturbing global trends which speak directly to the plight of migrant laborers. The first 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. This debt is employed by traffickers as an instrument of coercion. How does this work?

People are enticed into fraudulent offers of work abroad that require a steep payment up front for the services of a labor agency arranging the job or a payment that goes straight to the future employer. Traffickers and recruiters exploit this initial debt accrued as part of the terms of employment. This all sounds very legalistic until you learn the terrifying circumstances in which debt captures an indebted worker. Let me share with you a real life example. A contract labor agency in Bangladesh advertised work at a garment factory in Jordan. The ad promises a 3-year contract, $425 per month, 8 hour workdays, 6 days a week, paid overtime, free accommodations, free medical care, free food, and no advance fees. Instead, upon arrival, workers (who were obliged to pay exorbitant advance fees) had passports confiscated, were confined to miserable conditions, and prevented from leaving the factory. Months passed without pay, food was inadequate, and sick workers were tortured. Because most workers had borrowed money at inflated rates to get the contracts, they were obliged through debt to stay. The sad truth is that we find workers across the globe holding on to the thin hope that they will eventually get paid or that conditions will improve, because if they leave, there is NO hope that they will be able to repay the debt.

Debt bondage is criminalized under U.S. law and included as a form of exploitation related to trafficking in the United Nations Protocol To Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN TIP Protocol). Traffickers seek vulnerabilities in victims and migrant laborers, who themselves are often fleeing repressive governments or dire economic situations at home, are prime targets.

Shortly after starting in this job, I met Aye Aye Win, a young Burmese woman in search of work beyond her own tortured country. A recruiter painted a beautiful picture of work in a neighboring country. Aye Aye assumed substantial debt to cover up-front costs required by the recruiter for this job placement. Together with some 800 Burmese migrants, many children, Aye Aye was "placed" in a shrimp farming and processing factory. But it wasn’t a job. It was a prison camp. The isolated 10-acre factory was surrounded by steel walls, 15 feet tall with barbed wire fencing, located in the middle of a coconut plantation far from roads. Workers weren’t allowed to leave and were forbidden phone contact with anyone outside. They lived in run-down wooden huts, with hardly enough to eat. She tried to escape with three other women. But factory guards caught them and dragged them back to the camp. They were punished as an example to others, tied to poles in the middle of the courtyard, and refused food or water. Aye Aye told me how her now beautiful hair was shaved off as another form of punishment to stigmatize her. And how she was beaten for trying to flee.

Private homes are another sphere which often escapes the law. In many countries around the world homes become prisons of involuntary servitude for domestic workers. I recently returned from a trip to the Gulf. It is disheartening, and unacceptable, that so many wealthy countries in the Near East, which have significant resources to make progress on their Tier 3 status, are doing little to confront this problem. These are countries which rely heavily on foreign migrant labor—practices such as sponsorship laws create conditions that make guest workers particularly vulnerable to trafficking in the region.

Take Nour Miyati, an Indonesian woman who sought a brighter future for her 9-year old daughter. She worked as a domestic for 4 years in a Middle East state. She was treated fairly and was able to send money back home so that her daughter could stay in school. Then her fate took a turn under a new employer confined her to his house, denied her pay, and tortured her. Injuries she suffered to her hands and feet resulted in gangrene that required the amputation of her fingers and toes. Tragically Nour was twice victimized. Despite having escaped these horrific circumstances, she was arrested for "running away" under the country’s sponsorship laws.

Such laws give employers excessive authority over workers, allowing them to control movement and legal status. Workers may escape abuse in private homes or work sites only to find that their ‘sponsor’ denies them an exit permit to leave the country. I met a 24 year old from Nepal in Kuwait who’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. Their victimization reaches into the shelter or police station—the very places where they sought refuge. In the states of the Gulf, these sponsorship laws are particularly rigid, giving sponsors near ownership status over migrant workers. This is compounded by governments allowing employment agencies’ visa trading where workers are lured in by shark recruiters without a clear match to jobs where their skills fit.

In my work leading the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, I urge governments in the Gulf and elsewhere to limit the power of sponsors and strengthen the rights of foreign workers, often viewed as second class citizens. I did so in India, Oman, Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait within the last 2 weeks.

We also noted in the annual report a lack of progress on rule of law which can be traced to official corruption and complicity in the exploitation, on the one hand, and indifference on the other. Desperate migrant laborers are vulnerable to force, fraud and coercion, the hallmarks of human trafficking, in a climate of official indifference where labor slavery is, typically, not criminalized, but considered a civil, regulatory offense.

Trafficking in persons is one of the dark sides of globalization. But turning people into commodities kept, bought, and sold is not a necessary part of the growing global economy. We cannot ignore the unique challenges to vulnerable populations both at home and abroad the human trade represents. At the heart of U.S. government efforts to end human trafficking is a commitment to human dignity—a desire not only to rescue, but restore.

So, what can we do—what can you as individuals, NGO representatives, and government officials do to ensure that a foreign migrant or domestic worker isn’t treated as subhuman?

• Public awareness: Open forums in houses of worship, community centers, colleges and universities are key to understanding the issue and to victim identification.
• Donate time, energy and money to NGOs engaged in the fight.
• Agitate for legislation which will protect these vulnerable populations.
• Encourage the media to report on these violations of human dignity
• Work together as individuals and multilaterally with other nations at the UN.

Thank you for your attention and for caring enough to be here. Thank you for joining the abolition movement.