Cross border trafficking and new forms of slavery - Verona, October 1999

Speech made by David Ould (Deputy Director of Anti-Slavery) at the international conference - New Frontiers of Crime: Trafficking in Human Beings and New Forms of Slavery; organised by United Nations International Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI).

Historically the word trafficking has been used almost exclusively to cover cross border trade in women for prostitution and the Anti-Slavery organisation has been involved with such issues since the original lobbying for the first Convention on Trafficking signed in Paris in 1904. It is perhaps interesting to note that the main concerns behind this Convention was the traffic of British women to brothels in continental cities and of girls from Europe and Asia into the United States. A report into the problem published in 1882 stated:

"I find that fraud was frequently and successfully practised, that girls under age were easily enrolled, that in the in the case of English girls false birth certificates were the rule rather than the exception, and that the girls entered upon a life to which they were irretrievably committed before they could possible become aware of its true nature and condition. I find that that in several cases misrepresentation, falsehood and deceit marked every stage of the procedure."

As I am sure we will hear a lot during the course of this conference very little has changed in the intervening 117 years. In this short talk I will be concentrating on trafficking for purposes other than prostitution. The key difference between these forms of trafficking and trafficking for prostitution is the generally greater difficulty of reintegrating prostituted girls or women into their original communities due to prejudice, place of migration.

This definition draws on much of the work that has been done by others, particularly Kalayaan in the Philippines, and seems to me to be universal in its potential application. However, no doubt others will have their own views, and I am well aware that the definition omits any consideration of the factors that persuade people to accept the offers of the traffickers. I would now like to look at one a few actual cases:

Three years ago information was given to Anti-Slavery that children were being sent from Togo to other countries in the region to work mainly as domestic servants, but also to provide other forms of assistance for example to market women. Investigations showed that this was the case and indicated that children from neighbouring Benin were also being sent out of the country in quite large numbers. In order to understand the problem more thoroughly and to seek solutions Anti-Slavery developed small research project with a local Benin NGO, Enfants Solidaires du Monde, to investigate the trafficking of children from Benin to Gabon. A consultancy team looked at children in several villages in three provinces of Benin and then went to Gabon to investigate the position of children working there. The results confirmed that a well established trade between the two countries had been built up and that it often involved severe exploitation of the children concerned. Evidence was also found that some of the children were moved on from Gabon into Equatorial Guinea. The main results of the survey are summarised below:

Child Trafficking from Benin to Gabon
- Numbers of children involved: 1081 stopped at the borders in 1997, only 91 found in Benin in 1999
- Ages of children: six to 15
- Use of intermediates: usually men and women from the sending villages concerned
- Jobs done by children: domestic service, street porters, plantation work (rare)
- Wages: children's wages are often reduced to reflect ongoing payments to the intermediates
- Exploitation: children receive no education, often work very long hours, physical and sexual abuse are common.
- Employers: almost entirely Benin expatriates rather than locals
- Main reasons for the trade:

It is worth noting that Gabon is not the only country taking children from Benin and Togo but Anti-Slavery believes there are also children being sent to Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Congo and Niger. It is also worth noting that occasionally children can go much further. Just recently in the UK two 11-year-old Benin children have come into the care of the social services having apparently run away from Nigerian and Benin expatriate families in the UK. They had been first taken to Nigeria and from there to the UK and had not been receiving any education while in the UK. The French Committee Against Modern Slavery has reported similar cases in Paris.

A completely different area of trafficking involves the offering of employment to people from poor areas which involves them being taken long distances away from their homes to work. When they arrive they find that the types of work and the conditions of work are very different from that contracted. Two areas which have much concerned Anti-Slavery in the past few years have been the employment of Haitian migrants in the sugar cane plantations of the Dominican Republic and the contracting of young men in north east Brazil for work in the development areas of Amazonia and Rondonia. The exploitation of Haitians in the Dominican Republic sugar industry is a long-term scandal and although the outright selling of men and children from Haiti was ended in the 1980s the current recruitment and employment practices are often a form of trafficking.

Haitian and Dominican contractors meet migrants on either side of the Haiti-Dominican border and offer them work in the Dominican Republic. Often they will be told that the jobs are not in the sugar cane plantations which are known to be awful places. Once they have accepted and signed a contract, however, the Haitians are taken to the plantations and the contractors receive their fees. Usually the Haitians are illiterate and so have not been able to read the contracts they have signed. The contracts tie them into work on the plantations at very low wages. Often the wages are reduced by such measures as under-weighing cane cut and forcing workers to shop in company stores where the prices are higher and payment is made by tokens which can only be exchanged in one store. Living and working conditions are also terrible and the plantations are controlled by soldiers from the Dominican Republic army to ensure that the workers abide by their contracts.

In the last 15 years a similar problem has arisen in Brazil. Land owners in Para State in Amazonia have needed to find many workers to undertake forest clearance. Contractors are sent to the poor areas of Bahia and similar towns to find new employees. Young men are offered contracts at rates which would be reasonable in their home towns but they are misled as to the arduous nature of the work and the conditions under which they will be working. They are then loaded into trucks and driven hundreds of miles to isolated estates in Pará. When they arrive they are told that they must pay for the cost of travel and even the hire of tools. The work is very hard in terrible conditions and living quarters are usually minimal. In addition the only food has to be purchased from the company store where prices are much higher than expected. The workers soon fall into debt and if they want to leave are told that they can only do so if they repay all their debt to the company store. Armed guards patrol the estates and workers who try to escape are beaten and even shot.

Evidently in only one of these cases, concerning Haitians, are those trafficked crossing an international border, but the workers in Brazil are just as vulnerable.

Trafficking in Haiti/Dominican Republic and Brazil
- Contractors used to recruit workers
- Contractors deceive workers as to conditions and type of work
- Workplace is usually isolated and workers are transported large distances
- Wages are controlled by use of company store, false accounting and debt
- Force is often used to detain workers

The final area of trafficking that I want to explore is one of the biggest and certainly a world-wide problem. There has been much concern for many years at the plight of women migrants, from countries such as Sri Lanka and Philippines, working as domestic workers in the Middle East. Indeed a meeting of 14 women foreign ministers recently wrote to the UN Secretary General about the problems of trafficking and specifically mentioned the need for an investigation into the 'appalling working conditions of women migrant workers in the Middle East'. There is no doubt that such research is badly needed and has been blocked for some time by countries such as Saudi Arabia. Anti-Slavery and other NGOs have also drawn attention to the abuse of many women domestic workers in Europe.

For many years, women workers from many poor countries have been arriving in Europe, both legally and illegally, to work in domestic service. Research by Anti-Slavery and other organisations has shown a consistent pattern of recruitment and exploitation in many cases. The numbers concerned is still unclear but there seems little doubt that it runs into hundreds of cases each year and perhaps thousands.

Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe
- Jobs often found through contractors/recruitment agencies
- Employees take loans to pay the agency costs
- Loan repayment is dependent on remaining in the job
- Migrants are often illegal or visas are not renewed
- Passports are retained by the employer
- Workers are badly treated, poorly paid and given very little time off
- They mainly work for expatriates, often for people from their own countries
- Sending countries concerned include:
- Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Mali

I would like to consider briefly some strategies for combating these forms of trafficking. Although each of the forms of slavery we have looked at is quite different and requires tackling at the roots in the country concerned, there are some similarities and it seems to me that these should also be applicable to most other forms of trafficking.

Strategies to Combat Trafficking
- Raise awareness among those at risk (and where relevant with parents)
- Persuade governments and local authorities to give the issue more priority
- Ensure those trafficked are treated as victims and not as illegal migrants
- Punish traffickers
- Make penalties for trafficking people more realistic
- Consider the need for extraterritorial jurisdiction to cover traffickers who never enter the country where the crime is committed

In conclusion I would like to thank UNICRI for arranging this conference and to welcome the rise in interest in the international human rights community in the issue of trafficking. If solutions are to be found, then it is essential these are based on the consideration of the rights of those trafficked rather than as an issue of reducing the levels of illegal migration around the world.