Feb 6, 2015
Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director of the Solidarity Center, testified at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. She said the United States has a real opportunity to lead the fight against worker exploitation, especially with regard to upcoming negotiations on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. “Our diplomacy must be much more robust and aggressive on tackling the root causes” of forced labor, Bader-Blau told the committee, stating her belief that “it’s not too much to ask that we see real systematic changes” in how countries operate before agreeing to anything in trade negotiations.
Jul 30, 2014
The United Nations today marks the first-ever World Day against Trafficking in Persons, created to raise awareness and highlight the plight of the millions of women, men and children who are trafficked and exploited, as well as to encourage people to take action to end the scourge.
Forced labor is the most common motive behind human trafficking, with more than 21 million people trapped in often slave-like conditions. Forced labor generates $51 billion per year in illegal profits, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).
In the Dominican Republic, where tens of thousands of Haitians have been trafficked over decades to toil as domestic workers and sugarcane harvesters, the constitutional court ruled last September that children born to undocumented parents between 1929 and 2010 were not entitled to Dominican citizenship, effectively leaving up to 200,000 children and grandchildren of migrant workers without citizenship in the only country many of them have ever known.
Following international outrage, the country recently enacted a “regularization” plan that recognizes some 60,000 migrants with documents. But in practice, says Ana Maria Belique, “officials still reject our documents.” Belique, program director for the Bono Center, a Jesuit social and educational organization, took part in a recent migration advocacy training with labor and migrant activists organized by the Solidarity Center.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Dominican Republic signed a series of agreements with Haiti that covered seasonal Haitian labor in the government-owned sugar industry.
But because the Dominican Republic did not fulfill its commitment to repatriate migrant workers, the migrant laborer agreements essentially became legal instruments for trafficking Haitian labor. Migrant workers were settled on sugar refining lands and had no access to health care or education. These impoverished settlements, known as bateys, became home to the families of migrants who did not or could not return to Haiti. The lack of legal status and statelessness are internationally identified indicators that increase workers vulnerability to forced labor and other forms of trafficking.
Rather than granting citizenship to the descendants of those trafficked for back-breaking work in sugarcane fields, the regularization plan requires that they provide proof of birth through testimony from a hospital, family member or priest before beginning the long process of “naturalization” with no guarantee of achieving residency. International law calls for children of migrants to automatically receive citizenship from the country where they were born.
The precarious situation of migrant workers under the laborer agreements allowed employers to put Haitian workers in conditions of forced labor through nonpayment of wages, restrictions on their freedom of movement, lack of health and safety regulations, lack of access to social services for migrants and their families and abusive working conditions. And as long as they are undocumented, migrants and their families are a source of low-wage labor.
“The international community should not be fooled by the Dominican government’s ill-named National Plan for Regularization and Naturalization,” says Eulogia Familia, vice president of the Confederaciün Nacional de Unidad Sindical (National Confederation of Labor Union Unity, CNUS). “It is a plan … to maintain them as a cheap labor force which is disenfranchised in the country they were born.”
CNUS and migrant worker rights organizations are working with the Solidarity Center to urge that the government recognize descendants of migrant workers as Dominican citizens in line with international standards for the rights of children. The Solidarity Center and its allies also are seeking to strengthen civil society protection for migrant workers through labor code reform and in coming months, will launch advocacy and visibility actions to raise awareness of the contributions to the Dominican Republic by Dominicans of Haitian descent and by all migrant workers.
The Dominican Republic is one of several countries where the Solidarity Center works to assist workers who have been trafficked, and is among dozens of countries where human trafficking takes place. You can show your support for victims of human trafficking by taking part in a UN-sponsored “thunderclap,” in which messages on a single topic are sent out through social media in a short timespan. By joining the thunderclap via Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr today, you can send a message expressing solidarity with human trafficking victims.
Jul 10, 2014
Migrant workers’ high vulnerability to human trafficking is one of three main factors involved in labor trafficking in Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia, said Neha Misra, Solidarity Center senior specialist for Migration and Human Trafficking in testimony on Capitol Hill July 7.
The other two elements involve a lack of investigations, prosecutions and convictions for forced labor (linked to corruption and government complicity) and a lack of economic pressure by governments and businesses to eliminate the scourge.
Misra was one of four experts testifying on human trafficking and forced labor before the Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. State Department Ambassador Scot Marciel, principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asian And Pacific Affairs at the State Department; Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons; and Jesse Eaves, World Vision senior policy advisor for child protection, also spoke at the hearing, “Combating Forced Labor and Modern-Day Slavery in East Asia and the Pacific.”
The Asia-Pacific region has the greatest number of forced laborers in the world, accounting for more than 50 percent of all forced labor victims. Globally, forced labor generates $51 billion per year in illegal profits, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).Thailand and Malaysia were among countries cited last month by the U.S. State Department as failing to comply with the minimum standards to address human trafficking over the past year. The two countries were downgraded from the department’s “Tier 2 Watch List” to “Tier 3.” Such a downgrade makes the countries liable to sanctions, which could include the withholding or withdrawal of U.S. non-humanitarian and non-trade-related assistance.
“It’s disturbing to see East Asia and the Pacific not make the kind of progress that’s expected in ending human trafficking,” said Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), subcommittee chairman. He acknowledged that while sex trafficking is high profile, labor trafficking also is rampant.
According to Misra, unscrupulous labor recruiters charge migrant workers exorbitant fees for job placement, trapping workers in debt bondage, a situation further exacerbated when employers take workers’ visas and passports, leaving them with no means of escape.
“Labor recruitment fees lead to forced labor and should be eliminated,” Misra said.
Misra also said that multinational corporations have not done enough to prove to consumers that their supply chains are not tainted with forced labor. Multinational corporations need to exert their significant power as buyers to hold suppliers accountable to supply chains free of forced labor. Companies argue that it is too difficult or expensive to completely map their supply chains. If nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media can do it, however, companies can too.“Two of the export sectors with the highest numbers of forced laborers in the region are the seafood and ready-made garment industries, she added.
Read Misra’s full testimony.
Dec 18, 2013
From the moment Yani arrived in Malaysia for her job as a domestic worker, she toiled for a solid year with no break. Her day started at 4 a.m. and went long into the night, seven days a week, as she cleaned and took care of her employer’s child. Yani eventually became too ill to work, and her employer sent her back to her labor agent in Indonesia. The agent deducted two months’ salary from Yani to pay for her trip back home and abandoned Yani at a port, ill with hepatitis and far from her home. When Yani eventually made it to her village, she had $1 left, just enough for a plate of rice.
Yani is one of 400,000 workers from the Indonesian archipelago who leave their homes every year in search of jobs to support themselves and their families. Globally, up to 100 million people are working outside their home countries, nearly half of them women. Migrant workers contribute to the economies of their host countries, and the remittances they send home help to boost the economies of their countries of origin. Yet migrant workers often enjoy little social protection and are vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking. Many, like Yani, also are exploited by unscrupulous labor agents.
Today, International Migrant Workers Day, shines a light on the plight of migrant workers. Many toil in domestic work, in agrculture, manufacturing and the service sector. But as several upcoming world sporting events highlight, these high-profile competitions often are built on the backs of poor and vulnerable workers, particularly migrant workers and especially those working in construction.
Currently three countries are preparing for major global sporting events—and workers in all three countries have experienced worker rights violations.
- Workers from impoverished Brazilian states who traveled to Saõ Paulo to work on an airport expansion project in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup faced “slave-like” conditions, according to a recent government investigation. The 111 workers, including six ethnic Pankaruru indians, were living in poor accommodations near the building site and some had paid more than $220 to secure a job.
- More than 80 migrant construction workers in Qatar who worked for nearly a year without pay on an office tower in Dohat are facing serious food shortages and need urgent government assistance, according to an Amnesty International report released today. The 60 Nepalese workers as well as migrants from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nigeria, China and Bangladesh, have been fitting out the 38th and 39th floors of a building dubbed “Qatar’s Home of Football” because football-related organizations have offices there.
- Russia’s new law migrant labor law gives employers free rein on how to employ migrant workers without consideration of labor standards. Russian media reports have cited that the “FIFA Law” contravenes the country’s Constitution. Russia is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2018 World Cup.
The Solidarity Center has partnered with workers, trade unions, governments and civil society coalitions around the world to create community and workplace-based safe migration and counter-trafficking strategies that emphasize prevention, prosecution and protection. These steps include educating workers who plan to work abroad about labor laws and workplace rights in their origin and destination countries; promoting union-run legal aid, counseling and information centers; and helping to draft and pass improved anti-trafficking and safe migration legislation.
Follow International Migrants Day on Twitter with the hashtag #IamAMigrant.
Check out the non-profit anti-trafficking organization, ATEST.
Aug 12, 2013
At least 21 million people globally toil in forced labor, a problem that stems from a “global governance crisis” in which corporations’ supply chains have gotten so complex and diffuse that current oversight mechanisms are no longer effective, according to a panel of Human Trafficking experts on Capitol Hill. The lack of corporate or governmental oversight of supply chains, especially subcontractors, is a major problem allowing trafficking for forced labor to grow on a global scale.
Former U.S. ambassador and current Georgetown University Professor Mark P. Lagon moderated the July 26 panel, “Business Transparency to Address Human Trafficking.” The panel was convened in anticipation of a House bill on human trafficking, which would require U.S. companies to make information on their supply chains available to the public and to continually investigate sourcing. Advocates of the approach say it gives more power to consumers by enabling them to choose whether to purchase ethically-sourced products and also puts more pressure on companies to ensure that labor laws are enforced throughout their supply chains.
Cathy Feingold, AFL-CIO International Department director, pointed out that improved oversight laws would help prevent companies from doing what many Western retail giants did after the tragic Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh last April—that is, deny responsibility on the basis that they were only linked to the factory through a web of subcontractors, even though their products were made there.
Flor Molina, a trafficking survivor and now an advocate for other survivors in the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) Survivor Advisory Caucus, shared her harrowing story of coming to Los Angeles from Mexico as a trafficked worker, underlining the urgency of acting to end human trafficking and also the inadequacies of current oversight mechanisms. Molina’s trafficker, who forced her to work 17-18 hour days sewing dresses, withheld her wages and her passport, and forbade her from visiting a doctor, avoided jail time by paying a $75,000 fine. Now, Molina is an advocate for other trafficking survivors, and she believes greater private-sector accountability as well as government oversight will help prevent others from experiencing what she did.
Companies are likely to become more transparent with their sourcing, said Karen Stauss, director of programs at Free the Slaves, noting that several multinationals are gaining a greater ability to see deep into their supply chains, and these companies will pressure others to implement similar mechanisms. Investors are also increasingly seeing the “reputational and occupational” risk of doing business with companies connected with trafficking operations, said Bennett Freeman, senior vice president of Sustainability Research and Policy at Calvert Investments, and more investors are showing interest in socially responsible indexes and mutual funds. He said that in-depth research of product-sourcing, which his firm does, will help weed out companies that are the “systemic bad actors.”
Governments, however, also need to do more to combat human trafficking, said Louis Alexander of the Pan American Development Foundation. In Central America, one of the world’s hubs of trafficking, four countries have formed a coalition to combat the crisis and Alexander hopes that more multilateral state efforts like this one will emerge.
Although the panelists’ views differed on the role of governments in combatting human trafficking, panelists all agreed on a clear agenda of holding companies more accountable for keeping track of their supply chains and providing more public information on product-sourcing.
