On October 18, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing, “International Trafficking in Persons: Taking Action to Eliminate Modern Day Slavery.” The hearing coincided with Chair Tom Lantos’ (D-CA) introduction of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007 (H.R. 3887), to improve U.S. efforts against human trafficking. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (P.L. 106-386) was reauthorized in 2005; the current legislation expired on September 30, 2007 and is expected to be reauthorized in the near future.
Rep. Lantos (D-CA) said, “According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking, the subject of our hearing today, is the world’s fastest-growing international organized crime…Every year, according to the International Labor Organization, traffickers move between 700,000 and 2 million women and children across international boundaries, mainly for the purpose of serving the sex trade. But it doesn’t stop there: An almost equal number of men, women, and children are trafficked each year for the purpose of forced labor in slave-like working conditions. In our own country, forced laborers have turned up most often in agriculture, domestic service, sweatshops, and in restaurants and hotels.”
Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said, “Somewhere around 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Of that number, it is estimated that 80 percent are women, and half are children. These figures do not include the millions of people who are trafficked within countries, and the mere numbers do not convey the horrors and human tragedies that lay behind them…In our hemisphere, Cuba has been shamefully promoted as a destination for sexual tourism that exploits large numbers of Cuban girls and boys, some as young as 12…As noted in House Concurrent Resolution 234, recently introduced by [Rep. Ed] Royce [R-CA], and which I am proud to have cosponsored, up to 90 percent of North Korean refugee women fall prey to traffickers in China who sell the refugees into sexual slavery. In Burma, the failed and abusive policies of the ruling military junta are substantially responsible for that country’s heartbreaking trafficking problems, which have subjected countless Burmese to forced labor and prostitution. I am proud of the leading role that the House and this committee, and especially our chairman, have played in moving the fight against human trafficking from a ‘non-issue’ to a priority of the United States government.”
Sharon Cohn, senior vice president of Justice Operations at the International Justice Mission (IJM), displayed photographs of three young girls in Cambodia “who were Vietnamese trafficking victims, being offered for sex to pedophiles from the West.” Another photograph showed the girls “four years after they were removed from the brothel and provided with intensive health care and mental health services, a home, and loving caregivers.” She continued, “Even the most grossly exploited children can be reclaimed and restored. Among the many lessons from the field that we have learned is that the sooner children can be removed from sexual exploitation, the more complete will be the recovery of their mental and physical health. It is essential that they be provided with comprehensive, long-term trauma care, shelter, education, and life skills and that they are protected from former pimps and brothel owners who are often eager to secure the recovery of their ‘property’…Our experience everywhere we have worked, is that aftercare is a long-term resource-intensive investment, but that it can be successful. One area we would like to bring to the committee’s attention that is vital to the recovery and reintegration of trafficking victims is education and sustainable employment for girls once they reach adulthood. We see a need for investments in this area everywhere we work on sex trafficking cases.”
Barbara Shailor, director of the International Department of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), spoke of the need for more effective responses in addressing modern day slavery. “Seven years after the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (P.L. 106-386), often in reaction to pressure from the United States, governments around the world have responded to the problem of human trafficking by passing criminal anti-trafficking laws on the regional, national, and local level. These laws tend to focus on law enforcement, through prosecution, to combat trafficking for forced prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, and to a lesser extent the protection of victims. While effective law enforcement is a key factor in combating trafficking, such an approach overlooks the underlying causes of trafficking, and as such is ineffective in isolation to prevent the problem. Such an approach also ignores a major aspect of human trafficking: trafficking for labor exploitation. There is still both a misunderstanding of trafficking in sectors, such as agriculture, construction, domestic work, manual labor, and manufacturing, and a lack of will to effectively combat it.” She continued, “The definition of trafficking clearly includes slave labor. Policymakers and the general population, however, still conflate trafficking only with forced prostitution, and may regard workers exploited into forced labor, debt bondage, or involuntary servitude in sectors other than the sex industry, as mere worker rights abuses…The lack of understanding, inadequate statistical information, and the lack of political will contribute to the continued trafficking of workers for the purpose of labor exploitation. To remedy this situation, government policies and anti-trafficking initiatives must be reframed to include worker rights.”
Zipora Mazengo, a trafficking survivor, described her experience of coming to work in the United States for a diplomat from her home country, Tanzania. Ms. Mazengo said, “I flew to the United States alone. When I arrived, Mr. Mzengi met me at the airport and immediately took my passport and contract away from me. He held my passport for four years, until I escaped in 2004. I worked for the Mzengis in their large house in [Maryland]. I had to clean the whole house, cook, do the laundry, and take care of the three children. I worked sixteen hours each day: from 6:00 [each] morning until 10:30 each night…My contract had said that I would earn $900 each month. But the Mzengis never paid me. When I asked the Mzengis for my wages, they said they would hurt me and send me home. My contract said that I would have two weeks’ vacation each year and two days off each week, but I never had a single day off. I was not permitted to leave the house…I agreed to speak with you today because I do not want what happened to me to happen to anyone else…They stole my freedom from me. They stole four years of my life. But the Mzengis are free. They have not been punished. And they have not paid. I want justice for me. But I also want to stop diplomats from exploiting other people in this way. It is wrong.”
Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), along with several other representatives spoke against the diplomatic immunity that allowed Ms. Mazengo’s traffickers to go unpunished. “It seems to me that the Congress of the United States and this committee needs to demand of the State Department and any subsequent administration of State Department leadership, that anybody who treats other human beings like this should automatically lose their right to represent their nation in this country and should be deported immediately. We need to take their diplomatic passports and kick them out of the country. That would send a signal to countries around the world that we are not going to tolerate this sort of thing.”
Rev. Monsignor Franklyn Casale, president of St. Thomas University (Florida), also testified.
