Two Wolves - A Cherokee Parable
An
old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life..."A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
"One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
"The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
"This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
"Which wolf will win?"
The old chief simply replied,
"The one you feed."
Two Wolves- ABORIGINAL STORY OF WISDOM
Traffickers,
Enablers, Users – Labour Exploitation
· What is known about people
exploiting labour in your city and catchment area?
· What industries may use or enable
labour exploitation?
· Who are the enablers/observers of
labour exploitation?
· How big is the problem?
· What services or programs are
targeting the demand side of labour exploitation?
· Are there any codes of ethics for
companies?
Do local companies monitor their supply chain?
----------------------------
https://www.stopthetraffik.org/what-is-human-trafficking - CachedThis
human product creates profit, tens of billions every year…and growing.
...
vulnerable communities, making them safe, and to disrupt the traffickers' trade. ...
Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially
women ...
vulnerable communities, making them safe, and to disrupt the traffickers' trade. ...
Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially
women ...
www.state.gov/j/tip/id/help/ - Cached
- SimilarMeet
with and/or write to your local, state, and federal government
representatives to let them know that you care about combating human trafficking
in your ...
representatives to let them know that you care about combating human trafficking
in your ...
www.humantrafficking.org/combat_trafficking - Cached
- SimilarIndividuals
Interested in Helping to Combat Human Trafficking - Toolkit ... Victims
of sex trafficking are often found in the streets or working in ... on the front line can
readily identify the trafficking victim and have him/her treated accordingly.
of sex trafficking are often found in the streets or working in ... on the front line can
readily identify the trafficking victim and have him/her treated accordingly.
-------------------
Oct 20, 2012 ... This is Morocco, one of the few
moderate Arab countries, though not for long ... you have a flood of African
refugees to Europe, not into the Muslim world. .... We Europeans need to become
more racist than any other race or nation. ..... The simplest and quickest way
to do this was to invest in slaves. To help
African Refugees Say
Arab Muslims More Racist than Europeans
October 20, 2012 by Daniel Greenfield 92 Comments
Under liberal dogma, the world is divided
between the evil European colonialist exploiters of doom and the Oppressed
masses of the Third World. In the real world, things are very different.
This is Morocco, one of the few moderate Arab
countries, though not for long with the victory of an Islamist party. It’s
fairly tolerant by Muslim standards, which is still wildly intolerant by
European standards.
“Be careful, those blacks might eat you,” a
Moroccan juice seller in the little border town of Fnideq warned us. They might
what? “Yes, really,” he replies. “They can do anything.”
“Arabs hate black people. And that is not
from today, it is in their blood,” says Aboubakr, a young man from Senegal who
is hoping eventually to cross over into Europe. He spent almost a year in
Morocco’s capital Rabat before coming to this forest camp near the Spanish
border and his experiences there left him feeling bitter.
“Friends of mine were attacked with a knife.
Bandits target us because they know we cannot go to the police, even if we are
robbed and hurt. Having no papers, we will be caught instead. Blacks have no
rights here.”
American
liberals like to compare the plight of Muslims to the segregation of black
people in the United States, in fact it’s Muslims who practice segregation of
Africans.
Aboubakr is also insulted that Moroccans
“cannot believe many of us are Muslims too”. According to him, people are
surprised when they see him kneeling for prayer. “They don’t think a black can
be Muslim.”
The migrants are reluctant to believe that
they might meet more racism in Europe than in Morocco. If they finally manage
to cross the border “Black and white people are good together,” claims
Aboubakr. “In Holland, there are many blacks on the national soccer team. Moroccans
are just jealous.”
And that’s part of why you have a flood of
African refugees to Europe, not into the Muslim world. And here’s a little view of life for
Africans in Iraq.
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the
21st century.
------------
----------------
Refugee
Resettlement Fact Sheet
Readers, in honor of World
Refugee Day, today June 20th, 2013, I am happy to report we have a new fact
sheet!
Since we first posted a fact sheet in 2007 and
updated it again in 2010 we have had 31,236 visitors access this post.
Please help spread the word on the new 2013 Fact
Sheet a collaborative effort between RRW and others!
1. Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled over 3
million refugees, with annual admissions figures ranging from a high of 207,000
in 1980 to a low of 27,110 in 2002 (in the aftermath of 911) .
The average number of refugees admitted annually
since 1980 is about 98,000. Additionally, in recent years, another 40,000 or
more per year come in as asylum seekers and Cuban/Haitian entrants – all with
the same rights and entitlements as refugees.
All these flows detonate their own chain migration
flows in addition to the refugee influx. These follow-on flows have easily
multiplied the original admission numbers by a factor of 4 or more.
The quota for 2013 is 70,000 and it looks like it
will be met this year. There is strong political pressure to get refugee
numbers back to over 100,000.
2. The U.S. takes more than twice as many refugees
as all countries from the rest of the industrialized world combined.
3. One of the operative assumptions of those in the
refugee industry is that, since the U.S. is behind most of the chaos in the
world – Syria, here we come!, it is morally obligated to take the lead in
resettling the world’s refugees. Yet, for 2012 the leading countries, in order
of numbers of refugees sent to the U.S., were Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, Somalia,
Cuba, Dem. Rep. Congo, Iran, Eritrea, Sudan. All America’s fault? In very
recent memory the MSM was celebrating Bhutan and suggesting the U.S. had
something to learn from the Bhutanese concept of a “Product of National
Happiness”.
Ironically, the U.S. refugee program diverts
resources from assistance on the ground to those very countries in the
developing world which carry the main burden of refugee crises.
4. In recent years up to 95% of the refugees coming
to the U.S. were referred by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or
were the relatives of UN-picked refugees. Until the late 90’s the U.S. picked the large majority of refugees for
resettlement in the U.S.
Considering that the refugee influx causes
increases in all legal and illegal immigration as family and social networks
are established in the U.S., the U.N. is effectively dictating much of U.S.
immigration policy.
5. NIMBYists gone wild: As a Senator, Sam Brownback
harshly rejected the resettlement of Somali Bantu in his own state even though
he was a major advocate among evangelicals for increased refugee immigration to
the U.S..
The state of Delaware has resettled less than 10
refugees annually in recent years even though then Sen. Joe Biden was a sponsor
of the 1980 Refugee Act – the bill which defines the refugee program we have
today.
Upon entry, a network of private, “nonprofit”
agencies (so-called “voluntary agencies”) selects the communities where
refugees will live. The agencies are either headquartered in Washington DC or
have lobbying offices there.
Washington DC took less than 200 refugees between
2007 and 2012.
6. According to a July 2012 GAO report (Refugee
Resettlement:
Greater Consultation with Community Stakeholders
Could Strengthen Program: “most public entities such as public schools and
health departments generally said that voluntary agencies notified them of the
number of refugees expected to arrive in the coming year, but did not consult
them regarding the number of refugees they could serve”.
7. This same GAO report quotes a state official who
notes “that local affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they
serve, so affiliates (private contractors) have an incentive to maintain or
increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing
the number to decrease.”
8. Refugee resettlement is a self-perpetuating
global enterprise. Staff and management of the hundreds of taxpayer supported
U.S. contractors are largely refugees or immigrants whose purpose is to gain
entry for more refugees, usually for their co-ethnics.
9. According to David Robinson, a former acting
director of the State Department’s refugee bureau, writing about the refugee
contractors: “the federal government provides about ninety percent of its
collective budget” and its lobbying umbrella “wields enormous influence over
the Administration’s refugee admissions policy. It lobbies the Hill effectively
to increase the number of refugees admitted for permanent resettlement each
year ….If there is a conflict of interest, it is never mentioned…. The solution
its members offer to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase
the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets…” How
Public Opinion Shaped Refugee Policy in Kosovo, 2000, David M. Robinson, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA432218
We hesitate to quibble with an authoritative source
on the percentage of federal money floating the refugee industry, but from an
accountant’s perspective that percentage is actually over 100 % given the
amount of money the industry is able to pocket without any proof that it was
spent on refugees.
10. According to Ken Tota, Deputy Director at HHS
Office of Refugee Resettlement, Congress has never in his 25-year tenure
questioned the refugee quota proposed by the administration. By law, Congress
is supposed to consent to the annual quota but obviously refuses to take this
role seriously.
11. Refugee “self-sufficiency” is an important
measure of success and a basis for assigning refugees to agencies in future
contracts. The definition of “self-sufficiency” has been steadily defined
downward and today is virtually meaningless. A refugee can be considered
“self-sufficient” while using all of the programs listed in item 16 below with
the exception of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
12. Assimilation is no longer a goal for any agency
involved in refugee resettlement – government or private contractor. The
private contractors’ engagement with the refugee is so short – less than 4
months in most cases, that nothing approaching assimilation could even be
considered. The term “assimilation” is no longer a part of government lexicon
and does not even occur in dozens of recent reports and papers generated about
refugee resettlement. The operative term in vogue now is “integration” with its
clear intent of maintenance of ethnic identity.
13. A refugee or an asylum seeker must show a
“well-founded” fear of persecution on account of a political view or membership
in a racial, ethnic, religious or social group. The definition of a refugee has
been widely stretched by all 3 branches of the government – the Judiciary, the
Congress and the Administration.
In fact, Congress can name whatever group it wants
to be a refugee or asylum seeker. For instance Congress passed a law declaring
China’s one-child policy to be an example of persecution based upon a political
view. Not surprising: China now heads up the list of successful asylum seekers.
People may seek asylum in the U.S. based upon
domestic abuse, FGM and even lack of services for the disabled.
The government does not publicize rates of
admission by category so it is not possible to tell, for instance, if the vague
and easy to fake ‘social group’ category is more commonly used than the vague
and easy to fake ‘political group’ category.
Because of the privacy rights accorded the new
arrivals, we have no idea which category was used by Tamerlane Tsarnaev’s
parents to gain admission to the world’s most generous immigration program.
14. The Obama administration has placed a priority
on LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees. This has resulted in an upsurge of
asylum requests on this basis – even from countries like England! Since the
State Department does not keep data about numbers admitted by reason for
admission, we can’t obtain exact numbers of those admitted on the basis of
LBGTQI persecution, but one private refugee agency has set up an office in
Nairobi, Kenya to assist intending LBGTQI refugees. This office also advises
about how to get into the refugee pipeline. In other words, a private
contractor is recruiting refugees who will eventually become the contractor’s
profit-generating clients. At the 2012 conference of refugee contractors
sponsored by the DHHS Office of Refugee resettlement a refugee contractor
demanded that Medicaid pay for sex change operations if needed by newly arrived
refugees.
15. The program has gradually shifted towards the
resettlement of refugees from Muslim countries. Some individuals from Muslim
countries are Christians or other minorities, but most are Muslims. In the
early 90’s the percentage of Muslim refugees was near 0; by 2000 the program was
44% Muslim. The Muslim component decreased after 911, but today is back up to
about 40% and is set to rise from here.
Membership in a U.S.-registered Islamic terrorist
group is not a bar to entry on the program as long as the refugee was not a
“direct participant” in “terrorist” activity.
16. Refugees, successful asylum seekers,
trafficking victim visa holders, “Cuban-Haitian Entrants” (which are mostly
Cuban), S.I.V’s (for Iraqis and Afghanis) and other smaller humanitarian
admission groups are eligible for ALL federal, state and local welfare programs
30 days after arrival.
Refugee access to welfare on the same basis as a
U.S. citizen has made the program a global magnet.
The federal programs available to them include:
∙ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
formerly known as AFDC
∙ Medicaid
∙ Food Stamps
∙ Public Housing
∙ Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
∙ Social Security Disability Insurance
∙ Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD) (direct services only)
∙ Child Care and Development Fund
∙ Independent Living Program
∙ Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals (JOLI)
∙ Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
∙ Postsecondary Education Loans and Grants
∙ Refugee Assistance Programs
∙ Title IV Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments (if parents are ⌠qualified immigrants – refugees, asylees, etc)
∙ Title XX Social Services Block Grant Funds
∙ Medicaid
∙ Food Stamps
∙ Public Housing
∙ Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
∙ Social Security Disability Insurance
∙ Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD) (direct services only)
∙ Child Care and Development Fund
∙ Independent Living Program
∙ Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals (JOLI)
∙ Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
∙ Postsecondary Education Loans and Grants
∙ Refugee Assistance Programs
∙ Title IV Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments (if parents are ⌠qualified immigrants – refugees, asylees, etc)
∙ Title XX Social Services Block Grant Funds
17. Welfare use is staggering among refugees.
Welfare usage is never counted by officials as part of the cost of the program.
Yet, when it is included, the total cost of the refugee program soars to at
least 10-20 billion a year.
As some Americans are pushed off of time-limited
welfare programs many refugees are going on to life-time cash assistance
programs. For instance, 12.7% of refugees are on SSI – a lifetime entitlement
to a monthly check / Medicaid for elderly or disabled. This rate of usage is at
least 4 times higher than the rate of usage for SSI among the native-born
population and is reportedly rising from these already very high levels.
Permanent and intergenerational welfare dependence
has been allowed to take hold to a significant degree in some refugee groups.
Find latest welfare usage among refugees here
(latest data available is from 2009): https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/fy_2009_annual_report_to_congress.pdf
Find table TABLE II-14: Public Assistance
Utilization Among refugees who arrived during the 5 years previous to the
survey 57.7% are on government medical assistance such as Medicaid, about 25%
have no health insurance at all, 70.2% are receiving food stamps, 31.6% are in
public housing (an additional percentage is on a public housing waiting list), and
38.3 % are getting cash assistance such as TANF or SSI.
The figure of 57.7% dependent upon government
medical assistance is actually an undercount since it excludes children under
16.
18. Medium size towns, such as Bowling Green, KY,
Nashville, TN, Ft. Wayne, IN, Boise, ID and Manchester, NH, are serving as the
main reception centers for the refugee program.
19. Refugees are not tested for many diseases, such
as HIV. Refugees are a major contributing factor to TB rates among the
foreign-born. TB among the foreign-born now accounts for about half of the TB
in America.
20. The money the U.S. spends bringing one refugee
to the U.S. could have helped 500 individuals overseas in countries where they
currently reside.
21. It has never been reported in the U.S. that 47%
of loans made to refugees for transportation to the U.S. are unpaid leaving an
unpaid balance of $450 million. This amount – slightly out of date, does not
include interest or an unknown amount that has been written off. We will
announce the new balance as soon as it is available.
22. Refugee resettlement is profitable to the
organizations involved in it. They receive money from the federal government
for each refugee they bring over. They have almost no real responsibilities for
these refugees. After 4 months the “sponsoring” organization is not even
required to know where the refugee lives.
There are 9 main major refugee resettlement
organizations (Volags from “Voluntary Agency”) with approximately 450
affiliated organizations throughout the country; many are run by former
refugees. Below are the 9 Volags that operate today:
US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB),
Lutheran Immigrant Aid Society (LIRS),
International Rescue Committee (IRC),
World Relief Corporation,
Immigrant and Refugee Services of America (IRSA),
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS),
Church World Service (CWS),
Domestic and Foreign Missionary Service of the Episcopal Church of the USA,
Ethiopian Community Development Center (ECDC),
Lutheran Immigrant Aid Society (LIRS),
International Rescue Committee (IRC),
World Relief Corporation,
Immigrant and Refugee Services of America (IRSA),
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS),
Church World Service (CWS),
Domestic and Foreign Missionary Service of the Episcopal Church of the USA,
Ethiopian Community Development Center (ECDC),
Below are some of the sources of income for Volags:
a. $1,850 per refugee (including children) from the
State Department.
b. Up to $2,200 for each refugee by participating
in a U.S. DHHS program known as Matching Grant. To get the $2,200, the Volag
need only show it spent $200 and gave away $800 worth of donated clothes,
furniture or cars.
c. The Volag pockets 25% of every transportation
loan it collects from refugees it “sponsors”.
d. All Volag expenses and overhead in the
Washington, DC HQ are paid by the U.S. government.
e. For their refugee programs, Volags collect money
from all federal grant programs – “Marriage Initiative”, “Faith-based”,
“Ownership Society”, etc., as well as from various state and local grants.
The program is so lucrative that in some towns the
Catholic Church has lessened support for traditional charity works to put more
effort into resettlement. It uses collection offerings to promote the refugee
resettlement program.
23. Despite their rhetoric, refugee agencies have
steadfastly refused to use their own resources to maintain the U.S. refugee
resettlement program. Public money has thoroughly driven out private money.
A program known as the Private Sector Initiative
allowed sponsoring agencies to bring over refugees if the agencies were willing
to cover costs of resettlement and support. It was discontinued for lack of use
in the mid-1990s. Today the agencies are on record as opposed to diverting more
federal refugee dollars to overseas refugee assistance (where each dollar will
go further in helping refugees) because it might mean fewer dollars for them!
As with other government-dependent industries there
is a revolving door between the refugee industry and the federal government
which pays its bills.
24. To give an idea of the staying power of the
refugee program:
When we began taking Southeast Asian refugees in
the late 70’s, the refugee agencies hired temporary workers, thinking the
program would only go for a few months. More than 37 years after the last
American left Vietnam we are still taking refugees from South East Asia. At
least 1.5 million have come in as refugees alone. As well, it has detonated
chain migration of non-refugee immigrants.
25. The program is rife with fraud and corruption
at all levels. UN personnel often sell access to the program and once here
refugees make false claims of family relationship in order to facilitate wider
immigration. Government grant fraud is common among local refugee service
providers.
26. The refugee program has a significant impact on
U.S. foreign policy. It also affects internal and foreign policies of other
nations by allowing them to rid themselves of unwanted minorities or close
their borders to asylum seekers in the knowledge that the U.S. will take them
in
--------------
... they continued with their criminal activities
including human smuggling ventures to Canada, ... LTTE in Canada,
the others went to ... stop to these voyages by ...
Muslim “Refugees”
in Italy ... I suggest that those who refuse to eat the food provided be
... The muslim countries not only don’t accept them they shut
them ...
atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/11/-afghan...Cached
... insulted and persecuted by Indian Muslims
and Afghan Muslim refugees in this ... for refugee status
with the United Nations High Commission of Refugees ...
--------
No Muslim Country
Wants to Take in Syrian Refugees
November 11, 2013 by Daniel Greenfield 22
Comments
In all fairness, there’s no Muslim country that
Syrian refugees would want to go to. They’re not even happy with non-Muslim
countries. They’re already whining
about there not being enough jobs in Bulgaria. They want to go from France
to the UK because they heard there’s more free stuff.
And they’re actually so entitled that they’re going
home from Jordan and back to Syria… because apparently things aren’t really
that bad.
So it’s mutual. Syrian Muslim refugees don’t want
to go to a Muslim country and no Muslim country wants to take them. Those that
have, like Egypt and Jordan, didn’t do it too voluntarily and want them out.
Turkey is just storing up Syrian refugees for their regional and civil war.
“There are currently 17 countries
participating in the Syria resettlement/ Humanitarian Admission Programme
efforts. The countries that have made specific pledges are Australia, Austria,
Canada, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Moldova, Netherlands,
New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. In addition, France and the
USA are participating, but have not yet provided specific numbers.”
Why does Moldova want Syrian refugees? It’s a
country with 3.5 million people, a disastrous 1.47 birth rate and with a $306
monthly salary, it’s Europe’s poorest country.
Moldova needs Syrians like
Syria needs a plague of flesh-eating parasites (which it has). Moldova has
Europe’s worst qualities and none of its good qualities. It’s too poor to
absorb Syrians and its birth rate is low enough and its population small enough
that it’s endangering itself by even trying.
But I doubt any Syrians want to go to Moldova. If
they didn’t like Bulgaria, they’ll really hate Moldova. Maybe they should just
stay in Syria and stop killing each other instead of making other countries
into worse places, they could make their own livable.
Right? I forgot for a moment. The Koran is in the
way. Speaking of which, Moldova
sorta refuses to recognize Islam.
The leader of the Communist Party, former
President Vladimir Voronin, pointed out that Moldova resisted the construction
of mosques when it was part of the Ottoman Empire and must continue to do so
today.
“To register [this group] two weeks before
Easter, which is our biggest Orthodox holiday, to register a faith that is the
exact opposite of our own Orthodox religion — this is more than strange,”
Voronin said. “I don’t have words to describe it.”
When a Communist turns to religion as
justification, that’s a singular event. Maybe Moldova didn’t think its “Take in
a bunch of fanatical serial killers from a religion we try to suppress” plan
through.
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at
the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is
completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st
century.
----------------
4-ever.org/human-trafficking
... I could not go out by ... to do more to stop
slavery, now known as human trafficking. ... not adversely affect other
vulnerable groups like refugees or ...
Human Trafficking
Posted: 2005
People with power feed us fiction. We are led to
believe that we can trust our governments to do the right thing most of the
time and stand up for human decency, just like Andrei tricks Lilya into
trusting that he and the fake passport will be her salvation.
Contrary to popular belief, slavery is not dead. It is the third largest global crime, close behind drugs and arms trafficking. Inadequate laws and political apathy means human trafficking (slavery) will grow and grow...
Contrary to popular belief, slavery is not dead. It is the third largest global crime, close behind drugs and arms trafficking. Inadequate laws and political apathy means human trafficking (slavery) will grow and grow...
Page Contents
· Summary put simply
· Why is there human trafficking?
· Is human trafficking a big problem?
· How do victims become slaves?
· How are they kept enslaved?
(Summary put simply) - Vulnerable people, usually poor, are deceived or forced into working
abroad with promises of a better life. When they get there their passports are
taken off them, they are forced to work behind locked doors and beaten or
starved if they refuse. Sometimes they are killed and the threat of murder is
always there. Their "masters" or "owners" make money by
forcing them to work in sweatshops, dangerous jobs or as prostitutes. If the
victim manages to get to the police, she is often not helped because she has no
documents or the crime is not taken seriously. Because she is likely to be
deported to her own country where she will probably be murdered, she doesn't
usually try to contact the authorities and so human trafficking continues to
grow.
Trafficking Introduction
What is human trafficking?
Human trafficking is slave trading. Through force
or by deception, people are taken from their communities so they can be
exploited. Without passports in a foreign country they find they have nowhere
to turn. Their "owners" use violence, starvation and murder to
maintain their power over them. Victims are trafficked into a range of
hazardous working conditions.
Eventually I arrived in a bar in Kosovo,
[and was] locked inside and forced into prostitution. In the bar I was never
paid, I could not go out by myself, the owner became more and more violent as
the weeks went by; he was beating me and raping me and the other girls. We were
his "property", he said. By buying us, he had bought the right to
beat us, rape us, starve us, force us to have sex with clients." - 21 year
old Moldovan woman
Why is there human trafficking?
Human trafficking is a highly profitable route to
wealth and power, now ranking alongside drug and weapons trafficking as the
largest criminal activities.
Is human trafficking a big problem?
Trafficking is a worldwide phenomenon. According to
the US State Department about 900,000 persons, mainly women and children, are
being trafficked annually across borders worldwide. The UN believes the real
figure is between 5 and 10 million, with 2 million being children used, for
example, in domestic service, sweatshops, quarries and factory work. It is
estimated to be a $19 billion industry.
How do the victims become slaves?
· Respond to an attractive 'employment opportunity' ad
· Trust the promises of a boyfriend or friend
· Accept a promise of marriage
· Agree to a deal arranged by poverty-stricken parents
· Or they are abducted
How do the traffickers keep them enslaved?
· Take away their documents
· Blackmail them
· Threaten violence to children and family
· Beat, rape and humiliate
· Lock them in and starve them
· Sell and resell them around international networks
Many countries have no specific laws against
trafficking, so victims are reluctant to report their experiences for fear of
being killed, prosecuted or deported as illegal immigrants. Even in countries
with laws, there is little real protection for victims. The one shelter in the
UK will only assist if the victim agrees to prosecute their captors. With their
horrific history of abuse, the threat of being killed is too real for most to
take that risk. So some seek asylum but do not tell the whole truth. This backfires
on them as their evidence is found not to be credible in court.
The Lasting Solution
The solution is very simple and possible, but we
each have to want it. Fulfillment and peace are already within
us, not on the outside, and we must each know this is true. Only
then will there be a real possibility that the needless problems and craziness
will dissipate. Imho, Prem Rawat has an answer
that can help us all because he backs up his words with the practical experience
of true love or peace. Imho, it will be hard for some people to give up the
power, corruption and lies that make them rich and respected in influential
circles, but anyone with a sincere desire for peace and understanding can learn
to turn within and fulfill their life before it is too late.
Political changes will never fully work unless we
all change as well, but some actions are being taken in the hope that they will
save some suffering. (The links below may be out of date)
Learn More about Human Trafficking
Human Trafficking Org
How You Can Help
Actions Being Taken against Human
Trafficking
(on the web)
Sign the UNICEF
petition against child exploitation (UK)
Write
letters using Amnesty's excellent letter writing guide
Visit Unicef End Child
Exploitation Campaign
Human Rights
Watch needs people to sign letters to help women in Africa and this
would help with many issues including trafficking
Poverty is a
major reason for victims becoming enslaved. There are some fast, easy actions
that can be taken on the 4-Ever poverty
page
Petition against Human Trafficking
(Summary put simply) - This petitions urges governments to do more to stop slavery, now
known as human trafficking. This includes: giving heavier penalties to traffickers
(slave-drivers); signing United Nations agreements; training more people to
spot traffickers; protecting victims of trafficking and helping them as much as
possible; not to send victims back to their own country where they may be
murdered; not to treat victims as if they are criminals because they are not.
We call on all governments to:
Increase
efforts to combat trafficking.
Give full
protection to the victims.
Pass laws so
that punishments for human trafficking reflect the extremely serious nature of
the crime.
Sign and
ratify the United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons (2000) and the UN
Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers (1990).
Train
professionals to look for the signs that a person is a victim of trafficking.
Support victims
of trafficking with counselling, legal, medical, financial and practical
assistance appropriate to their special needs, ie severe trauma, humiliation
and constant threat of death.
Provide
support regardless of whether the victims co-operate with prosecutions. A
trafficked person is not an illegal immigrant or a criminal and their full
human rights must be ensured.
Provide
support from the moment they are recognised until the time they are happily
repatriated or given citizenship.
Ensure that
all anti-trafficking efforts are non-discriminatory and do not adversely affect
other vulnerable groups like refugees or migrants
Increase
public awareness of the hows and whys of trafficking to help prevent vulnerable
people becoming victims and to help in identifying possible victims and
traffickers
I agree and want to sign this petition
Letter Writing
Letter writing is an effective way of making
politicians take action. This sample letter may help you get started. There is
also an excellent
letter writing guide at Amnesty International
Sample letter about Human Trafficking
Dear
I wish to express my concern about human
trafficking and the treatment of its victims.
Vulnerable people, seeking a better life because of
poverty, domestic violence and other pressures they have no control over, are
wickedly exploited, often sexually abused, raped, beaten, starved and otherwise
humiliated by heartless men who make a god of power and money. But when such a
situation is discovered, the trafficker is often not punished appropriately
because of slack laws or because the victim is too afraid and traumatized to
co-operate with the prosecution. As long as this state of affairs continues,
the trafficking will increase because traffickers can make vast profits and get
away with it.
I understand that a Convention on Action Against
Trafficking in Human Beings will shortly come before the European Parliament
which will make trafficking a human rights issue. This will give far more
support to the victims and I heartily welcome this. However, I believe there is
indecision on some points so I urge you to fully support the following measures
so the inhumanity and injustice can be drastically reduced as soon as possible:
a) Trafficked people should be granted a minimum
reflection period of three months. This would allow them to remain in the
country legally while they recover from their ordeal and make an informed
decision about their future.
b) During this time, trafficked people should have
access to the full range of assistance, protection and support services. As
well as the measures already set out in the draft convention, these should
include financial support, educational, training and employment opportunities,
including the possibility of obtaining a work permit.
c) Trafficked people should be granted residence
permits in order to be involved in legal or administrative proceedings, or
where they have suffered or are at risk of serious harm or abuse. Permits
should be for a period of at least six months and should be renewable, with the
possibility of permanent residence being granted, especially to those who
remain vulnerable.
These measures are fundamental to the human rights
of trafficked people and should be taken regardless of whether a trafficked
person co-operates with any prosecution.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to
hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Links to Political Representatives
(Some of the above article, such as the quote,
comes from an Amnesty
International UK article.)
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A CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE- if u
don't have the guts... please don't enter and read the whole article....
CANADA
... been denied access to Canada as a refugee
in the early 1990 ... many refugees are allowed to go free
until ... Refugee Smuggling Ring Brought ...
THIS IS WHAT THE MINISTER HAS SAID:
NOTES FOR AN
ADDRESS BY THE HONOURABLE ELINOR
CAPLAN,
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION, TO
A PRESS
CONFERENCE ON THE TABLING OF THE
IMMIGRATION
AND REFUGEE PROTECTION ACT
OTTAWA,
ONTARIO
APRIL 6, 2000
Check against
delivery
Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here
today.
Just a few moments ago, I tabled a bill in the
House of Commons to create a new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It is
a comprehensive bill that will be supported by new regulations, and by
important administrative changes in my department. It is the product of
substantial consultations, following upon a series of Government commitments.
I will not mince words -- this is a tough bill.
But let's be clear: it is tough on criminal abuse
of our immigration and refugee
protection systems. But not on the overwhelming
majority of immigrants and
refugees who built this country, and who will
continue to do so in the years ahead.
This bill creates severe new penalties for people
smugglers and those caught
trafficking in humans. It calls for a faster but
fair refugee determination system that will be respected.
Criminal abuse of the refugee system will be
countered with front-end security
screening of all claimants, clarified grounds for
detention, fewer appeals for serious criminals, and suspension of claims for
those charged with crimes until the courts have rendered a decision.
By consolidating several current steps and
protection criteria into a single decision at the Immigration and Refugee
Board, and moreover, by combining increased use of single-member panels at the
Board with an internal paper appeal on merit, we will see faster but fair
decisions on refugee claims.
This bill will also strengthen the integrity of our
immigration system. It will deny
sponsorship to those convicted of spousal abuse,
those in default of spousal or
child support payments, and those on social
assistance.
It creates a new inadmissibility class for those
who commit fraud or
misrepresentation on immigration applications. It
requires physical presence in
Canada for at least two of every five years to
maintain permanent resident status.
Canadians have made it clear they want a system
based on respect -- both for our laws, and for our traditional openness to
newcomers.
That is why this new legislation will also improve
our ability to attract more skilled workers, speed up family reunification, and
honour Canada's proud humanitarian tradition of offering safe haven to those
truly in need of protection.
It will strengthen our overseas refugee
resettlement program, expand the family
class, and set out new selection criteria to bring
more highly skilled immigrants to Canada. It will create a new 'in-Canada'
landing class for temporary workers, foreign students and spouses already here
and wishing to stay.
I have made it clear on many occasions that I want
to see Canada's immigration levels increase. With our aging population,
declining birth rates, and skills shortages in key sectors, we need to step up
our efforts to bring the world's best and brightest to Canada.
And this is precisely the point of the bill I
tabled today. Closing the back door to those who would abuse the system will
allow us to open the front door even wider -- both to genuine refugees, and to
the immigrants Canada will need to grow and prosper in the future.
That is the dual mandate of my department.
Here I might add that we should have no illusions about
what we are up against. Since the initial passage of the current Immigration
Act in 1976, the world has changed dramatically. More than ever before, people
are on the move. For trade, tourism, investment, and education. To develop
their skills, share their knowledge, and pursue their dreams. Canada has been
an enormous beneficiary of this global movement of people. Immigration is a
continuing source of our social, economic and cultural richness.
But organized criminals are also on the move, and
threats to public health and
safety must always be taken seriously. In the eight
months since I assumed this
portfolio, I have learned that the business of
Citizenship and Immigration Canada is one of risk management. I have also
learned that we have not always been very good at it. We must -- and we will --
do better.
Administrative changes are under way to provide
overdue support to key offices at home and abroad in their efforts to improve
client service, reduce backlogs,minimize litigation and confront every and any
grievance or allegation of malfeasance quickly and fairly.
Funding announced in the recent Federal Budget will
provide for strengthened
overseas interdiction, more immigration officers at
our ports of entry, better medical and security screening of applicants, and an
improved capacity for the timely removal of inadmissible persons from Canada.
Taken together -- these steps, this new funding,
and the bill I tabled this morning -- will better enable Canada to both meet
the challenges, and take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead.
In closing, I want to point out that this bill is
the result of extensive consultations since 1994, with Canadians, provincial
and territorial ministers and officials, and countless non-governmental
organizations.
In particular, I wish to thank: the members of the
Legislative Review Advisory Group for their seminal report; my predecessor, the
Honourable Lucienne Robillard, for an outstanding government White Paper and
productive series of national consultations; the Immigration Section of the
Canadian Bar Association, for the very frank exchange of views we have enjoyed
along the way; the Canadian Council for Refugees; the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees: l'Acadie du Québec; the Interfaith Council of Churches
and finally, members of the House Standing Committee on Citizenship and
Immigration, for their excellent report on the refugee determination system. I
look forward to working with them as they
begin to study this bill.
Thank you. I welcome your questions.
[1] This
is the case in Canadian Criminal law. The Canadian Criminal Code establishes
two crimes related to identity fraud—Forgery of or uttering passport (Section
57) and fraudulent use of certificate of citizenship (Section 58) (Watt &
Fuerst, 1998) .
[2]
Canada is currently in the midst of a Commons Subcommittee series of hearings
into organized crime. Witnesses are presently being called to testify. These
hearings are in camera which basically means that there will not be scrutiny or
debate regarding the information that is presented.
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IMMIGRATION WATCH CANADA...
Canada – Immigration
Intake, 1860 to 2013
Home
Immigration Watch Canada is an organization of
Canadians who believe that immigration has to serve the interests of its own
citizens. It cannot be turned into a social assistance / job-finding program
for people from other countries. It should not be a method to suppress wages
and provide employers with an unending supply of low-wage labour. It should
never be a social engineering experiment that is conducted on Canada’s
mainstream population in order to make it a minority. **
But immigration has become those three things.
Why? In particular, why has Canada’s average
250,000 per year immigration intake remained in place for over 23 years?
The answer is that for many decades, Canada’s major
political parties have assumed that, on the immigration issue in particular,
they know better than average Canadians. This attitude and the promotion of
political party self-interest manifested itself particularly in 1990 when one
political party (the Progressive Conservatives) increased immigration levels to
250,000 per year.
At the time they did this, they actually announced
they were doing so in order to capture more of the immigrant vote. This may
sound hard to believe because it is so brazen, but it is a fact. Since then,
all other parties have adopted the same policy. All pretend that their actions
are helping people in the rest of the world and that this immigration flood is
also literally and figuratively enriching Canadian society.
The reality is that Canada’s average 250,000 per
year immigration intake since 1990 has been far too high. In fact, Canada’s
intake is the highest per capita in the world. And it has obviously been
destructive and senseless.
What are some examples of the destruction and
senselessness?
Our high intake has had major negative economic
consequences for Canadians who are looking for work. In fact, it has forced
many of Canada’s own unemployed to compete with immigrants for a limited number
of jobs and it has impoverished many Canadians .
And speaking of impoverishment, relentless high
immigration has resulted in two developments : (1) relentless high demand for a
basic human need such as housing and (2) relentless increases in house prices.
The urban area which is the best example of this is Metro Vancouver where house
prices are now the second highest in the world. Much of the population can no
longer afford house ownership. In cases where the existing population has
bought housing, they have had to take on huge mortgages.
This development and the continued pursuit of the
“Diversity” social engineering project have led many Canadians to conclude that
they are being ethnically cleansed and that Canada is being re-colonized.
Finally, many Canadians see with their own eyes
that Canada’s high intake has also turned many areas of the country into
crowded, grid-locked, environmental disasters-in-progress—duplicates of the environmental
catastrophes many recent immigrants come from.
We repeat one basic question :
Why Is Canada bringing in 250,000+ immigrants per
year? Ottawa has never provided a logical answer to that question. In fact, it
has pretended that current immigration is no different from past immigration.
It has also withheld vital information or tried to deceive Canadians by making
false claims about the benefits of immigration.
We believe Canada should have some immigration, but
that immigration levels should be reduced to about 25,000, that is, to about
10% of the current annual 250,000 intake. We advocate that the 25,000 intake
level should be kept in place indefinitely to compensate for the immigration
disaster that has occurred in the past 23 years.
We also advocate a significant reduction to
Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program which in 2012 allowed well over
300,000 non-Canadians to work in Canada. This program is being widely abused by
employers and should probably be reduced to nearly zero. In any recession (this
past one and others), it is madness for a country to be importing large numbers
of immigrants as well as large numbers of Temporary Foreign Workers.
In addition to a reduction of Canada’s immigration
intake to 25,000 per year and a dramatic cut to Canada’s Temporary Foreign
Worker program, we also call for major reform to many of Canada’s other
immigration policies. (See our Basics section for
details.)
** For background on major immigration policy
changes made in the 1960’s and 70’s, click on the following summaries of
excellent research done by reporter Doug Collins in his book “Immigration : The
Destruction Of English Canada” :
French
Immigration Watch Canada est une organisation de
Canadiens qui croient que l’immigration doit servir les intérêts de ses propres
citoyens et ne doit pas être transformé en un programme d’aide sociale / de
recherche d’emploi pour les personnes d’autres pays. Elle ne doit pas non plus
etre une méthode pour diminuer les salaires et fournir aux employeurs un
approvisionnement sans fin de main-d’œuvre à faible cout. Finalement, Les
pratiques d’immigration ne devraient jamais être une expérience d’ingénierie
sociale qui est menée sur la population du Canada afin d’en faire une minorité.
**
Mais l’immigration est devenue ces trois choses.
Pourquoi? En particulier, pourquoi le chiffre de
250 000 nouveaux arrivants par an en moyenne est le meme depuis plus de 23 ans?
La réponse est que pendant de nombreuses décennies,
les principaux partis politiques du Canada ont cru que, sur la question de
l’immigration en particulier, ils sont mieux informes que la moyenne des
Canadiens. Cette attitude et la promotion d’interets propres aux partis se
manifestent notamment en 1990, quand un parti politique (les
progressistes-conservateurs) a augmenté les niveaux d’immigration à 250 000 par
an.
Au moment où ils l’ont fait, ils ont en fait
annoncé qu’ils le faisaient pour augmenter leur part du vote immigrant.Cela
peut sembler difficile à croire mais c’ est un fait. Depuis lors, toutes les
autres partis ont adopté cette même politique. Tous prétendent que leurs
actions aident des individus dans le reste du monde et que ce flot
d’immigration ,au sens propre et au figuré,enrichit la société canadienne.
La réalité est que cette moyenne de 250 000
immigrants par an depuis 1990 est beaucoup trop élevée.En fait, ce pourcentage
par habitant, le plus eleve dans le monde,a évidemment été destructeur et
insensée.
Quels pouraient etre des exemples de cette
destruction et de cette absurdite?
Cette augmentation massive de la population a eu
des conséquences économiques négatives pour les Canadiens qui cherchent du travail.
En fait, elle a forcé un grand nombre de chômeurs à rivaliser avec les
immigrants pour un nombre limité d’emplois et elle a appauvri de nombreux
Canadiens.
Et en parlant de l’appauvrissement, cette forte et
incessante immigration a resulte en deux développements: (1) une forte et
incessante demande pour un besoin humain fondamental, comme le logement et (2)
les augmentations incessantes des prix des logements. La zone urbaine qui en
est le meilleur exemple de cela est Metro Vancouver, où les prix des maisons
sont maintenant les deuxièmes les plus eleves dans le monde. Une grande partie
de la population ne peut plus se permettre de faire l’achat d’une propriété. Et
quand cette meme population fait l’achat d’un logement, elle doit contracter
d’énormes prêts hypothécaires.
Ce développement et la poursuite continuelle de ce
projet d’ingénierie sociale nomme la “diversité” ont conduit de nombreux
Canadiens à conclure qu’ils sont victime de nettoyage ethnique et que le Canada
est en processus de re-colonisation.
Enfin, de nombreux Canadiens voient de leurs
propres yeux que cette augmentation élevée de la population Canadienne a
également transforme de nombreuses régions du pays en zones surpeuplees et
congestionnes qui sont de veritables catastrophes ecologique en cours de
developpement,similaires a celles dont de nombreux immigrants sont issus.
Nous répétons une question fondamentale:
Pourquoi le Canada admet 250,000+ immigrants par
année? Ottawa n’a jamais fourni une réponse logique à cette question. En fait,
il a ete prétendu que l’immigration actuelle ne différe aucunement de celle du
passé. Les gouvernements ont également cache des informations vitales ou tenté
de tromper les Canadiens en faisant de fausses déclarations sur les avantages
de l’immigration.
Nous croyons que le Canada devrait avoir une
certaine immigration, mais que les niveaux d’immigration devrait être réduit à
environ 25 000, ce est à environ 10% du courant annuel 250,000 admission. Nous
préconisons que ce niveau de 25 000 devrait être maintenu en place indéfiniment
pour contrebalancer la catastrophe demographique qui s’est produite dans les 23
dernières années.
Nous préconisons également une réduction
significative des travailleurs étrangers temporaires programme du Canada,qui en
2012 a permis a plus de 300 000 non-Canadiens de travailler au Canada. Ce
programme est grandement abusé par les employeurs et devrait probablement être
réduit à près de zéro. Durant toute récession (la derniere et les precedentes),
c’est une folie pour un pays d’admettre un grand nombre d’immigrants et de
travailleurs temporaires étrangers.
En plus d’une réduction du nombre dl’immigrants à
25 000 annuellement et une réduction radicale du programme des travailleurs
étrangers temporaires au Canada,nous appelons également à une réforme majeure
concernant d’autres politiques d’immigration du Canada. (Voir notre section
Basics pour plus de détails.)
** Pour des informations sur les principaux
changements de politique d’immigration faites dans les années 1960 et 70,
cliquez sur les extraits de l’excellent livre “La Destruction du Canada
anglais»:par le journaliste Doug Collins.
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TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN- GIRLS AND BOYS 4 SEX.....
TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN- GIRLS AND BOYS 4 SEX.....
CANADA: Local Safety Audit Guide:
To Prevent Trafficking in Persons And Related Exploitation
and..
3 charges have been laid under section 118 of the
Immigration and Refugee ... smuggling of migrants and trafficking
... Patrolling and surveillance of hot spots.
------------------
... been denied access to Canada as a refugee
in the early 1990 ... many refugees are allowed to go free
until ... Refugee Smuggling Ring Brought ...
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ccrweb.ca/traffick.html - Cached"Smuggling
of migrants" refers to the intentional procurement for profit of the
illegal ... The 1980s and 1990s saw Western and other countries putting
increasing energy ... The more states invest in measures to prevent "improperly
documented ..... with refugee obligations and goes beyond criminally organized
smuggling.
illegal ... The 1980s and 1990s saw Western and other countries putting
increasing energy ... The more states invest in measures to prevent "improperly
documented ..... with refugee obligations and goes beyond criminally organized
smuggling.
---
www.csmonitor.com/1996/1113/111396.intl.intl.2.html - Cached
- Similar13
Nov 1996 ... Canada is becoming a major gateway for people being smuggled
across the ...
by smuggling rings through border "hot spots" near Vancouver, B.C., ... But with
our geography and all the waterways, we can't stop it or cover it all," Mitchell says
. ... A 1990 land dispute led to a gun battle in Oka, Quebec, on the ...-
by smuggling rings through border "hot spots" near Vancouver, B.C., ... But with
our geography and all the waterways, we can't stop it or cover it all," Mitchell says
. ... A 1990 land dispute led to a gun battle in Oka, Quebec, on the ...-
----------
www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary.../13rp01 - Cached
- Similar5
Feb 2013 ... Knowledge gained from people smugglers ... [2]
Nonetheless, the literature
provides some insights into the choices ... The number one factor determining
where refugees go when they leave their country of origin is geography. .....
Some respondents indicated that they had wanted to go to Canada all along ...
[PDF] –
provides some insights into the choices ... The number one factor determining
where refugees go when they leave their country of origin is geography. .....
Some respondents indicated that they had wanted to go to Canada all along ...
[PDF] –
---
www.unhcr.org/4444afc80.pdf - Cached
- Similarhinges
on its real and perceived impact on international security.2 .... East
Timor
to try and prevent refugees in West Timor from returning home.10. 65.
[PDF]
to try and prevent refugees in West Timor from returning home.10. 65.
[PDF]
---------------
www.wlu.ca/documents/51001/2011a_Political_geography.pdf - Cachedsmuggling,
detention, asylum, and associated policies play out along the
geographical margins of the nation-state. ... become refugees or asylum-seekers
because of their location at ... Page 2 ... seekers throughout the 1990s and into
the new millennium, states ... After research in Canada, I went on to examine
enforcement.
geographical margins of the nation-state. ... become refugees or asylum-seekers
because of their location at ... Page 2 ... seekers throughout the 1990s and into
the new millennium, states ... After research in Canada, I went on to examine
enforcement.
www.pressreader.com/ - SimilarAccident
would be worst involving refugee flow in Mediterranean. berlin ...
Prosecutors also offered more insight into what went wrong in the inky waters that
night. .... Teva estimated a deal could generate $ 2 billion annually in cost and tax
savings. ...... The apparent futility of stopping the smugglers means Europe
should ...
[PDF]
Prosecutors also offered more insight into what went wrong in the inky waters that
night. .... Teva estimated a deal could generate $ 2 billion annually in cost and tax
savings. ...... The apparent futility of stopping the smugglers means Europe
should ...
[PDF]
----------------
www.unodc.org/documents/.../An_Annotated_Bibliography_2_web.pdfII: Definitions for research
methodology applied in allocating key words ...
Particular appreciation and gratitude for support and advice go to Morgane Nicot
...... in several Canadian newspapers to identify issues of ..... migration that have
been published since the 1990s. .... measures to prevent Rohingya refugees
arriving on.
Particular appreciation and gratitude for support and advice go to Morgane Nicot
...... in several Canadian newspapers to identify issues of ..... migration that have
been published since the 1990s. .... measures to prevent Rohingya refugees
arriving on.
----
[PDF]
www.immi.gov.au/pub-res/.../global-irregular-maritime-migration.pdf - Cached4.2
Non-state actors and people smuggling . .... Figure 2: Global
internet and
mobile telephone access . .... This figure includes 10.5 million refugees, 925,000
asylum seekers, and 17.6 million ..... Between 1990 and 2013, the estimated ...
the three 'South-North' hotspots of the US, Europe and Australia, as the examples
of ...
mobile telephone access . .... This figure includes 10.5 million refugees, 925,000
asylum seekers, and 17.6 million ..... Between 1990 and 2013, the estimated ...
the three 'South-North' hotspots of the US, Europe and Australia, as the examples
of ...
---
thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/132844-special-report-cargo-of-misery
2015-03-12 · SPECIAL REPORT: Cargo of Misery.
... that ought to stop smuggling. ... Refugees have come to Canada's
shores for years from Ireland to Chile to Sri ...
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Farewell to the United Nations?
From the desk of Fjordman
on Fri, 2006-07-28 07:07
Historian David Littman is a representative to
the United Nations (Geneva) of the Association for World Education. He has
spent years tracking the rise of Islamic influence at the UN. According to him,
“In recent years, representatives of some Muslim states have demanded, and
often received, special treatment at the United Nations.” “As a result,
non-diplomatic terms such as ‘blasphemy’ and ‘defamation of Islam’ have seeped
into the United Nations system, leading to a situation in which non-Muslim
governments accept certain rules of conduct in conformity with Islamic law (the
Shari’a) and acquiesce to a self-imposed silence regarding topics touching on
Islam.”
On August 5, 1990, the 19th Islamic Conference of
Foreign Ministers adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
According to the official English version, “All the rights and freedoms
stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’a.” The CDHRI
has since then become “a quotable source at the United Nations.”
David Littman warns that “The new rules of conduct
being imposed by the OIC [the Organization of the Islamic Conference], and
acceded to by other states, give those who claim to represent Islam an
exceptional status at the United Nations that has no legal basis and no
precedent.” “Will a prohibition of discussion about certain political aspects
of Islam become generally accepted at the United Nations and beyond,
contradicting ‘the right to freedom of opinion and expression’ promised by
Article XIX of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Unless farsighted
states, both Muslim and non-Muslim, make it their business to assert and
reassert the need for freedom of speech, this precious liberty is at risk of
being eroded throughout the system of international organizations.”
Fifty-seven Muslim governments are pressing to
include a “ban on the mocking of religions” in a new U.N.
human rights body by pushing a resolution under the agenda item “Racism”
condemning what they called the “Defamation of Islam.” In a clear reference to
the Muhammad cartoons controversy, the proposal stated that “defamation of
religions and prophets is inconsistent with the right to freedom of
expression.”
The United Nations High Commissioner on Human
Rights Louise Arbour involved herself in the discussion during the
tensions caused by the Danish cartoons. In a letter to the 56 member countries
of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), she stated: “I understand
your concerns and would like to emphasize that I regret any statement or act
that could express a lack of respect for other people’s religion.” In a
complaint to the High Commissioner, the 56 Islamic governments asked Louise
Arbour to raise the matter with the Danish government “to help contain this
encroachment on Islam, so the situation won’t get out of control.” Two UN
experts, on religious freedom and on racism and xenophobia, were said to be working
on the case.
Danish toy maker Lego was later upset with the
United Nations, after the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
published an “anti-discrimination” poster that used a Lego
building block as an illustration of racism. At the same time, David Littman
documents the relative UN inaction regarding hateful material used in public
schools in Islamic countries. An example is an extract from a book approved by
al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, widely viewed as maybe the most important
centre of learning for a billion Sunni Muslims. Pious justifications are
offered to Egyptian Grade 11 students concerning the reasons for beheading
infidels:
“When you meet them in order to fight [them], do
not be seized by compassion [toward them], but strike the[ir] necks powerfully
[…] Striking the neck means fighting, because killing a person is often done by
striking off his head […] This expression contains a harshness and emphasis
that are not found in the word ‘kill’, because it describes killing in the
ugliest manner, ‘i.e. cutting the neck and making the organ – the head of the
body – fly off [the body]’.”
This is now commonplace in Iraq, where more than
one hundred foreign hostages have been ritually beheaded. It is also used by
Muslim Jihadists against, among others, teachers in the troubled southern
provinces of Thailand, since they are viewed as infidel representatives of the
predominantly Buddhist state. As scholar Andrew Bostom demonstrates, the Islamic practice of beheading originates from
Islamic core teachings, such as the Koran sura 47, verse 4, which says: “When
you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their]
necks.” Muhammad and his followers also beheaded some 600 to 900 men from the Jewish tribe of Banu
Qurayza outside of Medina, enslaving their women and children.
While Islamic nations are trying to get the UN to
outlaw criticism of Islam on an international basis, UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan assures Americans that the plan of leaving the UN in charge of the Internet is nothing to
worry about, it is only to make the Internet more efficient. “One mistaken
notion is that the United Nations wants to ‘take over,’ police or otherwise
control the Internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United Nations
wants only to ensure the Internet’s global reach,” according to Annan.
Even as they were passing six resolutions
condemning Israel, the United Nations General Assembly failed to define terrorism because the
Organization of the Islamic Conference demanded exceptions for terror gangs
like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the head-hacking Al Qaeda holy warriors in Iraq.
Still, Secretary General Kofi Annan praised the OIC, an organization consisting of
some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, stating that “Over the years,
and especially the past decade, the United Nations and the Organization of the
Islamic Conference have worked to promote tolerance, equality, development and
the peaceful resolution of conflict.”
In contrast, Kofi Annan’s deputy assailed the United States
for withholding support from the United Nations, encouraging its harshest
detractors. Mr Malloch Brown said that although the United States was
constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American
public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he
called “too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.” “Much of the public
discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its
loudest detractors such as Fox News,” he said. UN Ambassador from the United
States John Bolton strongly rebuked the remarks, calling the speech by Annan’s
deputy a “very grave mistake.”
Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have
repeatedly called for the annihilation of fellow UN member Israel. Announcing
the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad reiterated Iran’s goal of “wiping Israel off the map.” The day
before, the UN’s Disarmament Commission, the organization
that is supposed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, elected
Iran’s Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi as one of its three vice-chairs. Iran denounced the
election of Israel to that same commission, calling the Jewish state a threat
to peace in
the Middle East.
the Middle East.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said no UN
Security Council resolution could make Iran give up its nuclear program. “The
Iranian nation “won’t give a damn about such useless resolutions”
he said, hours before an expected finding that Tehran has failed to meet a
Security Council deadline to suspend uranium enrichment. The Islamic Republic
of Iran has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens and is the source of
grotesque human rights abuses. It is also the long-time sponsor of Islamic
terrorist organizations abroad and has openly threatened to wipe out another
country with nuclear weapons. Despite all of this, the country is still a full
member of the United Nations, technically treated the same was as Switzerland.
The old UN Human Rights Commission was a body so
discredited that it was eventually disbanded. UN critic Anne Bayefsky warned, however, that the new
design “promises an institution more contemptible than its predecessor.” The
election of some of the world’s worst violators of free expression – Algeria,
Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia – to be members of the UN’s new
Human Rights Council was called a “scandal” by organization Reporters Without Borders:
“There is no difference between the composition of
the former Human Rights Commission – whose work was unanimously condemned by
NGOs, and by many countries as well – and that of the new council,” Reporters
Without Borders said. “They have taken the same countries and started over.
What is more, seven of these 10 countries have been elected for three-year terms,
the longest envisaged under the council's rules, terms that can be renewed
once. So the reforms adopted by the United Nations are clearly insufficient.
The UN will not guarantee respect for human rights in the world in the future
any more than it has in the past.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants to
reform the UN. He states that “it is time the world’s governments
faced up to the fact that the world bodies founded in the aftermath of World War
II have become moribund and ineffective. Whereas 60 years ago the world was
divided into nation states that could operate more or less independently of
each other, now international leaders are confronting an ever diminishing world
brought intimately together by globalization, a technological revolution that
has led to revolutionary approaches to labor employment, and greater economic
interdependence between states.” “Yet the world bodies have not kept up with
the economic and social progress of the last 60 years.”
Mr. Blair has said he believes that world bodies
like the United Nations have not only an important but a leading part still to
play in extending freedom to the whole world. But if the United Nations is to
take up this task, it must reform itself so that it becomes a body that
inspires respect from the world because of the wisdom of its leadership. Mr.
Blair will demand that Mr. Annan be replaced by a strong successor as Secretary
General, who should be granted greater independence from the General Assembly
in intervening in world crises.
Still, the question remains whether the UN is
simply so fundamentally flawed that it is beyond repair. Given the Islamic
infiltration of the organization, granting more power to it probably isn’t a
very good idea.
Hugh Fitzgerald of website Jihad Watch compares
the UN to its failed predecessor, the League of Nations: “The League of Nations
was not a mess in the 1920s. It became a mess when, in the 1930s, it could not
handle Mussolini or Hitler, and failed. The U.N. was not originally a mess when
founded, with such tutelary spirits as Rene Cassin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It
became a mess sometime when more and more ‘countries’ that were primitive
despotisms became members.” “Only a fool nowadays would use a phrase such as
‘international community,’ which attempts to treat Syria and Iceland as the
same kind of members, or Costa Rica and Saudi Arabia, as similarly situated and
behaving. There are no ‘united’ nations.”
He also points out the Palestinian fetish and the
ridiculous amount of time spent at the UN on denouncing one single country,
Israel. “How is it that the behavior of tiny Israel has become the Central
Question of the Age, while the Jihad is pursued in Indonesia, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, the Philippines, Kashmir, the Sudan, the Balkans, Central Asia, West
Africa, everywhere, without a single resolution denouncing [it]?” This monomaniacal
attention to Israel means that there is far less attention paid to other
issues:
“A sensible policy requires that the American
government every day make efforts to promote among Infidel countries and
peoples an understanding of how the UN has been infiltrated, and essentially
commandeered, by the forces of Islam: the Islamintern, it might be called. And
then to minimize the power, the respect, and the legitimacy still accorded to
the UN, this most corrupt and corrupting of institutions. And finally, it must
seek not to do the impossible – to truly reform this organization – but to
treat it as it should be treated: as hopeless, useless, and irrelevant as was
the League of Nations when confronted with the Nazi-Fascist attacks in Spain,
Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, and Nazi Germany’s annexation of the
Saarland and re-militarization of the Rhineland.”
Fitzgerald thinks that “Unlike the League of
Nations, it will not be closed down. But it should be ignored or mocked.” For
once, I am not sure I totally agree with Hugh Fitzgerald, a man I otherwise
hold in very high esteem. There are those who argue that the UN is useless,
that it costs billions of dollars to maintain, without any proof that this
helps to ensure world peace. I disagree. I think the UN can be quite useful. To
our enemies, that is. It is easy to say that we should remain members of the UN
and just “ignore” it, but I’m afraid this won’t work out. There will always be
people within the West who take the UN seriously, and in reality, some of its
resolutions will
influence our domestic policies.
influence our domestic policies.
Roger Scruton points out that the UN granted to the Soviet Union “the kind of
legitimacy that it could never have acquired through the conduct of its
leadership.” “The Soviet Union used the U.N. and its ancillary institutions as
a front. It supported the capture of the United Nations Association (an
independent nonprofit organization which was founded to rally support for the
international idea) by the peaceniks and encouraged the transformation of
UNESCO into an instrument of leftist and anti-Western propaganda.” Soviet
Communists recognized the UN “only as a way to neutralize Western defenses.”
Some would argue that Islamic countries are copying
this strategy now. As Scruton states, there is another, more dangerous effect
of the UN institutions, and one that is insufficiently pondered by Western
politicians:
“Both the U.N. and many of its ancillary and
subordinate institutions have legislative powers. They can use the original
force of the Charter to bind national legislatures to measures that may be
profoundly against the national interest. These measures will often be a huge
burden to law-abiding states but no burden at all to dictatorships. Yet the
dictatorships have as much right to press for them as the law-abiding states.
In effect, the lawless have acquired, through the U.N., the power to bind the
law-abiding in chains that they themselves escape.”
“One pertinent example is the U.N. Convention on
refugees and asylum, ratified in 1951, which obliges every signatory to offer
asylum to those fleeing from persecution. This means that Western states, which
are bound by their own laws, are forced to admit hundreds of thousands of
unwanted immigrants every year, simply because well-briefed lawyers invoke the
convention on asylum on their behalf. Most of these immigrants stay even when
their claims to asylum are exposed as bogus. The result, in Europe, is a
demographic crisis that threatens to rock the foundations of domestic policy.”
To use my own country, Norway, as an example, some
UN Conventions are directly incorporated into Norwegian law. This can have
serious practical consequences. UN representatives have, for instance,
criticized Norwegian anti-racism laws for not being strict enough. And the
Norwegian Minister of Justice responded by saying the Norway would work to get
more in line with UN recommendations. When we know that Islamic countries in
the UN are working hard to get “Islamophobia,” meaning basically anything
remotely critical of Islam, to be accepted as a form of “racism,” it becomes
extremely dangerous to allow UN authorities to influence domestic policies on
such critical issues. Recommendations from the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees have also been used to influence Norwegian immigration policies.
Admittedly, Norway is one of the more naïve, if not plain stupid countries of
the world, but this still illustrates a genuine problem common to all Western
nations.
There is usually a close correlation between those
in the West who champion Multiculturalism and those who champion the United
Nations as in important tool of international affairs. We have an internal
enemy that is post-democratic or even post-Western. They believe in
Multiculturalism at home, transnational organizations, “international law” and
the United Nations abroad. They are weakening Western civilization from within.
Multiculturalism essentially means that all
countries should become just like the UN, with hosts of cultures living
together on equal terms and without any core culture. Multiculturalism states
that all cultures are equally worthy or respect. The basic principle of the UN
is that all nations are equally worthy of membership. Which means that the
Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran should be accepted on
equal terms with, say, New Zealand. This is obviously ridiculous. Not all
countries are worthy or respect, just as not all cultures are worthy of
respect. It is an insult to human dignity that peaceful, democratic states
should be treated the same way as terror sponsoring states that oppress their
own population.
Our external enemy is the Islamic world. Our
internal and our external enemies converge at the UN. Islamic countries want to
use the UN as a tool to influence Western and infidel policies, bogging us down
with regulations that make it more difficult to avoid being demographically
overwhelmed by Muslim immigrants, placing obstacles in the way of stopping
terrorist supporters in our countries and from dealing with nations supporting
terrorism and Jihadist activities. Meanwhile, Islamic countries will ignore any
“human rights” resolutions and will continue with impunity their oppression of
Hindus, Christians or other non-Muslims in their own lands. All cultures are
equal, but some are more equal than others. There can be no United Nations with
Canada and Syria since these countries have absolutely nothing in common.
By discrediting or withdrawing from the UN, we will
thus weaken both our external and our internal enemies. It would be more
difficult for Islamic countries to influence infidel policies, and it would
deal an ideological blow to Multiculturalists and transnational progressives,
since the UN is the ultimate symbol of their world view of and a cornerstone of
their ideology. It is easier to oppose Multiculturalism on a national scale if
we first oppose it on an international scale.
So yes, I agree with Hugh Fitzgerald that we should
starve the United Nations for funds, we should ridicule it at any given
opportunity and we should de-legitimize it as much as possible. But I’m not
sure whether this is enough in the long run. At some point, I think we need to
pull the plug on the entire organization, make a clean break and withdraw from
it.
Which brings us to the next question: How should
international affairs be managed in this post-UN world?
As website EYE on the
UN points out, “at the foundation of the UN in 1945, democracy
dominated the character of the majority of member states, despite pockets of
instability. Nevertheless, democracy was not made a pre-condition for
membership in the UN. Sixty years later, the majority of UN members are not
full-fledged democracies. The consequences for UN operations and outcomes are
profound.”
The number of UN member states that are
full-fledged democracies or “fully free” according to Freedom House is 88. The
total number of UN member states is 191, which means that less than half of UN
member states are full-fledged democracies. Any workable organization needs to
be united around something that the member states actually have in common.
We could create a Democratic Union, where only
democratic states could become members. This would automatically exclude pretty
much all of the Islamic world, which would by itself be a great step forward.
However, there is always the possibility that such an organization could become
too much like the United Nations or the League of Nations, and become just as
impotent and inefficient as its predecessors.
Some would argue that we need an organization for
the entire world to “engage” the non-democratic states and spread democracy
through interaction with them. This is a naïve view of world politics. There is
little evidence that the UN has contributed to “spreading democracy.” On the
contrary, it could have the dangerous effect of giving influence over
democracies to the world’s worst regimes. Besides, if we want organizations
that span the entire world, we already have non-political organizations for
this. I don’t mind playing volleyball against Egypt or football against Saudi
Arabia, I just don’t want either of them to have any political influence over
my country.
Another possibility is an expansion of NATO. Jose
Maria Aznar, former Prime Minister of Spain, has argued along these
lines. Although not saying that we should dump the UN, he has advocated
strengthening and renewing NATO:
“The main purpose of NATO should remain to
collectively preserve our democracies. The new mission should be clear: to
combat jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” “I don’t
believe in appeasement against terrorism. I don’t believe in negotiation with
terrorism. I believe in the necessity to fight against terrorists. It is a very
serious mistake to negotiate with terrorism. Terrorists should be frightened
and defeated, and this is possible. No other policy exists for me.”
“If defending our own values against the radical
Islamists is the future of NATO, we must change the way the
Alliance is conceived geographically and open its doors to those nations that
share our values, that defend them on the ground, and that are willing to join
in the fight against jihadism. Thus, NATO should invite Japan, Australia, and
Israel to become full members.” “For me, Israel is a vital part of the Western
world.”
Expanding NATO geographically to Japan could be a
good idea. I have earlier stated that we have probably arrived at the end of the Western world order, meaning that
no one civilization will alone be able to manage world affairs in the 21st century,
the way the West did for some time. What the West should do is to enter into
strategic alliances with non-Western states that share some of our political
ideals and goals. We might consider some other Asian nations besides Japan.
India, for instance. Maybe the UN is one holy cow the Hindus of India would be
willing to slaughter. The greatest flaw with India as a potential ally is its
huge Islamic fifth column.
Still, there are problems with this option, too.
There are those who think NATO is just a relic from the Cold War. NATO
countries would theoretically be bound together by culture. In practice, this
is made difficult by the existence of the European Union, which is by many
viewed as a vehicle for countering the United States. The EU also serves as an
instrument for our internal enemy of Multiculturalism and transnational
post-democrats, as well as a bridgehead for our external enemy, Islam. Maybe we
need to get rid of the EU, too, for NATO to function properly.
Besides, NATO hasn’t always worked that well in
practice, either. The attacks on the embassies of NATO member Denmark following
the Muhammad cartoons didn’t trigger any response from NATO, although it was
pretty close to an act of war. The Western world did not rally around Denmark,
nor did NATO declare that these attacks on one member state would be viewed as
an attack on all member states. This inaction confronted with physical attacks
by Islamic thug states such as Iran and Syria was a shameful act of appeasement
that is going to cost us dearly.
Kosovo, which has become a hotbed of international
crime and Jihadist activities, could soon become an independent state, courtesy
of NATO. Western powers bombed the Christian Serbs to pave for ethnic cleansing
and the burning of churches and monasteries, all under the auspices of NATO
soldiers. NATO thus directly established a Muslim state in Europe, but did
nothing when the Islamic world launched a frontal assault in Western core
values such as freedom of speech. We shouldn’t kid ourselves into believing
that this has gone unnoticed in the Islamic world.
Another issue with both the Democratic Union and
the expanded NATO options is what to do with Russia and China. Russia under
Putin is hardly a model democracy, and China under the Communist Party certainly
isn’t. But both countries are simply too important to ignore in international
affairs. China in particular is probably, next to the Islamic world, our
greatest challenge in the future. There is, however, a big difference. The
Islamic world always has been our enemy and always will be. China does not have
to be our enemy, although our relations will be complicated because of her size
and her own Great Power ambitions.
Neither Russia nor China would be happy about the
loss of their vetos on the UN Security Council. We will need some understanding
with and some mechanism for consultations with both of them. It is nice to talk
about lofty ideals about democracy and human rights, but in the real world, we
still need a good dose of Machiavellian realpolitik as well. Perhaps, instead
of any new and formalized organization, the most important countries will
simply form ad hoc alliances to deal with issues as they arise.
I do not have all the answers to how such a post-UN
world will be like. The most important principle at this point is to isolate
and contain the Islamic world. We simply cannot allow our enemies to have
direct influence over our policies, which they partly do have through the UN.
Is it unrealistic to talk about the collapse of the
EU and the UN? I don’t know. The UN was created in the aftermath of WW2. It
survived the Cold War, but now we are rapidly entering into a new world war. My
bet is that we will see huge changes in world affairs in the near future, at least
as large as those which laid the foundations for the UN to begin with.
Whatever usefulness the UN may have had was lost
decades ago. It is today of little use to us, but of significant use to our
enemies. The time has come to say farewell to the United Nations.
------------
A sea of troubles: Canada’s plan to confront
human-smuggling by following Australia’s lead worries refugee advocates
----------------
Migrant
smuggling and trafficking in persons
20 February 2000
|
"There are continual
attempts by undesirables of alien and impoverished nationalities to enter Canada, but these
attempts will be checkedas much as possible at their source." Canadian
immigration official, 1923
|
Introduction
In recent years there has
developed an increasing international focus on combatting migrant smuggling
and trafficking in persons. Among other regional and international
initiatives, two of the first three protocols to the UN Convention against
Transnational Organization Crime (TOC) currently being negotiated are on
migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons (the third relates to firearms).
This suggests the priority accorded to the issue by the international
community.
Despite the fact that these
discussions have an impact on refugees seeking asylum, refugee advocates have
been largely absent. On the issue of trafficking, however, human rights and
women's organizations have been very active.
This paper reviews the issues
and particularly the draft protocols, from firstly a refugee perspective, and
secondly a migrants' rights perspective, as they might apply in Canada and
similarly situated countries. It also includes some recommendations for a
Canadian response to trafficked persons.
Definitions
Smuggling and trafficking have
been distinguished, the first referring to illegal entry into a country, the
second to some form of enslavement of exploitation of the person trafficked(1).
There is far from unanimity on the definitions or the distinction, and the
terms are often used interchangeably.
The UN draft protocols offer
the following definitions:
"Smuggling of
migrants"(2) refers to the intentional procurement
for profit of the illegal entry of a person into and/or illegal residence of
a person in a State of which the person is not a national or permanent
resident.(3)
"Trafficking in
persons" means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or
receipt of persons, either by the threat or use of abduction, force, fraud,
deception or coercion, or by giving or receiving unlawful payments or
benefits.(4)
Some commentators emphasize the
notion of "voluntariness" to distinguish between people who are
smuggled and people who are trafficked. While people who are smuggled are
assumed to want entry into the other country, people who are
trafficked are unwilling victims, who have been deceived or have been
abducted by force.(5)
Some definitions of trafficking
do not require crossing of an international border, but only that the person
trafficked be moved from the home community. This is true of the definition
used by the International Organization for Migration, for whom trafficking
occurs when:
· a migrant is illicitly engaged (recruited,
kidnapped, sold, etc.) and/or moved, either within national or across
international borders;
· intermediaries (traffickers) during any part of
this process obtain economic or other profit by means of deception, coercion
and/or other forms of exploitation under conditions that violate the
fundamental human rights of migrants.
The Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has defined trafficking in human beings as
follows:
· All acts involved in the recruitment, abduction,
transport (within or across borders), sale, transfer, harbouring, or receipt
of persons,
· by the threat or use of force, deception,
coercion (including abuse of authority), or debt bondage,
· for the purpose of placing or holding such
person, whether for pay or not, in involuntary servitude, forced or bonded
labour, or in slavery-like conditions (including forced prostitution),
· in a community other than the one in which the
person lived at the time of the original deception, coercion or debt bondage.(6)
The US Government definition
does not even seem to require displacement: "The term
"trafficking" means recruiting or abducting, facilitation,
transferring, harboring, or transporting a person by the threat or use of force,
coercion, fraud or deception; or by the purchase, sale, trade, transfer, or
receipt of a person for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary
servitude, peonage, slavery, slavery-like practices, forced or bonded labor
or services, or other criminal exploitation of workers. This definition
includes cases of trafficking into the sex industry."(7)
Historical background
According to the modern
international régime, states have sovereignty to control who enters their
territory. The right to freedom of movement between states is not
internationally recognized, although Article 13 of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights recognizes everyone's right to leave any country, including
their own.(8) Needless to say, large numbers of people
nevertheless try to enter without authorization, for political, economic and
personal reasons. The 1980s and 1990s saw Western and other countries putting
increasing energy into stopping "irregular" or "illegal"
migration, including in circumstances when it was clear that the migrants
being interdicted were people seeking asylum from persecution.
"Irregular movements" were identified as a threat to national
stability, an issue of international crime along with money laundering,
smuggling, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, mafia-type criminality and
terrorism.(9) Migrants, including refugees, trying to cross
borders came increasingly to be seen in the popular imagination as belonging
to the undesirable and criminal class. Interdiction techniques widely used
include visa requirements, reinforced border controls, carrier sanctions,
immigration officials posted in foreign airports, surveillance at sea and
interdiction of boats and cooperation agreements between countries.
The more states invest in
measures to prevent "improperly documented arrivals", the more
those seeking unauthorized entry must have recourse to smugglers (also known
as "coyotes" and "passeurs") and the higher the price
they are charged and the more dangerous the routes proposed to them.
Since interdiction measures
have never been more than minimally successful in preventing the arrivals of
undocumented migrants(10), governments have also relied
heavily on techniques of deterrence, i.e. making the situation of those who
do enter irregularly so unpleasant that others will be discouraged from
following their example.
At the beginning of the 1990s,
the more specific problem of trafficking began to attract increasing
attention. Following the break-up of the former Soviet Union, large numbers
of women and girls were trafficked to Western Europe, often to prostitution(11).
Asia had already emerged as one of the most important source areas of
trafficked women, who end up either within the region or elsewhere. Other
regions of the world are also affected, as sources, points of transit and/or
destination.
The US government estimates
that there are 1-2 million women and children trafficked annually around the
world and that approximately 50-100,000 women and children are trafficked
into the U.S. each year, primarily from S.E. Asia and the former Soviet
Union.(12)
Increasingly NGOs and then
international institutions have been addressing the issue of human
trafficking, and specifically trafficking in women. For example, in 1991 OSCE
states committed themselves to "eliminate ... all forms of traffic in
women ..." (Moscow Document) and later, in the Stockholm Declaration
(1996) the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly expressed concern about trafficking
and recognized its link to economic transition and the problem of organized
crime.
In the Asia-Pacific region, an
International Symposium on Migration in April 1999 developed the Bangkok
Declaration on Irregular Migration, where the participating countries
declared themselves "gravely concerned by the increasing activities of
transnational organized criminal groups and others that profit from smuggling
of and trafficking in human beings, especially women and children, without
regard to dangerous and inhumane conditions..."
The International Organization
for Migration (IOM) has involved itself in significant ways in combatting
trafficking in migrants. It declares itself "particularly concerned
about those migrants who are, or have been, deceived or coerced into
situations of economic exploitation, which unfold through forced labour,
forced servitude, coercion, debt bondage, or other violations of their
fundamental human rights". In addition "the Organization is
concerned about trafficking, as it poses a migration management problem to
governments of sending countries as well as transit and receiving countries,
because orderly migration and several types of national legislation,
including migration legislation, are violated."(13)
The United Nations has also
taken on the issue of trafficking with greater insistence. For example, in
March 1994 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted Resolution
1994/45 calling for the elimination of trafficking in women for the purposes
of prostitution. The Beijing Platform for Action emphasized trafficking in
women as one of the forms of violence against women needing to be addressed
by the international community. The General Assembly adopted resolutions on
traffic in women and girls on 12 December 1997 (52/98) and 1 February 1999
(53/116).
Formal UN negotiations on the
protocols to the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime began in
January 1999 (although drafts had been discussed before that date).
ISSUES/CONCERNS
· Relative evils
People smuggling is undeniably
a nasty business. It costs untold numbers of people their lives (drowned,
suffocated, shot, frozen or crushed to death). Many others are raped or
suffer violence and traumatic experiences. People are routinely cheated out
of thousands of dollars. After a painful journey, some find themselves
detained and deported back home.
If smuggling is bad,
trafficking is much worse. People, especially women and girls, are deceived
or abducted, held in a form of modern slavery, forced into prostitution, intimidated
and subjected to violence.
People smuggling, despite its
evils, has also been life-giving. It has made it possible for significant
numbers of people to flee persecution and reach a place of asylum when no
government was willing or able to offer an escape route. It has allowed them
to exercise their human right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum
from persecution (Article 14, Universal Declaration of Human Rights). For
others, smugglers have offered a way out of a situation of misery and an
opportunity for a new life of dignity.
Even some of the people who are
trafficked, knowing the wrongs of their situation of bondage, may still
prefer it to what they left behind, either for themselves or for what it
enables them to do for family members. This of course does not in any way
justify the abuses perpetrated by the traffickers. But it is relevant to any
discussion about solutions to the problem of trafficking.
· Right to seek asylum
Article 14 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that "Everyone has the right to
seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
Unfortunately, neither international human rights instruments nor states'
actions have done much to advance the right to seek asylum. People facing
persecution face enormous obstacles in attempting to flee, both from their
persecutors who may try to prevent them from leaving and from other states
that are attempting to control their borders. Interdiction programs reinforce
the barriers which the persecuted have to overcome to reach asylum. People
smugglers and even traffickers are sometimes the only options left for
desperate people trying to save their lives. Thus interdiction programs are
one of the factors feeding the demand for people-smugglers. Yet states seem
rarely if ever to discuss how their interdiction programs affect the rise in
people smuggling. Nor do they address the question facing persecuted people:
"How are they supposed to save their lives?"
· Who is the victim?
There is a equivocation about
who is the victim of the people smugglers and even of the human traffickers.
Are the victims the people who are trafficked or the country into which they
are being trafficked? Judging from the discourses of governments of the North,
there is some confusion.
This uncertainty is illustrated
in the case of Australia, which has been particularly energetic and outspoken
on this issue. According to the Statement by the Australian Delegation at the
Regional Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement, Auckland, 17-18 August
1999, "All of those who take advantage of what traffickers have to offer
are vulnerable and open to blatant exploitation.... UNHCR is a key player in
any partnership to address the protection needs of those who fall prey to traffickers".
Later in the same speech, the emphasis is placed on trafficking as a problem
for Australia: "Large scale people trafficking is a relatively recent
phenomenon confronting developed countries in the international
community".
The June 1999 Report of the
Prime Minister's Coastal Surveillance Task Force addresses the problem of
people smuggling and illegal immigration but does not mention trafficking:
this perhaps suits the militaristic approach which requires an unambiguous
enemy.(14)
The report views people smuggling as a problem in which Australia is the
victim. For example, paragraph 8 states that "[t]he level and geographic
location of our representation overseas should be reviewed at regular intervals
to meet the ever changing threat." (See also references to "the
threat from west" (para. 28) and "the threats involved" (para.
29)).
When we look behind the
rhetoric of concern for the migrants, we sometimes find little or no concrete
action undertaken by governments on behalf of the victims of traffickers.
Despite the Australian representative's words about the vulnerability of the
trafficked and the need to ensure refugees are protected, where there is
action it is action geared to protecting Australia. Migrants who arrive
irregularly are detained. And, as part of its crackdown on "illegal
immigration" and "people smuggling", Australia in October 1999
brought in a proposal to penalize refugees who arrive using false
documentation by granting them only temporary protection (with probable
deportation after three years).(15)
The United States and Canada
have also pursued policies of detention in response to the arrivals by boat
of Chinese, despite the fact that they are commonly described as being
brought over by traffickers. Such a treatment not only penalizes the victims,
but also reinforces in the public (and official) mind the notion that the
trafficked persons are the criminals.
· Distinguishing between people who are smuggled
and people who are trafficked
As noted above, there has been
increasing emphasis given to distinguishing between smuggling and
trafficking. Those who are trafficked are being exploited in abhorrent ways
and are deserving of protection. This is recognized by states participating
in various regional and global agreements and action plans and in the draft
UN Protocol on trafficking. These all call for measures of protection to be
offered to victims of trafficking. Yet very little thought seems to have gone
into how on the ground people who are being trafficked are to be identified.
If authorities have no means of determining among the intercepted or arrested
who is being trafficked, how do they propose to grant them the measures of
protection they are committing themselves to?
Conversely, where states in
fact use the fear of trafficking as a motivation for more punitive measures,
it is those who are not being trafficked that have an interest in
having the determination made. This is a real dilemma facing Chinese
nationals in detention in Canada, where release is being denied based on the
hypothesis that the individuals will disappear into the hands of their
presumed traffickers if released (despite the fact that there is no specific
evidence to show that the individuals were being trafficked).
· Focus on borders
In much of the Western
discourse about the issues of people smuggling/trafficking, the major
preoccupation centres on the "assault" on the borders and on
actions to control the borders. The crossing of borders is, however, only one
element of trafficking (and according to some definitions, not even a
necessary one). Surely it is at least as important to address the trafficking
at other elements in the process: within the source country and within the
country of destination? As most states recognize, they will never achieve
total control over their borders and unknown numbers of people enter
undetected. Trafficking may also involve legal entry, for example on a visitor
visa, on a work permit as a dancer (in Canada at least), or perhaps as a
fiancée or spouse through a mail-order bride business.(16)
For these reasons, trafficking needs to be addressed as a problem of slavery
within the country.
· Questions about the well-foundedness of claims
about the extent of the "problem" of people smuggling
In August 1998 the Solicitor
General of Canada released highlights of an Organized Crime Impact Study
(the full study was not made public). Migrant smuggling was one of the
organized crime issues studied: the annual cost was estimated at $120-$400
million. The study contains a number of very basic errors in this section
which puts into question their conclusions (and the expertise of the
"experts" they used as sources). Even so, the financial costs they
give for migrant smuggling are only a tiny fraction of the costs estimated
for other areas of organized crime (e.g. money laundering = $5 - $17 billion
a year). Despite this, media coverage of the study highlights focused
overwhelmingly on migrant smuggling. This suggests that the significance
accorded to the problem may be due to factors other than the objective scale
of costs.
· Addressing root causes
As is widely recognized, the
root causes of people smuggling and human trafficking lie in economic,
political and social realities, and in the harsh inequalities of opportunity.
People who use people smugglers or fall victim to traffickers left home for a
reason: sending them back home will not change that reality. The root causes
need to be addressed. Approaching the issue from an enforcement standpoint
simply reinforces a divisive current reality, where a minority of the world's
population (mostly white) has wide range of opportunities, including
opportunities to move freely around the world, while a majority (mostly
people of colour) are denied those opportunities.
PROTOCOLS ON SMUGGLING AND
TRAFFICKING
Negotiations began in April
1998 on the United Nations a Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
(TOC)(17).
Three protocols to the Convention are being developed concurrently: one on
migrant smuggling, one on human trafficking and one on firearms. An objective
of the end of the year 2000 has been set for the completion of negotiations.(18)
The draft protocols (and other
information relevant to the negotiation process) are available on the
internet here.
Summaries of main provisions
The Protocol against the
smuggling of migrants by land, air and sea:
Austria and Italy have the lead role.
Purpose: to criminalize migrant
smuggling and promote cooperation among states in actions against people
smuggling. (Art. 3)
Criminalization: states will
adopt legislation criminalizing people smuggling (but those being smuggled
into a country are not criminalized) (Art. 4)
Refugee convention: provisions
are without prejudice to state obligations under the Refugee Convention (Art.
5)
Measures against smuggling of
migrants by sea: actions to inspect, board, exchange information about, etc,
ships suspected of people smuggling (but actions to be in conformity with
international law, environmentally sound and humane and safe). (Art. 7)
Information: states will do
public information, exchange information among themselves. (Art. 10)
Prevention: states will take
action to detect and prevent people smuggling between its territory and
others. (Art. 11)
Control of documents: states
will ensure quality of documents they issue. (Art. 12)
Training: states will provide
specialized training for officials in preventing migrant smuggling (and on
protecting the rights of victims). (Art. 14)
Return of smuggled migrants:
states will accept back without delay nationals who have been smuggled. (Art.
15)
The Protocol to prevent,
suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children: USA and Argentina have the lead role.
Purpose: undecided (there are
two options circulating, but both are basically about preventing, suppressing
and punishing human trafficking). (Art. 1)
Criminalization: states will
criminalize human trafficking. (Art. 3)
Protection of trafficked
persons: states will provide various measures of protection for trafficked
victims against their traffickers who are being prosecuted and opportunities
of seeking damages from traffickers; states also to consider giving victims
temporary or permanent permits, and consider their status from a humanitarian
and compassionate viewpoint. (Art. 4-5)
Repatriation of victims: states
will accept nationals back without delay. (Art. 6)
Law enforcement, border
controls, travel documents: states will cooperate with each other, control
their borders, ensure quality of documents. (Art. 7, 8, 9)
Savings clause: nothing in
Protocol to affect rights and obligations under international law, especially
the Refugee Convention, and measures must be non-discriminatory. (Art. 13)
Comments
Smuggling protocol(19)
A. In the preamble, it is
stated that "the smuggling of migrants may lead to the misuse of
established procedures for immigration, including those for seeking asylum".
Nowhere is it stated that for many fleeing persecution, smugglers offer their
only opportunity to seek asylum from persecution.
Recommendation: make clear in
the preamble that there is no necessary connection between using people
smugglers and misuse of asylum procedures, and that many refugees have no
choice but to use people smugglers to save their lives.
B. Although the draft protocol
in the preamble (j) speaks of the "need to provide humane treatment and
protect the full human rights of migrants", the articles of the Protocol
contain next to nothing to secure the protection of the migrants' rights
(there is a reference to training of personnel on "recognizing the need
to provide humane treatment and protect the human rights of migrants"
(Art 14.2 (e)) but what more specifically those rights might be is not
spelled out). As pointed out by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
"the vulnerability of migrants, in particular irregular or illegal
migrants, as a result of their precarious situation in society often leads to
violation of their most basic human rights ... any instrument dealing with
[people smuggling] -- irrespective of its perspective -- must commit itself
to preserving and protecting the fundamental rights to which all persons, including
illegal migrants, are entitled."(20)
Recommendation: develop in the
protocol the consideration of the rights of the migrants and states'
obligations to protect them. This should include the right to make a refugee
claim, as well as other rights under international human rights instruments.
C. Interdiction measures
frequently have a discriminatory impact, entailing inconvenience and
humiliation or worse for some legitimate travellers, who are considered suspicious
because of their ethnicity or the colour of their skin.
Recommendation: include a
provision in the preamble articulating the principle of non-discrimination
and an article in the protocol committing states to apply the protocol in a
non-discriminatory manner and to monitor implementation in this regard.
D. Article 5 states that the
Protocol is without prejudice to obligations of states under the 1951
Convention and the 1967 Protocol. This leaves in question the obligations of
states signatory to this Protocol but not to the Refugee Convention.
Recommendation: articulate the
principle of non-refoulement as a principle of international law.
E. Article 7 calls for states
to cooperate "to the fullest extent possible to prevent and suppress the
smuggling of migrants by sea". Although this is to be "in
conformity with international law", the objective does not appear to be
consistent with refugee obligations and goes beyond criminally organized
smuggling. What about a boat whose passengers are refugees who have paid a
sum to be taken to a country where they hope to receive asylum? Should that
be prevented and suppressed?
Recommendation: Add the words
"criminally organized" before "smuggling" and insert a
specific reference to compliance with obligations under the 1951 Convention
and 1967 Protocol.
F. Article 7 ter requires that
states "ensure the safety and the humane treatment of the persons on
board" but makes no reference to protecting any refugees from
refoulement.
Recommendation: include
reference to non-refoulement obligations of states.
G. Article 9 directs states to
impose carrier sanctions. This goes beyond criminally organized smuggling,
since carrier sanctions do not specifically deter criminally organized
smugglers and may in fact force desperate people, including refugees, into
the hands of the criminally organized. Carrier sanctions also often lead to
discrimination against legitimate travellers.
Recommendation: delete
reference to carrier sanctions. Or include imposition of a requirement on
non-discrimination in the implementation of carrier sanctions.
H. Article 10 calls for
information measures to increase public awareness of the fact that the
smuggling of migrants is a criminal activity ... and that it poses serious
risks to the migrants involved." Since refugees may use people smugglers
and the notion of criminality is frequently transferred in the public mind to
refugees, it would be appropriate to take positive measures to rebut these
misconceptions.
Recommendation: add reference
to measures to increase public awareness that refugees may have no other
options but to use people smugglers in order to escape persecution. More
generally include reference to promoting public awareness of the need to
protect the human rights of the migrants.
I. This protocol is designed
(according to the draft "purpose statement") in part to encourage
states to ensure that the victims of trafficking, particularly women and
children, receive protection. It never, however, addresses the question of
how the victims of trafficking are to be identified. Without an effective
mechanism for such identification it is not at all clear how trafficked
persons will benefit from the protections recommended in the protocol.
Recommendation: include in the
protocol provisions addressing the identification of trafficked persons.
J. The protocol is intended,
according to its title, to "prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in
persons". In fact the protocol is minimally concerned with preventing
trafficking (Article 10, which deals with prevention, is brief and extremely
general). There is also relatively little in the protocol about punishing
trafficking, beyond the obligation to criminalize trafficking offences
(Article 3). The protocol seems to be largely concerned with trafficking at
the point of border crossing. Focusing on this element on trafficking is not
likely to be effective in combatting trafficking, since those caught will
mostly be the trafficked persons themselves. This emphasis also neglects the
root causes of trafficking, the "recruitment" (including possible
purchase or abduction), and the exploitation of trafficked persons at the
receiving end (should they successfully reach their destination). It also
ignores the fact that trafficked persons may gain prima facie legal entry to
another country.
Recommendation: address more
equitably the full scope of trafficking, including in the countries of origin
and the countries of destination (rather than treating it as simply a border
crossing problem).
K. Article 4 deals with
assistance for and protection of victims of trafficking. The kinds of
assistance to be given are very general and limited by reference to "in
appropriate cases". Since the protocol never defines the appropriate
cases these provisions may be virtually meaningless.
Recommendation: omit use of
"appropriate" and replace with firm commitments for assistance.
Specific reference should be made to access to NGO support and trafficked
persons' right to receive full information about their situation and options.
Their right to privacy should be fully protected. Special sections should
address the needs of children and youth who are victims of trafficking, and the
needs of women.
L. Detention has often been
used in response to the discovery of trafficked persons. This is not an
appropriate way to treat people who have been victims of exploitation.
Recommendation: direct that
persons who have been trafficked not be detained or charged under immigration
laws (or for involvement in the sex industry).
M. There is no mention under
the section on protection of trafficked persons of their right to make a
refugee claim.
Recommendation: include an
explicit reference to states ensuring that trafficked persons have access to
the refugee determination process.
N. Article 5 proposes that
victims of trafficking be allowed to stay in their territories temporarily or
permanently "in appropriate cases". Again there is no clarification
of what cases would be appropriate. Giving trafficked persons an alternative
to immediate deportation is necessary to avoid further victimization.
Recommendation: direct states
to give temporary permits in all cases and permanent permits in appropriate
cases.
O. "Repatriation of
victims" is addressed in Article 6. The draft however contains no
reference to voluntary repatriation, nor to safeguarding the protection or
other interests of the returnees after their arrival. There are no measures
to prevent revictimization of those returned. It is therefore not clear how
what is proposed differs from "deportation of victims".
Recommendation: call for
repatriation to be voluntary and for measures to ensure the protection of
those repatriated on return.(22)
P. States have particular
obligations to ensure the protection of unaccompanied children and youth
during repatriation. This has not been addressed.
Recommendation: introduce
provisions ensuring that the best interests of the child are respected
before, during and after repatriation.
Q. Article 8 addresses border
controls. As with the smuggling protocol, there needs to be attention to
protecting freedom of movement and non-discrimination in the application of
the measures to control borders.
Recommendation: include a
reference to Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the
right to leave one's country), to the principle of non-discrimination and the
need to protect freedom of movement.
R. Article 10 on preventing
trafficking and protecting trafficked persons lacks detail and force.
Recommendation: develop Article
10 to include specific measures to prevent trafficking and ensure that
trafficked persons are protected.
S. Trafficked persons are
frequently the victims of xenophobic and ill-informed public opinion, who
view them as perpetrators rather than victims of crime. This needs to be
addressed through public information campaigns.
Recommendation: add an article
calling for information and mass media campaigns to educate populations in
receiving states about the realities of trafficking.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CANADIAN
ACTION ON TRAFFICKING ISSUES
The issue of trafficked (or
potentially trafficked) persons in Canada has recently attracted enormous
attention and considerable controversy, following the arrival in the summer
of 1999 of several hundreds of Chinese people on the West Coast. These people
are suspected of being trafficked persons, destined for some form of
enslavement in North America, probably in the US.
How should Canada be dealing
with such people?
Detention has been one of the primary responses of the
Canadian government, with the result that hundreds of people have been
detained for months, mostly in British Columbia but also elsewhere. The right
to liberty is a fundamental right. It is not appropriate to add to the
victimization of victims of traffickers by depriving them of their liberty.
This is especially true in the case of minors or when the detention is
long-term or in jails alongside criminals. (Detention, it is worth noting, is
also a very expensive way to respond to the problem).
One of the concerns frequently
raised in relation to arrivals of potentially trafficked people is abuse of
the refugee claim process. Where significant numbers of people make
refugee claims even though they do not have any fear of persecution, there is
a burden placed on the refugee determination system. There is also frequently
significant negative publicity about the movement. This is hurtful both to
refugees, since public opinion often fails to distinguish between
"bogus" and genuine, and to victims of traffickers, who are reviled
as bogus claimants, rather than understood as people who have been exploited
by criminals.
All trafficked persons must
have access to the refugee claim process, and many may be Convention
Refugees. For those who are not refugees, however, if making a refugee claim
is the only option given to them, it is not surprising that they take it.
People who have been trafficked need to be offered some chance of improving
their situation. This does not necessarily mean that they should stay in
Canada: it does mean offering them something other than indefinite detention
followed by deportation to the situation they left behind.
Where trafficked persons are
being sent back to their country of origin, there needs to be some effective
mechanism to oversee the protection of their basic rights in the home
country, likely through an international organization. This would include
avoiding the "revolving door" potential, that is ensuring that
people returned do not find themselves once again in the hands of the
traffickers.
Canada should also avoid
penalizing trafficked persons under immigration laws. For example,
people who are deported from Canada are not allowed to re-enter Canada
(unless they have permission from the Minister).
As noted by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights in her informal note (AC.254/16, 1 June
1999), children have special rights under international law and child
victims of trafficking have special needs that must be recognized and met by
States parties. These needs are little developed in the international
discussions and, given the numbers of minors suspected of being victims of
traffickers currently in immigration processing in Canada, and the serious
concerns about their treatment, it is particularly important that these
issues be explored.
Women are among the prime targets of traffickers,
frequently destined by them for sexual exploitation. Special measures need to
be in place to respond to their situation.
Effective access to and
services from non-governmental organizations, including groups from
their own communities, should be assured for trafficked persons.
Appropriate health services
should be made available, particularly taking into account the health risks
associated with trafficking.
The privacy of
trafficked persons should be respected. (In recent months, media interest in
the Chinese in detention has been high and even minors have been exposed to
cameras and their personal information made public).
In developing a response to
trafficked persons, it is crucial that some mechanism be established for distinguishing
the victims of traffickers. Currently, people in immigration processing
are merely suspected of being trafficked, rather than being determined to be
trafficked persons. (The suspicion has negative rather than positive
consequences, as it leads to detention, frequently long-term).
International discussions about
responding to trafficking have generated many recommendations that can be a
useful guide for action here in Canada. They focus on:
· preventing trafficking, including by addressing
the economic and other causes.
· prosecuting the traffickers.
· protecting trafficked persons.
The last is particularly
relevant for considering how Canada should be treating trafficked persons in
Canada. Elements of the recommendations include:
· developing a coordinated national strategy and
ensure ongoing coordination between government departments and between
government and NGOs.
· offering victims of trafficking temporary or
permanent permits as well as access to shelter, counselling, information,
etc.
· ensuring victims of trafficking have access to
NGOs that can offer them assistance.
· making available witness protection programs.
· establishing policies and providing training to
government officials.
Extracts from relevant
international sources
UN General Assembly Resolution
(A/RES/53/116 ) Traffic in women and girls, (1 February 1999), especially:
· ... encourages Governments to intensify
collaboration with non-governmental organizations to develop and implement
programmes of effective counselling, training and reintegration into society
of victims of trafficking, and programmes that provide shelter and helplines
to victims or potential victims;
· Invites Governments to take steps, including
witness protection programmes, to enable women who are victims of trafficking
to make complaints to the police and to be available when required by the
criminal justice system and to ensure that during this time women have access
to social, medical, financial and legal assistance, and protection, as
appropriate;
· Urges Governments to strengthen national
programmes to combat trafficking in women and girls through sustained
bilateral, regional and international cooperation, taking into account
innovative approaches and best practices ...
· Invites Governments, once again, with the support
of the United Nations, to formulate training manuals for law enforcement and
medical personnel and judicial officers who handle cases of trafficked women
and girls, taking into account current research and materials on traumatic
stress and gender-sensitive counselling techniques, with a view to
sensitizing them to the special needs of victims.
Proposed Action Plan 2000 for
activities to combat trafficking in human beings, OSCE ODIHR, November 1999
Action at the National Level,
especially:
· Develop a national strategy to combat
trafficking, including measures to prevent trafficking, prosecute offenders,
and protect the rights of trafficked persons;
· Institute a coordinating mechanism on a national
level to ensure effective coordination between different government
authorities (and between government and NGOs) and to allow for a
multi-disciplinary approach;
· Establish social policies and programmes to
prevent trafficking in human beings, including economic and legal measures in
origin countries
· Increase awareness about trafficking among
police, judicial, immigration, and consular/embassy authorities, including
the human rights aspects of trafficking and the obligation of State
authorities to assist and protect trafficking victims;
· Adopt policies and protocols to treat trafficked
persons as victims of crime and potential witnesses, rather than as
criminals;
· Provide a temporary residence permit or stay of
deportation (in destination or transit countries) to all victims of
trafficking to enable victims to receive appropriate care and legal
assistance. Permits should be extended if the trafficked person cooperates
with law enforcement or if she would be endangered by repatriation;
· Enact or strengthen laws or policies to protect
trafficked persons, consistent with international human rights standards.
Such measures should include shelter, physical protection, appropriate
medical and legal assistance, procedural protections in criminal proceedings,
access to legal redress and compensation, and return and reintegration
assistance;
· Provide resources to NGOs and social agencies
providing services to trafficked persons. Take steps to identify and develop
alternative sources of assistance where specialized trafficking NGOs or
public funds are not available.
Informal Note by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (AC.254/16, 1 June 1999)
Re. Draft Trafficking Protocol
· ... Assistance and protection provisions must, at
a minimum, meet basic international human rights standards. From this
perspective, special reference should be made to adequate housing,
appropriate health care and other necessary support facilities.
· Assistance and protection provisions should also
take account of the fact that trafficked persons are usually in an extremely
vulnerable situation and may be subject to reprisals from traffickers. In
addition, it should be noted that trafficked persons are often subject to
detention and prosecution for offences related to their status (including
violation of immigration laws, prostitution, etc). States parties should be
directed to refrain from detaining or prosecuting trafficked persons for such
status-related offences.
· The High Commissioner is of the view that safe
and, as far as possible, voluntary return must be at the core of any credible
protection strategy for trafficked persons. A failure to include provision
for safe and (to the extent possible) voluntary return would amount to little
more than an endorsement of the forced deportation and repatriation of
victims of trafficking. When trafficking occurs in the context of organized
crime, such an endorsement presents an unacceptable safety risk to victims.
· At a very minimum, the identification of an
individual as a trafficked person should be sufficient to ensure that
immediate expulsion that goes against the will of the victim does not occur
and that the expanded protection and assistance provisions of the Protocol
suggested above become immediately applicable. The High Commissioner urges
Member States to consider a provision whereby trafficked persons are provided
with the option of at least temporary residence. In addition to providing a
measure of safety, such a provision would encourage victims of trafficking to
cooperate with the authorities and thereby contribute to achieving the law
enforcement objectives of the Protocol. It is important in this context to
note that victim protection must be considered separately from witness
protection, as not all victims of trafficking will be selected by
investigating and prosecuting agencies to act as witnesses in criminal
proceedings.
· ... The High Commissioner suggests the insertion
of a provision to the effect that States Parties are to take steps (both
individually and through international assistance and cooperation) to provide
for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims of
trafficking.
REFERENCES
1. The Honourable Elinor
Caplan, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration of Canada, has expressed the
distinction between smuggling and trafficking in the following way:
"Human smuggling has been around
for a while. It is a fee-for-service operation, involving simple payment for
passage, and we all know that it is sometimes used by genuine refugees. Human
trafficking, however, is more akin to human slavery. Its goal is profit from
indentured human servitude. We know that organized criminals demand up to
$50,000 dollars in unconditional debt from their naïve or misguided victims,
in order to exploit their simple desire for a better life. This debt is
typically repaid over a short and brutal lifetime of illicit activity, sexual
exploitation and forced labour. The victims of human trafficking often have
reason to fear for their lives, and the lives of their family members back
home." (Address to the Canadian Council for Refugees, 3 December 1999.)
2. One of the hurdles
identified by the drafters of the UN Protocols is the difficulty in finding
equivalents in other languages for "smuggling", particularly in
opposition to "trafficking". French, for example, would tend to use
"trafic" for both.
3. Elements of this definition
remain under discussion among states negotiating the protocol.
4. There is not yet agreement
on the definition of trafficking. The definition cited comes from the
preferred of two options being considered. Individual elements of the definition
are also under discussion.
5. This distinction is not
however a simple one, given the situations from which many of the
smuggled/trafficked persons come.
6. Proposed Action Plan for
Activities to combat Trafficking in Human Beings, Warsaw, November 1999.
8. This right is also
guaranteed in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights: "Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his
own."
9. François Crépeau examines
this phenomenon, particularly in the European context, in International
Cooperation on Interdiction of Asylum-seekers: a Global Perspective, in Interdicting
Refugees, Canadian Council for Refugees, May 1998.
10. Given the recent increase
in boats of migrants from China arriving in North America, it is ironic to
see the Houston Chronicle reporting on 31 October 1994 that discussions on
human smuggling between China and the US "have been so productive that
since June of this year U.S. officials have not detected one smuggling ship
trying to bring Chinese immigrants to the United States".
11. According to the Office of
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE, in 1997 an
estimated 175,000 women and girls were trafficked from Central and Eastern
Europe and the Newly Independent States alone, mostly to other OSCE countries
(OSCE, 1999).
14. The report in fact calls
for the Australian Defence Force to be involved in the defence of Australia's
borders against illegal immigrants: it recommends, inter alia, that a
uniformed Australian Defence Force officer fill the position of
Director-General Coastwatch.
15. The Australian Minister for
Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Philip Ruddock, undertook in January
2000 an Overseas Anti-People Smuggling Mission, a highly publicized tour of
Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, in order "to learn more about
the experiences these countries have had in dealing with people smugglers and
to provide information on Australia's tough new stance to curb the flow of
people arriving illegally." The Minister's media materials note that
1200 Iraqis and nearly 1100 Afghanis arrived in Australia in 1999. The likelihood
of some or even most of these people being refugees is not mentioned.
16. A report by the US
Immigration and Naturalization Service states that "[t]he information on
trafficking suggests that mail-order brides may become victims of
international trafficking in women and girls". News Release: INS Reports
to Congress on "Mail-Order Bride" Businesses, 12 December 1999.
17. Negotiations are being
conducted in Vienna under the auspices of the United Nations Centre for
International Crime Prevention.
18. The European Union General
Affairs Council recently (14-15 February 2000) authorized the EU Commission
to negotiate the two Protocols, on behalf of the member states. This
indicates that the members do not consider the protocols controversial.
19. Comments are with reference
to the 27 December 1999 version of the protocol.
20. Informal Note, 1 June 1999.
21. Comments are with reference
to the version of the draft protocol dated 1 January 2000.
22. An additional provision
calling on receiving states to "provide necessary facilities for the
return of victims" has been proposed by one state, ironically China.
China has recently reportedly brought in penalties of one year's imprisonment
for those leaving the country illegally.
|
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Destination anywhere? Factors affecting asylum
seekers’ choice of destination country
--------------------------
Who says
Christians and Muslims can't live together?
---------
Illegal
Immigration, Human Trafficking, and Organized Crime
University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA ^ | Raimo Väyrynen
University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA ^ | Raimo Väyrynen
Posted on 11/28/2005 1:17:12 PM PST by Calpernia
Illegal Immigration, Human Trafficking, and
Organized Crime
Raimo Väyrynen*
Abstract
It is important to make a careful distinction
between illegal immigration, human smuggling, and human trafficking which are
nested, but yet different concepts. This distinction is relevant because these
different categories of the illegal movement of people across borders have quite
different legal and political consequences. Human smuggling and trafficking
have become a world-wide industry that ‘employs’ every year millions of people
and leads to the annual turnover of billions of dollars. Many of the routes and
enclaves used by the smugglers have become institutionalized; for instance,
from Mexico and Central America to the United States, from West Asia through
Greece and Turkey to Western Europe, and within East and Southeast Asia. More
often than not flourishing smuggling routes are made possible by weak
legislation, lax border controls, corrupted police officers, and the power of
the organized crime.
Naturally, poverty and warfare contribute to the
rising tide of migration, both legal and illegal. In general, illegal migration
seems to be increasing due to the strict border controls combined with the
expansion of the areas of free mobility, such as the Schengen area, and the
growing demographic imbalance in the world. The more closed are the borders and
the more attractive are the target countries, the greater is the share of human
trafficking in illegal migration and the role played by the national and
transnational organized crime. The involvement of criminal groups in migration
means that smuggling leads to trafficking and thus to victimization and the
violation of human rights, including prostitution and slavery.
1 Concepts and categories of migration Human
migration has been and still is intimately connected with the transformations
of the world economy. Mass migrations were a common phenomenon in pre-modern
world politics in which they shaped the fates of empires and entire
civilizations. Only in a rather late historical phase, the rise of territorial
and national states started to impose constraints on migration flows (Koslowski
2002).
The national borders continue to restrict
international migration, but it may be that the process of economic
globalization and the gradual decline of the territorial state are now
accompanied with the growth of migration. In 2001, there were an estimated 175
million people living outside their country of birth; since 1975, the number
doubled.
Most immigrants were living in Europe (56 million),
followed by Asia (50 million) and North America (41 million). In developed
countries, every tenth person is a migrant, while in developing countries one
out of seventy persons has this status (International Migration 2002; The
Economist 2002a).
Illegal migration is a subcategory of international
migration. Its distinguishing feature is the legal status that is defined by
the rules adopted by national governments and intergovernmental organizations.
The illicit status of migrants also has consequences for the mechanisms of
cross-border movement and the personal position of migrants. In other words,
illegal migration cannot be separated either from the larger dynamics of the
global economy nor the policies pursued by governments. Thus, although legal
and illegal immigration differ in many crucial respects, they are both located
at the interface of international economic and political systems.
Licit and illicit aspects of international
migration can be depicted as a set of concentric circles. The largest circle
covers all aspects of international migration, including illegal migration.
Human smuggling is a special case of illegal immigration, while human
trafficking is a subcategory of smuggling. Official definitions of these
concepts are provided by the UN Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by
Land, Sea and Air and the UN Protocol to Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, especially Women and Children. The Protocols are supplements to the
so-called Palermo Convention or more specifically the UN Convention on
Transnational Organized Crime adopted by the UN General Assembly on 15 November
2000 (UN A/55/383).
The Protocols define smuggling as ‘the procurement,
in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material
benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State party of which the
person is not a national or a permanent resident’. In that sense, the smuggling
of individuals violates the rights of the state, while human trafficking
amounts to the violation of human rights. Trafficking refers to the
‘recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means
of threat or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraught, of deception,
of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having
control over another person, for the purpose exploitation’. The main forms of
exploitation are prostitution, forced labour, slavery, or the removal of
organs.
2 Migration, organized crime, and the illicit
economy Illegal immigration, including human smuggling and trafficking, is but
an element of the larger problem of organized crime and the illicit global
economy. Organized crime refers to subnational and transnational corporate
agencies that operate systematically outside the purview of law with the
intention to turn in profits for its members, especially the leaders. Organized
crime is obviously illegal in nature, although it may have diverse connections
both with the state agencies and legal markets.
It is useful to make a distinction between two key
activities of organized crime groups; trafficking of illegal goods and the
provision of protection and enforcement services, usually to other criminal
businesses. The Russian case shows how the agencies (the ‘mafiya’) selling the
use of force for protection tend to form the core group of the criminal world.
On the other hand, the position of organized crime involved in, say, marketing
contraband has a more ambiguous position. The centrality of mafia-type
organizations in Russia hinges on the fact that their activities compete directly
with a key function of the state, the monopoly of force (Varese 2001: 4-6;
Volkov 2002: 21-23).
However, even in the Russian case, one should not
exaggerate the domestic protection function as the mafia is also extensively
involved in transnational activities. In fact, organized crime has, in recent
years, become more diverse in scope, more pervasive in its actions, and much
more transnational in its reach. In sum, the ‘transnational criminal today
tends to be active in several countries, going where the opportunities are high
and the risks are low’ (Williams 2001: 58-60). Not unlike terrorism, the
transnational organized crime makes efforts to benefit from the weak legal and
bureaucratic capacity and flawed politics of weak or failed states (Williams 2002:
169-74).
Organized crime is a moving force of the illicit
global economy that consists of transnational movements of goods or the type of
activities criminalized by states touched upon by these transactions. Illicit
global economy is a more narrow concept than, for instance, the underground
economy or clandestine economy whose size is thus bigger and the mixture of
illicit and licit elements is different. However, not even the illicit economy
operates entirely on its own but it interacts in a number of ways with the
licit economy and public agencies (Friman and Andreas 1999; for a descriptive
analysis of the illicit global economy, see Naylor 2002).
Indeed, the illegal and clandestine movement of
people across national borders cannot be separated from their governmental
control and law enforcement. Migration becomes very easily a deep political
issue. Politicians tend to ‘securitize’ migration, and in particular illegal
immigration, as a risk for the state which is regarded ‘as a body or a
container for the polity’. Immigration is often perceived as a danger for the
integrity of the state and the nation, and thus a challenge to the principle of
their sovereignty (Bigo 2002: 66-68).
The sovereignty principle accords to states
metapolitical authority to criminalize specific transnational activities and
enforce provisions concerning them. However, states have seldom adequate
capabilities to fully enforce restrictions on criminal activities, that is,
their sovereignty is incomplete. This creates particular problems in areas
where the market demand for illicit activities is high. ‘The gap between the
state’s metapolitical authority to pass prohibition laws and its ability to
fully enforce such laws is the space where clandestine transnational actors
operate’ (Friman and Andreas 1999: 9-11; see also Williams 2002).
A political economy approach to human smuggling
would regard people as commodities; people are moved illegally for a payment
across borders because they have profit value for the smuggler whose start-up
costs in the business are small. People in traffic are often also in demand in
the recipient country, primarily to fill gaps in the employment structure that
needs cheap, irregular labour. In addition, the migrants turn themselves, often
voluntarily, into transportable commodities because they expect to fetch in the
target country a better price for their work. This creates a growing ‘migration
business’ that has both legal and illegal elements. In fact, one may say,
somewhat sarcastically, that people are a good commodity as they do not easily
perish, but they can be transported over long distances and can be re-used and
re-sold (Salt and Stein 1997; Ghosh 1998: 21-23; Findlay 1999: 75-77; Williams
1999).
The focus on the economic models and business
operations of illegal migration has its analytical merits, but it also distorts
the reality in some significant ways. First, it abstracts the social and
political environment in which the trafficking of the human beings takes place
and overlooks the conditions and policies that fuel it. Second, the business or
commodity approach pays inadequate attention to the exploitative aspects of
human trafficking which deprives its objects of any legal protection (this
aspect was explored early on by Warzazi 1986). Third, human smuggling gives
routinely rise to all kinds of human rights violations that both traffickers
and authorities have been known to carry out with impunity.
Obviously, in the international system of
completely open borders, illegal population movements were a conceptual
oxymoron. In a more specific way, one can say that the nature and degree of the
border control shapes the patterns of their crossing; the more coercive and
stricter the control, the more difficult it is for the undocumented migrants to
enter the country (Kyle and Dale 2001: 30-31).
This does not necessarily mean that the number of
such migrants is reduced as a result, but that their border crossing becomes
more costly and perilous. The experiences on the US-Mexican border show clearly
how enforcement and smuggling have developed almost in a symbiotic
relationship; each law enforcement move has provoked a law evasion countermove,
which in turn has been matched by more enforcement (Andreas 2001: 122). The
result is often a cat-and-mouse game between the smugglers/traffickers and the
law enforcement officers. The US-Mexican border provides also evidence on how
Operation Gatekeeper and other crackdowns have put migrants in more peril as
they try to enter the United States (Zeller 2001; Sanchez 2002).
In other words, illegal migration flows and state
policies interact with each other; state boundaries and the intensification of
their control by bureaucratic and paramilitary means increase the costs of
entry to the migrants. To be able to cross the border, illegal immigrants may
need the help of professional smugglers and their assistants. The rise of entry
costs and the growing size of groups mean, in turn, higher profits for the
smugglers.
1In sum, both the restrictive policies adopted by
states and specific actions
1The reality is revealed by an incident on the
Mexican-US border. A truck driver sought to smuggle to the United States 94
illegal immigrants from Central America. He was caught and now serves time in
undertaken by the smugglers and traffickers affect the way in which the
migration potential is actualized in international relations (Teitelbaum 2001:
26-28). On the other hand, there is a variety of proactive and preventive
policies by which the immigration flows can be regulated (Ghosh 1998: 146-76).
In addition to facilitating cross-border movements,
the Schengen Agreement has its own adverse effects. It has tightened up the
outside borders of its parties driving some cross-border activities underground
and illegal immigrants to the hands of the smugglers. At the same time the
attraction of the Schengen area has increased; if a migrant is able to enter
into the area, it is much easier to move around to other countries. This
expands the scale in which the migrants are able to search new opportunities
(The Economist 1999).
The free mobility of people within the Schengen
area has not been yet matched, however, by the EU harmonization of legislation
pertaining to immigration and asylum.
3 Migration, smuggling, and trafficking As noted
above, illegal immigration, smuggling, and trafficking are nested concepts.
They all share the illegal character of the entry
to a country, but they are quite different in terms of the specific economic
intentionality and agency issues involved. Illegal immigration concerns
voluntary transactions that are supposed to benefit both the immigrant, his
employer (a factory, a farm, or a shop), and the third party (a temporary
employment agency, a smuggler, or a corrupted policeman).
Illegal labour flows are often countenanced by the
target country as its economy needs the immigrants (and they are absorbed in
the existing ethnic and family networks).
There are even organizations that shelter illegal
immigrants providing them with humanitarian and legal assistance. For these
reasons, illegal immigration can be, in reality, semi-legal and regular, and
even tacitly accepted by the authorities.
The main intentionality behind illegal migration
flows is economic in nature; people move across borders because of the income
differentials, in the hope of a more gainful employment. This does not mean, of
course, that the regularized illegal immigration is without problems.
2On the contrary, the migrant workers are often
paid lousy wages, their housing quarters are overcrowded, they receive hardly
any health care services, and, in the absence of unions, labour laws are
routinely violated. The working and social conditions of the immigrant labour
has received a lot of attention, especially in the ILO. In general, the human
rights of migrants have been gaining increasing attention in international
debates (Mattila 2000).
[an overcrowded Mexican prison together with 4,000
other prisoners jailed on charges of immigrant smuggling. The driver was
promised US$11,000 for the one-time operation which is a considerable sum for a
person whose weekly income is US$400 which is very good by Mexican standards
(Thompson 2001). If we estimate conservatively that each migrant paid US$700,
the organizers pocketed about US$54,000 even when the operation failed. In
Central America, over 300,000 migrants annually smuggled to the United States
are handled by several hundred independent smugglers who often cooperate with
the travel industry (US Government 2000: 47-48).
2Ghosh (1998: 1-6) speaks of ‘irregular migration’
when referring to various aspects of illegal immigration. A problem with this
concept is that much of the ‘irregular’ movement of people is rather well
planned and repetitive action.]
As a rule, labour migration has been modelled as a
market transaction determined by the supply and demand without considering the
political economy of emigration (Ghosh 1998: 34-43). However, regularized
labour traffic may be sponsored by ‘migrant exporting schemes’, to use the term
by Kyle and Dale (2001). In such schemes there are agencies on the sending side
that recruit and finance customers for the smugglers who assume the task of
taking them across the border. This has been called the ‘mobilization phase’ of
the human smuggling chain (Salt and Stein 1997: 479-81).
The exporting schemes may become human commodity
chains that start from a local village and involve several intermediaries
before the destination is reached. One careful study identifies seven different
types of roles in a smuggling operation which may require several years to be
completed (Icduygu and Toktas 2002: 35-45; see also Salt 2000: 44-45). These
intermediaries are usually professionals, often small entrepreneurs, and they
do not need to be members of any centralized crime syndicates.
The exportation of migrants is frequently initiated
by the local entrepreneurs or elites who have connections with the smugglers
and foreign employers. The ‘en route’ phase of migration and smuggling schemes
can differ significantly in terms of its duration, mode of transportation, and
the degree of control, and of responsibility, that the smugglers have over
their customers (Salt and Stein 1997: 481-83). For all these reasons, it is
justified to characterize at least a part of the human smuggling and
trafficking as a ‘network of locals’ rather than an ‘international mafia’
(Icduygu and Toktas 2002: 45-47; Salt 2000: 42-43).
Exports of the human labour can be contrasted with
‘slave importing operations’ in which vulnerable people become a prey to big-time
criminal operators. In these operations, these people are transported en masse,
either clandestinely or by the help of the bribed officials, to work in
prostitution, plantations, sweatshops, or mines. The key feature of such an
operation is that the migrants lose their freedom and may become bonded labour
and live in servitude (Kyle and Dale 2001). History knows several of such slave
importing operations by which people are moved by the millions from, for
instance, Africa to the United States and from India to South Africa, Fiji, and
other places where labour force was needed in mining and agriculture (Cohen
1997: 57-79).
Both schemes described above may involve human
trafficking, but their practical and moral character differs significantly from
each other, the slave importation scheme being worse of the two. When in
illegal migration the goal is to just find employment, the person moving has at
least a modicum of freedom to decide whether he or she wants to leave the
country for a foreign destination. On the other hand, in slave trade there is
no such choice as it specifically targets those who are weak, vulnerable, and
deprived in the society (Bales 1999: 10-11).
4 Human trafficking The Protocols of the Palermo
Convention make a clear distinction between human smuggling and trafficking.
The latter refers to a process in which illegal and coercive means are used
both in the smuggling of the victims and subjugating to an unfree or abusive
status in the destination. Trafficking can be considered a form of
international business (Salt and Stein 1997: 470-71) which means that its
borderline with human smuggling becomes blurred (Helminen and Kirkas 2002:
21-22). The dilution of this borderline underestimates, however, the human
rights violations that are involved in human trafficking (UNICEF 2002: 2-4 and
passim).
As a result, human trafficking is usually regarded
as a nasty and repulsive business that receives almost universal moral
condemnation, while illegal immigration, and even human smuggling, are understood
because of the economic and humanitarian motives involved in them. The reason
for this difference is that in human trafficking, the focus is on the smuggler
who is a criminal benefiting financially not only from the act of smuggling,
but also of the ‘end use’ of the victim. An illegal migrant is only a person
who wants to improve his lot in the world, albeit by means defined as illicit
by governments.
Yet, illegal immigration and human smuggling, and
even trafficking, are interrelated and result in a ‘terrible paradox’ as Miller
(2001: 321) points out. The problem is that the more strictly the laws of
immigration against the illegal entrants are enforced, the more sinister forms
of criminality are used in human trafficking to overcome the barriers that are
needed for making a profit. Ultimately, the intensity of violence associated
with the smuggling of human bodies and body parts has increased because of the
‘aggressive extension of market values on the bodies of the vulnerable’ (Truong
2001: 11-14).
In other words, the higher the barriers of entry to
an attractive target country are, the more complex becomes the methods and
morality of human smuggling. The critical variable seems to be the interaction
between the governments and organized crime syndicates. Phil Williams points
out that ‘organized crime both threatens states and exploit states’; it
undermines the legality of states, but also uses its powers by corrupting the
officials and thus increasing its own profits (Williams 2002: 164-65, 174-78).
Corruption is, indeed, a central element in human smuggling and trafficking
because it makes it easier to get the migrants across the borders.
Illegal immigrants may, of course, enter the
country on their own, but often they need assistance by the professional
smugglers bringing them in clandestinely. The interaction between authorities
and smugglers/traffickers is more direct and corrupt when the latter provide
the immigrants with fraudulent documents – such as passports, visas, and job
letters – or bribe the immigration officials. Belgian passports are notorious
for their frequent use as impostor documents. There are several known cases in
which the consulate officials of a country have been selling visas to the
would-be migrants for a hefty fee. It is not at all unusual that travel
agencies also participate in such operations.
A special case is in this context the story of
children sent by their parents through smugglers/traffickers to Western Europe
in the hope that they will also be provided, in the wake, with the right to
asylum. This practice is particularly common in Somalia where each month some
250 children are sent out with parents paying up to US$10,000 to get their
teenagers, but sometimes only four to five year olds, out of the country.
These ‘unaccompanied’ children may end up with a
decent life with their relatives, but they may be also abandoned to
prostitution and domestic slavery (www.irinnews.org/webspecials/Somalichildren, 19
January 2003). In France, young unaccompanied immigrants often evaporate from
the official bureaucracy and end up in very diverse conditions. There is only
one reception centre for underage immigrants (Tervonen 2002).
In 2001 a total of 461 and in 2002 a total of 550
unaccompanied children came to Sweden, while in 1999 the figure was 236. The
entrants were mostly kurds from Northern Iraq, but they came also from Somalia,
Serbia, and Afghanistan. Swedish documentation shows that in most cases, these
children are assisted both by ethnic networks and smuggling rings whose concern
is money rather than a safe journey of their ‘customers’ (Kihlström 2003a;
Kihlström 2003b).
It is commonly assumed that the role of the
organized crime syndicates is pervasive in illegal migration. However, many
comments tend to confuse illegal migration and human smuggling/trafficking with
each other which is less than helpful (this is done even by Global Report 1999:
223-25). In addition, empirical evidence points in a somewhat different
direction; while organized crime is certainly involved in many illegal human
transfers, they can also take place without the criminal contribution.
Moreover, many smuggling rings are more like small
enterprises run by a group of relatives or acquaintances.
If they are involved, crime syndicates tend to be
dominant in human trafficking which often requires the control of the entire
migration cycle, while in smuggling the main task is to take the person across
the border for a profit. Human trafficking may combine smuggling with other
types of criminal activities, such as drug trade and prostitution, which is
possible because of the resources and networks controlled by the organized
criminal groups. In many cases they are tied together by ritual kinship
relations that reaffirm their fraternal and operational commonalities (Paoli
2001: 94-99).
For their operation, criminal networks become
especially relevant in the recruitment process in which the trafficker needs
local contacts to find, either personally or through media, new victims for the
business. Human trafficking often involves coercion and violence that are,
however, hardly effective means in the recruitment phase of the process. More
important is the social access to the local communities and their willingness
to provide human raw material for trafficking because without that material the
business would dry up (Koslowski 2001: 347-49; Truong 2001: 16-18).
5 Transnational mobility and borders The relatively
closed nature of political borders can be contrasted with the increasingly free
movement of goods, capital, and technology across borders. With the exception
of the European Union and few other cases, where labour can move freely from
one country to another, most people are contained by the current international
regime within the national borders.
This also means that most workers continue to
produce for the international market primarily from their home base. Capital
and technology are much more mobile than productive activities per se. This
creates a stark contrast between the global mobility of the rich and the
immobility of the great majority of the poor (this contrast has been stressed
by Bauman 1998).
An additional factor is that much of the
transnational mobility of the elite is licit by its nature; tourism, business
trips, and temporary residence or even multiple residences in foreign
countries. True, the masses also have an access to legal routes of migration,
though such migration has now become quite limited compared with the open
embrace of the immigrants for some one hundred years ago in the United States
and in the immediate post-Second World War period in Europe. In the 1950s and
the 1960s, especially in Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, the liberal immigration
regime was due to the need of the semi-skilled labour force in the Fordist
manufacturing system.
These migration flows followed methodically the
expansion of the industrial core of the world economy (Morawska and Spohn 1997:
25-38).
Thus, in recent history, large-scale migration has
been associated with the expansion of the mass industrial production. Due to
the demand for the labour force, immigration to Western Europe was mostly kept
legal and even assisted by the recipient countries. The shift to more capital-
and technology-intensive modes of production has significantly reduced the need
to import labour from the (semi)peripheral countries. Instead, we find that
capital is searching for new sites of production in which the combination of
the costs and the productivity of labour is in the right proportion to relevant
economic and political variables. These factors include the access to the
global and regional markets and the character of the governmental policy. An
implication of this business logic in the core is that it is everybody’s
interest, both for economic and political reasons, to keep the peripheral
labour force where it is now, that is, in the periphery.
These observations lead to an intriguing question
whether the globalization of capital is associated with the erection of
economic and political barriers to the free flow of labour, especially between
the periphery and the centre. The elites and masses of the core prefer to
confine the exploitation of the low-paying labour force to the periphery. This
barrier is often legalized and reinforced by the core governments, for
instance, by closing the border for migration and imposing employer penalties
(for an early analysis of this tendency, see Cohen 1987).
It has been often noted, though, that in
industrialized countries, the penalties to import and employ illicit labour are
weak and they are enforced in a haphazard manner.
However, in recent years, the control of borders
has become stricter largely because of the political backlash that the inflow
of immigrants and refugees has fostered in several European countries. In
reality, the issue is about the crisis of the asylum policy that represents
both the complexity of the new challenges of the new immigration and the
ineptitude of the EU governments to deal with it (on the British situation, see
The Economist 2003).
In sum, the licit flow of both unskilled and even
skilled workers is now increasingly regulated by the core states, although the
United States continues to be a partial exception in this regard. Core
economies prefer to admit specialists, primarily in information and
biotechnology industries, who can add value to innovative and productive
activities and thus contribute to national competitive positions in the world
economy. Less skilled workers do not fit this economic image and they are
excluded, to the extent possible, by the core from the present immigration
regime.
Brain drain from the periphery to the core has
existed for ages, but it seems to be today more pronounced, and more selective,
than before. While in the past, the university students could receive their
basic education in decent colonial institutions, now they have to leave much
earlier for Britain, France, and especially the United States to claim their
springboard for the future.
Restrictions of movements are not limited only to
the core, but they are used also in the semiperiphery. Malaysia’s recent
crackdown of foreign workers is a good example. It has now an estimated 800,000
legal and one million (some say 600,000) illegal foreign workers, most of them
unskilled labourers from Indonesia. By now, half of the illegals have been
deported and those caught after the grace period of four months will receive
five years in prison and six strokes of a rattan cane. The motive of the
government crackdown is mostly economic; by expelling the illegal foreign
workers, it wants to save the remaining jobs for the locals and promote more
capital-intensive industry instead of relying on imported cheap labour (The
Economist 2002b; The Economist 2002c).
Occasional expulsion of foreign workers does not,
of course, eliminate various low-paid and risky jobs in the core economies.
Immigrant labour continues to be in demand simply because the prevailing
polarized labour market needs underpaid workers, especially in the service
sector. In addition, there are dirty and dangerous jobs that the locals try to
avoid. Yet, to my knowledge, not a single industrialized country has a specific
regime to admit labourers from (semi)peripheral countries for menial jobs.
Immigrants and refugees may end up in working in
such tasks, but this is seldom the stated purpose of admission to a country. In
part, this is due to the resistance of the trade unions which, if they accept
immigration at all, demand equal wages and treatment for the foreign workers.
Legal immigration and asylum are, of course, still
available options, although they are in many ways restricted. UNHCR has estimated
that during 2001-02 the number of asylum seekers in 28 industrialized countries
dropped by 12 per cent. This reflects a common tendency to close borders,
though it is by no means universal. In the EU, Austria, Denmark, France,
Germany, and Sweden admitted in 2000 fewer asylum seekers than in 1990, while
the absolute figure had grown in Belgium, the Netherlands, and especially the
United Kingdom. This variation in national statistics cannot remove, however,
the fact that in most of these countries have experienced an anti-immigrant
backlash (Graff 2002).
Some countries, such as Australia, have adopted
especially strict policies vis-à-vis the asylum seekers. The number of
immigrants and refugees that Australia admits has steadily declined since the
1970s. The Howard government gained notoriety in August 2001 when its troops
stormed a Norwegian ship ‘the Tampa’ transporting over 400 Afghan refugees whom
the ship had rescued from a sinking Indonesian ferry.
The government refused sternly to accept the asylum
seekers to the Australian territory; they became a test case for the
determination of the government to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.
The Afghans were turned, instead, to Christmas Islands and, later on, to New
Zealand and Nauru to which Australia is providing funds to sustain the
refugees. These moves were prompted by domestic politics, in which the Howard
government was campaigning against One Nation, a rightist anti-immigrant party,
but they reflect also a general anti-immigration tendency in Australian
politics (Marsh 2001; New York Times 2001).
6 The European Union In the European Union, the
migration issues have recently dominated the political agenda. As early as
February 1997, the Council adopted a joint action to combat the trafficking of
human beings and sexual exploitation of children (97/154/JHA). A more
comprehensive process was started in the Tampere European Council in October
1999.
Its presidency conclusions reflect well the duality
of the EU’s approach. On the one hand ‘it would be in contradiction with
Europe’s traditions to deny freedom to those whose circumstances lead them
justifiably to seek access to our territory’. This liberal principle was
complemented, however, by the protective one; the ‘common policies of asylum
and migration’ must provide ‘consistent control of external borders to stop
illegal immigration’. The Council paid particular attention to the need to
tackle illegal immigration at its source (Tampere European Council 1999).
The Tampere decisions were followed up by the
Seville European Council (2002). The meeting aimed to speed up a common policy
on asylum and immigration to integrate it with the Union’s policies with the
third countries. By using resources earmarked to trade expansion, development
assistance, and conflict prevention, the EU should aim with them at the joint
management of migration flows, including compulsory return in the event of
illegal immigration. The ‘integrated, comprehensive and balanced policy’ should
also lead to the coordination of the visa regime and the establishment of
repatriation programme.
In July 2002, the EU Council adopted a Framework
Decision on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings that defined common
guidelines for the jurisdiction, the nature of offences, penalties, and
sanctions pertaining to the human trafficking. The original aim of the Decision
may have been ambitious, but the results remained limited as it was confined to
‘the minimum required’. The minimum standard had to be enforced by member
states by ‘effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties, which
may entail extradition’ (European Union 2002). So far, the penalties for human
traffickers have varied between countries, but they have been mostly quite
lenient that has drawn organized crime in the business, in part from drug
trafficking in which penalties are higher (Moore 2001).
The migration issues have gained new urgency due to
the decision to admit to the Union in 2004 of several new member states. Fears
have been growing that citizens of the new members start moving in great
numbers to the territory of the present EU. The immigration question has been
also put on the political agenda by the nationalist-populist backlash against
previous liberal immigration policies. In recent years, the immigration issues
have shaped domestic politics especially in Austria, Denmark, France, Italy,
and the Netherlands.
A coalition of EU member states has decided to make
a more forceful move against illegal immigration. Starting in 2003, Britain,
France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have established two joint naval
patrols; one in the Mediterranean and another around the Canary Islands. The EU
Council approved Operation Ulysses in September 2002 and it may form in the
future an element in the common EU border guard. The task of the patrols is to
intercept vessels that are assumed to carry illegal immigrants and take them to
the nearest harbour.
It is estimated that the EU countries accept
annually some 680,000 legal migrants from outside the Union. Rather than
promising to increase the chances of legal immigration, the EU is putting more
emphasis on preventing illegal immigration and integrating existing immigrants
in the society. It has also taken measures to return refugees to countries,
such as Bosnia and Afghanistan, which are considered now safe for them.
The level of the legal migration can be compared
with the estimated half a million illegal immigrants in the EU area who enter
there each year primarily from North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern
Europe.
In a sense, the problem of illegal immigration is a
result of political hypocrisy; governments ban or restrict the inflow of people
who either deserve humanitarian protection or are needed to sustain current
economic activities. The common idea that an economy and its labour force can
survive in fierce international competition by continuously ratcheting up its
productivity and innovative activities neglects the simple fact that in every
industrial country there are pockets of economic activity that can be
maintained only by having access to cheap labour. In addition, the demographic
trends in Europe and Japan make it necessary to start importing foreign labour
in increasing numbers in order to replace the graying population and provide
adequate services for it.
7 The scale of human smuggling and trafficking The
exact number of illegal immigrants is impossible to know. This is not only due
to the clandestine nature of the operations, but also the lack of common
international standards about what does ‘illegal’ exactly mean. The estimates
become even murkier if one adopts concepts such as ‘irregular immigration’. The
standard, and inexact, procedure is that the magnitude of illegal immigration
is estimated on the basis of the number of border apprehensions (Salt 2000:
39-41). Official estimates indicate that in 1992 a total of 3.3 million
irregular migrants have entered the United States, but the current estimates
are much higher, usually between 6-7 million. In Japan, there were in 1994 some
300,000 irregular immigrants, while for the European Union a figure of three
million irregulars is often quoted.
In the middle of the 1990s, an estimated
250-300,000 illegal migrants plus 700,000 asylum seekers arrived each year into
Western Europe. Traffickers were used by 10-22 per cent, that is, 100-220,000,
of these illegal entrants. By the end of the 1990s, the annual number of
illegal immigrants entering the EU has increased to about half a million.
However, the range of estimates for individual member states is usually so
large that any total figure for the illegal immigrants is at best a poor
reflection of the reality. One reason for the poor quality of data is that the
definitions of the key concepts in illegal migration are poor; this concerns
especially human smuggling and trafficking (Ghosh 1998: 9-13; Salt and Hogarth
2000: 31-34; Salt 2000: 37-39; The Economist 1999: 32).
The data problem is reflected by the fact that the
estimates on the number of illegal immigrants in Germany vary from 0.5 to 1.5
million people (some 100,000 people are smuggled into the country each year,
mostly through the Czech and Polish borders). In the Netherlands, there are an
estimated 46,000 to 110,000 illegal immigrants, while in France the
corresponding figure is said to be 400,000 (Cowell 2002). A recent estimate is
provided by the US Department of State which has monitored human trafficking
since 1994. It concludes that some 700,000 persons, especially women and
children, are trafficked world-wide each year. Among them, 45-50,000 are
smuggled illegally to the United States which figure seems to be on the low
side.
In Europe, 1,500 women are said to be trafficked
for prostitution in the United Kingdom each year and the total number of people
smuggled in is, of course, much higher. In the EU, in 1999 Belgium prosecuted
429, Germany 176, Italy 500, and Spain 1008 cases of human trafficking.
Although these figures cannot be strictly compared, they reinforce the general
impression that the South European countries are most exposed to human
smugglers operating across the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea (US Department
of State 2001).
3Greece alone is assumed to have more than a
million illegal immigrants, mostly from Turkey, Albania, Iraq, and Romania. The
figure seems high and perhaps the figure of 300,000 illegal immigrants is
closer to the truth (Cowell 2002).
8 The smuggling and trafficking routes Illegal
immigrants enter Europe from well-known sources where political and social
structures are fragmenting, the economy is deteriorating, laws are incomplete
and poorly enforced, and criminal networks involved in trafficking are
permitted to operate.
The routes used for smuggling and trafficking
people to Europe are not exactly clandestine in nature; they can be mapped
quite well combining various types of materials available. These routes
overlap, in part, those used to smuggle drugs, cigarettes, and stolen cars (for
maps of smuggling routes, see Fabre et al. 2000).
Turkey is one of the main gateways to Europe for
immigrants from Iraq (especially Kurds), Iran, Afghanistan, and many other
Asian countries, including China. The number of smugglers arraigned in Turkey
has risen from about one hundred in 1998 to 850 in 2000, while the number of
illegal immigrants detained rose from 11,400 in 1995 to 29,400 in 1998, and to
94,000 in 2000. The increase in numbers has been said to show that Turkey, as a
putative member of the EU, is taking the problem of human smuggling seriously.
In 2001, 23,400 of the apprehended persons came from Iraq, 8,500 from
Afghanistan and Iran each, and 8,300 from Moldova (Icduygu and Toktas 2002:
26-35).
These figures hint that, in recent years, a major
expansion in human trafficking from Asia through Turkey to Europe has taken
place. The smuggling routes go either overland to Bulgaria and Greece, and from
there to Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia, or directly by sea to Greece. In
Italy, the destination is more often than not the open coast of Apulia in its
southeastern corner. This area can be easily reached by speed boats from the
other side of the Adriatic Sea from which the shortest distance is some 60
miles. In 1997 alone, in the province of Lecce in Apulia some 20,000 illegal
immigrants were caught by the police. Most of them came from Albania (40 per cent),
from the former Yugoslavia (24 per cent), Iraq (23 per cent), and Turkey (8 per
cent) (The Economist 1999: 32).
Previously, smugglers crossing the Adriatic Sea
used small boats but the growth in the traffic has made possible for them to
rent dilapidated cargo ships that can take as many as 1,000 passengers for a
treacherous and sometimes deadly journey. The migrants usually pay US$1,000 to
US$3,000 for the smugglers depending on the route used. It is not unusual that
the migrants are cheated of their money and left stranded in an
[3 The State Department prepared the report as a
response to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (PL
106-386) passed by the Congress in 2001. The report divided the countries into
three tiers depending on how closely they comply with the minimum standards
defined in the Act.]
unfamiliar place or, even worse, in the sea (Moore
2001; Finkel 2001a). Perils for the passengers are probably even worse in other
parts of the world; for instance in 2001, a small wooden Indonesian ship on its
way to Australia, carrying Middle Eastern asylum seekers, sank taking some 300
people with it (Mydans 2001).
A key argument of the so-called critical
geopolitics is that the nature of space has been transformed in a major way;
the territorial conception of space is complemented by spaces that are defined
by various economic, legal, and symbolic markers. They represent ‘emerging
spatial forms’ that the disjuncture between the territorial system of nation
states and the spatial structure of the global economy is creating (Agnew and
Corbridge 1995; see also Väyrynen 2003). This disjuncture is characterized by
various networks, gaps, and enclaves.
Turkey is an example of a juridical enclave which
has lacked so far appropriate legislation and enforcement mechanisms which
permit the human smuggling business to flourish. Such an enclave cannot usually
exist without social enclaves in which ethnic and other networks help the
immigrants to find right contacts and even assume new identities. Juridical
enclaves are established by the governmental inaction, while social enclaves
represent the societal aspect of transnational relations.
Increasingly, the business of human trafficking is
conducted by the help of the internet when one can speak of a virtual enclave.
Internet has particular importance in the recruitment of women for the sex
traffic which joins drugs, gambling, pornography, and terrorism as its fast
growing areas of illegal business (Sager 2002). Territoriality has not disappeared
altogether, however; there are also territorial enclaves that smugglers can
safely use for their operations (Truong 2001: 6-7). Patras in Greece, Sarajevo
in Bosnia, Kiev in Ukraine, and Calais in France are examples of enclaves that
are regularly used in human smuggling and trafficking (Fabre et al. 2000:
51-52).
In other words, there are voids and gaps in the
international and national legal and territorial spaces as well as social and
logistical networks that the crime syndicates can utilize in their search for
quick profits from human trafficking. These enclaves are seldom connected by
market-based economic ties, but they create underground a new kind of
transnational system where interdependence is manifested in criminal networks.
They are often more loose and informal
organizations than usually alleged (Paoli 2001).
If one smuggling enclave, and routes linked to it,
is closed, the interests of migrants and of intermediaries alike leads to the
opening up of new routes. Thus, as the increased patrolling of the traffic
across the nine-mile wide Strait of Gibraltar has intensified, the flow of
illegal immigrants from North Africa has been directed to the Canary Islands.
In 1999, 875 illegal immigrants were detained there, but in 2000 the figure rose
to 2,410 and in 2001 to 4,112. The immigrants are held in captivity for up to
40 days after which they are formally deported, but in reality many of them
find their way to Spain’s mainland as illegal entrants (Daly 2002).
From Turkey and Greece, illegal immigrants aim
usually at Western Europe through various intermediary enclaves, among which
Sarajevo and the Bosnian countryside, as way stations to the EU, are among the
most popular.
Estimates vary, again, considerably, but it has
been assumed somewhat conservatively that in 2000 about 50,000 illegal
immigrants either stayed in Bosnia or used it as their staging post to the
Union. In the first half of 2001, a total of 11,000 people were allowed in at
the Sarajevo airport from a total of 13 prime sources of migrants, while 4,000
persons were refused the entrance. Out of the 11,000 entrants only 3,000 did
depart the country legally, while others were swallowed by the smuggling routes
(Finkel 2001b: 9).
As Bosnia is a landlocked country, the illegal
migrants must continue their journey either by flying to other countries or
moving through neighbouring countries, among which Croatia is a popular
throughway. Bosnia and Croatia have in all 400 crossing points on their
900-mile land border of which only 50 have been watched so far. In Croatia,
more than 20,000 illegal migrants are stopped annually by the police. Taking
into account the porous nature of the border, the weakness of the central
government in Bosnia, and the embedded corruption in the area, it is no wonder
that the illegal crossing of the border is a widespread practice.
The situation has been changing slightly since 2001
when Bosnia finally established a State Border Service. It has now under
control some two-thirds of the Bosnian-Croatian border. To stem the trafficking
of illegal immigrants, the Bosnian central government has received in this
effort external assistance from the EU and other sources. In addition, some
countries like England have established missions to Sarajevo to conduct pre-emptive
monitoring of the illegal immigrants.
Those crossing the borders from Bosnia to
neighbouring countries are often assisted by the ‘organizers’ who have
established among themselves networks of delivery in which the migrants are
moved from one enclave to another. The ‘organizers’ also often have
semi-permanent relations with the local authorities. Such relations are usually
rife with corruption as has been witnessed by the situation on the
Bosnian-Croatian border. The infiltration to Croatia is not without risks,
however; in 2000, some 30 people drowned when crossing the Sava River. From
Croatia, some of the illegal immigrants continue their journey through Slovenia
whose officials report that 35,000 people crossed the border without
permission. Some of those people move from there further on to Eastern and
Central Europe (Buric 2001; Finkel 2001b).
Another route in the Balkans has been through
Belgrade. The Milosevic regime developed close ties with China whose citizens
received numerous tourist visas in return for payments to the Yugoslav
authorities. Many of the Chinese overstayed their visas in Belgrade or
continued their journey to various destinations in Western Europe. This
pressure has been felt, among other places, on the Hungarian-Serbian border where
in one border section only close to 3,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended
in 2002, a figure that was 7-8 times higher than in 2001 (Buric 2001; Wright
2002).
Yet another route goes directly from Croatia,
Slovenia, and especially Albania to Italy whose 4,800-mile long coastline is
impossible to close completely for illegal immigrants. In Italy, Rome has
become a gathering place for illegal immigrants from North Africa, the Middle
East, and South Asia (many of them from Bangladesh). The popularity of Italy
among the illegal immigrants is not due only to its exposed geographical
location, but also the needs of the economy and the governmental policy.
Labour-intensive underground industries rely
extensively on immigrant labour, whose wages are very low by European
standards. This keeps the gray economy ticking and obviates the need to export
jobs abroad. The Italian government has also issued several mass amnesties to
illegal immigrants who meet some basic conditions and the illegals live in the
hope that there will be again a new amnesty. It is estimated that in Italy,
there are a total of 230,000 illegal immigrants (Juurus 2001).
Due to large immigrant communities and the
language, France is obviously another popular destination. It is also a way station
to England where the existing diaspora communities and the language also help
the adjustment to new conditions. Eurotunnel (‘Channel Tunnel’) has become a
popular, but perilous route to the wonderland of England. At any one time,
about a thousand asylum seekers and illegal immigrants have waited in a Red
Cross compound in Sangatte on the French side that was opened in 1999.
The asylum seekers made, night after night, an
effort to enter England through the rail tunnel. Others are packed in the
dozens in trucks and ferries that ply in business to the British side. In 2000,
the British police and security guards intercepted about 5,000 people who tried
to reach England through the tunnel, but in the first half of 2001 the figure
had already risen to 18,500. In November 2002, after persistent demands by the
British, the Red Cross closed the Sangatte camp for new entrants, many of whom
had been Afghans.
There are harrowing stories on the risks the
illegals are ready to take to make it successfully to England. Some of them
fail in this effort as did over 50 Chinese who were suffocated in a metal
container about three years ago. In the British view, France should tighten its
policy because its authorities use now no sanctions against those who try
repeatedly to cross the Channel under or above the water. On the other hand,
the French have criticized the British for too lax immigration rules that need
tightening (Cowell 2001; Richburg 2001).
The end of the cold war opened up the Eastern and
Eastern Central European countries for migration flows to Western Europe. The
most impoverished countries, such as Armenia and Romania, have become sources
of immigrants, while others, such as the Czech Republic, have served more as
conduits for immigrants coming from East European countries or outside Europe.
Prague has become a very popular tourist city and hence increasingly
international in flavour which allows also illegal immigrants to ‘melt’ into
the cosmopolitan urban environment and find ways to continue further to the EU
countries. The borders with Austria and Germany provide one possibility to
cross the line to the EU. The penalty for failure is small; the immigrant is
returned back to the Czech Republic where the treatment of his asylum
application continues uninterrupted. (Branstein and Poolos 2000).
9 Prostitution and slavery As mentioned earlier, a
central dimension of the illegal immigration concerns its intentionality. In
one case, the human smugglers only undertake the task to transport a person for
a fee to a particular destination or way station to be left there or to be
delivered to another agent. Traffickers may do it ‘honestly’ or cheat the
client by leaving him or her in the lurch in an unfamiliar country without much
money, documents, and contacts. These migrants tend to fall, sooner or later,
in the hands of the asylum authorities in one of the countries en route.
If the smuggling takes place between two rather
close points (say Albania and Italy or Mexico and the United States) and if the
routes are well-known and tested, the traffickers may be more like family
enterprises which do not need to have any deeper connections with the organized
crime. On the other hand, if the distance is long and the barriers of entry are
high, organized crime syndicates are more likely to be involved as is the case
in the professional trafficking by ‘snakeheads’ of Chinese illegal immigrants
to the United States which started in a big way in the 1980s.
The Chinese syndicates continue to control the
lives of the migrants in the destination, discipline them by force if needed,
and extract heavy payment for the services rendered.
The smugglers hold their clients as virtual
hostages until the fees have been paid. The average smuggling for illegal
Chinese immigrants to the US was US$27,000 in 1993 and it has obviously
increased since then (for a detailed analysis, see Chin et al. 2001: 138-47).
The second type of intentionality in human
trafficking concerns the exploitation of a person in a particular end task that
is usually prostitution or slavery, sometimes drug trafficking. The nature of
employment is not decided by the victim, but it is done by the agent hijacking
him or her to turn in profits or pleasure. The character of the job is not
always known in advance or the victim has only a vague idea about it. The
victim loses the personal freedom and is thus unable to leave the predicament,
or can do so only with a risk. The result is often physical and emotional harm.
It is not unfounded to call trafficking ‘a trade in human misery’ (Global
Report 1999: 223).
The difference between these two different types of
intentionalities is usually captured by using the concept of ‘smuggling’ to
refer to illegal immigration in which an agent is involved for payment to help
a person to cross a border clandestinely, while ‘trafficking’ involves coercion
and victimization. This dichotomy has been emphasized in the UN-directed Vienna
process on the transnational organized crime. Its main implication is that
‘smuggling’ is a migration issue that has to be dealt with by legal and
bureaucratic means, while ‘trafficking’ is a human rights issue and, as a
consequence, the victim deserves protection (Salt and Hogarth 2000: 20-23,
119-20).
This dichotomy is important for the reason that it
removes a stigma that is associated with persons who are trafficked for
prostitution. If coercion and exploitation are involved, the migrant is not a
criminal, but the victim of a crime. On the other hand, it has been argued that
trafficking and exploitation are not synonymous because trafficking leads to
different social outcomes depending on the target country (Pomodoro 2001:
238-41).
Sex trafficking seems to be most common in Europe
and South East Asia. A complete picture of the phenomenon is, of course, much
more diverse; for instance, there appears to be continuing trafficking of women
from the Dominican Republic to the Netherlands.
Within Europe, most of the women working as
prostitutes come from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
The number of sex migrants in Europe is impossible to determine, but 100,000 is
sometimes given as a conservative estimate.
A higher estimate is reached if one believes that
50,000 Russian women are lured every year to the sex business abroad. On that
basis, one may even suggest that the number of foreign sex workers in the EU
varies between 200,000 and half a million. Ukraine seems to be a major source
of sex migrants as 20 per cent of the trafficked migrants from there are women,
while the corresponding figure for Lithuania is 7 per cent and Poland 9 per
cent (Weir 2001; Salt and Hogarth 2000: 71-73; Global Report 1999: 225-27). The
higher level of living and the Roman Catholic culture in Lithuania and Poland
may explain the difference.
The estimation of the number of women trafficked
for the sex industry is made even more difficult by the fact that women may
come to a country for brief stints by a legal visa, go back home for a while,
and return again. Those staying in prostitution business for longer periods of
time may have originally entered the country legally to work, nominally at
least, as maids, entertainers, waitresses, or secretaries (on problems to
estimate trafficked migrants, see Salt and Hogarth 2000: 29-43).
In Germany’s red light districts alone, there are
estimated 15,000 Russian and other East European prostitutes. Moreover,
according to Dutch evidence, over one-half of the women are below 21 years.
Even in Europe, it is not unusual, either, that children are trafficked for
pornography and sex. In addition to Europe, women from Russia, Ukraine and
elsewhere are trafficked to the United States, Japan, Macau, and other places
where there is local or tourist demand for sex services. For instance, in South
Korea there are 6,000 illegal Russian female immigrants who make their living
through prostitution (Caldwell et al. 1999: 44-50).
In prostitution, there is also a Balkan route, not
only through the area to Western Europe, but also to Bosnia and Kosovo where
women are used, in addition to satisfying local demand, by international
peacekeepers and civilian experts. In Bosnia, there were in 2001 an estimated
2,600 prostitutes of whom 10 per cent were minors and 25 per cent claimed to
have been trafficked. In Eastern Europe, prostitution grows out of poverty that
explains why 80 per cent of the women in Bosnia came either from Moldova or
Romania (Dempsey 2001).
The country origin of women working in prostitution
in Kosovo is pretty much the same and they are, on average, 21 years old. Their
history illustrates also another aspect of the transnational prostitution
business; the women are usually sold three to six times before arriving in
Kosovo (Chausy 2001). To address the problem, the Stability Pact for
Southeastern Europe established in 2000 a Task Force on Trafficking in Human
Beings that has developed a multiyear anti-trafficking action plan to enhance
regional cooperation. Southeastern Europe provides vivid practical
illustrations on how human trafficking has pervaded the zones of violent
conflict and weak, flawed states in which the organized crime can operate with
impunity (for a comprehensive study, see UNICEF 2002).
The trafficking of women in South East Asia tells,
if possible, even a more dismal story.
In particular, there are many more minors in South
East Asia than in Europe. UNICEF estimates – fortunately it probably
overestimates – that there are 800,000 child prostitutes in Thailand, 400,000
in Indonesia and India each, and 100,000 in the Philippines. In addition, the
number is 300,000 for the United States and varies in the range of 500,000 to
2,000,000 in Brazil (Hoffmann 2001; Global Report 1999: 226).
Another difference in South East Asia is that most
of the child prostitutes are sold by their poor parents or they are abducted
from rural villages to work in urban brothels in their own countries. In
Thailand, for instance, the sale of young girls for prostitution is a common
practice, sanctioned by prevailing religious beliefs (Bales 1999: 34-79).
Thailand is both an exporter and importer of
migrant workers. In 1995, it was estimated that about 450,000 Thais of both
gender work outside their own country and 60 per cent of them, that is,
270,000, were illegal migrants. Taiwan has been by far the most common
destination for Thai migrant workers who are mostly unskilled labourers
(Phongpaichit 1999: 77-79, 88-89). The exportation of women for prostitution
and arranged marriages has also been a major element of this outward migration.
In Thailand, foreign sex workers, whose number has
been increasing quickly, come usually from Burma and Laos. There are estimated
30,000 Burmese women working as prostitutes in Thailand who are brutalized both
by the Thai and Burmese authorities, in particular the military. On the unruly
Thai-Burmese border, dotted by refugee camps, the smugglers work in cahoots
with the Thai border police who coerce camp dwellers to recruit young girls for
the traffickers and get, of course, paid for that help. These payments have
become an ‘informally institutionalized source of income for the police’.
In the sex traffic across the Thai-Burmese border a
financial premium is put on virgins that has resulted in the ‘commodification
of virginity’ (Kyle and Dale 2001: 40-47).
As illegal entrants, the trafficked Burmese girls
have no protection and they are at the mercy of the police and immigration
officers. The situation is made worse by the Thai perception that the Burmese,
especially the women, are culturally inferior and can be treated as if they
were not even human beings. If a Burmese girl is deported back to her own
country, she faces there imprisonment and hard labour. The situation of the Lao
women in Thailand is slightly better because of the greater porosity of the
Lao-Thai border and a smaller cultural distance (Bales 1999: 65-68;
Phongpaichit 1999: 90-92).
In the sex trade, there is in Thailand a two-way
street. In addition to the importation of prostitutes, many Thai women work in
the sex business especially in Japan, Germany, and the United States. In
Berlin, alone there are an estimated 2,000 Thai prostitutes, while in 1995
their number in Japan amounted to 23,000 out of the total 100,000 sex workers
in the country (many of the rest were Filippinas). In Germany, the women have
usually entered the country legally, although they seldom have a work permit.
On the other hand, in Japan and the United States women have almost always been
brought in illegally and they are controlled by the agents with connections to
criminal gangs. In the US, these gangs are often Chinese or Vietnamese holding
female prostitutes as virtual slaves (Bales 1999: 69-71; Phongpaichit 1999: 8).
In South East Asia, also Cambodia is involved in
sex traffic. The local sex industry expanded in the early 1990s with the end of
the war and the arrival of international peacekeepers and other officials.
There are now an estimated 80-100,000 prostitutes and sex slaves in Cambodia,
most of them in Phnom Penh, while in 1990 the number was only about 1,000. The
value of the sex industry is conservatively estimated at US$500 million per
year. Cambodian girls are trafficked to prostitution mostly in Thailand, but
also in Macau (thefuturegroup.org 2001).
Above a distinction has been made between illegal
migration, including smuggling, and human trafficking on the basis on the
agencies and intentions involved in the process. It follows from this
distinction that the organized crime syndicates are primarily involved in human
trafficking. As criminal organizations, these syndicates have no scruples to
become engaged in coercive and exploitative activities because this is the way
to make money.
Crime syndicates pursue both domestic and
international activities that cannot be always separated from each other.
Domestically, in addition to being involved in illegal business, these
syndicates also sell private protection services for companies that operate in
a poorly institutionalized market economy. Mafias are not, however, only
domestic organizations, but they have also strong transnational ties, for
instance in financial business and smuggling (De Brie 2000). Internet has
become an increasingly important instrument for shady business deals. In the
United States, it has been estimated that the value of underground business
conducted online amounts to US$37 billion a year which is about the same, US$39
billion, that US consumers spend on legitimate internet business (Sager et al.
2002).
A new feature on the international crime scene is
the rapid internationalization and mutual cooperation of organized crime
syndicates originating from different countries.
In addition, to the Italian mafia and Chinese
triads, the Russian, Nigerian, and Albanian crime syndicates, among others,
have spread their tentacles across the world. These syndicates have also
expanded their activities to new fields to the extent that they start
resembling travel agencies as they provide documentation, transportation,
accommodation, and other necessary tourist services. As the supply of willing
migrants continues to grow, the critical resources for an effective
intermediary are contacts in the target place and enough money to cover
start-up costs (Shannon 1999: 30-33; Caldwell et al. 1999: 50-61).
Criminal gangs do, however, other things that legal
travel agencies do not do. They traffic women, by coercion if needed, to
brothel keepers for prostitution and are ready to seize them if there is an
effort to escape. An important aspect of the mafia operations is their
involvement in debt collection to make sure that the money borrowed to the
trafficked person gets paid back from his or her work in prostitution or some
other criminal activity. Sometimes this task is subcontracted to the local
mafia in the target country. In addition to the costs of trafficking, the
victims have to pay their upkeep and for these expenses they can keep only a
part of the money earned from, say, prostitution (Shannon 1999: 33; Caldwell et
al. 1999: 63-67).
Debt bondage of prostitutes and other slaves is
particularly bad in South and Southeast Asia. The financial arrangements are so
onerous that the slave has little chance to be released unless he or she
becomes physically useless for the slaveholder. Often the debt burden
accumulates over time despite all the free work the slave performs for his
holder (for details, see Bales 1999).
The Albanian mafia is a good example of a criminal
organization that is specialized in smuggling human beings, drugs, cigarettes,
alcohol, contraband, and essentially everything that has market demand due to
the legal and political restrictions on their availability. As is well known,
the Albanian mafia has penetrated all levels of the country’s government
(Cilluffo and Salmoiraghi 1999). The Kosovar mafia has extensive operations all
over Europe. In London, Albanians and Kosovars control some 70 per cent of
massage parlours in Soho in which prostitutes are held as virtual slaves and
are treated with increasing violence. These groups have connections with
immigration and prostitution rackets across Western Europe.
10 Conclusion The pressures to migrate from the
peripheral to the core countries are growing both on the supply and demand
sides. On the supply side, rampant political and economic crises, and the sheer
lack of prospects for a more prosperous life, push people to move to the North
where there is a need of low-paid labour force in some industries and the
service sector. In fact, the present nature of the global economic competition
creates the need of both high-skilled and low-skilled, expensive and cheap,
labour force. The well-trained and productive component of the labour force
produces for the international market, while the low-skilled part of it is more
geared to meet the domestic demand that helps to contain costs and check
inflation.
The demographic gap between the South and the North
creates further incentives to move. The EU countries, according to a UN
estimate, alone need 1.6 million immigrants annually if they want to maintain
by 2050 their labour force at the current absolute level. Refugees seeking for
asylum are, as a rule, families with children and in need of economic and
humanitarian assistance and education before they can be gainfully employed.
‘Economic migrants’ are, in turn, usually young men
who seek for a better life and money, part of which can be remitted back to
their families at home and thus pay the loans taken to finance the trip to the
North. These migrants seldom come from the most squalid conditions, but from
families that own some land and other property. Often one of the oldest sons is
financed first by the help of this property to go to the North and find his
place there. Thereafter, other siblings and cousins have a better chance to
follow his footsteps.
Human trafficking has been growing in tandem with
the growing pressures of emigration and the closure of the borders, especially
in the European Union. In effect, there seems to be a direct correlation
between the increasingly restrictive policies by the EU and its member states
and the level risks and fees associated with human smuggling.
In other words, receiving states are creating by
their policies a lucrative market for the traffickers. The destination of their
‘commodity’ is decided by the logistical ease by which it can be reached, but
also by the prevailing political and legal conditions.
Usually, the countries that have lax immigration
laws and small penalties for illegal immigrants and their traffickers, such as
Italy and Spain, become popular targets and way stations for them. The EU has
been trying to harmonize the immigration laws and asylum procedures, but so far
the practical progress has been limited. Human smugglers and traffickers tend
to use entry points and routes where the risk of getting caught is lowest in
comparison to the amount of money that can be potentially earned by using this
particular juridical, social, and territorial enclave.
Although illegal immigration and human trafficking
are important political and social issues, their impact should not be
overblown. First, in Europe, most illegal immigrants are not smuggled in by the
traffickers, but they arrive with a legal visa and simply overstay it. Few
countries in the EU, or in North America for that matter, have reliable
national systems to track those overstaying their visas. These people often
‘melt’ into the local ethnic communities and the underground economy in which
there is a demand for their unregulated labour force. One may even say that the
highly regulated labour market in Europe has, perversely, increased the demand
for illegal workers. Illegal immigrants do not always stay permanently, but
they may well return temporarily home and come back again to earn more money.
One should not give, however, too rosy a picture
about illegal immigration. Many immigrants strand in desperate positions in
major European cities and their flophouses, or in reception centres in the
countryside. They do not get asylum, either because of the strict legislation
or delays in procedures, and thus do not have a chance to work or move around.
In particular, in cities they become a prey of the organized crime gangs that
may have smuggled him or her in the country in the first place.
Human trafficking can result in pernicious
consequences. This is evidenced by severe human-rights violations, even
slavery, in cross-border trafficking of women for prostitution. Especially in
Southeast Asia, prostitution involves also very young girls who are physically
and mentally destroyed by their sexual exploitation, while economically they
end up in debt bondage. The situation is not much better in the case of those women
who toil in sweatshops on practically every continent, but in particular in
Asia. Their freedom and self-confidence have also been robbed and their body
exploited for a quick profit.
See linked PDF file for References
TOPICS: Business/Economy; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: aliens; borders; humansmuggling; humantrafficking; illegalmigration; immigration; organizedcrime; sextours; slaveauctions; slavery
KEYWORDS: aliens; borders; humansmuggling; humantrafficking; illegalmigration; immigration; organizedcrime; sextours; slaveauctions; slavery
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To: Coleus; Fedora; windchime; backhoe; Liz;
nicmarlo; Viking2002; piasa; pissant; SwinneySwitch; ...
This is long; but a must read. Mark it to come back
to or print it out and stick it in the bathroom.
Make an effort to read it.
Make an effort to read it.
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To: dennisw
ping
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To: Calpernia
BTTT
4 posted on 11/28/2005 1:27:04 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
(Liberals-beyond your expectations!)
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To: Calpernia
thanks for the ping; bumped and bookmarked
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To: Calpernia
Good article. I saw some quasi slavery going on in
Asia when I lived there.
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To: Calpernia
Thanks! Read it.
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To: Calpernia
Thanks Calpernia....bump for a later read.
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To: Calpernia
bump
9 posted on 12/04/2005 2:14:51 PM PST by VeniVidiVici
(What? Me worry?)
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1790389,00.html
'Slave auctions' targeted in crackdown on airport crime
Jacqueline Maley
Monday June 5, 2006
The Guardian
Women are being sold off in "slave auctions" in the arrivals lounges of British airports, according to authorities desperate to crack down on the burgeoning trade in trafficking humans.
The Crown Prosecution Service said foreign women were being sold as sex workers as soon as they arrived, and police have been appealing to men who frequent brothels to contact them in confidence if they believe the prostitutes may be there against their will.
(snip)
A Home Office report released five years ago estimated the number of victims of human trafficking in the UK at 1,400. But the current figure could be double that, according to Gloucestershire chief constable Tim Brain, the head of Operation Pentameter, a multi-agency taskforce launched in February to combat trafficking. The CPS conference coincides with criticisms levelled at the government by children's charities, who believe its response to the trafficking of children is "completely inadequate".
(snip)
'Slave auctions' targeted in crackdown on airport crime
Jacqueline Maley
Monday June 5, 2006
The Guardian
Women are being sold off in "slave auctions" in the arrivals lounges of British airports, according to authorities desperate to crack down on the burgeoning trade in trafficking humans.
The Crown Prosecution Service said foreign women were being sold as sex workers as soon as they arrived, and police have been appealing to men who frequent brothels to contact them in confidence if they believe the prostitutes may be there against their will.
(snip)
A Home Office report released five years ago estimated the number of victims of human trafficking in the UK at 1,400. But the current figure could be double that, according to Gloucestershire chief constable Tim Brain, the head of Operation Pentameter, a multi-agency taskforce launched in February to combat trafficking. The CPS conference coincides with criticisms levelled at the government by children's charities, who believe its response to the trafficking of children is "completely inadequate".
(snip)
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