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70–951PDF 2011

THE TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT 2011:

TRUTH, TRENDS, AND TIER RANKINGS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

AND HUMAN RIGHTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 27, 2011

Serial No. 112–106

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

ROBERT TURNER, New York 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

ROBERT TURNER, New York 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

KAREN BASS, California 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

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C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large, Office to Monitor and 

Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State .............................. 5

The Honorable Robert O. Blake, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of 

South and Central Asian Affairs, U.S. Department of State ........................... 14

Mr. Joseph Y. Yun, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau 

of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State ........................... 22

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Luis CdeBaca: Prepared statement .............................................. 8

The Honorable Robert O. Blake: Prepared statement .......................................... 16

Mr. Joseph Y. Yun: Prepared statement ............................................................... 24

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 58

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 59

The Honorable Russ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Missouri: Prepared statement ......................................................................... 60

The Honorable Ann Marie Buerkle, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of New York: Prepared statement ............................................................ 61

Questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H. Smith, 

a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, 

Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights ........................... 62

Questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Ann Marie Buerkle, 

a Representative in Congress from the State of New York .............................. 65

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THE TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT 2011: 

TRUTH, TRENDS, AND TIER RANKINGS 

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:08 p.m., in room 

2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The subcommittee will come to order. And good afternoon to everybody. Welcome to this hearing to examine the State 

Department’s 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report. This annual report to Congress was first mandated by legislation that I sponsored, known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. 

In 1998—and I know Ambassador CdeBaca is very well aware of 

this—when I first introduced the bill, the legislation was met with 

a wall of skepticism and opposition, although we did have some 

friends like the Ambassador. People both inside of government and 

out thought the issue of human trafficking was merely a solution 

in search of a problem. For most people at that time, the term 

‘‘trafficking’’ applied almost exclusively to illegal drugs or weapons. 

Reports of vulnerable persons, especially women and children, 

being reduced to commodities for sale were often met with surprise, 

incredulity, or indifference. 

One major objection to the bill, especially from the Clinton administration, was the naming and ranking of countries based on 

compliance with the establishment of commonsense minimum 

standards, clearly articulated prevention, protection, and prosecution benchmarks, enforced by sanctions and penalties against egregious violators. 

Fortunately, reality won out over ignorance. Although it took 2 

years to overcome opponents and muster the votes for passage, the 

Trafficking Victims Protection Act was finally signed into law with 

strong bipartisan support. This support from both sides of the aisle 

has continued through subsequent reauthorizations, and has been 

essential in the ongoing successes by the U.S. Government in combating modern-day slavery both at home and abroad. 

However, the battle is far from over. According to the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking, created by the TVPA, more than 12 million people worldwide are trafficking victims. Other estimates put the number of victims as high 

as 27 million. 

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Today we know that human trafficking is the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world. According to the International 

Labor Organization, human traffickers make profits in excess of 

$31 billion a year. 

We are fortunate to have with us today three distinguished State 

Department witnesses to examine both the substance and the diplomatic activity that is behind the Trafficking in Persons Report. 

The report, which is written by the TIP office, headed by Ambassador Lou CdeBaca, summarizes the rankings and performance of 

each country and provides detailed recommendations as to how 

each country can improve its efforts. 

But more than a source of comprehensive, concise knowledge 

against human trafficking around the world, the TIP report has 

been an incredibly effective diplomatic tool. The report has been a 

catalyst for improvement, often dramatic improvements, in efforts 

of governments to address human trafficking within their borders 

and regions. 

With a combination of encouragement, persuasion, and sustained 

pressure via sanctions or the threat of sanctions imposed by the 

U.S., countries around the world have created or amended over 120 

laws to combat human trafficking, and, in the past 3 years alone, 

an estimated 113,000 victims have been identified and assisted 

worldwide. Individuals within each country can use the report to 

assess their government’s commitment and to lobby their government to take specific measures. 

The G/TIP Office also coordinates technical assistance and aid for 

many of the countries wishing to improve their anti-trafficking response. The result has been a worldwide anti-trafficking surge, 

largely dependent on the credibility, the accuracy, and faithful implementation of the report, including the tier framework. 

This afternoon, we will turn our attention to ensuring that the 

report retains these essential attributes, and to assess whether or 

not it is fulfilling its purpose. 

In 2003, Congress added a special Watch List to the tier 

rankings to allow countries an opportunity to address serious 

shortcomings in their anti-trafficking efforts before being placed in 

Tier III and subject to sanctions. When it became apparent that 

this Tier II Watch List was becoming a permanent parking lot for 

some countries, Congress added a requirement to the 2008 reauthorization that the President either downgrade or upgrade any 

country that had been on Tier II Watch List for 2 consecutive 

years. 

Obviously, the direction in which the country is moved is based 

on whether requisite measures were taken to meet the minimum 

standards. The President can waive the requirements to move a 

country off of the Tier II Watch List for up to 2 years if the country 

has a plan to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards, 

and designates sufficient resources to carry it out. But this waiver 

should only be applied in the most extreme cases, as countries have 

had since 2009 to undertake this effort. 

Consequently, it is with concern that I note the President has determined 12 countries need yet another year on Tier II Watch 

Lists. Some of these countries, notably China and Russia, have 

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been on the Watch List for 7 and 8 years respectively. Uzbekistan 

has been on the list for 4 years. 

I look forward to hearing, discussing with our witnesses today, 

exactly why the administration is convinced these countries need 

yet another year to get their acts together. I also look forward to 

a serious discussion about the application of sanctions. 

The report shows that of the 23 countries on Tier III, the full 

sanctions envisioned by the TVPA will be applied to only three 

countries: Eritrea, Madagascar, and North Korea. Partial sanctions 

will be imposed on seven countries, and 13 countries will have no 

trafficking sanctions imposed whatsoever. 

Some may argue that being on Tier III is punishment enough, 

but Congress envisioned tangible repercussions for countries on 

Tier III. Those who work on the front lines of human trafficking 

know all too well that a law is useless and diminished at the very 

least, unless faithfully implemented. 

I look forward to discussing with our distinguished witnesses 

today the accuracy of the tier rankings and the importance of substantial follow-up actions. 

I would like to now yield to my friend and colleague Mr. Payne 

for any opening comments he may have. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Let me start by commending Congressman Smith for calling this important hearing on the 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report. 

I want to thank our witnesses for agreeing to testify before us 

today. On June 27, the State Department issued its 11th annual 

Report on Human Trafficking in Persons, TIP Report, as mandated 

by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Overall, the 2011 report 

presents a sobering view of the state of U.S. and international campaigns against human trafficking. It describes the most common severe forms of human trafficking, and identifies key emerging issues 

and trends. 

Unfortunately, global progress has been mixed. For example, in 

the past 2 years the average number of prosecutions of human trafficking offenders has increased. However, if we look back further 

we see that the total number of prosecutions have declined. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about ways 

the international community can help developing countries 

strengthen their judicial systems to better respond to this and 

other criminal justice issues. 

The report also reveals that we are failing to adequately target 

each subset of TIP, particularly forced labor, which is more than 

a common crime; it actually occurs much more than sex trafficking, 

but only represents 10 percent of all prosecutions. 

I am looking forward to hearing the panel’s thoughts on how to 

better address this challenge of trafficking in the workforce. I also 

hope the witnesses can highlight the unique challenges facing 

many African and conflict-stricken countries in addressing the 

issue of human trafficking. 

According to the report, only two African nations, Nigeria and 

Mauritius, are fully complying with the minimum standards for 

combating human trafficking, therefore qualifying them as Tier I. 

Ten African countries fall within Tier III, which makes them subject to aid restrictions. In Africa, these potential aid restrictions are 

4

cause for concern. Many countries on the continent have been burdened by debilitating conflicts and strife. Africa’s conflicts have displaced citizens, traumatized local communities, and it is often children who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. 

In these conflict areas, where government control is often limited, armed groups may abduct women and children for sexual 

slavery, and also often recruit children for their ranks. 

Limited income-earning opportunities in conflict zones also contribute to these problems. Exploitation thrives under these conditions. Overburdened governments, poor judicial systems, and widespread poverty prevent adequate response to human trafficking 

cases in many of the countries that I am referring to. Yet some African nations are making progress on this front. 

The U.N. Secretary General stated in his most recent global report on children and armed conflict that, despite several challenges, considerable progress was made by the Sudanese People’s 

Liberation Army, the SPLA, in implementing a plan to remove 

child soldiers from its ranks. According to the 2011 report, Chad 

reportedly ended all child conscription into its national army, and 

continued to engage in efforts to demobilize remaining child soldiers from rebel forces. 

Earlier this month, President Obama certified that Chad had 

taken necessary steps to allow for its reinstatement of barred assistance. While I agree that the United States and the international community must hold states responsible for implementing 

robust anti-trafficking initiatives, I am concerned about the impact 

that withholding aid can have on innocent civilians. 

It is important that in our effort to end human trafficking and 

persuade nations to fully engage in the global cause, we do not inadvertently harm those we intend to protect and help. I commend 

President Obama for his thoughtful understanding of this very 

complex issue and for granting waivers where appropriate. 

As we move forward with our discussion today, let us not forget 

the conditions that allow the horrific crimes of human trafficking 

to exist. We should focus on ways to ensure that our aid programs 

help strengthen the capacity of developing countries to adequately 

protect their civilians and citizens. 

Thank you again to our witnesses, and I look forward to hearing 

your testimony. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Ranking Member. 

We are joined by Mr. Turner. Thank you for being here. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. And I will put all of the extensive resumes of our distinguished witnesses in the record, and just very quickly summarize. 

First, introducing Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, who is no stranger 

to this subcommittee, who was appointed in 2009 as the Director 

of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which assesses global trends, provides training 

and technical assistance, and advocates for an end to modern-day 

slavery. Ambassador CdeBaca formerly served as chief counsel to 

the House Committee on the Judiciary, where his portfolio included 

modern slavery issues among many other things. He also served as 

a Federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where he conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:36 Feb 23, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\102711\70951 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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victed dozens of abusive pimps and employers, and helped to liberate hundreds of victims from servitude. A very distinguished 

record. 

We will then hear from Ambassador Robert Blake, who currently 

serves as the Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of South 

and Central Asian Affairs, a position he has held since May 2009. 

He entered the Foreign Service in 1985, and served at the American Embassies in Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, and Egypt. He served 

as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Mission in New Delhi, 

India, from 2003 to 2006. And Ambassador Blake was our Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives from 2006 to 2009. He also held 

a number of positions at the Department right here in Washington. 

Then we will hear from Mr. Joseph Yun, who is currently Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and 

Pacific Affairs, a position he has held since August 2010. In this 

role, he is responsible for relations with Southeast Asia and 

ASEAN affairs. He joined the Foreign Service in 1985, and has 

served in numerous positions abroad, including in South Korea, 

Thailand, France, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. 

Ambassador CdeBaca, the floor is yours. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LUIS CDEBACA, AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE, OFFICE TO MONITOR AND COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman 

Payne, Congressman Turner. Thank you to the subcommittee for 

the opportunity to testify today. I have a more fulsome statement 

that I would offer for the record. But before we start, I would like 

to take a step back, if I may, to recognize what you and your cosponsors of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act achieved 

in bringing that initial skepticism that you perhaps mentioned to 

consensus. 

Eleven years ago this afternoon in fact, on a similarly rainy day 

in October, President Clinton recorded his radio address to be 

broadcast on the morning of October 28, 2000, the day that he 

signed that groundbreaking legislation into law to fight what the 

President described that day as slavery, pure and simple. As President Clinton pointed out, the TVPA was groundbreaking in providing new tools both here at home and abroad in increasing our 

assistance to other countries to help them detect and punish this 

pernicious practice. 

I would like to simply quote President Clinton, because his words 

that evening are as applicable now as they were then. He said, and 

I quote,

‘‘I worked hard for these provisions. They build on what we 

have been doing at home and abroad to address this problem. 

We see in the success of this landmark legislation once again 

that there is no real secret to getting things done in Washington. When we put progress over partisanship, we get results. When we work together, we get results. Working hard, 

working together through three Presidencies and various 

changes in the Congress, together committed to ending modern 

slavery.’’

6

As you continue to deliberate this year’s reauthorization of the 

Trafficking Victims Protection Act, hearings such as this one are 

helpful opportunities to discuss the global fight. And we are dedicated to working together with you to get those types of results 

that President Clinton mentioned. 

This week is also the 10th anniversary of the establishment of 

the Trafficking in Persons Office at the State Department. On October 22, 2001, the Office opened for business and has never 

flagged in its resolve. A decade of leadership by my predecessors, 

Ambassadors Nancy Ely-Raphel, John Miller, Mark Lagon, but the 

fight is really the result of the expertise of the G/TIP career staff, 

the civil servants, Foreign Service, and contractors and their partners at Main State and at post. Two of those experts, Amy O’Neill 

Richard and Carla Menares Bury, have been in the Office since the 

beginning. And those women are globally recognized leaders in the 

modern abolitionist struggle, and I would like to note that we owe 

them all a debt of gratitude for their decade in service in this fight 

against modern slavery. 

The most visible part of our work is the annual Trafficking in 

Persons Report. And thorough and honest assessments are the 

benchmark of the TIP report. We take into account information 

from civil society groups, foreign governments, and our own reporting officers at post who conduct on-the-ground research throughout 

the year. The review process involves numerous State Department 

offices so that the final product represents a Department-wide consensus on how well various governments are doing to handle this 

problem. 

Accurate reporting is essential to the effectiveness of the Trafficking in Persons Report as a diplomatic tool. And indeed, governments often cite it as a factor prompting stronger action in response to modern slavery. Sometimes those conversations happen 

in public, more often in private, and sometimes a government that 

criticizes the report, and perhaps even mobilizes others in the regions or around the world against it, quietly nonetheless takes 

steps to address the standards that were set forth by Congress. 

Regardless of the public response, we are going to work hard 

with our counterparts to get results, just as was done in the Clinton administration, just as was done in the Bush administration. 

What the report tells us is that no country, including the United 

States, is immune to this scourge, and that no government, including the United States, is doing a perfect job in combating it. 

The two regions that we address today, East Asia and the Pacific, and South and Central Asia, are hit particularly hard by this 

crime. We always say that the fight against modern slavery takes 

political will, and not just on the part of governments overseas. Assistant Secretaries Bob Blake and Kurt Campbell are showing that 

political will both individually and within their chains of command. 

As a result, we have seen a real institutionalizing of the anti-trafficking fight in these regions, and a coming together around this 

sense of mission. That means year-round engagement—not just the 

preparation of the annual report, and for that I am personally 

grateful for the leadership of Assistant Secretaries Campbell and 

Blake—year-round engagement, partnership, and hard work, necessary to move past this last decade of development in which laws 

7

and structures have slowly come on line, and to move into what 

Secretary Clinton calls a decade of delivery. 

Because the number of successful prosecutions seems to have leveled off a bit, because services for survivors continue to be inadequate, and victim identification remains a challenge, because 

structures and results are not the same thing. The difference between the passage of a law and the effective implementation of 

that law is political will. The reality is that there are places where 

that political will is weak or nonexistent, and in those places victims are most at risk. 

As the report shows, some governments merely go through the 

motions when it comes to fighting modern slavery, and some governments, the Tier III countries, typically, do not do anything at 

all. Every day, nongovernmental actors around the world work to 

make up for that, despite the fact that these governments are 

doing little or nothing. We support such groups through our international programs and foreign assistance funds. We know that it 

will never be possible to give every organization the help that they 

want, but even the current funding levels only average out to a little more than $0.72 per victim per year, given the 27 million estimate worldwide. And in many countries, if that little bit of American funding that we were able to give were to disappear, those 

programs would simply cease to exist. There would be no place for 

victims and survivors to go. 

It has been 149 years and 1 month since President Lincoln made 

the promise of emancipation. It was 4 months ago that we released 

the TIP report and that Secretary Clinton called for a decade of delivery to make good on President Lincoln’s promise around the 

world. 

If the U.S. Government is not able to stand with motivated governments and the nongovernmentals that make a difference on the 

ground providing victim services, training prosecutors, and police 

officers, the decade of delivery is already in danger. If the anti-trafficking movement loses steam in Washington and the halls of Congress, we could lose that fight everywhere else as well. 

We cannot try to balance the budget on the backs of trafficking 

victims. And if we do so, or try to do so with cuts to an already 

tiny amount of money, we put at risk all of the progress made over 

the last decade. Human trafficking is a threat to our country and 

an offense to our most important values. But more importantly, as 

Secretary Clinton has said, fighting slavery is part of who we are 

as a Nation. For 149 years we have not only had a responsibility 

to act against this crime, we have pledged ourselves to that responsibility. We must not and will not shirk from that task. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. CdeBaca follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Ambassador Blake. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ROBERT O. BLAKE, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIAN AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ambassador BLAKE. Mr. Chairman, Representative Payne, Representative Turner, I welcome the opportunity to speak with you 

today regarding trafficking in South and Central Asia. I am honored to do so in the company of my colleagues, Ambassador 

CdeBaca and Joe Yun. I have a longer statement that I will submit 

for the record. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, that will be made part of the 

record. 

Ambassador BLAKE. Mr. Chairman, first of all let me say how 

much I appreciate your leadership, the work of this subcommittee, 

and the focus that you bring to the issue of trafficking in persons. 

I have made it a personal priority to address trafficking in persons 

in the SCA region in close partnership with Ambassador CdeBaca. 

I have done so through direct advocacy with governments, but also 

by visiting with the many fine NGOs on the ground doing good 

work to combat trafficking, and frequently recording short video 

interviews with them that my staff posts on YouTube to publicize 

their work and the scope of the challenges that they are dealing 

with. 

Mr. Chairman, I am proud to say that our engagement has produced dividends and progress, but significant challenges still remain. The Department upgraded four SCA countries this year from 

Tier II Watch List to Tier II, India, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, and 

Tajikistan. Three remain on the Watch List, but we are making 

progress in all three, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Uzbekistan. And 

only one country is on Tier III, Turkmenistan. 

I would like to briefly touch on the situation in some of the key 

countries where I have been personally engaged. First, India. Mr. 

Chairman, I know you share our interest in seeing continued 

progress in India on anti-trafficking efforts. The Department’s upgrade of India to Tier II this year was based on the government’s 

increased efforts to address the trafficking problem, particularly 

bonded labor. Specifically, the government increased law enforcement efforts through the establishment of over 80 anti-human trafficking units. It ratified the U.N. TIP protocol. It achieved landmark convictions against bonded labor traffickers, with punishments of significant prison sentences, and increased rescue and rehabilitation efforts of thousands of trafficking victims in many 

parts of India. This good work continues at both the state and Federal levels. 

Tajikistan is another country that has made commendable 

progress against trafficking, and Secretary Clinton noted that on 

her recent trip there last weekend. In 2011, Tajikistan was upgraded to Tier II for addressing the use of forced labor in its annual cotton harvest through efforts such as accrediting and assisting NGOs to monitor the harvest. They also prosecuted and convicted the first trafficking offenders under their new anti-trafficking provision. 

15

Kazakhstan also was elevated to Tier II this year. The Kazakh 

Government increased law enforcement efforts against human trafficking, it passed a law strengthening penalties for convicted child 

sex trafficking offenders, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs has 

drafted a law that allows trafficking victims to have a legal advocate that expands the scope of trafficking-related crimes and increases legal protections for minors subject to forced labors. 

Mr. Chairman, you asked about Uzbekistan. It presents a mixed 

picture. The government has made good progress in combating sex 

trafficking, but has been slow to address the use of forced labor, 

particularly in the annual cotton harvest. In March 2011, the Government of Uzbekistan created an interagency working group 

tasked with ensuring compliance with all 13 ILO conventions to 

which Uzbekistan is a party. Our Embassy in Tashkent will be 

monitoring the Government of Uzbekistan’s actions to uphold these 

commitments, and I will continue to engage the government to 

make progress on this important priority. 

Mr. Chairman, the trafficking report has been an impetus for 

this change in all of our region, but it is only one of the tools that 

we have at our disposal to influence the anti-trafficking efforts of 

other countries. 

Reports from international NGOs have sometimes been instrumental in informing and compelling action on TIP. My Bureau and 

Ambassador CdeBaca’s team greatly value such input, and we have 

tried hard to foster a cooperative relationship with these institutions. We influence them and they influence us by information 

sharing to make sure that our efforts are complementary and that 

we make the most impact on the ground. Governments remain extremely interested to know where they will be ranked in the report 

when it comes out in June. 

But I think that the work that we do to consistently engage and 

influence people at every level of society is equally significant. For 

example, the exchange programs and workshops that we sponsor to 

train government officials in implementation are critical to realizing the potential of the new laws being passed. The training programs with police officers or border guards to sensitize them about 

potential trafficking in persons victims are also vital. So I want to 

assure you that we value the resources that we are entrusted with 

by Congress, and we work very closely with Ambassador CdeBaca 

and his staff to implement the programs to make a positive and 

lasting impact. 

In summary, Mr. Chairman, the SCA region is moving closer to 

being compliant with internationally recognized anti-TIP standards, but there is much more work to be done. This will continue 

to be a personal priority for me and a priority for my Bureau. So 

again, I thank you for this opportunity to address this subcommittee, and I look forward to your questions. 

Mr. SMITH. Ambassador Blake, thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Blake follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Yun. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JOSEPH Y. YUN, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF EAST ASIAN 

AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Mr. YUN. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Payne, Representative Turner, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 

today to testify on trafficking in persons in East Asia and the Pacific region. I have submitted a statement for the record. 

With your permission, I would like to make a few summary remarks. First of all, regrets to convey from Assistant Secretary 

Campbell. He wanted to be here, but he had to be traveling at the 

last minute. So I think in fact as we are speaking, he is landing 

in Dulles. 

Human trafficking and modern slavery reaches into every corner 

of the globe, but perhaps nowhere more so than in East Asia and 

the Pacific. According to the International Labor Organization, the 

incidence of forced labor and sex trafficking is higher in the AsiaPacific region than anywhere else in the world. And according to 

the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, victims from Asia 

are trafficked to the widest range of destinations around the globe. 

In addition to being trafficked overseas, many victims are trafficked within their own countries. In fact, the UNODC reports that 

most trafficking is national, not international, and is carried out by 

traffickers whose nationality is the same as their victims, and 

within national borders. 

While human trafficking remains widespread and serious, we do 

believe that TVPA, our TIP report, and its associated activities 

have been effective in fighting trafficking in persons in East Asia 

and the Pacific. 

There are several success stories I would like to share with you. 

Taiwan is one example of how information in the TIP report has 

led to real reform in many aspects of fighting TIP, including implementation of stronger anti-trafficking laws, better protection for 

victims, and increased prosecutions. In 2006, Taiwan was ranked 

in TIP report as Tier II Watch List, was upgraded to Tier II in 

2007, and in 2010 was upgraded again to Tier I, where it remained 

this year. 

The Philippines also has potential to serve as a model in the region for its recent efforts to combat TIP. After 2 consecutive years 

as Tier II Watch List, and facing an automatic downgrade, the 

Philippines was upgraded to Tier II in 2011. The number of prosecutions of traffickers in the Philippines increased greatly in the 

last reporting cycle. And the government has increased the resources it devotes to combat trafficking, and has begun to identify 

and punish corrupt officials linked to trafficking. The government 

has acknowledged these efforts were linked to the threat of a downgrade to Tier III in the TIP report. 

Singapore is another example of a country in our region that has 

potential, moving up from Tier II Watch List to Tier II in 2011. 

Singapore has shown a markedly increased awareness of TIP 

issues in the last year, and the government has formed an interagency task force to address the issue. In 2011, Singapore hosted 

a workshop for the ASEAN region on criminal justice responses to 

23

trafficking in persons, which was attended by Ambassador 

CdeBaca as well as other members of my Bureau. And in April 

2011, 6 members of Singapore’s 20-person interagency task force on 

TIP traveled to DC to meet myself, Assistant Secretary Campbell, 

and my colleagues in Ambassador CdeBaca’s office. I will stress 

that it is not the report alone that results in progress, but also the 

enormous amount of hours spent in country by staff from our embassies and consulates abroad, who engage year-round with the 

whole of government. Our advocacy in Washington with those 

countries’ ambassadors and embassy teams has also made a difference. 

Mr. Chairman, we are only too well aware the problem remains. 

We have worked very closely with Ambassador CdeBaca, who has 

made a number of trips over the last few months to our region, and 

we remain committed to working with G/TIP office as well as other 

international organizations fighting human trafficking. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to answering any questions you might have. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Yun, thank you very much for your testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Yun follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Let me first begin with a general question. I guess, 

Ambassador CdeBaca, you might be the one that might want to answer this. What diplomatic efforts did the Department make or undertake to ensure that countries knew that they would not remain 

on the Watch List for 2 more years, as per the trafficking reauthorization of 2008? And what was the reaction? I mean, were each of 

those that were currently on watch contacted and fully apprised of 

their potential downgrading? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Indeed. We did a number of steps, both 

internally within the Department through all docs and messages 

out to the field, but then also with that as a tasker for that direct 

type of engagement. And we saw on the part of a number of countries a recognition that this was kind of long overdue, that countries had gotten perhaps a little comfortable on there. 

We saw a recognition on some other countries, especially those 

such as Senegal or the Philippines or others who are MCC countries, a recognition of what the prospect of a Tier III downgrade 

might mean not just reputationally, but as far as sanctions, and as 

far as some of the other assistance and aid and work in the international monetary fora might have on those countries. It was a bit 

of a wakeup call for some of our partners. And we think that we 

have seen, as a result of the Watch List designation, some real 

movement. There were a good percentage of the Tier II Watch List 

countries moved up to Tier II on the merits. 

The waiver issue was never even something that had to be faced 

because of the work that they had done. And this was not 1-year 

work, this was work that they had undertaken across those 2 

years. We felt that it was important to kick it in after 2 years because of the notion that almost an ex post facto type of situation, 

even though this isn’t a domestic criminal law, but the notion that 

countries should have fair warning that 2 years on the Watch List 

would have that result. We also made it very clear what countries 

would need to do to get waivers. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t saying, you know, you should choose the lesser of two evils, but with 

the recognition that not every country would necessarily be able to 

get up to Tier II on the merits, as you and others had recognized 

in putting the waiver provision in. So there was certainly increased 

diplomacy that was done at the bilateral level by our ambassadors, 

by me at G/TIP, but also specific engagement on the part of thenUnder Secretary for Political Affairs Burns, now Deputy Burns, 

and others, who looked at those 37 countries as countries that 

needed very specific interventions. 

And we saw that from the willingness of Deputy Steinberg, the 

willingness of Under Secretary Burns to have those conversations 

was very important, we thought, in having these countries move up 

and off the Watch List. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Let me ask you with regards to South 

Korea, you might recall that we initiated an effort back in early 

2002 to try to get a zero-tolerance policy and to do an investigation 

among our military to see whether or not there was complicity with 

regards to our deployments in South Korea, and certainly in the 

former Yugoslavia. And the IG’s report from the Department of Defense was very, very damning. And it did lead to Bush’s zero-tolerance policy. 

36

I and others have raised repeatedly the issue of the juicy bars 

in South Korea. I am just wondering why that seems to have been 

left out of the narrative for this year’s report. Have they disappeared? Has the issue largely been mitigated? Or are those still 

a problem? And as you recall, many of the women who were being 

exploited there were Filipino women. And I know the Filipino Government took some very aggressive action. I wonder if that has 

been sustained. 

Mr. YUN. I think this issue, as you know, has been an ongoing 

concern. And USFK in South Korea has made zero-tolerance policy 

very effective. And my recollection is that I don’t think we can say 

juicy bars have disappeared 100 percent, but the incidence of abuse 

that went on is much way down. 

If you like, Mr. Chairman, we can get more background on the 

statistics or data we have on that. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that, because it does seem to reemerge. 

I know that Stars and Stripes has done some very fine reporting 

on that, as have others. But as soon as you think you have it in 

hand, all of a sudden a new spate of this kind of exploitation 

emerges. Did you want to touch on that? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Mr. Smith, I was in South Korea a couple 

of months ago, and in fact went to USFK, and we went through 

some of these issues directly. One of the things that I was struck 

with personally was the juxtaposition of those images that we are 

all familiar with from the undercover reporting that was done by 

some U.S. reporters of not just our servicemen in active brothels, 

active strip clubs, not even the euphemism of the juicy bar, but 

then also the shore patrol type of folks, who were supposed to be 

there making sure that there wasn’t anything untoward going on, 

telling the undercover reporters how easy it was to go with prostitutes. 

Those same street corners, those same neighborhoods that were 

in that undercover reporting are now nonsexually-related businesses, partially because of the zero-tolerance policy, partially because of the fact there are more families being posted to that area 

of Korea, and not as many young men by themselves. I think all 

of it together paints a picture of towns where there used to be 

nothing but red-light districts, and now there are places where you 

can take your kids and can get chicken fingers on the menu. I 

think that has a big effect. 

And it is something that happens because USFK, because our 

Embassy in Seoul, and all of us are not taking our eyes off the ball. 

But that notion that it can come back if we do take our eyes off 

the ball is well taken. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. As you know, according to section 110 of 

the TVPA, China and any other country can only remain on the 

Watch List if it has a written plan to begin making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards, 

and that the plan, if implemented, would constitute making significant efforts, and the country is devoting sufficient resources to implement that plan. 

I am wondering with regards to China, what is China’s plan? If 

you could elaborate on what it is that they said they are willing 

do. Are they doing it? As you know, and I have raised this before, 

37

we just had a hearing, as you may know, in this committee hearing 

room just a few weeks ago. We heard from survivors, women, including Chai Ling, all of whom have suffered the gross exploitation 

of a forced abortion. And the direct consequences of the one-childper-couple policy has been the missing girls. And some estimates 

put it as high as 100 million. Nobody knows the exact number. It 

is generally accepted that by 2020, 40 million, and maybe as many 

as 50 million, is the newest number we have heard, men will not 

be able to find wives because they have been subjected to a sex selection abortion. 

So the magnet for human trafficking is in ascendancy in China. 

And I hope any plan that they have submitted or suggested that 

they will follow pursuant to our not putting them on Tier III, which 

is where they belong in my opinion, you know, really will take into 

account the horrific consequences of the missing daughters, the 

missing girls in China. 

In the report before this one, there was more attention, I 

thought, paid to the component and the contributing actions of the 

one-child-per-couple policy to trafficking. I think we are going to 

see bride selling and, frankly, kidnapping, and certainly force, 

fraud, and coercion used in a variety of ways to bring women into 

China because of this huge gender disparity. Of course India has 

one as well, which is egregious, but China’s is a direct result of a 

government policy. 

So I am wondering if that is fully understood, is it being conveyed to the Chinese how concerned we are about this terrible and 

cruel experiment called the one-child-per-couple policy that has 

rendered brothers and sisters illegal, but it has made sisters 

scarce? If you could. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I think I will address, Mr. Smith, the 

waiver issue as far as the plan was concerned. One of the things 

that we saw from the Chinese this last year is that, of course, there 

is the written action plan that they have. But perhaps more so, 

there are a number of other instruments that came out in the 

ranking period which we thought were very interesting, and in fact 

were having an impact in a way that we had never seen before 

from China. 

For instance, there was the guidelines that were issued by the 

Ministry of Public Security and the Supreme People’s Court on sentencing issues. This is, again, something that we had seen in the 

report over the previous years where we had been criticizing the 

low sentences, a number of guidelines going out to the courts saying you need to bring up the sentencing on this. The idea of better 

law enforcement. The commitments made for guidelines for shelter 

staff, for protocols for working on trafficking victims on relief and 

reintegration. And perhaps, most importantly, a directive to the 

field that women who were encountered in prostitution should not 

simply be seen as criminals, but instead should be assumed to be 

victims of trafficking at the outset of the investigation; that shifting the burden away from the victim, and assuming that they are 

somebody who needs help was a very positive step. It would be a 

positive step no matter what country it was in. But especially in 

the Chinese context, we thought that that was something that was 

worth noting. 

38

We look forward to working with the Chinese Government over 

the coming months as they look to bring themselves into compliance with the Palermo Protocols standards. As you know, we have 

been consistently raising the problem of their trafficking definition, 

which was so focused on child abduction, doesn’t necessarily track 

the Palermo Protocol. 

In our conversations with the Chinese Government, it appears 

that their academics and their legal technocrats are doing the kind 

of work that is necessary to start teeing-up legislative changes, and 

also to put together a new plan going forward, a new 5-year plan. 

I think Mr. Yun is going to address some of the other concerns. 

But I will certainly say that as far as the family issues that you 

raise, one of the things that I raise when I am in China, and will 

continue to do so, is this concern that the population planning policies of the Chinese Government is having that contributory effect 

that you mentioned. And it is twice mentioned in the report. We 

are not backing off on that issue. 

Mr. YUN. Mr. Chairman, if I can just expand a little on Ambassador CdeBaca’s remarks. The administration considers China’s coercive birth limitation policies a grave violation of human rights, 

and has routinely expressed our opposition to those policies both 

publicly and privately. The White House issued a statement on August 23 articulating the administration’s strong opposition to all aspects of China’s coercive birth-limitation policies, including forced 

abortion and sterilization. And thus, we at the Department continue to monitor developments concerning this very important 

issue. 

Promoting greater respect for human rights, including reproductive rights, is one of our key foreign policy objectives in China. And 

we will continue to urge the Chinese Government to treat its people in accordance with established international norms. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Yun. Two final questions. I will yield 

to my colleagues, and then I have a few additional, if you would 

allow. 

Deborah Cundy, you might recall, Ambassador CdeBaca, testified 

about best practices. We met her, you and I, at a conference in 

Rome. I thought her testimony when she appeared here was extraordinary about best practices that her hotel chain has undertaken. But there have been many reports that indicate that American chain hotels in China as well as in Mexico have been the locations of sex trafficking. And namely, we are talking about the Hilton hotel chain. And I am wondering what you were doing specifically to work with hotel chains, including Hilton, to ensure that 

they are not complicit in human trafficking. Are they working with 

law enforcement, for example, to ensure that trafficking laws 

against complicit hotels—I mean, are we taking a harder line on 

those that are part of the problem? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. There are several things that we are 

doing on the hospitality front. First of all, it is in the context of the 

overarching business approach where we, through projects such as 

the slaveryfootprint.org Web site, where everyone can go, and after 

taking a 15- to 20-minute survey on what they own and what they 

buy can get at least a rough idea of how many people who are held 

in modern slavery are impacting their lives. 

39

I took it, and I am ashamed to say that even though I do this 

for a living, and have for a while, that according to the economists 

at Berkeley and the others who did the algorithms that support 

that application, that at a minimum I have got 84 people held in 

forced labor around the world who are contributing to my lifestyle 

just on the basis of what I buy, what I do, et cetera. And that is, 

as I said, not only somebody who doesn’t use commercial sex, but 

also fights slavery for a living. And if that is my slavery footprint, 

we can only think about what people who aren’t asking these questions might be. 

A hotel has a slavery footprint as well. And I think that we have 

seen that leadership from the Carlson Company, certainly through 

their properties, Radisson, Country Inn and Suites, et cetera, but 

also we are seeing leadership in some other ways from hotels. Marriott made the decision—evidently they have a policy that they 

don’t sign onto codes of conduct, kind of a general company-wide—

so when they looked at it they said, you know, what we think that 

we can best do with our properties is not only think about how to 

have an exploitation-free hotel environment, but also to harness 

the power of the trafficking victims and the survivors. And so we 

are happy to say that the first projects in the Marriott family, and 

I think Starwood is participating as well, to actually bring trafficking survivors into the training programs there, in Brazil, in 

Mexico, in Vietnam—we think that the best victim protection is a 

job, a good job, a safe job. And hotels can be the agents of that. 

Hilton, in the wake of those scandals—unfortunately, it often 

takes a scandal to wake up a country or a company as to the fact 

that they need to deal with this in their own supply chains—in the 

wake of that scandal has now signed onto the code of conduct for 

the travel and tourism industry. And we made it very clear to Hilton that one of the reasons why we selected the Hilton in downtown Miami for our recent Western Hemispheric Reporting Officers 

Conference, when we had a choice of a number of properties to host 

that in, was in recognition of the fact that they had done so. 

We don’t see this as necessarily tied to the Federal Acquisitions 

Register or to our contracting in general. We don’t have a rule that 

says this is something that we always have to do. But what we are 

certainly looking at is if there is a Radisson, if there is a Hilton, 

if there is somebody that has put their money where their mouth 

is as far as human trafficking, then we as consumers individually, 

but also G/TIP as an office, we should reward that type of behavior. 

So that is the plug. If you see a T.G.I. Fridays, that is Marilyn 

Carlson Nelson’s company does that. We can’t tell you where to eat, 

but you should know that they are doing their best to fight slavery. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. Just one question before I yield to 

Mr. Payne. 

With regards to Cuba, a Tier III country which was granted a 

waiver on September 30 for cultural and educational exchanges, 

my question is how does granting that waiver actually promote democracy, rule of law, respect for human rights? 

And I would note parenthetically that I have tried, me personally, to get a visa to go to Cuba, primarily to go to the prisons and 

to try, if possible, to meet with the political prisoners there, to meet 

with Fidel Castro to raise directly—or his brother Raul—the issue 

40

of human rights, and particularly the mistreatment, the torture, 

the degradation that is suffered by political prisoners in Cuba. And 

there are still hundreds of them. Some were recently let out including, Dr. Oscar Biscet, who I frankly nominated for the Nobel Peace 

Prize. He is an unbelievable man, a tremendous man. He is still 

under what we would call house arrest, but at least he is out of 

solitary and he is not being tortured per se. And I was denied. 

I tried to go with a cultural exchange group, because to get into 

Cuba you need to be going with some group. You just can’t show 

up on your own. And I couldn’t get a visa, still can’t get a visa to 

go to Cuba. And yet a waiver was granted, and Frank Wolf joined 

me in that. He and I are trying still. We have been in prisons in 

China, the Soviet Union, Romania, East Bloc countries. I met with 

Xaxana Gusma ̃o, when he was in—from East Timor, who then obviously went on to become President—in Indonesia. Yet we can’t 

get into Cuba’s prisons. And it is very troubling especially, since 

that is what is permitted or exempted in terms of sanctions. So a 

Member of Congress, chairman of the Human Rights Committee 

for Congress, can’t get into Cuba, and yet that is waived. So if you 

could speak to that, I would appreciate it. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Well, you are correct that it is waived. It 

is the only thing that is waived for Cuba. We feel that Cuba doesn’t 

have a comprehensive strategy to address this. It has little if no 

discernible anti-trafficking law enforcement, victim care, trafficking 

prevention measures. You know, most other countries, even that 

end up being on Tier III, at least generally admit that there might 

be some trafficking going on. We feel as though, on the trafficking 

specifically, that just as we have been able to establish a dialogue 

with the Government of Cuba on migration issues, that we need to 

be in there trying to talk to them. Trying to talk to them can be 

frustrating. It can mean not getting a visa at times. We don’t base 

our rankings of countries on whether Members of Congress, or even 

me or my staff, can get a visa to go talk to them. 

There have been other countries, other than Cuba, where we 

haven’t had the luck of getting that visa issued as we would desire. 

But I think at the end of the day the calibration that this administration has on Cuba is very much that if we can get not only the 

formal dialogues with the government through—especially on the 

migration dialogue, but also that notion of some people-to-people 

work, getting the Cuban people to be able to see what freedom 

looks like, to be able to see what that example does, it will achieve 

great change on the island. 

And so within the context of these particular sanctions, which 

are just some of many against the regime and doing business in 

Cuba, we felt that exempting out these cultural and educational exchange programs was a way to continue those types of relationships. 

As you said, even during the depths of the Cold War, that notion 

of educational exchange programs was one of the ways that we 

were able to (A) keep the dialogue going, but (B) raise up an entire 

generation of leaders who in the late 1980s and early 1990s finally 

were able to achieve change behind the Iron curtain. And we want 

to continue to be able to do that with Cuba. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Mr. Payne. 

41

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I just wonder if any one of 

you would take on this question. Human trafficking is a broad term 

that encapsulates a diverse group of crimes from debt bondage to 

child sex trafficking. In your opinion—any one of you could try to 

answer this—what are the main push-and-pull factors driving 

international human trafficking? How do they differ in your opinion by region and by type of trafficking? And to what extent do current anti-trafficking programs address such underlying factors or 

vulnerabilities? Do you see a big difference as it relates around the 

world? Do you think there is any sort of a cartel that communicates 

with each other in different regions of the world? I just wonder if 

anyone might take that general question. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I think I might tee it up. But I know that 

my colleagues have thoughts on this because we have talked about 

this over the last couple of years. 

We are talking about two regions of the world that are both 

source and destination regions. I sometimes—as I mentioned to Assistant Secretary Blake, I am going to see some of his clients when 

I am going to the Gulf States because there are so many people 

from South and Central Asia who are there who are vulnerable and 

often exploited. On the other hand, there are people within South 

Asia who are going from one country to another within South Asia 

or who are enslaved in their own countries. The same I think is 

true in East Asia where we have a lot of interregional trafficking 

that happens. 

At the end of the day, poverty is very much a driver of this but 

it is not necessarily the most abject of poverty. It perhaps is the 

one step up on the developed rung, the person who actually sees 

an opportunity to—having gone to school, now having no opportunity to get a job in their home village or their hometown says, 

Well, then I am going to have to go off somewhere else. All too 

often, the person who can help them do that is not an honest labor 

broker. It is somebody who is going to charge a usurious recruiting 

fee and enforce that through force, threats of force and threats of 

coercion. 

So one of the things that we very much look at is the idea that 

development could do something to stem the flow while recognizing 

that there is some research out there now that is showing that this 

is definitely a crime of opportunity. The victims want opportunity. 

They are willing to put themselves in harm’s way to some degree. 

And the traffickers see the opportunity to take advantage of them. 

It manifests itself very differently in a number of these different 

countries, though. Even in different parts of the same country, you 

will have mainly sex trafficking in one part, and, in another part, 

mainly agricultural trafficking. Which is why I think that the work 

that we do at the embassies is so important. We have to apply 

these minimum standards to the regions and to the world, but we 

have to do it in the context of each one of these countries. The difference between a Senegal and a South Korea are very different 

based on where they are and what they need, and we have to be 

able to tell the difference as we are applying these minimum standards that you have given us. 

Ambassador BLAKE. Let me jump in and just add to what Ambassador CdeBaca said. I think in the SCA region, you see both a 

42

combination of push-and-pull factors, as you said, Mr. Payne. In 

places like India and Nepal, trafficking is often a function of poverty and poor education, where particularly young women, but also 

young children, are very vulnerable to seductive pitches from traffickers who promise a better life in the city and then find themselves enslaved once they get there, and in debt, bondage of some 

sort which they will never get out of. So they are very, very vulnerable to those kinds of pitches. 

It is also a function of weak governmental institutions and weak 

rule of law that is unable to deal with these kinds of challenges. 

Frequently you find trafficking in countries where there is a poor 

level or a low level of economic growth, in places like Tajikstan 

where one-seventh of the country is working outside of Tajikstan 

in Russia and in Kazakhstan because there is no economic opportunity for them. So those migrant workers are often very vulnerable in the countries in which they work, as Ambassador CdeBaca 

said, not just in the Gulf but in Russia and elsewhere. 

Another serious problem almost throughout my region is corruption where, again, those weak government institutions and often 

poorly paid officials are very susceptible to corruption, particularly 

by these organized criminal gangs and networks. And so that is a 

very difficult problem for us to try to deal with. 

So our challenge is to both try to shine a light on these practices, 

as I think this report does, but also work with the many capable 

NGOs on the ground who are doing terrific work, and then finally 

to engage the governments directly not only in terms of advocacy, 

but in terms of the many important programs that your committee 

helps to fund. 

Mr. YUN. Mr. Chairman, of course I agree with everything that 

has been said. 

But an interesting aspect in my view is, clearly it is tied to poverty and economy. Having said that, it is also clear that in some 

cases, country and countries can make enormous progress in very, 

very short time. And in my region, I would highlight South Korea 

and Taiwan. So you need to ask, why is it that some countries can 

make enormous progress in very short time? Obviously the 

strength of the institution is one. And I would say what I would 

loosely call ‘‘freedom index’’ is another one; that is, the media as 

a watchdog, civil society, and of course the willingness of lawmakers to look at their legislation, to look at their laws and see 

what they can learn from elsewhere and what will work for them. 

So it is entirely possible in my view that in many countries, things 

can improve quite rapidly, given opportunities. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Kind of a similar question in that vein, 

because I just wonder, how does the problem of—in your opinion—

human trafficking compare to other social economic challenges facing governments that are not fully compliant with the U.S. minimum requirements? Do you find that when human trafficking is 

a problem, there are other similar problems? 

And secondly, where does a sort of state corruption come in? Officials in many instances, you have to work with policing. And I 

think policing around the world, even sometimes in our country, we 

see policing problems. Sometimes peaceful demonstrations are disrupted and they become actually a police riot. 

43

There is some question of just what happened in San Diego a 

night or so ago where people were relatively peaceful. A bottle or 

two might have been thrown. But the reaction of a police force 

here, even in our country—I just use that as an example that policing is so important. 

So the law enforcement agencies in countries where the social 

economic issues—in some instances these law enforcement people 

aren’t even paid—not that that is an excuse for them to therefore 

be corrupt—but are low paid and poorly trained. How does that 

help them fit in? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Again, I think I will let my colleagues 

discuss the particular ways that that manifests in these regions. 

But I think on the overarching, I think we learned that lesson in 

the United States prior to 1947. We may have forgotten it, frankly. 

One of the things that was the major civil rights achievement of 

the Roosevelt administration, working with the NAACP litigators 

and others, was to break the backs of the peonage and share-cropping system in the South, and that didn’t happen until 1947, allowing the space then to move on from 13th Amendment jurisprudence 

to 14th and 15th Amendment civil rights, housing, voting, all of the 

things that we are familiar with from the 1950s and 1960s. But at 

the end of the day, it was the sheriffs and it was the local justices 

of the peace that were enforcing debt bondage in the American 

South for three generations after slavery was officially illegal. That 

is corruption at large, and it was systemic corruption. And we see 

some places where that type of corruption still exists. 

But then we also see the individual corruption of a police officer 

or their family who actually owns the brothels. It is not just that 

the cops are going to these brothels, as the kind of ‘‘boys will be 

boys’’ tolerance which we need to rout out, but then it is also that 

they are individually profiting. Or we see countries where, you 

know, the large landed interests don’t want to clean up some of the 

problems with forestation or extractive industries because it is the 

senator’s brothers or cousins or whoever that own those plantations. 

So we have to keep unpacking this corruption problem, because 

I think that the easy corruption problem is to say it is the fault 

of some low-level guy that is taking a bribe. We have to not only 

look at that level, you have to go up that other step, not blame the 

deputy, you have to go after the sheriffs themselves. 

Mr. PAYNE. That is excellent. Yes. 

Ambassador BLAKE. Mr. Payne, I would say to answer your first 

question, I think we do often see problems like trafficking in persons, drug trafficking and others, coexisting with each other. And 

again, they are a function of the fact that these organized criminal 

groups are often involved in these activities, find them very, very 

profitable. 

But I think corruption is also a very, very significant problem. 

And corruption often exists where you have, as I said, poorly paid 

officials, poorly developed institutions, but also it is a function of 

a lack of democracy in independent democratic institutions, like a 

free press, like free NGOs, such as Transparency International, 

that can bring to light some of these things without fear of retribution. 

44

It is a function of often lack of opposition parties in many of 

these countries who, again, have an interest in bringing these 

kinds of things to light. So there is a whole series of things. And 

often we try to see these in a holistic way as well and try to, again, 

not only address the problem itself but—in my mind the most critical thing that we can do in many of these countries is the work 

on rule of law because that underlies everything else. And if you 

have a strong, independent judiciary, you can get to the root of 

many of these problems quite quickly. 

Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Blake, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I do. 

In listening to my colleague, I was fortunate enough to get in Cuba 

a number of years ago, and I thought it was my responsibility to 

raise issues with Mr. Castro. Fidel Castro at that time was the 

leader there. And I raised issues about, as a matter of fact, the inequity of the blacks in Cuba. Much of it, as I said, was because of 

remittances coming from the U.S. and other places, and the ones 

who left were not the blacks that were left behind. So there was 

a growing inequity among the races. There is very little we can do 

about that. 

But I also raised questions with some investors starting hotels. 

There started to become a prostitution question. It wasn’t gigantic, 

but it was starting to raise its ugly head and raise a question that 

once again the poor people are going to be the ones—the minorities 

would end up in the position, by virtue of their lack of equality financially, and that there needs to be attention given to this, and 

this was not in the right direction, and even raised a question of 

prisoners. 

And as a matter of fact, another group went down after that and 

instructed them to not only raise questions but sort of talk to them 

about the fact that there should be—you need to reconsider people 

who are in prison that should not be there and who have not had 

a fair trial, which was raised by some Members, some people. And 

that seemed to have had some positive impact because we have 

seen—people shouldn’t have been in prison in the first place. But 

there have been some released. So I feel that there needs to be a 

dialogue. 

I went to Bahrain a couple of weeks ago. And although there was 

only interest in, you know, me seeing the employment and things 

that were going on well, I wanted to meet the 25 medical people 

who were sentenced, and the government had all 25 of them, doctors and medical people who have been charged with a crime at a 

hospital which is just unheard of. There will be another trial. It is 

a military trial. I think the pressure is growing with how the Members pushed them to reconsider. So all the folks will be retried. So 

I think it is a step in the right direction. 

We have a committee of inquiry that we would hope that would 

come out. And they are not from that country, but from outside the 

country. But people still have not been put back to work. They 

were fired for protesting, and we said that this is wrong. Labor 

unions have been discriminated against. 

But I think that when you get an opportunity to go, we made it 

pretty clear that these—and they met with these different groups 

which are not on a regular program. But we insisted before we 

went, we had to meet with them not only so that we could make 

45

ourselves clear, but that these are things that have to be turned 

around and that we insist that this injustice in that kingdom end. 

So I guess my point is that I find some value of going and having 

conversations with some of the people that we don’t necessarily—

don’t want to go to dinner with necessarily, but to try to convince 

them that policies need to be changed. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Mr. Payne, if I could, I think that what 

we have seen is that if it is simply the trafficking ambassador that 

goes out and raises this and then, you know, comes back and works 

on the report, that those governments—the ones who are friendly 

and want to fight on this with us, they would have done that without a visit from me. The ones who are not interested in working 

on human trafficking without some cajoling—it is not just me 

going. When they hear it from Bob Blake, when they hear it from 

Joe Yun and Kurt Campbell, when they hear from you all when 

you are out on the road in the Codels or when your staff has been 

out. 

When I was on the Judiciary Committee staff, I was able to go 

to a shelter in Cambodia with Sheri Rickert from the Foreign Affairs Committee staff and some others, and being able to see the 

victim practices there, but also having to have the Cambodians 

know that Congress cared. It is a very different message than simply, you know, a guy from a small office in the State Department 

raising the issue of slavery in the modern era. 

So we join you in that notion that there is value and we want 

to support, whether it is Codels, staff dels, traveling with us will 

raise, I think, when we are out on the road, but knowing that you 

are raising it as well makes a big difference. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask a couple of final questions. First, I 

am sure all three of you saw the New York Times article, ‘‘The 

other India: Where are the Children?’’ on October 12, just a week 

ago. And it makes the very disturbing statement that between January 2008 and October 2010, 13,570 children were missing in Delhi 

alone. It says, ‘‘Some of the children who were eventually found 

spoke of being taken by force or of being enticed with promises of 

food and clothes. But they were then sold into various forms of 

slavery, including domestic labor, beggary, agricultural labor or 

commercial sex work.’’ And the article also notes that ‘‘A provisional Indian census report released in 2010 estimated that one in 

ten workers in India are children,’’ and experts say that these numbers are conservative. 

I guess, Ambassador Blake, this might be directed to you, as well 

as to all three of you, really. The upgrading of India off the Watch 

List and not to Tier III but rather to Tier II—I listened very carefully, I read it very carefully in the report, but there is still I think 

some very disconcerting and unanswered questions. 

You say in your testimony, Ambassador CdeBaca, that sex trafficking of women and children has not abated and may, in fact, be 

increasing in places such as India. So it would appear, according 

to your testimony, that it is at least as bad and possibly getting 

worse. 

About 10 years ago, I had several hearings on trafficking, and we 

heard from the International Justice Mission, IJM. And the testimony was focused on India, and Gary Haugen actually brought a 

46

video and showed all of these young—some of them were not even 

teenagers, they were so young—little girls that were in a cellar 

who, when the police came—and the traffickers were tipped off by 

the police, they went through some charade. Afterwards the little 

girls were brought out of the hiding place. Their eyes were all 

squinted because it was dark. And you could see that these were 

tiny, little, at-risk little girls who were being trafficked. And one 

of the things that Gary Haugen made very clear in his testimony 

was, a point made clearly was, it is the police. 

And I have noticed, you know, if we are going to have a problem 

anywhere, it is not often the President, the Prime Minister. It is 

that point of contact at the police level, which obviously is part of 

government, and therefore is subject to the minimum standards. 

This report, other reports that I have read on India, point out 

that law enforcement still may be lax, still may be the Achilles’ 

heel in India. I was actually in Nigeria, in Abuja, in a hotel after 

a full day of working on trafficking, when I turned on CNN and 

there was a very, very fine report on CNN International about 

India. And again, the police were tipped off. They went through the 

charade of walking into the brothel and the kids, some of them 

didn’t get out quick enough, ran out to the street. And he said, by 

the next day, they were all back being sold and exploited, and the 

police were laughing about it. 

And I am wondering if that is still a problem, especially since, 

as you pointed out, Ambassador CdeBaca, that sex trafficking of 

women and children may not have abated and may, in fact, be increasing in places such as India. Are we just holding our breath 

with some hope here that India will get its act together? 

And I add into that the similar problem, but not apparently government-sponsored, but like China where the one-child-per-couple 

policy is a major push toward the elimination of the girl child. But 

we had a press conference—again, right in this room very recently—and it was focused on India and China, and the bias 

against and prejudice against the birth of and the lives of little 

girls. And again, most of the girls are eliminated, destroyed by sex 

selection abortions. But many others, particularly in India, are 

killed. As they are born, their gender is discovered, and they are 

suffocated or killed in some other way. 

Again, one of our people at that press conference said the most 

dangerous three words in that part of the world is ‘‘It’s a girl.’’ If 

it is a girl, she may be dead. Or if she gets to be a little bit older, 

she may be exploited through trafficking. 

And again, with deep respect to Ambassador Blake and to all of 

you, I would hope that unless there is—my hope is next time 

around, India, if they have not made truly significant progress—

you know, when you say there are 80 units, trafficking units, that 

is one out of every 14 million people. Is that just something that 

has been put together to appease a local political constituency or 

an international one? Or is this an all-out effort to eradicate slavery? Because as Ambassador CdeBaca said, it has not abated, and 

it may even be getting worse. 

Ambassador BLAKE. Mr. Chairman, that is a big question about 

a big country. So let me try to tackle it, and then I will ask Luis 

to chime in. First of all, let me just say that I personally have been 

47

working on this issue about trafficking persons in India for the last 

8 years. I started out as deputy chief of mission in 2003 and spent 

3 years there. One of my most important tasks then as deputy chief 

of missions was the work on trafficking missions. I led our working 

group inside the Embassy working on this, because I felt it was 

such an important priority. And you are right, I remember going 

to train stations and seeing traffickers waiting for young kids to 

get off the trains from rural areas, because they were so poor and 

so desperate, and these guys were predators waiting to basically 

bring them into slavery. 

And I was there with really dedicated NGOs who were there to 

stop those guys and had, in fact, found partners in the police to 

help them stop that. So even at that time, there were some quite 

good efforts that we were supporting to stop those kinds of practices. 

At that time, too, Mr. Chairman, I think India often even refused 

to admit these kinds of things even existed, and certainly didn’t 

want to acknowledge the scope and the scale of the problem. I 

think we have come a long way since then, Mr. Chairman, with 

due respect. 

This year India was upgraded because they are making some 

pretty significant efforts. I mentioned the 80 anti-human trafficking units. What is significant about that is that now, those are 

under the authority of the very powerful Ministry of Home Affairs, 

which is their chief law enforcement branch that is responsible for 

this. And the Minister himself has taken direct responsibility for 

this issue which is very significant. Before, it was the Ministry of 

Women and Child Affairs and things like this; but the Ministry of 

Home Affairs was not involved. So this, I think is quite significant. 

Secondly, they say they have ratified the protocol. And most importantly, as you said, Mr. Chairman, it is working with the police 

and it is working with the courts, because that is where the real 

action is going to be to stop these guys who are engaged in the trafficking itself. 

And in the past, India often used to arrest the victims. They 

would go into a brothel, and they would arrest all the girls and the 

people who had been trafficked, not the people who were behind it. 

And, again, I think that is really changing now. 

I can just give you a few examples, if I could. We have been 

working a lot in Mumbai. Mumbai is a real center for the trafficking industry. And people come from as far away as Bangladesh 

and Nepal and are trafficked into Mumbai. There is a judge there 

by the name of Judge Swati Chauhan who has really done some 

terrific, terrific work. Literally, her court has taken over and 

cleared hundreds of sex trafficking cases and issued rehabilitation 

orders for roughly 1,200 rescued women. And what is important 

about this is that the Ministry of Home Affairs has not only taken 

note of her efforts but has said, we need—that they need to publicize those efforts and duplicate those efforts all over India. So 

they are actually organizing very soon a seminar of all these nodal 

units all around India to come and hear about how she has done 

this and how she has tackled this. And I think they are going to 

try to resource this in an appropriate way. 

48

They are also going to expand these anti-human trafficking 

units. They have got 80 of them now, but I think they have intentions over time to establish them in all 600 districts of India, which 

is a big deal. 

I want to say at the state level, there is a huge disparity in India 

between some states that are doing very well and then others 

aren’t doing so well. And I think in a lot of the states now where 

you do see quite significant trafficking like West Bengal, like 

Maharastra which I mentioned, Karnatica, the police are actively 

working not only on the sex trafficking side but increasingly on the 

bonded labor side. And as Luis will remember, back in 2003 to 

2006, this wasn’t even on their radar. And now not only are they 

dealing with it, but they are dealing on the law enforcement side 

and bringing these into the court systems and prosecuting people. 

Mr. SMITH. Does that also include police who are complicit? Were 

there any instances where the police were prosecuted? 

Ambassador BLAKE. You know, I can’t tell you for sure. 

Mr. SMITH. If you could check that. 

Ambassador BLAKE. That is a very good question. 

But the point I want to make is, do the problems still exist? Of 

course they do. But I think what is really different now is that 

there is a political will on the part not only of the Federal Government but State government and, most importantly, the law enforcement. 

And to get back to Mr. Payne’s question, I talked about the rule 

of law. And what India does have going for it is an independent 

rule of law, particularly a very strong Supreme Court. I think that 

is the backbone of a lot of what happens in India. And for that reason, you do have very strong NGOs, you have very strong opposition parties, all of whom are more than happy to highlight these 

problems and try to get them addressed. 

So there are still a lot of problems to be dealt with, but I do believe that India is making progress in the right direction. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate it. Mr. Ambassador. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I would second that. I think that one of 

the things that was notable over the last couple of years that we 

have seen from the Supreme Court is that it has begun to do these 

inquiries into the different aspects of the anti-trafficking fight, not 

just on the sex trafficking or the sex trafficking of children, but 

looking at things as diverse as these circus performers who are 

being enslaved. 

We had a briefing from the Polaris Project the other day about 

the HHS-funded hotline that they run here in the United States. 

One of the trends that they saw was that they have gotten I think 

29 or 30 calls from people who are in carnivals here in the United 

States who were trying to get help because they had been harmed 

or trapped or stuff. And the Civil Rights Division actually prosecuted cases of that ilk back in the 1970s. To suddenly see that the 

Supreme Court of India was having hearings on the exploitation of 

these people and these transient or itinerant circuses, I think it 

shows that there is kind of a level of sophistication that is coming 

into some of these institutions in India that we, frankly, had not 

seen 6 or 8 years ago. Obviously we do have a very large problem 

49

of human trafficking in India. No one—the Indians or the Americans or anybody else who looks at it—would say otherwise. 

I think that one of the concerns that we have—and we have mentioned this in my report last year—as far as the changing nature 

of sex trafficking in India—as you mentioned, that is in our testimony—is this notion that there seems to be a move from the redlight districts to roadside prostitution, small hotels and private 

apartments. That is problematic for a whole host of reasons, in no 

small part because of the law enforcement challenge. As law enforcement becomes more serious about doing these cases, the law 

enforcement challenge goes up very steeply when you don’t have 

access to the people who you are trying to save, the people you are 

trying to rescue. So we we are looking at this. We are going to be 

continuing to be raising that with our Indian counterparts. 

But there are definitely things happening in India that I think 

anyone looking at India, circa 2002–2003, it would be mind-boggling to think that they are actually liberating people from brick 

kilns, putting bonded labor bosses in jail. We need to take that 

now, work in partnership with Indians as the two largest common 

law—not just large democracies but common law—countries and 

really take it to the next level. 

Driving it out to the states is as important in India as it is here 

in the United States. That is where law enforcement gets done, and 

we want to work with our counterparts there to make sure that 

that happens. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate it. I have two final questions. And thank 

you for that explanation. 

The first is with regards to Vietnam. And Ambassador CdeBaca, 

we have talked about that many times, and I have raised it, as 

have others, many times at hearings. The labor trafficking issue, 

your view as to whether or not there really is progress being made, 

especially since so many of the allegations are against companies 

that are really state-run companies. The Daewoosa case, still no 

payment as far as I know of the $3.5 million. And I know you were 

involved with that prosecution, the very first one, pursuant to the 

TVPA. 

And then a second question, if you could maybe speak to a good 

news issue and that would be, you know, Nigeria is now a Tier I 

country. I have visited there. I mentioned that a moment ago. I 

met with their TIP leaders and went to Lagos where trafficking obviously was a problem. Many of those women, young girls, were 

trafficked right into Europe, into Italy. 

I will just tell a very, very quick story about a woman named 

Elizabeth that I met in Rome who actually became pregnant as a 

direct result of being trafficked and abused sexually. And she made 

a statement I will never forget. This little 3-year-old was running 

around at the shelter in Rome and she had been trafficked for 

about 5 years, a terrible ordeal. I hope she writes a book someday 

because it is a testimony to faith and courage. But this young Nigerian woman said, ‘‘The child saved my life.’’ And said, ‘‘If it wasn’t 

for this child, I probably would have been a statistic’’; you know, 

suicide or something along those lines. You don’t hear that kind of 

heroic love for a child all that often, at least explained like that. 

50

But she told how she went through the route out of Nigeria into 

Italy. 

So the question is, Nigeria, they are Tier I. It is a good news 

story, I think. They certainly have tried very hard. And maybe you 

want to elaborate on that for the record, as well as the Vietnam 

question. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Well, I will take the Vietnam, then. I 

think that Mr. Yun can set the scene for us on Vietnam. 

Nigeria is an interesting case because, of course, Nigeria is not 

necessarily thought of on many law enforcement issues as being on 

the cutting edge. It is not a country—unlike what we have been 

testifying to today as far as transparency indices or corruption indices or things—that always comes out on top. And yet we have seen 

some very innovative anti-trafficking efforts there that, as you say, 

when we looked at, over the last 2 years, the application of the 

facts and the minimum standards, has come out as a Tier I. 

You know, we don’t go into these with a predetermined tier ranking. We put the facts into the logs, like we have a big machine, 

they all go together, and we turn the crank. And suddenly a Nigeria comes out the other side with a Tier I label on it. And I think 

it surprised a lot of people, frankly. Maybe it even surprised the 

Nigerians themselves. But at the end of the day, what they did was 

very innovative. Taking police, prosecutors, and social workers and 

putting them in the same—not just chain of command but putting 

them in the same office, assigning them to cases simultaneously so 

that they knew that they were going to be working together 

throughout, that is very different than what most countries do. 

Here in the United States, we have prosecutors assigned to cases 

early on, and we have victim witness coordinators in most of our 

law enforcement entities. But you know, there are very few prosecutors that are older than me that came up in that system. And 

thank God, as I age, most of the prosecutors younger than me don’t 

even know that there was a time when there wasn’t a victim witness coordinator in that prosecutor’s office fighting for the rights of 

the victim. 

Nigeria seems to have taken that ethos and taken it to a new 

level. And I think that that was perhaps one of the reasons why 

we saw at the ASEAN prosecutors conference in Singapore this 

summer that the cutting-edge prosecutors that were invited to 

share their best practices with their ASEAN counterparts—ASEAN 

looks to a couple of places that maybe people wouldn’t be surprised 

about, Sweden and the United States, but then they also looked to 

Nigeria. So to the degree that we are seeing African leadership 

that can be tapped into around the globe, I think is a very, very 

positive thing for this fight against human trafficking. 

Now each year we are going to look at Nigeria. We don’t—Tier 

I is a responsibility, not a reprieve. And we hope that Nigeria will 

continue to sharpen and continue to improve because, like India, 

it is a country that has a big trafficking problem. And even when 

they are doing well or they are doing a good job of having these 

structures, they are having good results, there is still a big, big 

trafficking problem with Nigerians; as we saw in some of the Tunisian refugee camps and Libya and other places, pimps who suddenly were in the camps with the women that they had been trying 

51

to get across into Europe. So this is a problem and it continues to 

be one. 

But seeing the ASEAN region prosecutors react to their Nigerian 

counterparts and seeing African leadership that way, to me showed 

that we really are, after this decade of development, we are on the 

precipice, I think, of some real change here. 

Mr. YUN. Thank you. Vietnam is a case we have expended a 

great deal of efforts. Secretary Clinton was there twice over the 

past 18 months, and I was with her on both occasions. And in both 

meetings, the items that featured very prominently were human 

rights and trafficking there, of course challenged on both accounts, 

as well as freedom of religion. That remains an issue. 

Vietnam is designated as Tier II Watch List. But I do believe 

they are undergoing changes both in the government and in society 

where we are seeing signs, some concrete signs that they are making some progress. Number one is that they now do have a law, 

anti-trafficking law. And the question remains, how is it going to 

be implemented? The law was only passed I think maybe about 9 

months ago. So we are keeping a very close eye on that. And also 

there had been a number of criminal prosecutions and convictions 

of sex traffickers. So we are encouraged by that. 

As you mentioned, labor trafficking remains an issue. And again, 

we are somewhat happy that they now have a predeparture training for overseas workers. So it is changing, and we do hope it will 

change more rapidly, and we are expending a great deal of bilateral 

efforts. 

In fact, in about 2 weeks, we are going to hold an annual human 

rights dialogue. On our side, it will be led by Assistant Secretary 

Posner, and the Vietnamese will be here this year. So next year we 

will go over there. So these dialogues and high-level meetings have 

helped, but I understand your concerns. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. 

Just before I yield to Mr. Payne, earlier today, Secretary of State 

Hillary Clinton testified before the full Foreign Affairs Committee. 

And while it was focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan—and my 

and everyone else’s questions were primarily focused on that—I did 

ask her if she would pick up the phone and call the Foreign Minister of China to inquire as to whether or not Chen Guangcheng 

is dead or alive, or perhaps even dying. There have been rumors, 

reports—we don’t know if they are true—he has been beaten savagely by the Chinese police, first in prison and then under house 

arrest. And his crime, as we all know, is that he pushed human 

rights. He is the blind activist lawyer, and actually raised the case 

of forced abortion in Linyi and took the women’s side. And for that, 

he was singled out for excessive brutality. Again, knowing that that 

issue of human rights abuse leads directly into our reason for being 

here this afternoon, human trafficking, it exacerbates it significantly. 

If you could take that back. She didn’t answer the question. We 

pretty much ran out of time. We didn’t go back to it later. But I 

think a phone call—I will be convening an emergency hearing of 

the China Commission next week, and I hope Ambassador Campbell can make it, as one of the members of the executive branch 

who is on that. I am chairman of that Commission. And it will be 

52

an emergency meeting focused on Chen and his wife. Where are 

they? And whether or not they are dead or alive, and what we are 

doing and what the West is doing, what any country that cares 

about human rights is doing, vis-a`-vis Beijing, to raise his case because we think he may actually be dead or bleeding as we meet. 

Please take that back. 

Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Just a quick question or two more. The chairman 

raised Nigeria. And I was just going to—when I said I have a couple of other questions, I didn’t know he was going to raise that. But 

I wanted to know what anyone—maybe you, Ambassador CdeBaca, 

might tell us. What African countries have made the most progress 

outside of Nigeria in confronting human trafficking? And are there 

any best practices that can be replicated? 

And the other part of the question is that there are regional 

groups, as you know, in Africa; SADC in the South and IGAD in 

the East and ECOWAS in the West. Did you find it an advantage, 

the AU, African Union, to work with the regional groups to sort of 

find best practices, if there were some that could then be introduced to them? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Well, exempting Nigeria from the question is a little tougher because that is such an innovative practice. 

Let me say one last thing about Nigeria because there was something that was done that the Netherlands and Nigeria cooperated 

on, and that was bringing up some traditional healers so that the 

victims in a case in the Netherlands would be able to, in effect, 

have a counter put on to the Juju that had then been put on them 

before they left home, which was as powerful a form of coercion to 

them, based on their religious and cultural practices, as were the 

threats of force and the beatings that they were undergoing at the 

hands of their traffickers. And that notion of that innovation of 

bringing in a traditional healer in order to have a counterceremony 

for those women was, I think, very forward-thinking. And it is the 

kind of thing that you only get if you have those relationships between the governments on these issues. 

We have certainly seen on the part of Mauritius, a meeting the 

minimum standards. But as far as the tiers are concerned, that is 

really what we see in the Africa region. We would like to see more 

on the mainland itself. 

There is some, I think, hunger on the part of a number of governments to work on this. We have seen, whether it is in Malawi or 

in Benin, programs that are out there working with especially the 

child victims. Much of the victim response in Africa has been on 

child victims, and we want to encourage that to continue but then 

also make sure that our African partners recognize male victims 

and female victims who are adults, not just the children. 

Perhaps some of that is because of some of the good work we 

have seen from UNICEF in the area. It is so dominant, then, that 

a lot of countries respond on child issues first. 

A success story of sorts is the rapid movement that we have seen 

in Swaziland over the last 2 years. Swaziland, Tier III on the report in 2009; since then, having raised up to Tier II. Maybe because they were so late coming to the game, and they came in as 

a Tier III country that denied there was trafficking, didn’t want to 

53

do anything on it, et cetera, when the wake-up call happened, they 

put together an inter-ministerial working group that had NGOs on 

the working group. We don’t even have that in the United States. 

So when they meet under the auspices of the Prime Minister himself, when they meet, the NGOs and the folks from the government 

are together in the room. What we have seen is that it has got a 

level of respect for each other that has been slow coming in many 

other African countries. The NGOs feel like they can get a fair 

shake from their government counterparts and the government 

counterparts don’t just look at the NGOs as potential rivals for 

power or someone who could be a problem for them. And that is 

something, again, that we would like to see. 

Swaziland, obviously, has a very specific governing structure. 

And in other countries that don’t have a monarchy, that have different types of governments, perhaps that couldn’t happen quite as 

quickly. But we have seen that as a real positive. 

I think that at the end of the day, what we have really seen is 

it is that notion of political will. In Senegal, when the government 

started focusing on child begging, and realizing that the Koranic 

teachers were not a religious institution but were cowards hiding 

behind the Koran as a way to lure the children in so that they 

could do their begging all of the time, taking advantage not only 

of the trust that the parents had of these supposed religious figures, but also taking advantage of the admonishment that the 

Koran has as far as alms-giving and as far as the support that 

should be had for such schools, perverting that in a way that is 

right out of Dickens. These child begging rings have been plaguing 

that part of Africa for quite a while. 

And to start to see the governments in that part of Africa recognize that it is not cultural, it is not just something that is always 

going to happen, but it is criminals who are taking advantage of 

children; I think that is a best practice in and of itself, the recognition and then the political will to do something about it. 

It is not just an African thing. We have seen this in the U.K. just 

in recent months, the liberation of Eastern European children from 

begging rings. Obviously we see this in New Delhi and in any 

major city, I think, in the region; and we see it here in the United 

States. So this notion of the beggars is something that we all share. 

But I think in Africa, the countries rising up against it, as we are 

starting to see happening, that is a great thing to see. 

Mr. PAYNE. That is great. 

Just, finally, we had a hearing with our committee, and there 

was a young man who was blind. He was a slave, a Dinka from 

South Sudan. And we know that that has been a problem of Dinka 

children and Nuba childr0en, especially during the conflicts. It was 

encouraged by the government of the North. And I wonder if some 

of the conflicts where abduction is still happening, and of course 

people are brought into indentured servitude, have you seen that 

start to eliminate itself? Could you give a short statement on that? 

Ambassador CDEBACA. Well, sadly, the conflict, because it is the 

enemy of rule of law, it creates the ultimate zone impunity where 

the traffickers operate. Conflict does seem to be followed very closely by this, especially in Africa. And unfortunately, it is not only the 

slavery that comes in its wake, whether it is the villages being 

54

emptied out for the men to work as porters as the army moves 

around, for the women to cook, clean, and be used as, frankly, sex 

slaves, but also for the children to work in artisanal mines, whether it is gold or the rare minerals that we use in our cell phones 

and other things. But also that notion of conscripting, flat-out 

stealing, frankly, combatants. And so this notion of the child soldiers being, in effect, both victim and perpetrator at the same time, 

I think, is one of the tragedies of the region. 

What we have seen is that a number of countries have taken 

steps. With the good work of UNICEF and the work that we have 

been doing and others, we have seen a difference in Chad, for instance, as far as the demobilization of child soldiers. What we 

would like to see more in countries around the world is not simply 

demobilization and giving some type of safety to the child soldiers 

who you capture from the people that are fighting against you, but 

then also countries looking at their own troops and making sure 

that they are scrubbing them accordingly. 

So while the trend seems to be improving a bit, we need to keep 

our eye on the ball as far as the child soldier issues. And while my 

office is not the lead on child soldiers in the State Department—

that is the Bureau of Democracy Rights and Labor—we certainly 

look at it each year in the trafficking report because we know that 

slavery—whether it is the women that were held as sex slaves during the Balkan conflict in Europe, whether it is the folks who are 

currently held in Africa or in other parts of the world, this follows 

conflict wherever it goes. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. I will follow up in terms of things looking into. On 

July 22, I chaired a hearing of the Helsinki Commission on the 

egregious practice in Egypt of abducting, kidnapping young Coptic 

Christian girls, apparently by the thousands each year, who are 

then held and forced into Islam and then given at age 18 to a man, 

and now they are Islamic. The women who testified, we had several, three people testified—was Michele Clark, who both, Ambassador CdeBaca, you and I know very well as number two for trafficking at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 

very reputable. She is a professor at George Washington University. And she said it is not a matter of allegations anymore. She 

has actually done the reporting herself and will be doing more reporting on this. But it seems to be a human rights and, I would 

say, a trafficking issue, certainly something that rises to the level 

of needing to be combated very aggressively. 

And I am wondering if it is something you have looked into. We 

gave the information to our new Ambassador before she was deployed to Cairo, and the hope is that she will really raise it. But 

I can’t imagine what it must be like for a parent, especially for the 

young girl—but for a parent and her entire family to have first the 

child abducted and then put into a situation of bondage, if you will, 

and then perhaps abused in numerous ways, and at the appropriate age, age 18, given as some kind of gift by shadow slavery 

to someone as a wife. And again, Michele Clark has true credentials in the human trafficking area. And she says we are missing 

it. So if you could speak to that, number one. 

55

And secondly, Uzbekistan, again, putting on my Helsinki hat. 

Every year, the cotton crop is picked by large numbers of young 

children who are brought out of school, and it is child labor at its 

worst. And yet for 4 years, Uzbekistan has been on the Tier II 

Watch List. It seems to me they should have dropped to Tier III. 

Your views. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. I think I will do Egypt, and then we can 

go to the northeast with Assistant Secretary Blake who is fresh off 

the plane from Uzbekistan. 

Mr. Smith, we will definitely look into the new allegations that 

you mention. We certainly looked through the earlier report that 

CSI did that I think that Professor Clark had been involved with. 

It sounds like there may be some new information, and we would 

very much like to look at that. This is an area that we like to look 

at. 

We also, of course, look at Muslim girls being sold for marriage 

and other things, whether it is through the temporary marriages 

to—what basically can only be described as sex stores. 

Mr. SMITH. But as Michele Clark said—let me interrupt you 

briefly—from certain jaundiced view on the part of some, they get 

two things out of it. They get a wife who then they give out like 

she is some kind of property or commodity. And secondly, they 

Islamasize—and to me, that is—you know, if somebody decides to 

be Muslim, Christian, whatever their faith may be, and that is 

what freedom of conscience is all about, but to do it through coercion is a horrific human rights abuse. I am sorry to interrupt. 

Ambassador CDEBACA. No. I was just saying that we would very 

much look forward to seeing the results of any new reporting, any 

new evidence. It is something that we take seriously. And we also 

continue to take seriously the promises of the new government in 

Egypt that has assured us that they will enforce and continue to 

implement the national plan of action for combating trafficking of 

persons which was announced in December of last year, which was 

just a few weeks before the events of the Arab Spring happened. 

Despite the fact that there has been a lot of leadership by thenFirst Lady Suzanne Mubarak on getting that national plan of action in place and equally, obviously, the Mubarak family is no 

longer in the position that they were, we have heard from the current government that this is something that they want to continue 

because they realize that this protects Egyptians, whether Egyptian children or Egyptian adults. 

So as we continue to work with them on how they are going to 

implement that action plan, how they are going to bring it to life? 

We will want to make sure that all of these allegations about 

forced marriage, whether of Muslim or Christians, are addressed. 

And we will continue to look at this. And like I said, we would be 

happy to look at whatever new evidence that Michele or others 

might have. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. 

Ambassador BLAKE. On Uzbekistan, Mr. Chairman, again, this is 

another country I worked hard on. And to answer your question, 

you know, we granted a waiver and kept Uzbekistan on the Watch 

List this year, because in March of this year they decided to create 

an interagency working group that was tasked with ensuring comVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:36 Feb 23, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\102711\70951 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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pliance with all 13 of the ILO conventions to which Uzbekistan is 

a party. That working group in turn has created an action plan to, 

again, ensure compliance. 

This year, the government permitted UNICEF to assess child 

labor in all 12 regions of Uzbekistan. And, you know, just as importantly I think, Uzbek officials tell us now that they are making a 

real effort for the first time to try to end the use of children under 

the age of 16 in the harvest, and to actually punish those who are 

violating the law. So the harvest is ongoing right now, Mr. Chairman, as you probably know. But from initial reports that we have 

received from independent sources and from our own Embassy, 

they tell us that in fact there has been a reduced incidence this 

year of forced child labor in Uzbekistan, and fewer schools have 

been closed as a result of that. But the forced adult labor continues, and in fact may even be increasing to compensate for the 

child labor part of it. 

So, you know, obviously we are going to have to withhold judgment until the end of the season and see how it goes. But, you 

know, I think we have the government’s attention. And you know, 

they are now committed to this, where they have an action plan, 

they have submitted something on paper. 

And, you know, this year we are going to seek, I would say, three 

things: First, we are going to try to seek action to end the use of 

forced adult and child labor, full stop. 

Secondly, we are going to try to urge them to investigate and 

prosecute officials who are suspected of being complicit in trafficking. Again, I think there is no stronger signal than putting people like that in jail. And that is going to serve as a powerful deterrent to others. 

And then, third, we want to focus on trying to encourage them 

to allow forced labor experts, particularly the ILO in there. 

UNICEF is doing these assessments now, but it is really not their 

job. And they themselves are the first to say that they encourage 

the government to do this. So we are going to be working both with 

the ILO and with the government to try to bring them together and 

achieve not only implementation of these conventions, but also ILO 

presence on the ground to kind of verify that. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. Thank you. Is there anything—and 

I appreciate your work. You don’t look jet-lagged at all. Is there 

anything else any of you would like to add before we conclude the 

hearing? Any country you would like to highlight that perhaps Mr. 

Payne, Mr. Turner, and I have not brought up? 

Well, I want to thank you so much. We will have some written 

questions. 

I won’t keep you any longer. And I do very much appreciate your 

work. We all do. The subcommittee respects the hard work that 

you expend every day on behalf of the victims. So thank you so 

very much. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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