FOR THE COURAGEOUS, A MODERN DAY FIGHT TO ABOLISH SLAVERY

U.S. Ambassador James F. Moriarty, in an opinion column June 6 in a major Nepali-language daily newspaper, The Annapurna Post, urges greater efforts to stop the scourge of trafficking in persons:         

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice released the Department of State’s fifth annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.  The report puts it bluntly: trafficking in persons is modern day slavery and is a crime that affects virtually every country, including the United States.  The U.S. government estimates that over the past year 600,000 – 800,000 persons -- including children and especially women and girls -- have been forced into sexual servitude, child soldiering, forced labor, and debt bondage.

Some like Nayla, 8, brought to Dubai from Azerbaijan and prostituted when she was 13, are sold into slavery by acquaintances or family members.  Others, like 15-year-old Michael, kidnapped from his Ugandan village to serve as a combatant for a rebel army, are simply accosted and held with threats against their lives and the lives of their families.  Another, 12-year-old Malik of Niger, was lured from his parents by a religious leader, who made false promises of education and instead forced him to beg on the streets of Mali.

Along with the more than $400 million in international anti-trafficking assistance to date, the annual TIP Report is an important part of the U.S. commitment to work with international partners to fight trafficking.  The report, mandated by law, is intended to raise global awareness of the problem, underscore the growing efforts of the international community to combat human trafficking, and encourage nations around the world to take effective actions against this abuse.  Again this year, the TIP Report presents “tier assessments” of countries’ compliance with what U.S. law has set as minimum standards for the elimination trafficking in persons.

This year’s report classifies Nepal as having slipped to “tier two,” meaning it is not fully complying with the minimum standards for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking but is making significant efforts to meet them.  The United States is pleased to note, though, that from July 15, 2004 through July 15, 2005, Nepal’s government reported prosecuting 347 cases at the district, appellate and Supreme Court levels, and filing 73 new trafficking cases.  Nonetheless, it is clear the government of Nepal must improve its anti-corruption efforts to meet the minimum standards.  Similarly, the Maoists must abandon the forcible conscription of children.

Events in Nepal over the past year made anti-trafficking efforts more difficult.  Yet the United States hopes the recent reinstatement of a multiparty Parliament will enable the new Nepal Government to focus on this issue more directly.  To assist the Nepal Government, the Department of State and USAID will continue to support the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare in its anti-trafficking activities in the areas of prevention, rehabilitation and prosecution.

We can all do better in this fight. The U.S. government, for its part, continues to seek new ways to address America’s own trafficking problem.  Earlier this year, President George W. Bush signed a law reauthorizing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which strengthens provisions designed to combat human trafficking by prosecuting and punishing traffickers, protecting their victims, and preventing future attempts by criminals to perpetrate this scourge against human dignity and freedom.

Critical partners in the fight against trafficking are non-government organizations (NGOs).  These civil society leaders press governments to combat trafficking, keep law enforcement officials informed, and assist victims with shelters, counseling and education. Altogether, USAID in Nepal has provided $1.3 million over a four-year period for anti-trafficking programs, such as providing skills-based training to women and girls who are most at risk of being trafficked.  Other NGOs have organized non-formal education and trafficking awareness programs in rural Nepal.  These programs led to the arrest of several people involved in trafficking girls to circuses in India and the rescue and repatriation of these girls.

Thanks to these and other NGOs -- and spurred by the U.S. Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report -- more governments have joined a growing international partnership of nations sharing information and cooperating in the fight against human trafficking.

For millions of enslaved people around the world, this new abolitionist movement has come none too soon.  As President Bush recently noted, “Our nation is determined to fight and end this modern form of slavery.”