13 January 2005

(State's Miller says prevention, education top U.S. priorities to stop slavery)

By Jane A. Morse
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- There has been virtually no increase in verified incidents of human trafficking in countries hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, says John Miller, director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

"The number of actual reported cases attributed to the tsunami is, thankfully, very small at this point," Miller said in a January 12 interview with the Washington File, but he cautioned that this might change.

In the days following the disaster, a number of widely circulated media reports said predators were taking advantage of the chaos to snap up orphaned children for the lucrative human slave trade.  But Miller said authorities from the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) have been able to confirm only one or two cases so far.

"Our expertise," Miller said, "leads us to believe that trafficking is likely to take place not in the week following the tsunami, or two weeks, but over the next several months, as children and families realize their vulnerability and start weighing phony opportunities for education and jobs."

U.S. efforts regarding human trafficking in the tsunami aftermath have been focused on encouraging governments and charitable organizations "to take the common-sense education and prevention and warning measures that will be helpful in avoiding the worsening of this problem in the coming months," he said.

Immediately after the tsunami struck, Miller said, his office was in communication with nongovernmental organizations on the ground in the affected areas suggesting steps to reduce the opportunities for exploitation, such as the identification and registration of children in camps and the education of camp workers on the increased dangers of trafficking.

"We also communicated through our embassies with foreign governments on steps to take, such as increased scrutiny at airports where children are traveling," he said.

Human trafficking has been "a huge problem" involving hundreds of thousands of people in this region long before this latest natural disaster, Miller noted.  Slavery, he said, is a worldwide problem that "dwarfs anything that is tsunami-related."

Of the countries worst hit by the tsunami, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and India have been noted in the U.S. Department of State's Trafficking in Persons Report for 2004 (http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2004/34021.htm) as having governments that do not comply with the minimum standards set by the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) enacted in 2002.  The TVPA, intended to raise global awareness and spur governments to fight human trafficking, calls for the U.S. government to withhold nonhumanitarian, non-trade-related assistance to countries that fail to take significant actions to eliminate this global scourge.

Miller said that even though some of the tsunami-hit countries get poor ratings in the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report, the United States is pleased with those governments' attention to the trafficking issue as it relates to the tsunami.

"I think what you're seeing is because of a lot of work that went on in the preceding year or two, the governments that are involved are far more aware of the slave trade threat than they were before," Miller said.  Media reports in the wake of the tsunami heightened awareness of the problem, he added.

The United States already has more than 200 anti-trafficking programs operating worldwide  (see The U.S. Government's International Anti-Trafficking Programs, http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/rpt/34182.htm), but it stands ready to provide additional aid in the wake of the tsunami, Miller said.

"We're in touch with just about every NGO on the ground and every international organization, and we have made clear that if a significant trafficking problem can be identified where a programmatic response is called for, we will be ready and willing to help," he said.