Human Trafficking at a Tipping Point

The issue of human trafficking has reached a tipping point. On the same day that I pass by The Body Shop, and see their request that customers sign a petition to stop “sex trafficking of children and young people,” apparently co-sponsored by UNGIFT and UNICEF, a student admits that until I began introducing him to the existence of the issue, he was utterly unaware that people were being bought, sold and exploited around the world.
While many people remain unaware that men, women and children are subjected to indentured servitude, debt peonage and other forms of human trafficking, celebrities and corporations and even conservative American politicians have embraced the issue, at least aspects of it. Angelina Jolie and Microsoft Corporation, through their co-funded and founded organization KIND (Kids in Need of Defense), fund pro bono legal training for unaccompanied children, including children who are trafficked. In her capacity as YouthAIDS Global Ambassador, Ashley Judd has become an advocate against human trafficking. Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon lend their cultural and legal feminist star power to aspects of the issue. Conservative and moderate politicians such as Olympia Snowe support bills directed towards international violence against women, including human trafficking.
If corporations situated in the Northern Hemisphere; and conservative, moderate and liberal politicians; and celebrities; and law enforcement and all branches of government are lined up in support of aspects of the issue, then why have we failed so miserably to find and then secure assistance to victims of human trafficking and why have we failed to prosecute traffickers? The answer of course is multi-fold, but part of the problem lies in the bifurcation of the issue. The Body Shop wants us to sign a petition to prevent sex trafficking of children. What about the trafficking of Sri Lankan and Nepalese men into Iraq and Afghanistan to provide support services to US troops and their allies? Angelina Jolie and Microsoft will help unaccompanied children. What about agricultural laborers threatened with blacklisting if they complain about non-payment or exploitation? Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon are concerned with the lack of consent inherent in sex work. What about women who agree to sex work but then have their earnings withheld until they “pay back” their traffickers?
The issue is complex (as IntLawGrrls Janie Chuang and Dina Francesca Haynes have regularly articulated here and here), and the interest of celebrities, politicians and the corporate world is not only laudable, it is often rich and deep. The people who elect to become involved in the issue often become very knowledgeable about it, and yet each selects one aspect in which to become involved, further bifurcating the issue, polarizing the debates and alienating victims who do not fit within their funding or client profile. It is likely the interest in human trafficking will remain for some time. Let us work on making that interest as rich, as meaningful and as holistic as possible.

Dueling Truths in Sri Lanka

The struggle to account for war crimes committed during the civil conflict in Sri Lanka (prior posts here and here) has taken several interesting turns of late. Let's start by scrolling back to June, when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a U.N. Panel of Experts to investigate violations of human rights and humanitarian law during the conflict in Sri Lanka. President Mahindra Rajapaksa's administration called the appointment of the panel a violation of its sovereignty, accusing the West of applying double standards. Hundreds of Sri Lankans, including Buddhist monks, responded to the creation of the panel by protesting outside the U.N.'s offices in Colombo, burning an effigy of Ban Ki-Moon and staging a five-day hunger strike. When police arrived to break the siege and escort U.N. officials out of their compound, the Sri Lankan Defense Secretary (and brother of the President) Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered the police to leave.

In response to the panel, President Rajapaksa created an eight-member Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation charged with investigating events occurring between February 2002 and May 2009 -- a vague mandate that requires neither analysis of violations of international law nor identification of those responsible for such violations. The Commission held its first public hearings in Colombo, the capital, last week, and held two more hearings this week in the northern, predominantly Tamil town of Vavuniya.
Last week, the U.S. State Department's Office of War Crimes Issues submitted a report to Congress raising concerns about the Commission's ambiguous mandate and questioning the independence and impartiality of its members, its failure to establish a witness protection program, its lack of consultations with the Tamil community, and potential government limitations on the scope of the inquiry.
Despite these flaws, many Tamils came forward and testified before the Commission over the weekend, bearing witness to the disappearance of loved ones at the hands of the military and unidentified militia. On the other side of Alice's looking glass, Defense Secretary Rajapaksa testified before the Commission on Tuesday that the Sri Lankan army did everything possible to avoid civilian casualties during the war, and blamed the United Nations for failing to prevent the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from using civilians as shields.
Though the UN Panel of Experts has yet to finalize its report, it's quite unlikely that it will share either Rajapaksa's view of responsibility for the war crimes in Sri Lanka. The situation presents quite a puzzle for theorists of transitional justice, with sharply contested versions of the "truth" and seemingly little space for common ground. The widespread resentment of the U.N. suggests that a regional body might be a more effective sponsor of investigations, though Asia's regional human rights mechanisms are hardly up to the task. With Buddhist monks siding with the government's position, it will be difficult to find a relatively neutral moral authority, though the question is surely worth careful study. The EU's decision to withdraw trade concessions worth $150 million in response to the Sri Lankan government's human rights record is an interesting one; time will tell whether this will prove an effective stick or a provocation to further anti-Western tirades. An approach that engages with the government's perspective may be more successful in extracting concessions, but would require quite a delicate balancing act. After 25 years of war, shared truths will take time and care to construct.

Law moves in mysterious ways . . .

The disturbing trend of "pushing back" asylum seekers hit new lows last week when Australia announced that it would suspend asylum applications from Afghanis and Sri Lankans, claiming that both countries have stabilized sufficiently that even refugees can be returned. And on Tuesday, Arizona passed a bill that criminalizes the presence of those without lawful immigration status, risking racial profiling among other rights violations. It seems the fences are getting higher across the developed world, and human rights are pushed to the side as anti-immigrant politics take the fore.
Of course, these policies have raised the ire of immigrants' rights advocates, but we've also seen strong criticism, leveraging the language and power of international law, from unusual quarters. In Italy, where, as I blogged last week, asylum seekers arriving by boat are returned to Libya without even an interview, the Vatican issued a powerful critique of this practice. Paraphrasing without citing the UN Convention Against Torture, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto noted that

No one can be transferred, expelled or extradited towards a state where there is a serious risk that the person will be condemned to death, tortured or subjected to other forms of degrading or inhumane treatment,

and that conditions in some Libyan detention centers are inhumane and degrading.
In the case of Arizona, a more traditional but no less powerful vision of international law was offered up. The Mexican Embassy issued a strongly-worded statement condemning the bill criminalizing undocumented status, noting not only its potential for violating the civil rights of Mexican nationals, but also its potential to upset diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico. Moreover, the Embassy's spokesperson reiterated the Mexican consulate's commitment to ensuring that the rights of its nationals are respected in the United States.
And in the case of Australia, while a legal response may be forthcoming from the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Tamil Referendum Council of Australia made perhaps the most creative use of international law in responding to the blanket denial of asylum to Sri Lankans. The Council relied on a letter from Human Rights Watch finding that Australia's actions violate the UN Refugee Convention and Protocol to argue that an independent Tamil homeland in northern Sri Lanka is the best way to prevent an influx of refugees and consequent violations of international obligations. In other words, if Australia doesn't want these refugees on its doorstep, it should help to resolve the root causes of flight in Sri Lanka.
Though self-serving to different degrees, the adoption of the language of international law in advocating for the rights of immigrants and refugees is also a reflection of the increasing power of human rights law and indicative of the new life that can be breathed into long-standing principles of foreign affairs and consular protection. And while lawsuits have and will be brought to remedy these rights violations, the use of international law by a variety of actors may start to shift the court of public opinion, which may be more important in enforcing the rights of immigrants.

On December 14

On this day in ...

... 1955, by Resolution 109, the U.N. Security Council admitted 16 new member states to the United Nations. Simultaneously admitted were Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon (today, Sri Lanka), Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. The vote was 8-0-3; abstaining were Belgium, China, and the United States.

(Prior December 14 posts are here and here.)

Refugees on the High Seas

Though the "end of the war" was proclaimed several months ago in Sri Lanka, Tamil refugees continue to flee the island. According to some reports, security cameras donated by the Australian government to Colombo's airport have been used by the Sri Lankan government to identify and detain Tamil political activists, who as a result have turned to the sea as their escape route. Whatever the reason, increasing numbers of Tamils are choosing to flee Sri Lanka by boat; three such boats filled with asylum seekers have been intercepted en route to Australia in the past few weeks. In order to prevent such risky boat journeys, or so it claims, the Australian government requires that refugees it rescues on the high seas be sent to Indonesia rather than Australia.
Nearly three weeks after their dilapidated wooden boat was interdicted by the Australian navy in Indonesian waters, 255 Sri Lankans remain on board the ship in a Java port. Having been denied protection in Malaysia, these asylum seekers refuse to disembark in Indonesia because they fear being placed in detention camps. (Just this week, Malaysia released to UNHCR 66 Sri Lankan asylum seekers detained since September; 40 remain in detention camps.) Indonesia is not a party to the UN Refugee Convention, and has stated that it will not allow the refugees to remain on its territory indefinitely, raising concerns of refoulement.
Almost two weeks ago, nearly eighty Sri Lankans were rescued by an Australian customs ship, which is now moored off an Indonesian island. The local governor has said that Indonesia is not a "dumping ground" and and that he will not allow the boat to disembark its passengers. The Indonesian president has sent a delegation to meet with local officials to discuss the situation, and has asked Australia for $50 million to process and detain the refugees. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankans don't want to disembark in Indonesia, for the reasons laid out above, and are demanding to be received in Australia. Though the Indonesian central government has said it will not forcibly remove the Sri Lankans from the Australian boat that rescued them, Australia has not yet ruled out the use of force.
Detention in Indonesia would be an ironic solution to the problem, as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had closed detention camps for asylum seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea in favor of the more humane approach of processing asylum applications on Australia's Christmas Island. It's clear that cooperation between neighbor states will be needed to address this issue, which extends beyond Sri Lankans -- a reported 66 boats carrying over 1600 asylum seekers have been intercepted this year en route to Australia. But that cooperation should take the standards of the UN Refugee Convention as a baseline, and should seek to find a permanent solution for these desperate refugees, rather than warehousing them indefinitely in detention camps.

On July 29

On this day in ...
… 1994 (15 years ago today), British chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (left) died in Ilmington, Warwickshire, England. Among her most influential discoveries was the structure of vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1969, after 35 years of work, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin, which she considered her greatest scientific achievement. She cooperated with laboratories active in insulin research and traveled to give talks about insulin and diabetes. Hodgkin also was concerned about social inequalities and stopping conflict: from 1976 to 1988, she was President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization that works toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and global security threats. (credit for 1996 British stamp honoring Hodgkin as 1 of 5 “20th Century Women of Achievement")
… 1987, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (below, at left) and Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayawardene (below, at right) signed the Indo-Lankan Pact, also known as the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord. (photo credit) The agreement aimed to end ongoing anti-insurgent operation by Sri Lankan forces in the Northern peninsula. Sri Lankan troops were to withdraw to their barracks, and the Tamil rebels (mainly the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers) were to disarm. India agreed to end support for the Tamil separatist movement and recognize the unity of Sri Lanka. Under the accord, India pledged military assistance to promote peace. The pact did not in fact put an end to conflict. Just this past May, the Sri Lankan military crushed Tamil Tiger rebels, in operations that, as IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales posted here and here, raised humanitarian law concerns.

(Prior July 29 posts are here and here.)

War's End

While many in Sri Lanka celebrated the recent end of the country's decades-long civil war, the impact of the war's bloody finale on displaced and migratory Sri Lankans is no cause for cheer. The violence perpetrated by the Sri Lankan goverment and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the last months of the war dramatically increased forced migration within and without Sri Lanka. In an interesting twist on the typical tale of civil war-spurred migration, Sri Lankan diaspora communities, many former refugees themselves, are marshalling their political voice in support of those fleeing the violence.
In the last few months of the war, nearly 300,000 internally displaced people, including 80,000 children, were forced out of their homes and are now interned in refugee camps. Such camps are generally dangerous places, particularly for women and children, who risk not only disease but also sexual violence. To make matters worse, the Sri Lankan government has blocked the Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from accessing some of these camps. For those able to escape Sri Lanka, the situation is equally grim; last week, fifty-five Sri Lankan asylum seekers whose boat drifted ashore in Indonesia (en route to Australia) went on hunger strike after being placed in prison.
These floating asylum seekers followed a well-worn path; throughout Sri Lanka's lengthy civil war, Tamils have fled in large numbers to Australia and Canada. In these two nations in particular, the diaspora have prospered and grown into a powerful political force. In Canada, Tamil leaders have asked the government to tell the Sri Lankan government that it must allow aid groups to access all refugees and that it should reach a political settlement with the Tamil minority. The Canadian government appears to have acceded to these requests, and has also been responsive to the diaspora's request to fast-track Tamil refugee applications. In Australia, where the war has resulted in violence between Sinhalese and Tamil communities, Tamil groups have requested that the government reinstate a humanitarian visa for Sri Lankans, a move that would minimize the dangers of illegal border-crossing.
So what impact will the unusually strong voice of the diaspora have on the war's end? If Tamil leaders abroad can leverage their political power in their nations of residence to successfully demand a political settlement from the Sri Lankan government, this power might prove a very valuable ingredient of long-term stability. It's also possible that the well-established Tamil diaspora might enable Sri Lankan Tamils to vote with their feet by emigrating, thus draining the island of its ethnic diversity -- a less appealing result. In the worst case scenario, if the government refuses to include Tamil interests in a political settlement, Tamils abroad might enable locals to resist such a decision and even revive the long-running ethnic conflict. We can only hope for the first outcome, in which case it will be interesting to see whether and when the Tamil diaspora might return to their native land.

A Political Solution for Sri Lanka?

As the government of Sri Lanka moves closer and closer to its goal of "crushing" the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the human cost of the conflict spirals out of control -- the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 120,000 people fled the conflict zone in the last ten days of April.

The situation is even grimmer for the 50,000 Sri Lankans said to be held by the LTTE in an area smaller than New York's Central Park. Since mid-January, 6500 civilians, including 1000 children, have died in the conflict. The Sri Lankan government has rejected requests from the United Nations to slow the assault by government troops so that food and aid can be sent to these trapped civilians, as well as calls for a humanitarian ceasefire by Britain and France, calling the latter "hypocritical" and "sanctimonious." Currently chaired by Russia, which has openly supported Sri Lanka's push into LTTE territory, the U.N. Security Council has taken no steps to stop the government's military offensive.

In an editorial last week, the New York Times noted that it would be a relief to see an end to the 25-year conflict in Sri Lanka. True enough, but what comes next? The Times proposes, in one breath, prosecution of both sides for war crimes and a serious political settlement. Can they go hand-in-hand, or must peace precede justice? Once the Sri Lankan government has defeated the LTTE, what incentive will it have to allow prosecutions to go forward against its own officials? Moreover, what impact will the Sri Lankan government's focus on "crushing" the LTTE (and, apparently, any civilians who get in the way of that goal) have on the possiblity of a political solution from the perspective of the Tamil population? The extremism and lack of respect for human life on both sides of the table make it difficult to imagine how common ground could be established. A lasting political solution will need to address the root causes of the conflict in a way that respects the presumably very different preferences of the Tamil and Sinhalese civilians who have suffered over two decades of violence.

Guest Blogger: Myriam Denov

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome as a guest blogger Dr. Myriam Denov (right).

An Associate Professor of Social Work at McGill University in Montreal, she received her doctorate in Criminology from the University of Cambridge.

At McGill Myriam researches and teaches on children and youth at risk, with an emphasis on war and political violence, children and armed conflict, and gender-based violence. She has worked with vulnerable populations internationally including former child soldiers, victims of sexual violence, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Her current research explores the militarization and reintegration experiences of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. Myriam has presented expert evidence on child soldiers and has served as an advisor to government and NGOs on children and armed conflict, and on girls in fighting forces. She is currently writing a book on child soldiers that will be published by Cambridge University Press.

Myriam's guest post below, which draws from her experience in Sierra Leone to focus on girl soldiers, an issue on which another IntLawGrrls guest, Dr. Noëlle Quénivet, also has posted.

Myriam's transnational foremother was herself a girl soldier:

I would like to dedicate this guest post to Mamusu, who I was privileged to meet during my time in Sierra Leone. Mamusu was a former girl soldier who was abducted at the age of 9 by the rebel Revolutionary UnitedFront, forced to fight in battle, and to become the “wife” of a rebel commander. She remained with the rebel group for more than five years and bore two children, as a result of sexual violence. In the aftermath of the war, impoverished and with few systems of support, Mamusu courageously and inspirationally attempted to carve out a life and livelihood for her and her two young children. Mamusu died at the age of 17.

Mamusu joins other IntLawGrrls transnational foremothers in the list below the "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

On November 5

On this day in ...

... 2003 (5 years ago today), in Colombo, Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga declared a state of emergency, thus "giving herself sweeping powers to ban assemblies, detain people without cause and censor news reports" for a period of 10 days. The move came a day after she "suspended the country's Parliament, took control of the powerful Defense, Interior and Media ministries and deployed a small number of troops at key government buildings." Kumaratunga (right) had been President -- the 1st woman to hold that post -- since 1994. She would leave office in 2005, after failing to persuade the Sri Lankan Supreme Court she should be permitted to stay an additional year.

... 1838 (170 years ago today), a 15-year-old alliance known as the United Provinces of Central America began to dissolve when 1 of its members, Honduras (left), withdrew and became an independent republic. (map credit)

Selective Justice?

South Asia's extraordinary religious and ethnic/linguistic diversity -- from Hindu and Muslim to Jain and Zoroastrian; from Bengali and Punjabi to Tamil and Sinhalese -- can pose serious challenges to democratic stability in the region. In India, the world's largest democracy, this week saw the completion of a landmark trial of nearly 100 (largely Muslim) perpetrators of 1993's deadly bombings in Mumbai. Dawood Ibrahim, a Muslim ganglord, ordered these bombings in response to communal riots. According to a Commission of Inquiry led by former Indian Supreme Court Justice Srikrishna, the Hindu nationalist group Shiv Sena was responsible for organized attacks during these Mumbai riots that killed almost 600 Muslims -- but the (largely Hindu) perpetrators of these crimes have yet to be indicted. As one victim of the riots asks, "There's no justice for us because we are Muslims?" To the south, the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission reports 186 complaints of disappearances, largely of Tamils and Muslims, in May and June alone. The administration of Sinhalese President Rajapaksa claims that these numbers are exaggerated in order to discredit his government and that many of those reported disappeared have gone abroad or eloped. But Philip Alston, in his capacity as a UN Special Rapporteur, found that the Sri Lankan government failed effectively to investigate most political killings, in part because they lack sufficient linguistic ability and cultural sensitivity to gather information in Tamil and Muslim communities. This selective justice violates core principles of the international human rights regime, beginning with Article 2 of the ICCPR (to which both India and Sri Lanka have acceded), which prohibits discrimination based on language and religion and requires that states provide an effective remedy for all violations of the treaty. Perhaps more importantly, the provision of justice by religion or ethnicity threatens to unravel the tapestry of multicultural India in ways that we have sadly seen in the two and a half decades of devastating conflict in Sri Lanka.

Asian Enigma answered

Answer to Asian Enigma above:

c) Philippines

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (below) has served as President since 2001. She is not is not the 1st woman to serve as President of the Philippines, however; Corazon Aquino held the post from 1986 to 1992. Notably, women have governed in 3 of the other Asian countries on this list:

a) Sri Lanka: Sirimavo Banaranaike was Prime Minister 1960-65, 1970-1977, and 1991-2000; her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Prime Minister in 1994 and then President from 1994 to 2005.

d) Bangladesh: Hasina Wajed, Prime Minister from 1996-2001, and her rival, Khaleda Zia, from 1991-1996 and 2001-2006.

f) South Korea: Han Myeong-Sook served as Prime Minister from April 2006 to March 2007.