[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 65 (Friday, May 2, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E671-E672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EFFECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY: TIER RANKINGS AND THE TIP REPORT
______
HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH
of new jersey
in the house of representatives
Friday, May 2, 2014
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, I held a
hearing on the power of holding countries accountable in the annual
Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, including its tier rankings, for
government successes or failures in the fight against human
trafficking.
Experts have observed that there are more slaves in the world today
than at any previous point of human history. With the Trafficking in
Persons Report and tier rankings, the United States is also ensuring
more accountability and progress than ever before in the fight to rid
the world of slavery.
Many of those who attended the hearing have been in this fight for
more than a decade from the year 2000 when a law I authored--the
Trafficking Victims' Protection Act (TPVA)--created a comprehensive
policy that not only established the Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons at the Department of State, but also the annual
Trafficking in Persons Report.
The success of the TIP Report and rankings is beyond anything we
could have hoped for at the time. From presidential suites to the halls
of parliaments to law enforcement assets and police stations in remote
corners of the world, this report focuses anti-trafficking work in 187
countries on the pivotal goals of prevention, prosecution, and
protection.
Much of the praise for the success of the TIP Report is due to the
incredibly effective Ambassadors-at-Large who have led the Office to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) and their highly
dedicated staff. Ambassador Mark Lagon is one of them and he testified
at our hearing this week.
Each year, the trafficking office evaluates whether the government
of a country is fully complying with the minimum standards for the
elimination of human trafficking, or, if not, whether the government is
making significant efforts to do so.
The record is laid bare for the world to see and summarized in a
tier ranking narrative. Tier 1 countries fully meet the minimum
standards. Tier 2 countries do not meet the minimum standards but are
making significant effort to do so. Tier 3 countries do not meet the
standards and are not making significant effort to do so. Along with
the embarrassment of being listed on Tier 3, such countries are open to
sanction by the U.S. government.
Over the last 14 years, more than 120 countries have enacted anti-
trafficking laws and many countries have taken other steps required to
significantly raise their tier rankings. Some countries openly credit
the TIP report as a key factor in their increased and effective anti-
trafficking response.
We created the Tier 2 Watch List In the 2003 TVPA reauthorization.
This list was intended to encourage good-faith anti-trafficking
progress in a country that may have taken positive anti-trafficking
steps late in the evaluation year.
Unfortunately, some countries made a habit of last minute efforts
and failed to follow through year after year--effectively gaming the
system. To protect the integrity of the tier system and ensure it
worked properly to inspire real progress in the fight against human
trafficking, Congress in 2008 created an ``automatic downgrade'' for
any country that had been on the Tier 2 Watch List for two years but
had not taken significant enough anti-trafficking measures to move up a
tier.
The President can waive this automatic downgrade for two additional
years if he certifies ``credible evidence'' that the country has a
written and sufficiently resourced plan, which if implemented, would
constitute significant effort to meet the minimum standards.
Last year was the first test of the new system--and it worked.
China, Russia, and Uzbekistan ran out of waivers and moved to Tier 3,
which accurately reflected their records. In the hearing, we evaluated
whether these countries have made any significant progress over the
last year.
I am particularly concerned that China's trafficking crisis
continues unabated. The recent U.N. Commission of Inquiry Report on
North Korea provides horrifying evidence of the trafficking of North
Korean women to China-for sex, brides, or labor. An estimated 90
percent of North Korean women seeking asylum in China are trafficked
for these reasons. Thousands of women a year leave desperate situations
in North Korea only to end up in a brothel or forced marriage--a tragic
and astonishing fact.
China's response has not been to provide protection for victims or
to prosecute traffickers, it is to hunt down and repatriate North
Koreans, sending them back--to hard labor, long imprisonments, and
possible execution.
North Korean women are not the only victims. By 2020, more than 40
million Chinese men will be unable to find wives in China because of
China's short-sighted and abusive one-child policy, which, coupled with
modern abortion technology, has triggered the mass abortion of tens of
millions of baby girls. A human rights abuse in and of itself, sex-
selective abortions have also created a huge trafficking magnet,
pulling victims into forced marriages and brothels from countries in
proximity to China and beyond.
China's extremely modest and overly hyped suggestion that it might
relax the draconian one-child policy for some couples is unlikely to
mitigate the disaster and may be further counteracted by the spread of
abortion sex selection technology to more of rural China. Whether the
birth limitation is one-child or two-child in special cases, birth
limitation policies constitute abuse, cruelty, and exploitation without
precedent or parallel for baby girls and society.
The Government of China is failing not only to address its own
trafficking problems but is creating an incentive for human trafficking
problems in the whole region. Although she could not join us in person
at the hearing, renowned author Mara Hvistandahl, author of Unnatural
Selection, Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World
Full of Men, submitted testimony for the record specifically on the
effect of the sex ratio imbalance as a cause of human trafficking and
the proliferation of ``marriage agencies'' in China, which traffic
women from poorer countries into China and sell them into marriage.
During the hearing, we also looked at a second set of countries
that, this year, must be automatically downgraded unless they have made
significant efforts to fight human trafficking. These countries include
Thailand, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Chad, Barbados, and Maldives. Burma
may receive a Presidential waiver in order to avoid downgrade to Tier 3
but the facts on the ground don't justify that course of action.
Cutting across Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia is the tragic plight of
the Rohingya minority. Rohingya are leaving Burma by the thousands to
escape religious persecution. However, according to a report put out by
Reuters, Thai authorities are selling Rohingya to human traffickers,
where they are held in ``tropical gulags'' until relatives pay ransom.
Those who cannot pay the ransom are sold into sex slavery or hard labor
and many die from abuse or disease. Thai authorities have done little
to stop this practice, their efforts at prevention and prosecution are
said to be ``losing steam.''
Rohingya are often trafficked to Malaysia where they are exploited
for labor. The sad fact is that many Rohingya, a persecuted Sunni
Muslim minority in Burma, hope to find refuge in Malaysia, a majority
Muslim country.
Burma is the source of Rohingya trafficking in the region. Policies
of discrimination, child limitation, forced birth control, and violence
push the Rohingya minority to leave Burma and leave them vulnerable
refugees. The Burmese government is culpable in Rohingya trafficking
and the regional problems their policies create.
The Burmese Government also has done little to stop trafficking of
Rohingya within Burma. Reports indicate that authorities profit from
the sale of Rohingya to traffickers, Rohingya women are held at
military bases as sex slaves, and Rohingya men are used for forced
labor. Though these practices have gone on for many years, they are
underreported in the State Department's TIP Report.
Displaced by war with the Burmese military, women and children from
the Kachin tribe in Burma are also subject to trafficking. Roi Ja, an
18-year-old woman living in IDP camp in northern Burma, was lured to
China with a promise of a restaurant job. Once in China she was bused
to a rural village and locked in a room. According to her testimony,
she cried for three days and begged those around to let her go. She was
told to just ``give up'' and was sold as a bride for $5,312.
We hear constantly about Burma's success democratic reforms, but
peel away the layers of good news, and many of the same human rights
problems and human atrocities remain. I understand that the
administration has started a ``Human Trafficking Dialogue'' with Burma.
Diplomatic engagement is important, but not enough to warrant an
upgrade in Burma's status. For that we have to see concrete results,
not Rohingya trafficked for sex and labor.
The importance of accurate Tier rankings and TIP Report country
profiles cannot be
[[Page E672]]
overstated. Again and again, we have seen countries turn 180 degrees
and begin the hard work of reaching the minimum standards after the TIP
Report accurately exposed--with a Tier 3 ranking and truthful country
report--each country's failure to take significant action against human
trafficking. By the same token, a premature boost to Tier 2 may not
only undermine progress, but fail to inspire it among countries
actually doing the hard work.
I won't deny that there are at times diplomatic costs to accurate
tier rankings--but it is the price of freedom for the men, women, and
children caught in human trafficking. They remind us that each of their
lives is priceless and must be protected.