Trafficking in Persons: The European versus the U.S. Approach
Dr. Mohammed Mattar
Executive Director, Protection Project
Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Brussels, Belgium May 11, 2005
Thank you so much. It is an honor for me to be here in Belgium, a country that I have always wanted to visit. I travel all over the world but have never been here, so thank you so much for inviting me.
I am privileged to be speaking to such a very distinguished group. Ten minutes ago you handed me a copy of the European Convention on Trafficking of May 3rd, 2005. I had a few minutes to take a look at it, so if you have questions on the Convention, do not ask me, you'll have to ask the help desk. I had a chance to read the headlines, the subtitles of the Convention and this is a document that the Europeans should be proud of. It is based on the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, but it goes beyond the Protocol. For those of you who were part of the Convention, you fully understand what I mean. First, there is a provision on the identification of victims of trafficking, something which we have been saying that was absent in the United Nations Protocol and which is the most important issue when it comes to trafficking persons. We do very good work in the United States, I am sure you do excellent work here in Belgium, but I think both of us have a problem in identifying victims of trafficking. In the United States, back in 2000, when the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was signed into law on October 28, Section 102 talked about 50,000 women and children being trafficked into the United States. Then, in 2002, the State Department revised that number to 18,000 women and children trafficked into the United States. Then last year the number was reduced to 14,500, and one would ask the question of whether there is real difference in the number of persons that are trafficked into the United States, and if so why. But I believe that we have a problem in identifying the victims. The numbers have also changed globally. In 2002, the number was 700,000. When President Bush talked to the United Nations back in September 23, 2003, he talked about Iraq and he talked about trafficking. He devoted one-third of his speech to the issue of trafficking persons. I remember that on that same day, after the speech, the Washington Post called me and asked: "Why is President Bush talking about trafficking persons?" He talked about 800,000 to 900,000 women and children being trafficked globally. The CIA revised that number. Now the number we have in the United States is 600,000. So do we have a decrease in the number of those who are trafficked? Or we just do not know enough to reach the persons that are trafficked? But whether we talk about 50,000 or 18,000 and whether we are talking about 900,000 or 600,000, in the United States we really don't identify many victims of trafficking. You might also know about the T-Visa. In the United States, a trafficked person has the right to apply for a residency status, what we call a T-Visa. Since the enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, there have been 5,000 T-Visas available every year, so we could have approximately 20,000 visas so far, but those who applied and got visas are less than 700, so something is wrong. I remember in 1999 when we were debating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in the United States, I raised my hand and said: "Only 5,000 visas for victims of trafficking? That's not enough. We are talking about 50,000 victims. Why don't you increase it?" But the 5,000 number was a matter of compromise between those who do not like to widely open the immigration door and those who believe that we should do something about victims of trafficking. Now we have less than 700 victims of trafficking that have been identified in the United States. So I was happy to see a specific provision in the European Convention making it an obligation upon the state parties to identify victims of trafficking. Another provision that I like in the Convention is the provision on civil society, the role of the citizens, and the role of NGOs. For those of you who are familiar with the United Nations Protocol on trafficking, you know that there is no provision on the Protocol that is devoted to the role of NGOs. However, the Protocol mandates that when a country is providing the appropriate preventive measures under the Article 9 or protective measures under Article 6, the country itself has to take these measures in cooperation with non-governmental organizations and other elements of civil society. Based upon Article 6 and Article 9, I will make the argument that there is an international obligation imposed upon countries to cooperate with NGOs. However, there is very little discussion as to the role of the NGOs. Now, the European Convention has a specific provision on the role of civil society. Cooperation with civil society is what I call the missing P of trafficking. All of you are familiar with the 3Ps approach to trafficking: prevention, protection, and prosecution. I usually talk about five Ps: prevention, protection, prosecution, provision, and participation. Why provision? I would like to draw a distinction between protective measures and services granted to victims of trafficking. For example, if you are building a shelter, that is provision. If you are including victims of trafficking in a witness protection program, that is protection. The fifth P that I added to the Ps approach is participation. This means that the ordinary citizen, elements of civil society, and NGOs, all have a role in combating trafficking in persons and that role is what we call active participation. Somebody was telling me that sometimes we talk a lot about action plans and task forces and all that, but when it comes to grassroots organizations we have problems to actually involve them in the fight against trafficking in persons. I think that different elements of civil society are under a duty to report suspicious criminal activities including suspicious trafficking activities. Without that, I don't think we are going to be able to prosecute cases of trafficking effectively. That is why I like Article 13 of the United Nations Convention on Corruption of October 31, 2003. 15 countries have ratified it so far. We need a total of 30 instruments of executions for the Convention against Corruption to become international law. Article 13 talks about active participation of individuals and groups, such as elements of civil society, NGOs, and community-based organizations in the fight against corruption. That is why I like the European Convention on Trafficking, which allows for an active participation of civil society to combat trafficking a person. The third provision I got very quickly is a provision on the non-criminalization of the acts of the victims. For those of you who are familiar with the Protocol, and I am sure all of you are, the Protocol does not define a trafficked person as a victim. The Protocol uses the word victim but does not define a trafficked person as a victim. I was in Indonesia last week to draft a new law on trafficking persons. One of the most important issues that I emphasized is to define a trafficked person as a victim. The Convention does that. The Protocol does not. How do you do that? You can follow definition of a victim as contained in the 1985 United Nations Declaration on the Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of a Crime. Under this Declaration, the victim is defined as a person who suffers harm. The United Nations says the harm may be physical, psychological, and economic, and that is really what a victim of trafficking suffers, the harm. So you have to refer to the harm. Something that is missing in the Protocol and mentioned in the European Convention. I don't want to be spending my whole time talking about the European Convention, but I was excited to see the 2005 Convention. Especially because I will be writing an article for Tulane International and Comparative Law Review, comparing the European approach to trafficking in persons with the American approach. So, I will solicit information from you trying to understand the difference between the Belgium and the US approach to trafficking in persons. Take a look at the legal map on trafficking. There are at least 25 countries that have comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation. A comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation is a law that adopts the three Ps approach to trafficking, namley prevention, protection, prosecution, looks at victims of trafficking and victims of crime, and talks about the human rights approach to trafficking. Belgium is one of these 25 countries.
Currently, there are at least 15 countries that are considering adopting an anti-trafficking legislation. For example, I was working with the parliament in Ecuador; they are having a new law. And Indonesia is having a new law, too. So you add 25 to 15, and you will have 40 countries. Then we have from 95 to 100 countries around the world that have a provision in the criminal code making trafficking in persons a crime. These countries basically comply with Article 5 of the Protocol, mandating that State parties must recognize trafficking in persons as a specific crime and provide for an effective punishment for it. So, most countries around the world are limited to that criminal law approach to the problem. According to this approach, you make trafficking a crime; you go after the trafficker and put the trafficker behind bars. So we have 40 countries plus 100 more countries, and that makes 140. But there are 191 countries in the United Nations, so there are 51 countries or so left. These countries are not concerned about trafficking at all. If you ask me which countries are the bad ones, well the answer is: "Most countries in the Middle East." I am originally from Egypt, as you can tell, since I have an accent in English. But Egypt does not have an anti-trafficking legislation and does not even have a provision in the criminal code making trafficking a crime. Similarly, the Arab countries, most Muslim countries and some countries in Africa and in Latin America do not address trafficking in persons in their laws. So we still have a lot to do when it comes to anti-trafficking legislation. We have to work with the 50 countries and that is what the United States does. Under the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, if a country does not comply with the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking under Section 108, the United States imposes sanction. There is little discussion on this issue. But we talked about that during the break and somebody was asking about Iraq. I was in Iraq in December. The war is not popular, but we have to do something about it now, and I think we are taking a step forward in trying to end corruption in Iraq. We have to do the same thing with trafficking. The United States helps countries to have anti-trafficking legislation. So we now have to work with the 50-something countries that do not have anti-trafficking legislation. I have to thank some of the Belgian people I met in Singapore, the country of Belgium and the embassy of Belgium in the United States. At the Protection Project we do a lot of research. We are part of the university, Johns Hopkins, and all we do is research. We publish a report on human rights and trafficking in persons. Our report comes out before the United States report on trafficking, and we sent Ambassador John Miller a copy of our report. If you take a look at the introduction to the United States Department of State Report on Trafficking in Persons, the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University is mentioned among other NGOs. Now I was thinking about publishing a specific report on the role of task forces in different countries. During the last three or four years, several countries have been moving from adopting an anti-trafficking legislation to establishing a task force in charge of combating trafficking. Some of you are members of the task force. So I designed a questionnaire, I sent it to different embassies in the United States, and the first embassy that responded to us was Belgium. I was in Indonesia last week, so the embassy asked me to talk about best practices regarding task forces. So, I talked about the different models of task forces. The Ministry of Justice is usually the ministry that coordinates the ministries in the task force. In Indonesia it is the Ministry of Women's Empowerment. In other countries it's the Ministry of Human Rights. In other countries it's the Ministry of Interior. I was asked: "Which ministry do you think would be the best in taking care of trafficking?" I said: "It doesn't matter. What matters is that you have a ministry or a coordinator who has any power and authority to coordinate and do something. Whether it's the Ministry of Human Rights or the Ministry of Interior. Overall, I would like to think about trafficking persons not so much as a crime, but as a human rights violation. So I think something like the Ministry for Women's Empowerment or the Ministry of Human Rights is a better idea." But in the final analysis it doesn't matter who is the national coordinator. What matters is to give the national coordinator authority to do something about trafficking. The other issue when it comes to the task force is the involvement of NGOs. In the United States, the Interagency Task Force on Trafficking does not include NGOs. But Article 105 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act provides that the interagency task force shall consult with NGOs. So that is what we call the consultation model. The Belgian model is different. Belgium adopts the representation model. According to this model, NGOs are represented in the interagency task force. Some of the task forces around the world allow for a full membership of NGOs and some only allow the NGOs to serve as observers. So the NGOs would attend the meetings of the task force, but they will not have the right to work. Something like what is happening in Palestine. This is something we have to ask every country: " Do you have a task force, and if so, what is it doing about trafficking persons and victims of trafficking? I was asked to talk about trafficking in persons in the United States, and I know I have a limited time so I would like to share with you what took place these last few months, because it all started in the United States back in October 28th, 2000. That is when President Clinton signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act into law. A lot has happened since then. I assume that all of you are familiar with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of the United States but if you have any questions I would love to answer them. During the last three or four months, the United States Congress has been looking into three new bills. The first one is the End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act of 2005. That's a new bill. Hopefully it will pass and it will become law. This Act focuses on the issue of demand, something you have here in European Convention, and which is part of the Protocol, in Article 9(5). This article makes it clear that all countries must take measures to discourage demand. NGOs are often concerned about the purchaser of the sexual service: the customer, the client. In fact, if we want to do something about sex trafficking we have to do something about the customer. The End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act of 2005 calls for public awareness campaigns, educational programs for the first time purchasers of unlawful commercial sex and publication of names and addresses and other good measures discouraging demand.
Demand is one of the most difficult issues in the area of sex trafficking. I don't know what can be done to discourage demand, but some countries try. The most popular approach is the Sweden approach, adopted in the January 1, 1999 law. According to this approach, buying sex is a crime and selling sex is not a crime. So if you are in Sweden and you go for one-hour sex for the equivalent of $250 US dollars, you can end up in prison for up to six months. Under the Swedish law, prostitution is prohibited, but only from the customer side. I wanted to see how it would all work. I had one of my students from Sweden, so I called her. 'Give me statistics.' She sent me statistics for 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2003, 300 customers have been convicted. In 2002, 110 of them were convicted. Is the law working? I don't know. I do not know whether that is a good approach or not, but I support it. I like the Swedish law. Finland and Norway are following this approach. Similarly, and this is the second approach, article 418(a) of the Macedonian Criminal Code criminalizes the customer who buys sex with the knowledge that the woman in prostitution is a victim of trafficking. The third approach is the Islamic law approach. The Islamic law punishes both the woman in prostitution and the customer. The Koran states: "Do not force them into prostitution and if they are forced do not punish them, God will forgive them." I like the approach of the Koran, because when a woman is forced to prostitute herself she is exempted from liability. That person is a victim. So this is the Islamic law approach. In the United States it is different. In the United States, prostitution is a crime except for some counties in Nevada. This is the main difference between the European and the US approach when it comes to sex trafficking. In Europe prostitution is mainly legal. As a matter of fact, some countries have gone even further by legalizing prostitution. According to this approach, women in prostitution are entitled to social security benefits. Currently, we have a Human Rights Fellow from Turkey at the Protection Project, who can help us understand the European approach. Moreover, on May 23rd we are having a big conference back in Washington, D.C., which will provide an insight into the Turkish approach.
The European approach to prostitution helps us understand how Europeans think about the problem versus the United States. President Bush issued a presidential directive basically following the 1949 Convention on Prostitution. The Preamble of the 1949 Convention makes it clear that prostitution is evil, not only for the individual but the family and the community as well. And that's why the United Nations on March 8th, Woman's Day, passed a resolution calling on countries to do something about demand. The language of the Resolution followed the 1949 Convention. Prostitution is evil. Of course most European countries objected to that language, so the language you have now follows the United Nations Protocol article 9(5), mandating that that we have to do something about demand. So, the first pending bill in the United States covers the issue of demand. If you believe, like the United Nations, that demand is the crucial issue, I think you would be happy with what is happening in the United States and what was decided in the United Nations on Woman's Day, that now countries must take the appropriate measures to discourage demand, because demand leads to exploitation of women and children, and that leads to trafficking. The link between demand and trafficking is explicitly mentioned under article 9(5) of the UN Protocol, and now it is part of the European Convention. The second bill which is pending in the United States is the International Marriage Broker Regulations Act. There was some concern about this bill, since marriage is a privacy issue. But Congress is determined to adopt this law. Why? Because sometimes women are trafficked for the purpose of marriage. For this reason, I like the 2003 law of trafficking of the Philippines because it makes offering a person for marriage a crime. In the United States, we have at least 200 matchmaking organizations. If you take a look at their websites you will find names like "I love Cuba", or "Foreign Affairs". A lot of good names but bad stuff inside. Why is it bad? Because what you are going to find are pictures of women for marriage. In the United States this is a big problem because there is demand for what we call mail order brides. I have a problem with the whole institution of mail order brides. Especially when it comes to marriage by numbers. Who would like to marry n.37, n.7, or n.13? It doesn't make sense. In the United States, approximately 2,000 to 3,500 women get married that way. So Congress believed it necessary to do something about it. How? An option would be an obligation on the matchmaking organization to inform the prospective bride about the husband. So the person who is coming from the Philippines to the United States to get married to an American must know something about her husband. The third bill is the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act was signed into law on October 28th, 2000. In 2003 Congress amended the 2000 Act through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003. Now, the Congress is considering amending the Act again. I think the United States is the only country that is enacting the third legislation on the rights of victims of trafficking in less than five years. This is something really nice. Of course I like the 2005 bill. The Act amends Section 108 of the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, whereby the United States monitors the status of severe forms of trafficking by examining whether a country is taking measures to combat demand for commercial sexual activities. The Act also amends the Section by asking whether a country is taking measures to ensure that its national who are deployed abroad as part of a peacekeeping mission do not exploit victims of trafficking and whether the government of the country punishes those who do so. Sex tourism is also at stake for the United States now. In 2003, President Bush signed into law the Protect Act. Section 105 makes it a crime for a United States citizen to travel abroad to engage in illicit sex with a child, and under the U.S. law a child is defined as a person under the age of 18. Belgium defines a child as a person under the age of 16. In France a child is defined as a person under 15. Since the 1994 law required proof of the intent, it was necessary to prove that the person was traveling to have sex with a child. Now intent is no longer a requirement. Because of the difficulty in proving the intent, only one case of sex tourism was prosecuted until 2003.The case is United States v. Hersch. Professor Hersch, used to travel to Honduras to have sex with children. He liked a child very much. He brought him back to the United States. He sent him to school during the day and had sex with him during the night. His ex-wife called the FBI. He got 105 years in prison. Professor Hersch is still in prison as we talk at this moment. But we only have this case. Why? Because the prosecutor had to prove that the primary purpose of the travel was to have sex with a child. Now this is no longer a requirement. Now accidental sex tourism, travel with sex on the side, are enough to trigger the case of sex tourism. So we're going to ask countries what they are doing about sex tourism. And we're going to ask countries what they are doing about peacekeeping. Currently, we have 15 peacekeeping missions around the world. Every time we have peacekeeping we have some bad sex. The United Nations adopted a Code of Conduct that prohibits peacekeepers from engaging in sex with or exploiting women and children in the countries they serve in. The problem is that you cannot go after the peacekeeper because of his/her military status. You have to send him back to his country of origin and then only the country of origin may punish him. There were 24 cases that were considered cases of misconduct by the United Nations Board of Inquiry. The 24 peacekeepers went back home. None of them were convicted of anything. But now there is the amendment to Section 108 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Before I open the floor for discussion - because I don't want to be just talking - I want to talk about the differences between the European and the United States approach when it comes to trafficking in persons. In fact, the concept of trafficking itself is dealt with differently depending upon whether you are in the United States or in Europe. In the United States the focus is on exploitation of the victims more than on trafficking as a crime against the state. The US approach is that trafficking is a crime against the individual. This implies the concept of security of the person. Let me give you an example of how this concept affects different solutions in the United States and in Europe. The immigration status of a victim of trafficking is very important. First, we have to recognize that the trafficked victim is entitled to basic rights. One of these rights is the right to have an immigration status. But you have a different strategy here in the country of Belgium. Here, there is something called a reflection period. The reflection period does not exist under the U.S. law. It exists under the "Council Directive of April 29, 2004, on the Residence Permit Issued to Third-Country Nationals who are Victims of Trafficking in Human Beings or who Have Been the Subject of an Action to Facilitate Illegal Immigration, who Cooperate with the Competent Authorities." So if you have a victim of trafficking here in Belgium, you give that victim a reflection period. Thanks to the reflection period, the victim can choose whether to go back to her country of origin or cooperate with authorities and report other cases of trafficking. The period under the European Convention is at least 30 days. I just read it very quickly because I wanted to know. The Directive does not specify a period. It says it is up to the country to decide on the reflection period. Belgium is generous and decided for a 45-days period, while in Germany the reflection period lasts for 28 days. In the United States, we do not have a reflection period. And I would like to make the case that the European model with the reflection period is a good model. Why don't we think about adopting that model in the United States? Here is the difference. The United States looks at the problem as a humanitarian one. You will provide the victim of trafficking immigration status on a humanitarian basis regardless of whether the victim will testify or not. So the immigration status is not really tied to the court proceedings. I like the case in Europe. In the United States, we have a tier one, a tier two, a tier three and a tier four. Tier one is the victim herself. Tier two is the spouse, who can come to the United States. Tier three is for the children: the victim can bring them over. Under tier four, a victim under the age of 21 can bring his/her parents. Then after three years your visa might become permanent, so you become a U.S. citizen. That is related to Article 7 of the United Nations Protocol. The United Nations Protocol talks about a compassionate approach to the problem of trafficking in persons. The United States does not consider trafficking as a crime against the state. According to this approach, you have to go after the victim so she can tell you about the crime, you prosecute the trafficker, and once you prosecute it, the victim can be deported. In the United States if the victim tells that she is a victim of a severe form of trafficking and that she would be subject to extreme hardship, she will stay in the United States. Moreover, in courts extreme hardship is interpreted very broadly. It is easier than the standard of fear of prosecution under the asylum law. That I think is second difference when it comes to the American versus the European approach. A third interesting difference is the whole concept of a right to compensation. This is part of the European Convention. It is also part of the Protocol. According to this concept, a victim of trafficking must be entitled to the right to compensation. Here in Europe, there are 13 countries, including Belgium, that allow for a state-offered compensation. In the United States, under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the victim of trafficking has no right to civil compensation. Then, the Reauthorization Act of 2003 has allowed her to file a lawsuit to ask for compensation. In the United States, she can get compensation from her trafficker, and she can also get punitive damages. You are familiar with the punitive damages in the United States. You file a lawsuit, you ask for $300 for compensatory damages and $8 million for punitive damages. But the United States does not have the state-funded compensation concept, something which is really nice part of the April 29, 2004 Council Directive on Compensation for Crime Victims. What does this mean? Sometimes you cannot find the trafficker. Sometimes the trafficker does not have the money and the victim of trafficking would be left to suffer. Under the European approach, there is something called state-funded compensation. Article 12 of the Italian law, for example, talks about confiscation of assets and talks about using these assets to compensate victims of trafficking.
Another difference between the US and European approach relates to the penalty. In the United States, the penalty for trafficking is 20 years and if you are trafficking a person under the age of 14 you can get up to life. So it's about 20 to life: a long, long sentence.
In Europe, sentences are not as long as in the US. If you take a look at the July 19, 2002, Council Framework Decision on Combating Trafficking in Persons, the penalty is about eight years. The penalty can be raised in cases of child trafficking, or organized crime, or when injuries or death occur. But it is still a short sentence. In the United States we have the concept of plea-bargaining. That allows us to provide for a lighter sentence. In Europe, plea-bargaining is not recognized. Only France now I think is considering plea-bargaining. So the sentence here in Europe has got to be shorter than the sentences of the United States. I have been told to start my speech with a case. The first case that was decided under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was United States v. Vershenko. Plea-bargaining was used in that case. I am against using plea-bargaining regarding sex crimes. Do not use plea-bargaining and get a trafficker free when it comes to a sex crime. In United States v. Vershenko, a Russian national recruited six women, including two who were 16 years old, so minors, to come to the United States, to dance in his club. The women agreed, Vershenko took them to the United States and they ended up in prostitution. They stayed for almost a year and then Victor Verchenko was charged with fraud, obstruction of justice, intimidation of a witness, and transportation of a minor across borders. But he got only 48 months in prison for basically a plea bargain and he has almost finished his term of imprisonment. I have a problem with plea-bargaining when it comes to sex trafficking. But I want to end with the concept of stripping. Why? Because many cases of sex trafficking are not committed for the purpose of prostitution but for stripping. So if we are serious about sex trafficking, we should do something not only about prostitution but about stripping as well. That is a push of the Department of Justice Model State Law on Trafficking. In the United States we have the Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, but now we have four states that have state trafficking laws: Texas, Florida, Washington, and Missouri. We are pushing more states. Now Arizona is considering enacting a state law on trafficking in persons. So the Department of Justice decided to adopt a model law so states can follow the model. The model law expands the concept of bad sex. How? It defines bad sex to include not only a commercial sexual activity, such as prostitution, but a sexually explicit performance as well. Stripping. And I would even like to add massage to that. So if you have massage with a special ending, that should end in court the same way we talk about prostitution or stripping. That expansive law definition of bad sex I think is something the United States now is following. I open the floor for discussion. Question: Your presentation is very interesting but you concentrated only on the victims of trafficking, which is of course very important, but there's another totally different side to it. There's an economic aspect. People trafficked for economic purposes. And economic exploitation as well. Would you like to comment a bit more on that because you concentrated on the other side. Dr. Mattar: Excellent question. The economics of the problem is part of Article 9 of the United Nations Protocol. It talks about the causes of the problem such as poverty, underdevelopment, and lack of equal opportunity. That's why the US Congress is making the economics of the problem a subject of research. Definitely there is an economic reason why people are being trafficked from one country to another, but I do not think it is the only reason. When we talk about the causes of trafficking, we talk about causes of vulnerability. Economic vulnerability is part of it. You have women who do not have equal opportunities, who suffer from poverty and so on. But there are other reasons that I believe contribute to the problem. One is the political condition. This is what happened with the Soviet Union, and countries that are unstable, or in transition. The third is the whole area of cultural vulnerability. There are certain harmful cultural practices that contribute to trafficking. But of course I agree with you that economics is a crucial cause of trafficking. Why I don't focus too much on it, because do you think you can do something about the gap between developing countries and developed countries? Probably. It would take some time. That's why I think more in terms of others reasons as well, but I agree with you that economic vulnerability is a cause. Question: You merely focused on trafficking as a sexual exploitation. Do you have also cases of economic exploitation in the U.S.? Dr. Mattar: Excellent question. Excellent. That is again another area of comparison between the European approach and the American approach. The concept of trafficking in the United States is limited. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, you have only two types of trafficking, either sex trafficking or labor trafficking. We have already talked about sex trafficking. But labor trafficking exists as well. For example, in the United States there is trafficking for domestic service. Let me give you the example of a case that was just decided, United States v. Satia. A woman from Maryland trafficked a girl from Cameroon who was 11, she enslaved her, made her work as a nanny and the court found her guilty. She got 17 years in prison. Another case is United States v. Verapool. The wife of the Thai Ambassador recruited girls from Thailand to work in her house and in the restaurant she owned in Los Angeles. Not only did the court find that this was a case of human trafficking but it also applied the so-called Vulnerable Victim Enhancement Doctrine. The Vulnerable Victim Enhancement Doctrine means that if you are a vulnerable victim, the sentence can be enhanced by two points. The court said that a person from a foreign country coming to the United States, who does not know the language, does not know the culture, is a vulnerable person. For this reason, the court in United States v. Verapool applied the Vulnerable Victim Enhancement Doctrine. So you have cases of labor trafficking for domestic service. You have also cases for other types of labor. A very famous case occurred in American Samoa. The victims were laborers from China and Vietnam and parts of Asia and they were trafficked in the United States to work for very little money, little pay, and they were considered victims of severe form of trafficking ashore, because under the U.S. law not every victim of trafficking would be entitled to benefits. Only a victim of a severe form of trafficking is entitled to benefits. Severe form of trafficking means either you are trafficking a child under the age of 18 or the person that is being trafficked was recruited through the use of force, fraud or coercion. If you do not have force, fraud or coercion, you may have a victim, but such victim is not a victim of a severe form of trafficking so such a victim will not be entitled to benefits under the U.S. law. Question: A large number of trafficking occurs from mainland China. Victims of trafficking are transported through Taiwan to the United States. Do you know of any specific pressures that the United States government is putting on Taiwan to put a stop to this trafficking? Dr. Mattar: Of course. Some victims of trafficking are definitely from China because of the China one-child policy. It is something you are familiar with. That is a type of trafficking that is called trafficking for the purpose of inter-country adoption. It is not part of the U.S. law. Everywhere I go, people tell me: "Don't talk about adoption when you talk about trafficking because the child ends up in a good home. The child does not end up in exploitation or condition of servitude." So adoption is different under the U.S. approach, but under the United Nations adoption can be a form of trafficking. Because of the one-child policy many mothers end up selling their children when they have the first child who is a girl and want a boy, instead. So there are cases of adoption that are illicit and start from China. In addition to that, there are cases of labor trafficking from China to the United States. You ask about Taiwan. I do not know. But I know for a fact that many of the victims arriving to United States come from countries like China. Question: If the victim decides to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities, what is the witness protection program? Dr. Mattar: Excellent question. Let me make myself clear. I draw a distinction between the requirement of testimony, that would require the witness to testify, and cooperation under the U.S. law. Under the U.S. law, the victim is not required to testify. The U.S. law language is "complies with reasonable request made by law enforcement official in the investigation or prosecution in the case of trafficking." So you can have a case of investigation that does not end up in prosecution and the victim would be only required to provide information. As you know, I teach a course on trafficking so I invited Alex Acosta to speak. I asked him: "What do you require the victim to do if you won't require her to testify?" He said: "To the extent that it is reasonable, let her just provide information regarding her case. We require her to comply with a reasonable request to cooperate with the authorities. She does not have to testify. And the case does not have to end in a trial. And a trial does not have to end in conviction." This model is different from models of other countries where despite the testimony or the court proceedings, you give the victim three months, six months or until the court proceedings are over and then you tell her 'thank you so much, you can leave.' In the United States that is not the case. The victim gets a visa for three years. She gets the visa; it is a temporary visa, for three years. After the three years, she can adjust the visa and get a permanent status. I see a difference here when you say required to testify. I make a distinction between trafficking as a crime that is distinct and trafficking as a threat against your security. You have to look at trafficking as a threat against the person. So if she leaves, she won't be safe, she will be punished by her legal system. She would be killed by her trafficker. She won't have access to legal remedies. She won't have access to medical care. She won't be able to be integrated in her society. Under the U.S. law all that gives her a right to stay in the United States. Question: Have you made much connection between human trafficking and drug trafficking? Dr. Mattar: Again that is an area that requires further research. What I saw is a connection being made between drug trafficking, arms trafficking and human trafficking, based on the fact that they are committed by the organized crime. You have arms first and then drugs and then number three, profits made of human trafficking. I don't believe that's enough. So if you ask me if I have information, statistics, whatever, on a connection between drug trafficking and human trafficking, I will tell you I have never seen any credible information. In addition to that, I do not want to think about trafficking always in terms of organized crime. I don't want that because it makes trafficking not important. If you are talking about trafficking not in terms of organized crime, that's not the problem. No. I would like to think that we are prosecuting the trafficker not only because traffickers are involved in organized crime or drug trafficking or whatever, but because of exploitation. In the United States there are some cases of trafficking that are organized in nature, but there are too many cases of trafficking in the United States that are individual in nature, such as United States v. Verapool, or United States v. Satia. I'd like to believe that we are prosecuting traffickers not because of their involvement with organized crime and drug trafficking but because we care about the victim. That's why I like the European Convention, because it makes it only an aggravating circumstance. Yes, trafficking is part of organized crime and has developed. But don't make it a requirement of the crime itself. That goes beyond your question, but the answer to your question, there is no credible evidence. I have never seen something to the effect that there is a link between drug trafficking and human trafficking. Voice: I think we've exhausted the subject. We've traveled far and wide. Professor Mattar, I want to thank you very much for being here with us this afternoon, and thank you for your good questions. We still have some coffee and dessert out there, so we can continue talking. Thank you very much. [Applause]. # # # # | 
