Walking Merchandise: Child Smuggling and the Snakehead Trade

Last Spring, Rob Nguyen and Ethan Downing decided that they wanted to raise awareness about a lesser-known division of human trafficking. In the following year they tracked down lawyers, journalists, social workers, and trafficked individuals in order to create an informative and startling documentary about Chinese human traffickers known as snakeheads. The film, Walking Merchandise: Child Smuggling and the Snakehead Trade, examines the intricacies of this specific trafficking method from China to the United States.

“We got involved with the topic because last Spring, Ethan Downing, the director of the film, was completing a Master's in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, at Columbia University,” said Rob Nguyen, the producer of Walking Merchandise. “He had been aware of Lauren A. Burke's work at The Door, a youth services center here in New York. She had been working with young Chinese persons who had been smuggled and trafficked into the U.S. and often working in restaurants around the U.S.”

Snakeheads solicit individuals to travel from China into the United States, using illegal means to transport them across borders and charging fees as high as $80,000, according to Walking Merchandise. Many of these individuals are children being sent by their own families. These individuals are subjected to cruelty, and extortion during their journey to America. After arriving they are forced into labor, and their well-being, as well as their families’, are threatened should they not pay back the impossible debt.

The interviews between the filmmakers and victims are an enlightening glimpse into one specific subclass of human trafficking, which as a whole, has become an estimated $31.6 billion industry, according to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking.

Finding professionals who had knowledge of human trafficking, and more specifically, the Snakehead Trade proved easy. However, finding young individuals to tell their stories was much more difficult. “Many of them still owe money to either the snakeheads who brought them here, or persons from whom they borrowed money to pay the snakeheads,” said Nguyen.

Current involvement in the industry posed challenges for the filmmakers. Many of these individuals would be traveling to New York City only to find their next job on the restaurant circuit. This offered the individuals a chance to tell their story to, but the filmmakers extremely short notice to meet with them.

“During that brief window of time is when we'd meet with them, so this would be often last minute, with just a day or two's notice,” said Nguyen. “We just tried to be as flexible as possible in order to make ourselves available to meet with them.”

Another important part of production was maintaining anonymity of the trafficked individuals’ identities. “So as you may see in the trailer for the film we've either obscured the young persons' faces through silhouette lighting and post-processing, or otherwise simply not including their faces in the shot when we filmed the interview,” said Nguyen.

Many of the interviews they conducted were through a professional referral, and “They would take great pains to make sure that the young person was choosing to be interviewed of their own free will, and that's something that we would ask them again once we sat down and met with them,” said Nguyen.

Nguyen was surprised to find that while most of the young victims spoke with a “matter-of-fact perspective” about their ordeal, others were particularly eager to share. These few were able to realize the scope of the film, and a larger purpose in telling what had happened to them.

“They felt that they themselves had not been told the full story when their parents sent them to the U.S., and they really wanted other kids to know about it,” Nguyen said. “This was really impressive, as was their ability to articulate their experiences and their hopes for other young persons considering making the same journey.”

The film, which is currently in post-production, is expected to be finished in May of this year. The filmmakers hope that they will be able to screen the film at festivals, as well as for non-profits and NGO’s who specialize in human trafficking, through May of 2012.

“After that, we'll release the film online for free streaming and download,” said Nguyen. “We'll also try to complement that with a number of smaller online videos, similar to those on our website presently, so that the site, as well as the film itself, can be a resource for people wanting to learn more about this issue.”

Funding for the documentary was provided through a graduate fellowship from Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity that Downing had been awarded. Later, additional capital was raised through a fundraiser for the film, known as the Kickstarter Campaign.

Nguyen, Downing and the rest of the team who worked on the film, including Vincent DeLuca, Director of Photography, Drew Downing, Production Assistant, Annie Sheng, Translator, and Michael Nguyen, Publicity Coordinator, are extremely grateful for the additional encouragement that pushed them to finish the film.

“As with many small films, we are also heavily indebted to countless family and friends for their support and help with the film,” said Nguyen.

Forced Labor News from January

Throughout the month, there are many cases or stories that break regarding forced labor. They are usually not on the front pages of our newspapers, rather they are buried deep and sometimes are only accessible through the internet. These are some of the stories, both headline articles and those that are not, from January.

Several exclusive country clubs in south Florida were found to be contracting slave labor. The contracting firm, owned by a husband and wife, forced 39 Filipino workers to work 16 hour days with little pay. It is unclear whether the some of the clubs were aware they were using slave labor, but it appears that at least a few were not.

Officials from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration along with three employment recruitment agencies were charged with corruption and human trafficking. The complaint suggests that officials knowingly allowed the three agencies to continue operating despite knowing they were no longer authorized to operate, due to recruitment violations. The complaint suggests that the officials allowed the recruitment agencies to operate knowing the laborers were to be exploited.

The Laogai Research Foundation, a D.C. based organization that researches and raises awareness about forced-labor prisons in China, released a report suggesting a company based in the province of Alberta, Canada is importing products made in Chinese labor camps. Canada does not allow any products made in labor camps to be imported into the country.

Leticia Moratal, a Filipina babysitter sues the NY family, also Filipino, that she worked with for forced labor, human trafficking and slavery. Though she worked long hours for 10 years, Leticia says she never received money for her labor and was subjected to cruel treatment. She also says that her employers confiscated her passport and threatened her with deportation.

The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of a New York City couple who were convicted of enslaving their Indonesian housekeepers. The housekeepers were abused and their documents were confiscated. The wife claims that publicity prevented her from receiving a fair trial, while the husband claims he should not have been convicted simply because he did not stop his wife from committing these crimes.

An updated indictment in the exploitation of Thai workers by an LA based labor contractor, Global Horizons, suggests that their exploitation lasted longer and covered more states than previously thought. More growers were also involved then previously thought including Del Monte. It seems now that nearly 600 Thai workers, not 400, were exploited between 2001-2007 on farms in six different states.

In a landmark case, a Saudi Arabian women has been sentenced to three years for abusing her maid who is from Indonesia. She was sentence under a recent royal decree focusing on combatting human trafficking. The maid was severely beaten and had to be hospitalized in November. This may be the first case of anyone in Saudi Arabia being sentenced for abusing a migrant worker. The convicted woman plans to appeal.

In the United Arab Emirates, a similar landmark case occurred. Two women were charged with forced labor, the first for such a charge in the UAE, for forcing three women to work in a massage parlor, providing massages and sex to customers. The victims were threatened and kept in confinement in addition to not being paid.

A North Carolina women has been accused of enslaving a teen illegal immigrant and is facing charges of forced labor and document servitude. The teen, according to prosecutors, was required to sell goods including alcohol and to clean yards. The women says that the story was fabricated by the teen who was placed in her care while awaiting a judge's decision about his immigration status.

A Ukrainian man may have been forced to work in an oxygen factor for 12 years. Details are still emerging about this case but the man claims that a few months after arriving he suffered burns and was not able to return home. At this time, his employer took his passport and stopped paying him. The man claims he was placed under surveillance by the employer who also threatened him. Later in the month though, details emerged which suggested that the man may not have been forced to work, but that there were problems with his work permit. A former employee of the company has claimed that the Ukrainian man was not forced to work, or even prevented from leaving. An investigation even suggests he may have been paid, but details are still too murky to know what happened for sure.

Photo by Kay Chernush for the US Department of State

Forced Labor News from December

Throughout the month, there are many cases or stories that break regarding forced labor. They are usually not on the front pages of our newspapers, rather they are buried deep and sometimes are only accessible through the internet. These are some of the stories, both headline articles and those that are not, from December.

A couple in South Florida was sentenced for forcing almost 40 Filipinos to work in country clubs and hotels. The couple pleaded guilty to crimes such as visa fraud. The workers had their passports confiscated and were not allowed to leave their living quarters without an escort. The victims were also deprived of their wages and proper medical care.

A woman from Russia is suing a man she married in California for forcing her and her daughter into slave labor. She met the man through an online dating service. Within weeks of moving to the US, the man and his son began beating the women and forcing them to work seven days a week performing tasks such as moving large rocks on the father's rural property.

Carmakers have until January 31st to make comments on proposed regulations to prevent the use of conflict minerals in the production of vehicles. Some of the mines where minerals such as tin and tungsten are extracted employ slave and child labor.

A journalist from Hong Kong claims that Local Communist Party officials in the Sichuan Province of China are behind an organization that kidnapped people who were homeless or mentally disabled and forced them into slave labor. The investigation suggests that some of the victims were shocked, beaten and forced to live in very poor conditions.

During an INTERPOL operation, 140 victims of child labor were discovered in Gabon. The operation focused on victims exploited in the local markets, but the children were from a total of 10 different countries. More then 44 suspected traffickers were arrested. The children were forced to do various tasks including carrying heavy items and selling goods.

A jury in Brooklyn awarded a Hindu priest $2 million after finding he had been forced to work in a temple in Corona, NY for 7 years. He worked up to 18 hours a day doing everything from ministering to construction work and was only paid $50 a week amounting to merely $21,000 over seven years. His passport was confiscated and was told he would be arrested if he left.

Police in Florida raided two houses and found 27 potential victims of human trafficking. Police believe the victims were forced to work at a buffet restaurant. Though there are not many details at this time, neighbors noticed that there were many people living at the two houses and that white vans would pick up people early in the morning and would not return until very late at night.

The United States Department of Labor added a dozen countries to its list of countries that use forced or child labor. On a positive note, the department suggest that the number of child laborers is decreasing. Some of the more common products on the list include cotton, sugar, diamonds and gold. You can see the full report here.

Two British firms, Cargill Cotton and ICT Cotton, are facing charges of breaking international rules on child labor by sourcing cotton from Uzbekistan, which is well known for its use of child labor during the cotton harvest. The complaint, filed by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, claims the organizations are linked to Uzbekistan through branches in the country's capital and partnerships with state-owned merchants.

More details emerged about the the first case of human trafficking to come to trial in Canada. This article provides more details about the conditions workers endured, who is being charged and the types of evidence the government has against the families involved.

Photo by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department.

Human trafficking on the rise in Mekong countries

From Xinhua:

HANOI, Nov. 6 -- Human trafficking in the six Mekong countries is expected to increase due to growing migration within the sub-region, the Laos newspaper Vientiane Times reported on Thursday, citing the Anti-human Trafficking Committee Secretariat Head Kiengkham Inphengthavong as saying.

"Trafficking in persons nowadays is increasingly acute and dangerous. It operates in a very intricate manner, and comes in many forms, and is therefore very hard to monitor and control," said Kiengkham Inphengthavong at the sixth Senior Officials Meeting held in Vientiane on Wednesday as part of the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking (COMMIT).

Annually, the number of people trafficked from and within the region is estimated at between 200,000 and 450,000, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The meeting brought together government officials from the six Mekong countries - Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Myanmar and Cambodia - to share their experiences and decide on appropriate responses to the increase in human trafficking.

"The purpose of human trafficking is not only for sexual exploitation but also labor exploitation in factories, sweatshops, domestic work, begging and in the fishing industry. The problem is far more widespread than many would think," he added.

According to the Laos' Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, from 2001 to 2008, 1,229 trafficked people, mostly women and girls, have been repatriated to Laos from Thailand under the Lao-Thai memorandum of understanding on human trafficking.

Laos is developing victim protection guidelines to ensure a more holistic and rights-based approach to the provision of care and assistance to victims of human trafficking, Khiengkham said.

Documentary: Dying to Leave

From PBS:

This two-hour WIDE ANGLE special explores the current worldwide boom in illicit migration. Every year, an estimated two to four million people are shipped in containers, shepherded through sewage pipes, secreted in car chassis, and ferried across frigid waters. Others travel on legitimate carriers but with forged documents. An alarming number of these migrants end up in bondage, forced to work as prostitutes, thieves, or as laborers in sweatshops. By listening to the voices of those who pulled up their roots, who risked all, the film will put a human face on what might otherwise be seen as statistical, overwhelming and remote. Focusing on five major stories whose journeys traverse 16 countries from Colombia to China, from Mexico to Moldova this documentary will look into the circumstances that drove these migrants from their homes, describe the difficulties involved in their epic journeys and reveal what awaits them in their new world.

Watch full episode

Stamping Out Prostitution with an Olympic Baton

From the Asia Times:

By William Sparrow
June 15, 2008

BANGKOK - China, as the host of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in August, is beset with Olympic-size challenges as the government tries to assure that the "action" occurs in Beijing's stadiums and not its red-light districts and bars.

Last week, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games released a legal guide that itemized the preferred parameters for foreign visits, and expressly denied entry to certain types of undesirable visitors.

"There was no open prostitution 25 years ago," Jing Jun, a sociology and AIDS policy professor at Tsinghua University told the Washington Post in a 2007 article by Maureen Fan titled "Oldest Profession Flourishes in China". "Fifteen years ago, you didn't find sex workers in remote areas and cities. But now it's prevalent in every city, every county."

According to the same Washington Post article, "Estimates of the number of prostitutes in China vary widely, from 1 million who earn their primary income from sex, to eight or 10 times that, including people who sometimes accept money, gifts or rent in exchange for sex. That the numbers have been allowed to increase illustrates the tricky relationship officials have with the ancient profession."

Today, reports from colleagues in mainland China suggest prostitutes are everywhere, and not just of the Chinese variety. Contacts say that of the non-nationals practicing the sex trade, the most prevalent are Russian and Eastern European - and they command higher prices.

An expatriate journalist in Beijing, who wished to remain unnamed, said, "But as far as foreigners go [the sex industry] is largely confined to three [red-light] bar areas: Sanlitun, Hohai and Lidu [in Beijing] staffed almost wholly by Chinese women."

There is no "go-go" action - the kind otherwise infamous in Southeast Asia - as China is more of a freelance operation. As the journalist puts it, "There are 'lady bars' [in the districts mentioned above]. But the bars are rip-off joints, aimed at tourists. It is a quasi-Japanese hostess-style affair where the man picks a girl, buys her drinks [she earns commission on these], and pays for her time, then pays a lot more if they want sex."

Prostitution occurs in karaoke bars, "beauty salons", massage parlors and by street walkers. According to reports, all that is needed is a decent command of Mandarin to engage with these women. A foreigner stumbling into these venues uninitiated, or without local language skills, would at best find himself lost, at worst unwelcome.

These sex trades will surely be in full operation during the Games, no matter what measures the authorities enact. There is also no doubt that local venues will try to adapt to capitalize on the lucrative opportunity the Games will present. The massive influx of potential customers could easily mean a year's worth of work for some prostitutes - many of whom reportedly come from impoverished, rural backgrounds.

As has been the case at other international sporting events, local professionals will be augmented by enterprising foreign women. The 2006 football World Cup in Germany - where prostitution is technically legal - saw the number of sex workers rise from an estimated 400,000 to more than 700,000 - some estimated as many as 1.2 million. The "legal guidelines" mandate appears to be Beijing's first salvo in an upcoming battle against such an anticipated influx.

Digital information - specifically mobile phones and the Internet - will also cloud matters for the government. Even the so-called "Great Firewall of China" won't be able to stop working girls from making connections. In fact, recent reports have shown that Chinese authorities have struggled to adapt their enforcement to deal with even the local sex industry as "in-call/out-call" ladies have turned to technology to cover their tracks.

Read the full article

U.S. Trafficking in Humans Report Criticizes China on Eve of Olympics

From Freedom Center:

By Paul Bernish
June 6, 2008

The U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report was released [this past June], but if you blinked, you probably missed hearing about it.

That’s a shame because the report — despite its flaws and allegations of political influence impacting its data — does give the general public an overall look at the nature and extent of human trafficking around the world. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post, for example, have yet run stories on the report, and broadcast news has been largely silent.

The 2008 report, released by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, concludes that while progress in combating human slavery is being made, the lack of enforcement of anti-trafficking laws in many nations is enabling perpetrators to escape punishment. The focus on prosecutions, Rice said, was a new emphasis of this year’s report.

The annual human trafficking assessment was mandated by Congress in the 2000 Trafficking in Persons Protection Act. It annually evaluates the efforts of 170 countries to combat human trafficking. The report aims to raise awareness of the scourge of modern slavery and to encourage countries to take action to prevent it.

A controversial aspect of the report is its ranking of countries in “tiers” based on an assessment of the government’s compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking as explained in the 2000 anti-trafficking legislation. Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries have moderate to severe challenges in controlling trafficking. Another category, “Tier 2 Watch List,” indicates countries in danger of falling to the bottom Tier 3.

The controversy arises for two reasons: while the State Department ranks the anti-trafficking efforts of other nations, the United States itself is not ranked, which has prompted many governments — including some allies — to accuse the American government of placing national self-interest above objective analysis. (Trafficking into and within the United States is detailed in a separate report each year. In the U.S. an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 victims are trafficked into the country each year).

Second, the rankings of nations appears to many to be unduly influenced by global political and economic factors that result in human rights violations being ignored.

The State Department counters this criticism by pointing out that U.S. efforts to combat trafficking involve partnerships with other countries, international and nongovernmental organizations. In fiscal year 2007, the U.S. government spent approximately $79 million to fund 180 anti-trafficking projects in about 90 countries. Since fiscal year 2001, the United States has funded more than $528 million for anti-trafficking projects worldwide.

Still, it’s hard to fathom the relatively benign Tier 2 ranking for China — which is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in August. China, the report charges, has made insufficient efforts to combat trafficking, especially in regards to North Korean women who are trafficked into China as “wives” or prostitutes. Those North Koreans unlucky enough to be returned by authorities to North Korea routinely are punished by the North Korean regime, said Ambassador Mark Lagon, the director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Whether China deserves a lower ranking, one thing’s for sure: with the Beijing Olympics about to begin, it would have been reasonable to expect that the trafficking report would have generated much more extensive world-wide coverage. It still might, but it’s disappointing to see the international news media ignore profoundly important human rights issues to focus, instead, on athletic competition in a nation that appears to flaunt essential protections for its citizens.

Scotland: Crackdown on Sex Trafficking Leads to Rescue of 59 Women

From the Herald:

SCOTLAND- Police have rescued 59 women trafficked into Scotland's booming off-street sex industry.

In a major nine-month crackdown, officers from all eight Scottish forces raided saunas, massage parlours and covert brothels across the country - many believed to be run, or at least supplied, by Chinese organised crime.

Detectives arrested 35 suspects, most believed to be foreign, and identified 59 adult women they suspect were victims of sexual exploitation - many from China.

The raids were part of Operation Pentameter II, a UK-wide drive that helped rescue a suspected 351 sex slaves, 13 of them children.

It was the largest police crackdown on human trafficking to date and resulted in the arrest of 528 people across Britain.

The operation has again exposed the scale of the UK's off-street sex trade, a network of around 1000 brothels exploiting thousands of women, many trafficked into the country.

"The numbers have doubled since Pentameter I," said Detective Superintendent Michael Orr of Strathclyde Police, who co-ordinated the campaign north of the border. "Suffice to say, there's a high level of demand."

Senior police sources stressed many of the women who were "rescued" had declined to give evidence against their traffickers, mostly because they were terrified.

Only 15 of the 59 women initially identified as victims have confirmed they were trafficked. All were described as from being from "south-east Asia". Tara, a group run by Glasgow Community and Safety Service, an offshoot of the city council, has now identified women from 42 countries working as prostitutes in the city.

Read the full article

Made in China, Trafficked to Taiwan

From the China Post:

On Friday, the Legislative Yuan held a hearing to review the possibility of drafting legislation designed to combat human trafficking.

At the hearing, representatives of government agencies, non-governmental organizations, charities and human rights lawyers discussed the seriousness of human trafficking in Taiwan and ways that legislation should be designed to combat the problem.

We fully support the proposal for having a special Anti-Human Trafficking Law, and hope to see our legislators come up with a comprehensive bill that can finally address this growing problem.

It has long been known that foreign nationals and mainland Chinese have been brought into Taiwan to perform difficult or illegal tasks, ranging from menial factory jobs to prostitution. For such a law to be effective, provisions must be drafted that impose stiff punishments for people convicted of smuggling or exploiting illegals immigrants.

Budgets for the Coast Guard have to be increased so more traffickers can be interdicted at sea and their human cargoes rescued. A mechanism must also be set up to protect the dignity and human rights of foreign nationals who help bring their exploiters to justice.

Much of the attention focused on the human trafficking problem is centered on the smuggling of people into Taiwan. However, we believe another important facet of this human rights catastrophe often goes overlooked and needs more attention.

It has long been known in law enforcement circles in the United States, Canada and Europe that "snakehead" groups smuggling mainland Chinese into other countries prefer to use Taiwan-issued travel documents when bringing their clients into foreign countries on commercial flights. The main reason why ROC documents are preferred is because mainland Chinese have the easiest time posing as Taiwanese tourists and speak the same language as we do.

According to research performed on human smuggling in China, an ROC passport containing a valid U.S. visitor's visa can fetch more than US$20,000 on the black market, as it can easily be used to smuggle a mainland Chinese into the United States.

Read the full article

Confusing trafficking and smuggling

Multiple articles were published yesterday and today in major news agencies around the world regarding the Europol operation that arrested 75 people yesterday in nine different countries in Europe under charges of smuggling. 

From the Europol press release:

Today, a total of 75 persons suspected of being part of a people-smuggling network were arrested throughout Europe...

All suspects are said to be involved in the clandestine smuggling of a large number of illegal immigrants into and within the European Union. This was one of the largest co-ordinated actions against people smugglers ever, involving more than 1,300 police officers...

Operation Baghdad targeted a network primarily consisting of Iraqi nationals and former nationals facilitating the illegal immigration of citizens from Afghanistan, China, Turkey, Bangladesh, and Iraq into and within Europe.

No where in the release is it mentioned that there were suspicions or charges of human trafficking although it did mention that the migrants often suffered through cramped conditions while being smuggled into the EU.

However, the BBC and the Times Online reported that this effort was a part of a bust on human traffickers.

BBC: A pan-European police operation has led to the arrest of 75 people suspected of trafficking Iraqi Kurds in the EU

Times Online: Dozens of suspects were arrested in Britain and across Europe yesterday in one of the largest co-ordinated crackdowns on people-trafficking.

It is important to recognize the distinction between trafficking and smuggling for multiple reasons:

• They are different problems, even though their paths sometimes cross. Essentially, smuggling is the facilitation of illegal border crossing or irregular stay, while the final purpose of trafficking is exploitation. Also, borders need not be crossed in trafficking (i.e. internal trafficking.
  
• By not distinguishing the issues, it creates confusion among the public and hinders general awareness of both problems.
  
• It impedes a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to tackling the problems effectively.

While, other news sources such as AP, Al Jazeera,  and CNN (although CNN used the term "funneling" immigrants, which is not an official term) did not place trafficking anywhere in their reports, the fact that some news agencies did confuse the two terms shows that there is still a lack of awareness among journalists covering these stories, even in major news networks.

The AP story did include an interview with a representative from UNHCR who commented on how this operation, for example, affects refugees desperate to reach Europe.

William Spindler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva, urged authorities to consider the interests of refugees who at times count on human smugglers to help them flee misery at home.

"We welcome actions to crack down on human smugglers, some of whom are utterly ruthlerr characters who abuse, exploit, rob and sometimes even kill their clients. But it is important to ensure that their victims are properly protected," he said.

"An unintended effect of cracking down on human smugglers - as important as that is - may be to close the only avenue left for refugees to escape persecution or conflict," he said.

He noted cases in which some Iraqis had been granted refugee status in European countries but were unable to get there without turning to people smugglers.

"For many refugees it is well nigh impossible to get passports, visas or plane tickets," Spindler said. "They have to travel in an irregular way in order to save their lives and reach a secure place."

An article such as this one approaches these issues from multiple points of view without confusing them. Law enforcement must also be careful in these situations with migrants who may, in fact, end up becoming victims of trafficking. The importance is to approach the migrants with a consideration for human rights and the possibilities facing these migrants as to why they went through a smuggler in the first place. However, it is the media's job to be responsible and not confuse the issues, thus hindering better public awareness and a better response to each of these problems.

Toyota Looking Into Allegations of Human Trafficking and Sweatshop Abuses

From Edmunds:

The Toyota Prius may be the darling of environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities, but a new report by a self-described human rights advocacy group accuses Toyota of "human trafficking and sweatshop abuses" in the building of its vehicles.

The National Labor Committee on Wednesday issued a 65-page report, "The Toyota You Don't Know," which accuses the Japanese automaker of using "low-wage temps" to build the popular Toyota Prius. The report also alleged that Toyota has "ties to Burmese dictators" through the Toyota Tsusho Corporation. "Toyota's much admired 'Just in Time' auto parts supply chain is riddled with sweatshop abuse, including the trafficking of foreign guest workers, mostly from China and Vietnam to Japan, who are stripped of their passports and often forced to work — including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota — 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage," the group said in a statement.

Toyota addressed the allegations late Wednesday with a brief statement. "We are reviewing the lengthy report issued today by the National Labor Committee," the automaker said. "As the well-being of our workforce and suppliers is one of our highest priorities, we are taking the allegations seriously." Toyota spokesman Curt McAllister told Inside Line on Thursday that the automaker has no further comment on the controversial report.

Read the full article

Human Trafficking Thrives Across N.Korea-China Border

An infrared photograph shows two naked people crossing the Tumen River in the dark -- one is a human trafficker and the other a North Korean woman.

From Chosunilbo:

A 26-year-old North Korean woman, Mun Yun-hee crossed the Duman or Tumen River into China in the dawn of Oct. 22 last year, which at that point was some 40 m wide, guided by a human trafficker.

She was being sold to a single middle-aged Chinese farmer into a kind of indentured servitude-cum-companionship. Both of them wore only panties, having stored their trousers and shoes in bags, because if you are found wearing wet clothes across the river deep at night, it is a dead giveaway that you are a North Korean refugee.

Mun was led to a hideout, and the agent left. Asked why she crossed the river, she replied, "My father starved to death late in the 1990s, and my mother is blind from hunger." Her family owed 300 kg of corns, beans and rice and sold herself for the sake of her blind mother and a younger brother.

The middleman paid her 350 yuan, or W46,000 (US$1=W939), equivalent to half of the grain debt. A Chosun Ilbo news team became the first in the world to see the scale of human trafficking in the China-North Korea border. The exodus in the famines of the latter half of the 1990s has degraded into blatant human trafficking.

In the 10 months since May, 2007, the team witnessed the lives of North Korean refugees in five countries: China, Russia, Japan, the U.S. and Britain. In China, the refugees live day and night in fear of deportation to the North and poverty.

"I was first sold to a 34-year-old Chinese man in Shandong Province. Six months later, public security officers arrested me one day at midnight. Asked how, they said on a notification by a neighbor," Mun said. She was immediately sent to Dandong prison, from where a group of North Korean detainees were deported to Shinuiju chained two and two. There, she was thrown into a North Korean State Safety and Security Agency camp for a month.

"They took a quantity of blood to check possible venereal disease. Undressing the women, they checked even inside the sexual organs with gloved hands,” Mun recalled. If you repeat sit-and-stand 20 times, you vomit up everything you have eaten. Male inmates are forced to strike their heads against the steel door and beaten with clubs when they resist. Pregnant inmates were forced to miscarry on the grounds they were bearing Chinese children.

“The meals of corns with one side dish served were so poor that we longed for the meals we were given by the Chinese prison." Transferred to an escapees camp in Chongjin, North Hamgyeong Province, she was released after a stint of hard labor in 17-hour shifts.

Several months later, now 25, she again entrusted her body to a trafficker. An officer from the Durihana Mission, an organization assisting North Korean refugees, asked her, "We won't sell you to a Chinese. Will you go to South Korea?" Without hesitation, she replied, "I'll go back to the Chinese man who bought me first. I want to live with him, eating plenty and earning money, and send money to my family at home."

For the benefit of her blind old mother and younger brother, she opted to stay in China, risking another deportation. The Durihana Mission officer, failing to persuade her into going to the South, bid her farewell after buying her a few pieces of winter clothes.

Read the full article

A Struggle for Survival: Trafficking of North Korean Women

Mark P. Lagon, Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

From the U.S. Department of State:

March 3, 2008- I would like to begin by thanking the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for hosting this morning’s discussion and also thank Bob Hathaway, a former colleague on the Hill, for the kind introduction and for putting together this forum on a very important issue: the exploitation and trafficking of North Koreans, specifically women and girls.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a source country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor, and for the fifth consecutive year has been placed in Tier 3, the lowest tier, in our annual Trafficking in Persons Report because it is making no discernible efforts to combat the trafficking of its citizens.

It has been well-documented, and publicized, that the dire conditions in North Korea include a severe shortage of food , a lack of basic freedoms, and a system of political repression which includes a network of government-operated prison camps, where as many as 200,000 prisoners are subjected to reeducation and slave-like conditions. The circumstances in the DPRK lead many North Koreans to seek a way out across the border into Northeast China where tens of thousands of North Koreans may reside illegally, of whom it is estimated that more than half are women.

Commonly, North Korean women and children voluntarily cross the border into China, but some of these individuals, after they enter the P.R.C. in a vulnerable, undocumented status, are then sold into prostitution, marriage, or forced labor. The trend of North Korean women trafficked into and within China for forced marriage is well-documented by NGOs and international organizations. Sometimes North Korean women are lured out of North Korea with the promise of a “better life” as waitresses or factory workers, and then are forced into prostitution in brothels, or exploitative labor arrangements.

A potential factor, among others, in the trafficking of brides is the gender imbalance caused by China’s one-child policy. There is, in short, a demographic man surplus relative to marriageable women. All agree that the two governments are not doing enough to prevent or punish the practice of forced marriage. NGOs and international organizations find it difficult to work independently in the PRC, so little assistance reaches this vulnerable group of DPRK women who have crossed into China.

North Koreans crossing the border are extremely vulnerable to trafficking given their illegal status in China and their inability to return home. A core principle of an effective anti-trafficking strategy is the protection of victims. The United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons calls on governments to protect foreign victims of trafficking, including legal alternatives to deportation to countries where they face hardship or retribution. Greater government efforts need to be made to protect this highly vulnerable group of victims.

Unfortunately, China classifies North Korean refugees as “economic migrants” and forcibly returns some to the DPRK where they may face severe punishment, including in some cases execution. The PRC stands by this policy; however, the U.S. consistently urges China to treat North Korean asylum seekers in line with international agreements to which it is a signatory. China’s poor transparency and the political sensitivity of the issue hamper our efforts to effectively advocate for change on this issue.

Some steps to address the problem are being taken in China. The International Labor Organization (ILO) recently began a new project to work closely with the China Enterprise Confederation to educate entrepreneurs, owners, and managers of various enterprises that in the past have been linked to trafficking, such as hotels, karaoke bars, restaurants, bars, and massage parlors. The All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) and non-governmental organizations have a number of ongoing prevention and education projects in affected provinces. In the past five years, with assistance from UNICEF and international non-governmental organizations, China has established transfer, training and recovery centers for trafficking victims in four provinces and has assisted more than 1,000 trafficked women and children. ACWF works closely with law enforcement agencies and border officials to raise their awareness of the problem of trafficking.

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Criminals See Gold at Olympics

By Peter Edwards

From the Star:

It's not just the gymnasts, grapplers and jumpers who are worth watching at this summer's Beijing Olympics, a British organized crime expert says.

It's also the prostitutes – or lack of them."China is a police state and it's a police state that is paranoid about its image," says Misha Glenny, author of McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld.

China has already ordered a "social cleansing" to clear Beijing of beggars, hawkers and prostitutes, but keeping crime groups from flooding the host city with hookers poses an Olympian task.Human trafficking is a key staple of 21st-century organized crime groups, along with narcotics and weapons, Glenny said.

The 2004 Athens Olympics and 2000 Sydney Games were each marked by massive influxes of prostitutes.

Canadian officials have already been warned to brace themselves for more of the same at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. The Future Group, an organization that combats human trafficking, has warned the B.C. and federal governments in a report called "Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking at the 2010 Olympics."

Glenny said he finds it tough to look at major international events like the Olympics, or shifts in government policy, and not wonder how they might benefit the myriad international crime groups he has studied.

"Whenever a big political event takes place, I don't look at it through the same eyes any more," said Glenny, a former BBC correspondent in the former Yugoslavia and Southeast Asia and the author of two books on the Balkans.

The fall of communism and the liberalization of international financial markets over the past two decades have created an exponential growth in organized crime around the world, said Glenny, who's based in England and acts as a political policy adviser.

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China Says Abusive Child Labor Ring Is Exposed

* More news on child labor in China.

By David Barboza

From the New York Times:

SHANGHAI — China said Wednesday that it had broken up a child labor ring that forced children from poor, inland areas to work in booming coastal cities, acknowledging that severe labor abuses extended into the heart of its export economy.

Authorities in southern China’s Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they had made several arrests and had already “rescued” more than 100 children from factories in the city of Dongguan, one of the country’s largest manufacturing centers for electronics and consumer goods sold around the world. The officials said they were investigating reports that hundreds of other rural children had been lured or forced into captive, almost slavelike conditions for minimal pay.

The children, mostly between the ages of 13 and 15, were often tricked or kidnapped by employment agencies in an impoverished part of western Sichuan Province called Liangshan and then sent to factory towns in Guangdong, where they were sometimes forced to work 300 hours a month, according to government officials and accounts from the state-owned media. The legal working age in China is 16.

The labor scandal is the latest embarrassment for China as it prepares to host the Olympic Games this summer. For much of the past year, the country has been plagued by damaging reports about severe pollution, dangerous exports, riots in Tibet and the ensuing disruptions to its Olympic torch relay by Tibet’s sympathizers, among other groups.

The abuses may also reflect the combined pressures of worker shortages, high inflation and a rising currency that have reduced profit margins of some Chinese factories and forced them to scramble for an edge — even an illegal one — to stay competitive.

The child labor ring, which was first uncovered by Southern Metropolis, a crusading newspaper based in Guangzhou, came less than a year after China was rocked by exposure of a similar problem in a less developed part of central China. Last June, labor officials in Shanxi and Henan Provinces said they had rescued hundreds of people, including children, from slave labor conditions in rural brick kilns. Many of those workers said they had been kidnapped.

The earlier case, which local officials initially sought to keep quiet, set off a national uproar in China and prompted a sharp response from President Hu Jintao, who vowed a broad crackdown on labor abuses. Local officials in Guangdong may have moved quickly to acknowledge the latest incident to keep it from becoming a running scandal as the Olympics approach.

In recent years, Beijing has stepped up its efforts to crack down on child labor and labor law violations. Last August, Beijing revoked the license of a factory accused of using child labor to produce Olympic merchandise. Several other suppliers were also punished for labor law violations.

But experts say rising costs of labor, energy and raw material, and labor shortages in some parts of southern China have forced some factory owners to cut costs or find new sources of cheap labor, including child labor.

Even factories that supply global companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, have been accused in recent years of using child labor and violating local labor laws. Big corporations have stepped up inspections of factories that produce goods for them. But suppliers have become adept at evading such scrutiny by providing fake wage and work schedule data that suggest they abide by labor laws. Experts say the labor problems discovered in Dongguan are not uncommon.

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Chinese Children Sold "like Cabbages" into Slavery

From Reuters:

BEIJING, China - Thousands of children in southwest China have been sold into slavery like "cabbages", to work as labourers in more prosperous areas such as the booming southern province of Guangdong, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

China announced a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labor last year after reports that hundreds of poor farmers, children and mentally disabled were forced to work in kilns and mines in Shanxi province and neighboring Henan.

"The bustling child labor market (in Sichuan province) was set up by the local chief foreman and his gang of 18 minor foremen, who each manage 50 to 100 child labourers," the Southern Metropolis Newspaper said.

"The children generally fall between the ages of 13 and 15, but many look under 10," it added.

The newspaper said 76 children from the same county, Liangshan, had been missing since the Chinese Lunar Year festival in February, 42 of whom had already left the region to work. "The youngest kids found in the child labor market were only seven and nine years old," it said.

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Illegal Adoption in China

By Ashton Shurson

From the Daily Iowan:

As Chinese adoptions increase around the world and especially in the United States, a few University of Iowa (UI) students have been looking into the darker side of adoptions in the Asian country.

UI law students Patricia Meier and Joy Zhang gave a presentation Monday on the Hunan baby-trafficking scandal and how it exposes vulnerabilities in Chinese adoptions to the United States.

In November 2005, police in China uncovered a baby trafficking ring involving six orphanages and babies primarily from the southern part of the country.

It is unclear how the children were obtained, but defendants claim the babies were abandoned while prosecutors in the case accused the Hengyang Social Welfare Institution of knowingly buying abducted babies.

Zhang said that the primary reason for the adoption trafficking was to garner more money - Hengyang received roughly $1,000 from the orphanages for each child and the orphanages could collect approximately $3,000 for each adoption placement.

While many involved with this specific case were arrested and punished, many questions remain about the whereabouts of the children and if Hengyang was an isolated case.

Either way, it has illustrated that the Chinese adoption process is easy to corrupt, Zhang said. Meier said inter-country adoption means large incomes for orphanages that are often misused.

In 2006, 10,000 children were adopted from China, with 7,000 going to the United States. Adoptive parents usually pay around $15,000 to $20,000.

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Poor Laws & Law Enforcement Failures Fuel Child Trafficking in China

The Washington Post published a long, personal article on the situation of child trafficking victims in today's edition. The article, entitled "A Desperate Search for Stolen Children: Lax Protections Leave Chinese Vulnerable to Human Trafficking," goes through the story of families in search of their children who were kidnapped and forced to work in kilns.

Officially, 2, 375 trafficking cases were reported in China last year, a 7.6 percent decrease from 2006, according to the Public Security Ministry.

But the statistics are based on China's narrow definition of trafficking, which covers only the kidnapping, purchase or sale of women and children younger than 14, not older teenagers and men. Activists say the number is grossly understated and that tens of thousands of people are trafficked each year.

Historically, many victims have been women forced to marry lonely farmers, or male babies illegally adopted by couples who wanted a son. But those types of cases are leveling off, while cases of migrants deceived into sexual exploitation and forced labor are increasing, activists say.

That is an incredibly narrow definition of trafficking, perhaps based on historical experience, but nonetheless in need of serious updating if it is expected to be effective in the face of today's trafficking patterns.

As the article follows a father trying to search for his son, and in the process recruiting other families with lost children and tapping into local and internet media. The picture, however inspiring for grassroots activity against trafficking, still provides a sad, stark overview of China's trafficking problem.

In one kiln, Yuan said he saw three children about 16 to 18 years old, still in school uniforms. The families tried to rescue the students but were chased away by a kiln boss and 20 other employees.

The families called the police.

"The police immediately sent out a car taking us to the kiln again," Yuan said. "Seeing the police, the boss agreed to let us take the three children away. We bought them train tickets and sent them home. But the police didn't ask the boss any more questions and they took no further action."

Last June, hundreds of migrants and children were found living in slave-like conditions in illegal brick kilns in Shanxi. The workers making the cheap bricks in China's construction boom were poorly paid, infrequently fed and threatened with beatings and vicious dogs. Some of the children were as young as 8.

State media coverage of the police raids that followed made clear that police collusion had allowed many kilns to operate illegally. Police later raided more than 8,000 kilns in two provinces, rescuing 568 migrants including 22 children. Some victims were reportedly resold to other kilns by officials involved in their rescue.

Since then, government officials have announced several anti-trafficking initiatives, including a national plan of action in December that called for stepped-up enforcement and coordination among 28 government ministries under the Public Security Ministry's guidance.

In recent years, organized criminal networks have become more sophisticated at cheating and abducting migrant workers, including abduction by anesthetizing the often unsupervised children of migrant worker parents, said Chen Shiqu, who heads the office against human trafficking in the Public Security Ministry.

Chen said that police should send officers to investigate the places where people disappear as well as their residences. "They should collect photos of the kidnap victims, look for witnesses and get more evidence on how the person was kidnapped," Chen said.

But trafficking remains difficult to prosecute, and as millions pour into China's cities, the problem has become inextricably linked to migration issues.

China's situation is not unique, and the model for more effective laws is available. Step one should be to broaden the definition of trafficking to include the trends specified in this article, which would mean broadening the type of victim and the means of deception. The trafficking of people from rural areas while trying to find work in bigger cities for abroad is more common than the trafficking of urban residents in many countries, including Ukraine.

However, no matter how modern the laws are, the attitude of law enforcement and the court system are what really matters because if no one is willing to investigate the crime or prosecute the traffickers, the laws do not mean a thing. In this case, the police were even accused of working with traffickers and the bosses of these kilns that use forced labor.

In this State Department article in October 2007, Mark Lagon, Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, finds that China has taken steps towards combating forced and child labor, but overall the situation remains poorly attended to.

Early this summer reports emerged of over one thousand farmers, teenagers and children, including some who were mentally handicapped, forced to work for little or no pay in scorching brick kilns, enduring beatings and confinement in worse than prison-like conditions. This was a form of modern day slavery that shocked not only the international community, but prompted an outcry among Chinese citizens and a forceful reaction from the authorities.

In response, the Chinese government organized a joint task force to investigate and punish forced labor practices. By mid-August, the joint task force reported that it had inspected 277,000 brick kilns and other small-scale enterprises nationwide, and had rescued 1,340 workers from forced labor conditions, including 367 mentally handicapped workers and an undisclosed number of children. In connection with the crackdown, Chinese authorities arrested 147 individuals for such crimes as using child labor and physically assaulting workers, with sentences of up to five years in prison. At least four county-level government officials were charged with dereliction of duty, and at least one brick kiln foreman was sentenced to death, one trafficker sentenced to life in prison, and one brick kiln owner sentenced to nine years in prison.

However the report also states that China still has many problems with the protection of victims and a lack of transparency about the actions of law enforcement bodies, especially in relation to the tactics used to combat the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation. The report also criticizes the current laws as being far weaker than international standards. China has been on the Tier Two Watchlist for three years now. Between the two reports, it seems China's policy towards this problem is one of reaction rather than any sort of proactive engagement to combat the issue, particularly inside its borders.

From Nepal to India: Trafficking and the HIV/AIDS Crisis

From the American Chronicle:

Nepal is certainly an important country globally for urgent HIV/AIDS interventions? UNAIDS predicted two years back that Russia and India were going to be the two largest centers for the future AIDS epidemics, though both countries are able to expertly handle any kind of pandemic when push comes to shove. In fact India's projected rate of 50 million next to South Africa's 56 million, is now hugely diminished re-totaling to only 21 million, but still a large figure nonetheless. China too has nearly 27 million known HIV infections. Both countries are capable of intensive AIDS patient care and produce their own anti-retroviral treatment based total health care packages.

Where would that leave Nepal, which is the only country that India shares an open border with? Has anyone thought about it seriously? The alarming fact appearing to both Indian and Nepali media these days is that a large number of Nepalese girls and women are trafficked to India and known to be engaging in the commercial sex trade in Indian brothels substantiating a decade old ILO estimate. There are only a handful of NGOs that work in this sector among the 6,500 registered at the national level.

Just imagine this likely scenario. A quarter of Nepal's female commercial sex workers numbering around 100,000 of a total 200,000 were infected with HIV or had full blown AIDS (a 2005 estimate that is quoted in You and AIDS, UNDP web portal), came back and got married into Nepalese communities, gave birth to Nepalese children, and infected their Nepalese spouses.

According to the UN website, "a major challenge therefore is to control HIV in the country is the trafficking of Nepali girls and women into commercial sex work in India, and their return to practice in Nepal. About 50 percent of Nepal's FSWs previously worked in Mumbai, India and some 100,000 Nepali women continue to engage in the practice there. The National Network against Girls' Trafficking, an Indian coalition of approximately 40 NGOs initially established to tackle the problem of girl trafficking, has also begun to address the issue of HIV/AIDS".

But many of the remaining have got married to Indians in Indian cities and stayed back. What kind of crises would Nepal and India jointly face in the future? Certainly, on of the most staggering geo-strategic cross-border security and human development challenges facing any two countries in the world requiring 'quick brew' interventions, availability of an international pool of knowledge bank experts, vast quantity of ART drugs, hospitals and hospices, 'stand-by' financial resources and workable intervention strategies comparable to a hidden, springing math formula.

It would be a major diversion from the two countries' development budgets and a loss of human lives as more people died of AIDS related illnesses. Are we capable of handling such a scenario in Nepal? The answer again is NO!"

The author of this stark and alarming article is Surya B. Prasai, a Nepali national who has written extensively on issues of the environment, HIV/AIDS, the United Nations, and migration, often with inclusion of Nepal's issues. The scenarios and figures Mr. Prasai discusses, however, are not only concerns he has. The Journal of the American Medical Association produced a report in August 2007 entitled "HIV Prevalence and Predictors of Infection in Sex-Trafficked Nepalese Girls and Women," which produced the following results among 287 repatriated Nepalese victims:

• 38% tested positive for HIV,
  
• Girls who were trafficked prior to the age of 15 were at increased risk for HIV with over 60% of this group testing positive for infection,
  
• Girls who were trafficked prior to the age of 15 were also at greater risk of being detained in multiple brothels with longer periods at each one,
  
• Additional factors associated with HIV positivity included being trafficked to Mumbai and longer duration of forced prostitution

In a New York Times article, written at the time of the release of the report, Dr. Jay G. Silverman, professor of human development at Harvard's School of Public Health as well as the lead author of the AMA report had this to say:

Girls from China's Yunnan Province sold to Southeast Asian brothels, Iraqi girls from refugee camps in Syria and Jordan, and Afghan girls driven into Iran or Pakistan all appear to be victims of the same pattern, he said, and are presumably contributing to the H.I.V. outbreaks in southern China, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Most authorities fighting human trafficking don't see it as having anything to do with H.I.V.," Dr. Silverman said. "It is just not being documented."

Brothel owners pay twice as much for young girls, Dr. Silverman said, and charge more for sex with them, sometimes presenting them as virgins, because men think young girls have fewer diseases or believe the myth - common in some countries - that sex with a virgin cures AIDS.

"It's absolutely heartbreaking, "Dr. Silverman said. "Some of them are just shells - and shells of very young human beings. It's every father of a daughter's worst nightmare."

"About half of those tested had been lured to India by promises of jobs as maids or in restaurants. Some were invited on family visits or pilgrimages and then sold - sometimes by relatives. Some were falsely promised marriage. Some were simply drugged and kidnapped, often by older women offering a up of tea or a soft drink in a public market or train station," Dr. Silverman said.

Education Push Yields Little for India’s Poor

From the New York Times:

LAHTORA, India — With the dew just rising from the fields, dozens of children streamed into the two-room school in this small, poor village, tucking used rice sacks under their arms to use as makeshift chairs. So many children streamed in that the newly appointed head teacher, Rashid Hassan, pored through attendance books for the first two hours of class and complained bitterly. He had no idea who belonged in which grade. There was no way he could teach.

Another teacher arrived 90 minutes late. A third did not show up. The most senior teacher, the only one with a teaching degree, was believed to be on official government duty preparing voter registration cards. No one could quite recall when he had last taught.

“When they get older, they’ll curse their teachers,” said Arnab Ghosh, 26, a social worker trying to help the government improve its schools, as he stared at clusters of children sitting on the grass outside. “They’ll say, ‘We came every day and we learned nothing.’ ”



Sixty years after independence, with 40 percent of its population under 18, India is now confronting the perils of its failure to educate its citizens, notably the poor. More Indian children are in school than ever before, but the quality of public schools like this one has sunk to spectacularly low levels, as government schools have become reserves of children at the very bottom of India’s social ladder.

The children in this school come from the poorest of families — those who cannot afford to send away their young to private schools elsewhere, as do most Indian families with any means.

India has long had a legacy of weak schooling for its young, even as it has promoted high-quality government-financed universities. But if in the past a largely poor and agrarian nation could afford to leave millions of its people illiterate, that is no longer the case. Not only has the roaring economy run into a shortage of skilled labor, but also the nation’s many new roads, phones and television sets have fueled new ambitions for economic advancement among its people — and new expectations for schools to help them achieve it.



That they remain ill equipped to do so is clearly illustrated by an annual survey, conducted by Pratham, the organization for which Mr. Ghosh works. The latest survey, conducted across 16,000 villages in 2007 and released Wednesday, found that while many more children were sitting in class, vast numbers of them could not read, write or perform basic arithmetic, to say nothing of those who were not in school at all.

Among children in fifth grade, 4 out of 10 could not read text at the second grade level, and 7 out of 10 could not subtract. The results reflected a slight improvement in reading from 2006 and a slight decline in arithmetic; together they underscored one of the most worrying gaps in India’s prospects for continued growth.

Education experts debate the reasons for failure. Some point out that children of illiterate parents are less likely to get help at home; the Pratham survey shows that the child of a literate woman performs better at school. Others blame longstanding neglect, insufficient public financing and accountability, and a lack of motivation among some teachers to pay special attention to poor children from lower castes.

“Education is a long-term investment,” said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the government’s top policy czar. “We have neglected it, in my view quite criminally, for an enormously long period of time.”

Looking for a Way Up

Education in the new India has become a crucial marker of inequality. Among the poorest 20 percent of Indian men, half are illiterate, and barely 2 percent graduate from high school, according to government data. By contrast, among the richest 20 percent of Indian men, nearly half are high school graduates and only 2 percent are illiterate.

Just as important, at a time when only one in 10 college-age Indians actually go to college, higher education has become the most effective way to scale the golden ladder of the new economy. A recent study by two economists based in Delhi found that between 1993-94 and 2004-5, college graduates enjoyed pay raises of 11 percent every year, and illiterates saw their pay rise by roughly 8.5 percent, though from a miserably low base; here in Bihar State, for instance, a day laborer makes barely more than $1 a day.

“The link between getting your children prepared and being part of this big, changing India is certainly there in everyone’s minds,” said Rukmini Banerji, the research director of Pratham. “The question is: What’s the best way to get there, how much to do, what to do? As a country, I think we are trying to figure this out.”

She added, “If we wait another 5 or 10 years, you are going to lose millions of children.”

Money From the State


India has lately begun investing in education. Public spending on schools has steadily increased over the last few years, and the government now proposes to triple its financial commitment over the next five years. At present, education spending is about 4 percent of the gross domestic product. Every village with more than 1,000 residents has a primary school. There is money for free lunch every day.

Even in a state like Bihar, which had an estimated population of 83 million in 2001 and where schools are in particularly bad shape, the scale of the effort is staggering. In the last year or so, 100,000 new teachers have been hired. Unemployed villagers are paid to recruit children who have never been to school. A village education committee has been created, in theory to keep the school and its principal accountable to the community. And buckets of money have been thrown at education, to buy swings and benches, to paint classrooms, even to put up fences around the campus to keep children from running away.

And yet, as Lahtora shows, good intentions can become terribly complicated on the ground.

At the moment, the village was not lacking for money for its school. The state had committed $15,000 to construct a new school building, $900 for a new kitchen and $400 for new school benches. But only some of the money had arrived, so no construction had started, and the school committee chairman said he was not sure how much local officials might demand in bribes. The chairman’s friend from a neighboring village said $750 had been demanded of his village committee in exchange for building permits.

The chairman here also happens to be the head teacher’s uncle, making the idea of accountability additionally complicated. One parent told Mr. Ghosh that their complaints fell on deaf ears: the teachers were connected to powerful people in the community.

It is a common refrain in a country where teaching jobs are a powerful instrument of political patronage.

The school’s drinking-water tap had stopped working long ago, like 30 percent of schools nationwide, according to the Pratham survey. Despite the extra money, the toilet was broken, as was the case in nearly half of all schools nationwide.

From Development As Freedom by Amartya Sen:

For a variety of historical reasons, including a focus on basic education and basic health care, and early completion of effective land reforms, widespread economic participation was easier to achieve in many of the East Asian and Southeast Asian economies in a way it has not been possible in, say, Brazil or India or Pakistan, where the creation of social opportunities has been much slower and that slowness has acted as a barrier to economic development.

A poor economy may have less money to spend on health care and education, but it also needs less money to spend to provide the same services, which would cost much more in the richer countries. Relative prices and costs are important parameters in determining what a country can afford. Given an appropriate social commitment, the need to take note of the variability of relative costs is particularly important for social services in health and education.

The Different Paths of India & China
Beijing, China

The contrast between India and China has some illustrative importance in this context. The governments of both China and India have been making efforts for some time now (China from 1979 and India from 1991) to move toward a more open, internationally active, market-oriented economy.

While Indian efforts have slowly met with some success, the kind of massive results that China has seen has failed to occur in India. An important factor in this contrast lies in the fact that from the standpoint of social preparedness, China is a great deal ahead of India in being able to make use of the market economy. While pre-reform China was deeply skeptical of markets, it was not skeptical of basic education and widely shared health care. When China turned to marketization in 1979, it already had a highly literate people, especially the young, with good schooling facilities across the bulk of the country.



In contrast, India had a half-illiterate adult population when it turned to marketization in 1991, and the situation is not much improved today. The social backwardness of India, with its elitist concentration on higher education and massive negligence of school education, and its substantial neglect of basic health care, left that country poorly prepared for a widely shared economic expansion.

*During my research in the Philippines I repeatedly came face to face with the vulnerability created by low education and unemployment. While the majority of higher education is privatized in the Philippines, and therefore inaccessible to all but the wealthy, there exists an under funded, yet functioning lower, middle and secondary school system.

The reality for a young child, however, is that rather than attending school, he/she will seek a job to help their family, which then creates a large population of young people with no skills desperate for jobs who are vulnerable to trafficking. One of the common frustrations of the NGOs I worked with was the inability to help trafficking victims once they were rescued, rehabilitated and finally reintegrated back into their home communities. What often ends up happening once they arrive home is they will go and apply for another job and take the risk of being trafficked all over again because the economic need is so great.

At the end of the day the lesson is simple economics- school is not an option when there is no food on the table. At the same time, an educated population is one of the cornerstones of development that will ultimately lead to increased jobs, higher quality of life, and decreased susceptibility to trafficking.

More
Read “Cooking Up Profit” for more about the relationship between development and trafficking.

Read “International Labor Migration & Human Trafficking” for more on how education can help stimulate development and decrease vulnerability to trafficking.