Security Firms Agree Not to Use Forced Labor

Private security companies sign code of conduct
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS November 9, 2010, 4:48AM ET
GENEVA

Major private security companies have signed a code of conduct pledging to respect human rights and the rule of law in conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

DynCorp International, G4S and Xe Services are among the firms signing the code Tuesday in the Swiss city of Geneva. North Carolina-based Xe Services was formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide.

The code developed by industry and government representatives requires companies to ensure their employees "take all necessary steps to avoid the use of force."

It also forbids mistreatment of detainees, sexual exploitation and forced labor.

Signatories, non-governmental groups and governments who employ them still have to agree how companies' compliance will be monitored and by whom.

************************************************

Several major security firms gathered in Geneva to sign an agreement stating they would not allow their employees to use forced labor or engage in sexual exploitation. Several of these organizations have been in the news for an array of allegations about rights abuse violations including human trafficking. It does not provide much comfort that at this point no arrangement was determined on how this agreement will be monitored and enforced. These security forces provide vital services in Iraq and Afghanistan but are largely viewed as being above the law both in the communities they work in and by the American people. Despite their negative public image, this is a step in the right direction and the agreement has the potential to hold security firms accountable, but only if enforced.

South Asians Left Jobless, Homeless In Iraq

From NPR:

By Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Morning Edition, December 15, 2008 · Tens of thousands of poor South Asians have made their way to Iraq since the U.S. invasion, in the hopes of making money to send home to support their families.

Dishwashers, cleaners, drivers and cooks from countries like Bangladesh, India and Nepal form part of an army of contractors that service America's expensive war.

But the system that gets them to Baghdad is riddled with corruption and exploitation, leaving some South Asians living in hovels, jobless and afraid.

Four months ago, Sushil Khadka, 26, left his wife, his two children and his home country of Nepal for Iraq.

"I'd dreamt of a good job, sending home my salary every month to feed my family, to send my children to school. That's why I came here. But that never happened. The opposite happened. It's terrible," he says.

Now Khadka sits in a hut made out of salvaged cardboard, huddled next to a chain-link fence in a dusty corner near Baghdad's international airport. Flies swarm around splattered bits of old food and dirty blankets.

"They made fools of us," he says. "Had we gotten work, it would've been alright but they took our money and ran away."

He sold the family jewelry — all they had in the world — to pay a recruiter in Nepal $5,000. He says the recruiter promised him a job working for American contractor KBR that would earn him $800 a month — a fortune in Nepal. The average income there is $340 a year.

But when he arrived in Iraq he was told there was no work, he says. The agent who was supposed to help him was arrested and the visa in Khadka's passport was ripped out. He was left to his own devices, scrounging around the airport to find shelter and food.

Khadka is not alone. The 40-or-so men who live with him in this makeshift camp tell similar tales.

Upendra Das, 17, sits on the floor chopping vegetables on a dirty plank of painted wood.

"We eat once a day. Sometimes we can't even do that," he says. "I've been here three months so far. To get here I borrowed from the village moneylender. They charge a lot of interest. I can't leave so I'm still waiting, hoping that I will get some work."

Another group of 1,000 South Asians have been held in a nearby warehouse for several months by KBR subcontractor Najlaa Catering Services, a company based in Kuwait. The men say they had their passports taken away and were confined in substandard conditions.

The U.S. military and KBR say they are investigating.

The U.S. State and Defense departments have issued contracting guidelines that are supposed to protect workers in Iraq.

"As in all things, in Iraq there is a policy in place but there is no one really there to enforce it," says investigative journalist T. Christian Miller, who works for Pro Publica and has written a book called Blood Money about the mismanagement of Iraq's reconstruction.

He says that the abuse of South Asian workers in Iraq is common.

"It's definitely a situation of exploitation. You are talking about the most vulnerable people in the world," Miller says. "The U.S. has contracted some of the most dangerous and dirties jobs to some of the poorest people in the world. At this point, five years into the war, there are no excuses for U.S. companies not to be aware of the issue of human trafficking or labor trafficking."

Back at the Baghdad airport, a representative from the International Organization of Migration (IOM) has just showed up offering the homeless South Asians free repatriation. The IOM heard about the men only 10 days ago.

The men crowd around as Thair Issan hands out forms for them to fill out if they want to go home. Issan says the men's plight is desperate.

"Those are victims," he says. "You see the conditions they're living in. It's a very big humanitarian crisis."

Bangladeshi Mohammad Nazrul Islam says he wants to stay here but he's been told he'll be jailed if he does.

"The Iraqi authorities say ... they will jail us if we stay. If we leave right now, it's OK. But we don't want to leave because we've all paid a lot of money to get here," he says.

Where will we find the money to pay off that debt? he asks desperately, adding that he wants to stay but no one will give him a job.

Cohen Milstein Files Human Trafficking Victims Lawsuit Against U.S. Military Contractors in Iraq

From Market Watch:

Aug 27, 2008

LOS ANGELES- Cohen Milstein, representing victims of human trafficking and their survivors, filed suit today in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against a prominent U.S. military contractor, Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc. ("KBR"), and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners ("Daoud"). During the relevant time period, KBR was the largest military contractor for the United States in Iraq.

According to the lawsuit, the trafficking victims include 13 Nepali men who were taken to Iraq against their will to provide menial labor at a United States military facility.

The men, ages 18-27, were recruited in Nepal to work as kitchen staff in hotels and restaurants in Amman, Jordan. Their families went deep into debt to arrange the jobs, which they hoped would lift them out of poverty. Once they arrived in Jordan, however, they were not provided the expected employment. Instead, their passports were seized, they were held against their will, and they were told that they were being sent to work at a military facility in Iraq, the United States Al Asad Airbase.

The men allege that the illicit trafficking scheme--from their recruitment in Nepal to their eventual employment in Iraq--was engineered by KBR and its subcontractor Daoud.

Tragically, as the men were being transported to Iraq, a car containing twelve of the men was stopped by members of the Ansar al-Sunna Army, an insurgent group. The 12 men in the car were taken hostage and executed by the insurgents. The executions were filmed and posted on the Internet.

The Inspector General for the United States Department of Defense investigated and confirmed the facts related to the fate of the 12 men, which led to increased enforcement of anti-trafficking measures by the United States.

The 13th trafficking victim, Buddi Prasad Gurung, was not kidnapped with the others and arrived at the U.S. military facility in August 2004. He was assigned to work as a loader/unloader in a warehouse, supervised by KBR.

For 15 months, Mr. Gurung was held in Iraq against his will, before KBR and Daoud allowed him to return home to Nepal. Mr. Gurung has joined with the family members of the 12 deceased victims to file claims under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and the Alien Tort Claims Act.

They are represented by Agnieszka Fryszman, Matthew Handley, and Molly McOwen of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll P.L.L.C. (Washington, D.C.) Cohen Milstein's International Human Rights practice group has earned a stellar reputation for its work representing victims of forced and slave labor and other violations of international law.

A copy of the human trafficking complaint is available on the firm's website, www.cmht.com, as are copies of relevant Department of Defense documents. Ms. Fryszman and Mr. Handley are available for comment.

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.

Saddam’s Unrepentant Judge

An Iraq High Tribunal member talks about Saddam Hussein's trial



*This is a powerful interview which depicts the brutality of the Hussein regime. It also delves into the issue of "honor killings" when rape victims are killed by a family member to restore family honor.

From Newsweek:

Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa is a member of the Iraq High Tribunal, which was created to prosecute crimes that occurred under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Khalifa presided over the conviction of Saddam Hussein and the so-called Anfal trial, which specifically dealt with the crimes committed against Iraqi Kurds. The Anfal decision, as it is known, named six of Saddam's highest officials as responsible for the genocidal campaign that left hundreds of Kurdish people dead. It also designated rape as a form of torture. In one case Khalifa remembers the story of a female prisoner whose baby died soon after she gave birth. The woman was not allowed to bury her child. Instead she was forced to watch dogs rip its tiny body apart and eat it. During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., Khalifa spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Ramirez about the work of the Iraq High Tribunal. Excerpts:

What kind of court is the Iraq High Tribunal?
Our court is an exceptional court, in part, because we are doing very specific work on crimes committed by Saddam's regime. When that mission comes to pass then the court will be dissolved. The Global Justice Center, which has recognized the Iraq High Tribunal's work in the area of women's rights, had you meet Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg. What did you discuss? It was brief, but we learned about the high court in America and the function of the constitution. We talked about the kind of cases they have looked into and jurisdiction. We discussed the number of judges who preside and some history of the court.

When you and the other judges reviewed the information that led you to believe rape was a form of torture in the Anfal decision, what kind of stories helped you reach that decision?
There were many. Kurdish women have suffered a lot. When the ruling authorities at the time used to arrest civilians, they would isolate women from men. That was the first step. Then they would isolate young men from old men. The young men would be taken and killed. The elderly people would be taken to stay with the women. Once this was done then they would start investigations. The elderly ladies, their investigation would not take a long time. The investigation would be concentrated on the young ladies. That is what court witnesses said.

Some of the elderly ladies told us that the investigators would take some of the young women at night saying they wanted to investigate them. In fact, there was no investigation. They were being raped. We asked the elderly women how they knew this. They said that when the young ladies came back they told that they were raped. Another elderly woman had seen the rape occur through curtains. Those who were not raped directly during the investigations were asked to be naked and investigated in that manner.

Another witness we spoke to was arrested under the accusation that he had used foul language against the son of the president. He was beaten and tortured. He was ordered to confess to being a member of an opposition party. If he confessed he was told he would be executed. He refrained. He was a university student. So the security men resorted to another way of getting him to confess. They tortured him with electricity, pulled out his nails and broke his bones. I believe he was even sexually violated. As a means to force him to confess, they brought his mother and sister. The security men then raped them one after the other before him. They expected him to confess, but he didn't. They sentenced him to prison. He was released in 1990. When he was released he found that his mother had been executed. In 1991, during the events of the uprising, he fled. So they executed his father, two of his brothers and three sisters. He had no one remaining. Every member of his family is dead.

Often, if a woman is raped, a family member will kill her in order to restore the family honor. Do you think Iraqis should change their view of rape in general, and not just as it pertains to crimes committed by Saddam's regime?
[Honor killing] happens when a family does not understand and does not have a clear viewpoint of what happened to their daughter. She is a victim. How can she be a victim twice? Iraqi law does not protect those who kill women that are raped. The court should always be on the side of justice when the woman is a victim.

Read the full interview


Thousands of Women Killed for Family "Honor"

From National Geographic:

Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.

Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women's Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.

But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.

Children in Iraq

This article is from Al Jazeera from last month, but I was prompted to look deeper into the subject of human trafficking in Iraq after listening to a free netcast from Yale University featuring Yanar Mohammed, founder of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (available on iTunes under iTunes U). The article deals specifically with the problem of Iraqi children and how the conflict is worsening their chances of becoming victims of trafficking:

Local officials and aid workers have expressed concern over the alarming rate at which children are disappearing countrywide in Iraq's current unstable environment.

Omar Khalif, vice-president of the Iraqi Families Association (IFA), an NGO established in 2004 to register cases of those missing and trafficked, said that at least two children are sold by their parents every week.

Another four are reported missing every week.

He said: "[The] numbers are alarming. There is an increase of 20 per cent in the reported cases of missing children compared to last year."

"In previous years, children were reported missing on their way home from schools or after playing with friends outside their homes. However, police investigations have revealed that many have been sold by their parents to foreign couples or specialised gangs."

According to police investigations and an independent IFA study, Iraqi children are being sold to families in many European countries- particularly the Netherlands and Sweden - Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

"Taking advantage of the desperate situation of many families living under poverty conditions in Iraq, foreigners offer a good amount of money in exchange of children as young as one-month old and up to five years of age, " Khalif said.

He said there are fears children are being trafficked for the sex trade and the organ transplant black market.

Children drugged

Hassan Alaa, a senior ministry official, said that while it has been difficult to precisely trace where the missing children are taken, government forces have captured 15 human trafficking gangs operating in Iraq in the past nine months.

"Many were carrying false documents prepared to take some children out from the country."

"During their confessions, they said many children are sold for as little as $3,000 and for very young babies, the price could reach $30,000," Alaa said.

The interior ministry has stepped up its security at checkpoints and border posts throughout Iraq.

He said that the child traffickers resort to drugging children with powerful sedatives during the trip out of Iraq. When they drive up to a checkpoint, the police are told the children are merely sleeping.

"All the children leaving Iraq now have to be woken up and interviewed by the police and border patrols, except those who are infants and unable to speak," Alaa said.

Extreme poverty

Mahmoud Saeed, a senior official at the ministry of labour and social affairs, says extreme poverty and nationwide unemployment have pushed parents to the edge, forcing them to make decisions once believed unthinkable.

"Desperate seeing their families without food and hygiene, parents prefer to give their children for adoption, to save their lives," he said.

Saeed said the ministry was making employment a national crisis issue in 2008, hoping to find immediate work for the poor. He is hoping international aid agencies and NGOs will increase their participation and investments in projects geared towards helping children. 

But for many parents, help will inevitably come too late. 

Iraq is on the Special Cases list of the State Department's 2007 TIP Report as it states, "Iraq was in political transition during the reporting period and is therefore not ranked in this Report [meaning the country's efforts are not placed into the tier system]." It has been on the Special Cases list since 2003. Although in 2007, it reported that there was credible evidence that this problem was getting worse and that legislation is severely lagging behind international standards.

UNICEF also painted a grim picture for the current state of the children in Iraq. Among their findings:

• Almost a million children of primary school age are now out of school indefinitely,
• Almost 75,000 children have resorted to living in temporary camps or shelters by the end of 2007,
• Almost 25,000 children were internally displaced per month throughout the year,
• Approximately 1,350 children were detained by police for "security reasons."

While the report also details good things UNICEF has been able to see accomplished in the time period, the violence and instability is obviously still affecting children. The displaced children and children living in temporary housing and refugee camps are especially vulnerable according to information on the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict:

Evidence indicates that refugee and internally displaced persons' camps are often recruiting grounds for child soldiers because of the convenient concentrations of children in these zones. These children also face severe protection risks during flight as well as outside camp boundaries that can include killing or maiming, sexual violence, abduction and trafficking.

Germany Smashes Human Trafficking Ring Sending Iraqis to Sweden

From All Headline News:

German police arrested six people on Wednesday morning at Gelsenkirchen, Essen and Mulheim, in an alleged human smuggling ring that took Iraqi refugees to Sweden. Aside from the six arrested, another five were detained for investigation and one member of the ring is still being pursued.

The syndicate is allegedly responsible for bringing over 100 Iraqi asylum seekers to Sweden; another 63 were apprehended in Germany and Italy. The refugees were traveling aboard rented camper vans that picked up the Iraqis in Greece and traveled through Italy, Austria and Germany.

Sweden is a favorite destination of refugees because of its liberal asylum laws. Investigation into the syndicate began in September 2007 and involved about 200 police officers.

Germany, because of its central location, is a favored stopover or final destination for victims of various human trafficking schemes. On July 2006, joint Bulgarian and German police operations took down a syndicate that tried to smuggle 14 Bulgarian women into Hamburg to work as prostitutes.

This Week in the Philippines #3

Graft, international trafficking to Iraq, and the Peace Corps...


A Filipino worker applying for a job in Iraq, lights candles during a rally in Manila (Source: Corbis)

Corruption rampant in GMA regime
In a recent survey, seven out of 10 Filipinos, or 71 percent, gave President Arroyo a failing grade in her anti-corruption efforts

New batch of Peace Corps volunteers arrive in Philippines
Fifty seven new volunteers arrive in the Pearl of the Orient for a two-year stint

11 Filipinos trafficked to Iraq to help build US embassy
Kuwaiti company illegally recruits Filipino workers despite Philippine govt travel ban

Lack of enforcement mechanism blamed for trafficking to Iraq
NGO accuses Philippine government of doing too little to prevent trafficking- more important than issuing a travel ban, enforcement mechanisms were absent

Filipino migrant workers share stories of life in Iraq
There are an estimated 10,000 Filipinos in Iraq despite the standing government ban on travel to the war-torn country