Human trafficking experts meet here
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
International experts and officials concerned with the trafficking of laborers in Asia and the Pacific, especially the sexual exploitation of women and children, yesterday called for nations to improve conditions for migrant workers and take other steps to make them less prey to abuse and slavery.
A keynote address yesterday by Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, opened a three-day human rights conference, "The Human Rights Challenge of Globalization in Asia-Pacific-U.S.," at the Hawai'i Convention Center.
A panel discussion on "Sex Trafficking in Hawai'i" will meet at 10:30 a.m. today. Panelists will air different views of the problem and possible solutions, but the issue hasn't been probed locally, said Nancie Caraway, director of the conference. She said the event will culminate in the creation of a Hawai'i Anti-Trafficking Task Force.
"This is really unexplored here, but we know that Hawai'i is a large gateway," she said. "Trafficking has not been studied systematically."
However, the opening of the conference — which Caraway said drew about 300 participants, largely from Southeast and South Asia — presents the broad, international perspective.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had been set as the keynote speaker, but the convening of the current lame-duck session of Congress forced her to dispatch videotaped remarks in lieu of her attendance.
"Trafficking is a pervasive human rights violation and a transnational crime," she said in the video. "It's time for us to lead the way to bring it to an end."
Heyzer, who comes from Singapore, said the number of trafficking victims worldwide has been estimated at anywhere between 700,000 and 4 million. She identified labor migration, political unrest and gender inequality as contexts for exploitation in the Pacific region.
Sometimes this exploitation follows legal recruitment of workers, who then fall short of hiring criteria for the higher-skill jobs, she said. They then become vulnerable to traffickers who promise better opportunities and then entrap them in prostitution or other work with slave-like conditions, Heyzer said.
"It's the lack of access to legal tracks to jobs that leads to illegality," she said. "Also, the kind of violence on women has grown worse with the changing nature of warfare" in which civilians are targeted.
"Daughters in many cultures are still not highly valued. We're bound to have women and girls sacrificed when countries face poverty."
Heyzer called for programs to improve employment training and options so poorer laborers might remain in their countries, as well as protection for migrant workers abroad, who then would be less prey to trafficking.
Claude Allen, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pointed to the passage two years ago of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, with the establishment of a cabinet-level task force and State Department office devoted to the issue, as signs of progress.
Allen related a harrowing tale of a Mexican teen he nicknamed "Keiki" who was recruited by traffickers in her hometown and ended up in a Florida brothel where she became ravaged by disease and depression before her rescue.
"If you take Keiki's story and multiply it, you will understand the scope of the problem we are facing," Allen said.
Reach Vicki Viotti at 525-8053 or vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com.
