IN THE NEWS recently has been the just released US State Department Global Trafficking in Persons (TIP) 2010 Report, or more specifically, the Government of Guyana’s strong opposition to the placement of Guyana on the Tier Two Watch List.
For simplification sake, and the edification of those who are not familiar with the placements, Tier One is the ranking assigned to countries which have implemented certain basic provisions in the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVAP) of 2000.
These provisions broadly cover government’s efforts to prevent TIP; to protect its victims and to prosecute those who perpetrate TIP crimes.  Tier Two is assigned to countries which have made some effort to address TIP, while Tier Three constitute countries which show no interest at all.
A Tier Two Watch List qualification — which is how Guyana has been certified — means that the country has the potential of slipping into Tier Three (based on a subjective ranking system).
The United Nations has its own definition of TIP, enshrined in the  ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’,  collectively known with another protocol on smuggling as the Palermo Protocols.
According to the TIP protocol:
‘Trafficking In Persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;
The TVAP 2000, concurrent to the Palermo Protocols, is pretty similar to UN document, with the Act benefitting from three reauthorizations, or upgrades, since then.  In short, it is as comprehensive a piece of legislation as one can get with regard to dealing with TIP as an international criminal issue, with a particular focus on defining the US’s role in policing the problem around the world; from providing assistance to organizations combating TIP to the issuing of annual country reports.
I can’t imagine that the current report isn’t causing more trouble for Obama’s foreign policy agenda than it’s worth, since only a handful of countries – none with any strong anti-US agenda – have made it on to Tier One in the first place.
There is, first of all, the problem of non-consultation with government officials from the countries under review, at least not in the case of Guyana, based on Minister Manickchand’s statements.  Under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the US government is mandated to conduct an annual report on the status of initiatives and programmes to combat human trafficking, with the reporting agencies being state and other local government officials and not NGOs, other civil society organizations or evidence on the ground.
This is the sort of presumption of credibility that the US does not afford the governments of sovereign countries like Guyana in compiling its international report, with the TIP report country narratives being created independent of input from state actors.
Granted a consultation period – stymied by the stonewalling of governments with something to hide – can lead to late reporting if left uncheck.  But I cannot see why at least a one month review period cannot be put in place in which government officials and other stakeholders can assemble and clarify any discrepancies in a preliminary report, the results of which would constitute the final report.
Additionally, I don’t believe that it is helpful in any way for the report to be an annual static document unchanging during the year, presuming that we accept its objectivity in the first place.  What is the point of stating that a particular country is on the Tier Two Watch List – which implies some active observational mechanism operating through the year and somehow having an impact on related policy? The Watch List proviso seems, frankly speaking, more an intimidation mechanism, particularly since TVPA non-compliance comes with aid-related penalties, than an actual tool for monitoring and assessment of what are very subjective and unilateral benchmarks for compliance.
And of course it doesn’t help that TIP compliance assessment policy clearly states:
“Tier rankings and narratives are NOT affected by the following:
•         efforts, however laudable, undertaken exclusively by nongovernmental actors in the country;
•         public awareness events – government-sponsored or otherwise – lacking concrete ties to prosecution of traffickers, protection of victims, or prevention of trafficking; and,
•         broad-based development or law enforcement initiatives without a discrete human trafficking focus.”
Of primary concern for me, however, is what appears to be some glaring inconsistencies within the classification system.  If we are to take it that Guyana’s classification is warranted, by the same yardstick, I don’t see, for example, how Nigeria could have made it on to the Tier One list.  The report lauds Nigeria’s reported 149 investigations, 26 prosecutions, and 25 convictions of trafficking offenses during the reporting period, which seems on the surface commendable in itself.  But when you consider that Nigeria is Africa’s most populated country, with some 154 million people, and that various international agencies, NGOs and other bodies – including the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour – have stated that Nigeria has an endemic problem with trafficking in persons as well as other human rights abuses, the 25 convictions (with an average of 2.2 years jail time) seems like a drop in the ocean with regard to that country’s TIP progress.
While there is no evidentiary basis for the accusation that – as some have asserted – the United States is using the Annual TIP Report as a tool of American imperialism, one would at least expect that in light of the Obama administration’s stated commitment to multilateralism and consensus, there would be some movement away from the unilateral pronouncements and their attendant consequences.
It’s a positive step that America at least decided to include itself in the report this year, although this is a tiny gesture and morally insignificant when one considers the country’s stance on other morally contentious issues, like its refusal to sanction or condemn Israel for its increasing inhumane actions in Gaza or the US’s refusal to subject its soldiers to trial at the International Criminal Court on the flimsy assertion that frivolous cases could be brought against members of its military.
From the perspective of the developing world, it would make infinitely more sense if the United States were to perhaps vest the responsibility of gauging and pronouncing on the world’s treatment of a global problem in the one organization that possesses enough legitimacy and credibility to carry out such an exercise with minimum contention and without accusations of an agenda.