The Humpty Dumpty Institute's 17th Congressional Delegation to United Nations Headquarters

Human Trafficking

March 13, 2006

Executive Summary

The Humpty Dumpty Institute (HDI) sponsored its 17th Congressional Delegation to the United Nations on March 13, 2006, which brought ten Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and their staff to New York for a day of meetings centered on the topic of human trafficking. This bipartisan delegation's primary purpose in coming to the U.N. was to meet with senior U.S. and U.N. officials in order to discuss how the U.S. Congress can best coordinate anti-trafficking efforts with the UN.

The term "human trafficking" or "trafficking in persons" (TIP) refers to the practice of recruiting or transporting persons in order to place them in a situation of abuse or exploitation, such as forced prostitution or labor, and is often considered a form of modern-day slavery. The conditions of human trafficking often involve battering and extreme cruelty, sweatshop labor, or exploitative domestic servitude. Annually, approximately 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders; millions more are enslaved in their own countries. In the U.S. alone, between 15,000 and 18,000 people, mostly girls, are sold into slavery.

The bipartisan delegation met with U.N. Under-Secretary-General Chris Burnham, U.N. General Assembly President Ambassador Jan Eliasson, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton. Delegates also met with senior representatives from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the U.N. Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF). UNODC Goodwill Ambassador Julia Ormond offered perspectives on the issue and urged action to fight human trafficking both on U.S. soil and internationally. Click here to listen to stories by U.N. Radio on this trip.

The Briefings

Chris Burnham, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Management, welcomed the Congressional Delegation on behalf of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and discussed the Secretary-General's new report on overhauling U.N. management practices, entitled "Investing in the United Nations: For a Stronger Organization Worldwide." Mr. Burnham addressed U.N. reform, specifically the creation of an ethics office, a new whistleblower protection policy, and an internal audit advisory committee to standardize accounting practices within the organization. Mr. Burnham also emphasized efforts to identify opportunities for outsourcing, such as printing and translation services, to streamline various reporting requirements into one annual report, to upgrade the U.N.'s New York campus to meet the city's safety requirements as part of the U.N. Capital Master Plan, and to implement a new UN-wide computer system to increase efficiency.

Simone Monasebian, Chief of the New York liaison office of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and Julia Ormond, UNODC's Goodwill Ambassador on Human Trafficking, spoke of UNODC's role as the focal point within the U.N. system to combat human trafficking, as well as the close collaboration between the various U.N. agencies involved with trafficking and the U.S. Government, which has played a leading role throughout the world in fighting human trafficking. In her role as U.N. Goodwill Ambassador, Ms. Ormond spoke passionately about trafficking as a multi-dimensional threat to international peace and security, and urged the Congressional participants to generate the political will necessary to stop trafficking in all its manifestations. She noted that a holistic approach is required to combat this serious and complex problem: public awareness of the issue must be raised, police must be better trained to identify victims, and stronger legal mechanisms need to be created to make it harder to smuggle human beings across borders. Most essential, according to Ms. Ormond, is the need to fight global poverty, which provides fertile ground for human trafficking and other criminal behavior. Click here to read the text of Ms. Ormond's speech.

At a special working luncheon, HDI organized senior representatives from UNIFEM, UNFPA, and UNICEF - three of the key U.N. agencies involved in the coordinated effort to fight trafficking - to provide in-depth explanations on how the U.N. is working to prevent trafficking, protect at-risk people, and prosecute known traffickers.

Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), informed the delegates on the particular issues facing women who are treated by many governments as criminals after being forced by extreme poverty or organized trafficking syndicates into prostitution. Ms. Heyzer also discussed the gender-based approach in responding to trafficking.

Hedia Belhadj, Deputy Director of the Technical Support Division of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), spoke of the economic root of the world's trafficking issues, with people migrating across borders out of economic desperation and finding themselves vulnerable to being physically and financially coerced into illegal activities.

Karin Landgren, Chief of Child Protection at the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), emphasized the specific problem of child trafficking and their efforts to protect children from exploitation as soldiers, laborers, and prostitutes. Thousands of children are forced into these illegal circumstances by parents who see no other economic choice, and by the criminal organizations that profit from these illicit activities.

During the discussion forum following these presentations delegates of both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations offered comments on the need to support small, localized initiatives to combat human trafficking, persuade national police forces to treat trafficked peoples as victims and not criminals, develop more thorough data tracking and statistic-sharing mechanisms worldwide, aggressively pursue and prosecute perpetrators of organized criminal trafficking, and inform the public of the U.S. and other U.N. member countries that this is a problem that has wide-reaching economic, security, and human rights implications.

Following lunch, the delegation met with Ambassador Jan Eliasson, President of the U.N. 60th General Assembly, who described human trafficking as a "modern form of slavery" and "a threat to human dignity" that can only be defeated through the collaborative efforts of the global community. The Ambassador also commended the United States for signing the protocols against smuggling and organized crime, thus strengthening the legal framework required to fight human trafficking. After discussing human trafficking, Ambassador Eliasson spoke more broadly about his commitment to human rights, calling it one of the three pillars of the UN, along with security and development. He expressed his belief that the proposed Human Rights Committee would be a significant improvement over the existing Commission on Human Rights, and was hopeful that the Security Council would provide its support for the new institution.

Ambassador John R. Bolton, U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, finished the day by briefing the Congressional delegation on the priorities of the United States at the UN. He noted that the U.N. must more effectively discipline peacekeepers charged with sexual exploitation, in keeping with the organization's zero-tolerance policy regarding such offenses. Ambassador Bolton reiterated the Bush administration's concern with the atrocities occurring in Darfur. While commending the efforts of African Union troops, he commented that supplementing these forces with a U.N. peacekeeping mission could more effectively curtail the violence in Darfur. Finally, Ambassador Bolton discussed his efforts to strengthen the current proposal for a U.N. Human Rights Committee.