3071-The political economy of new slavery

David Ould 61
• Governments that fully comply with the minimum standards defined
by the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, 2000.
• Governments that do not fully comply with the Act’s minimum
standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into
compliance with those standards.
• Governments that do not fully comply with the Act’s minimum
standards and are not making significant efforts to bring themselves
into compliance.
According to the Act, beginning with the 2003 report, countries
in Tier 3 will be subject to certain sanctions, principally termination
of non-humanitarian, non trade-related assistance and US opposition
to assistance from international financial institutions, specifically the
International Monetary Fund and multilateral development banks such
as the World Bank. In his presentation of the 2002 report Secretary
of State Colin Powell reiterated that countries in the third tier in 2003
would be subject to sanctions. In 2002, there were 18 countries in Tier 1,
53 countries in Tier 2 and 19 countries in Tier 3. While the practice
of one country ranking all other countries on an issue of human rights
is questionable, it has persuaded many governments to pay the issues
much more attention.
The ILO has recently issued some new statistics (ILO, 2002) for child
labour generally and these say that in the year 2000 they estimate that
worldwide some 1.2 million children were trafficked.
Such widely disparate figures demonstrate that trafficking is a serious
problem, affecting large numbers of women, children and men all
around the world, but also show the need for much more research and
investigation by both governments and the international agencies.
Trafficking of women
Every year millions of women (and a much smaller number of men)
migrate to seek employment as domestic workers in richer countries. They
come particularly from Asian countries, such as Philippines, Sri Lanka
and Indonesia, but also from Latin America and Africa. The main
receiving countries are in the Middle East and the richer countries of
Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia). However, there are large
communities of female migrant domestic workers in most rich countries.
Anti-Slavery International has reported for more than 20 years on
cases of slavery and forced labour affecting many of these domestic
workers. Most of these workers make use of various contractors and