Discursurile Ambasadorului Pamela Hyde Smith

Ambassador Pamela Hyde Smith's Remarks at the NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Meeting in Brussels

July 24, 2003

As U.S. Ambassador to Moldova I often tell Moldovans about the United States and our policies. Today, I want to tell you about Moldova and other countries in the former Soviet Union, and about a terrible problem that affects the lives of people in parts of Europe and Eurasia that have not yet made successful transitions.

In terms of gross national product per capita, Moldova is one of the most impoverished countries in Europe. It is an absolutely beautiful country, with talented, hard-working people, but it lost over 50 percent of its GNP in the twelve years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The rural districts of many countries in the former Soviet space are experiencing similar difficulties; I focus on Moldova only because I know it best. In many cities in the region, public buildings are often not heated in the winter. In the villages, where the majority of the population lives, most schools are not heated, so parents can't send their children to school for months during the winter. The quality of education has suffered as a result. In rural parts of the NIS, there is no longer safe drinking water, so families struggle to bring buckets of clean water up long flights of stairs from the water truck or well. In the villages, some schools are so poor that math teachers can't afford even one compass to teach the children geometry. The quality of teaching has further deteriorated as teachers look to more lucrative forms of employment, if they can get them. Even college graduates have a difficult time finding jobs, and if they do, they are often paid very little.

Given the dire lack of opportunities, many people try to find ways to leave Moldova and other countries in the region, to make better lives for themselves. Men frequently go into construction work in other countries, and women become housekeepers or babysitters. Often the work is illegal, but this has not prevented a mass exodus from the region since independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union. No one knows for certain how many people have left Moldova, but a recent UN study estimates at least 1 million -- 65 percent of them young women -- out of a population of 4.3 million according to the last, Soviet-era census. The study also revealed that 90 percent of the youth in the region want to work or study outside their country, at least temporarily. Anecdotal evidence suggests that every village has at least 10 percent of its population abroad. Of those who remain in the villages, many are products of families torn apart by the economic collapse of the first years of independence, when the region's GNP plunged so severely and caused serious social problems, especially alcoholism. Others staying behind are children abandoned by parents who have left the country looking for work abroad. Often cared for by elderly or distant relatives, these children go years without seeing or hearing from their parents.

In many cases, there is no one at all to care for such children. The governments put them in several different kinds of institutions, including orphanages and boarding schools. Residents of boarding schools are not orphans; they are children whose families cannot take care of them, in many cases because their only relatives are out of the country. Depending on the type of orphanage or boarding school they attend, these children are forced to leave the institution at age 16 or 18. They then enter society with few opportunities, no family support, only the slightest help from the cash-strapped government, few skills, and little idea of how to make a living.

Human traffickers target these most vulnerable persons: rural women, many of them minors, who grew up in state institutions or in abusive family settings. These women know only an environment that holds absolutely no hope for the future. They are desperate for any opportunity to break out of poverty. They know that the only people in the villages with money are those who have worked abroad or whose relatives abroad have sent money home. Traffickers prey on these women, offering them their own dream of life in a rich Western country, working as housekeepers, babysitters, or waitresses. Once they have been smuggled across borders, these women become illegal migrants and are even more vulnerable to manipulation by their traffickers. They are commonly raped, beaten, tortured, and drugged. Traffickers take the women's documents and give them little or no money, and barely any food. They threaten to turn them over to the police -- or worse -- if they do not produce income for the trafficker through forced prostitution, usually servicing many clients per day. The women's experiences are so hideous that many risk their lives, or lose them, trying to escape. Others are driven to suicide.

We often hear that trafficking is a form of slavery. That is not simply a clichй: in various places in Europe there are actual markets where trafficked women are bought and sold. The price of a girl is usually $50 - $100 in a village, $100 - $200 in a city, $300 - $400 in a transit country, and $4,000 - $10,000 in the Balkans, with criminals making profits on each transaction. "Owners" then typically make $15,000 to $20,000 per month off the victims. Trafficking in human beings is the second most lucrative illicit business in the world after arms trafficking. This is not prostitution -- it is not consensual; it is not quid pro quo. Clients of trafficking victims are -- perhaps unknowingly, perhaps knowingly -- committing acts of rape.

According to some studies over 50 percent of the trafficking victims in the Balkans are Moldovan, a staggering statistic considering Moldova's small size. Most other victims come from other parts of the former Soviet Union. Although the Balkans are by far the most common destination for these women, other frequent destinations are Italy, Turkey, Israel, and other countries in Western Europe and the Middle East; a Moldovan girl was recently found to have even been trafficked to Japan.

The United States, along with other nations, has undertaken a number of efforts to fight human trafficking. These efforts can be broken down into three areas: prevention, prosecution, and protection. The importance of the issue is enshrined in American law: under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, countries can lose U.S. assistance if they do not do enough to fight trafficking in persons. The recently released State Department report on trafficking in persons included the first countries designated for sanctions under this law.

I'd like to describe for a moment the U.S. government-sponsored programs in Moldova and other countries that are dedicated to fighting trafficking. In Moldova we support the International Organization for Migration, which, among its other good works, repatriates trafficking victims to Moldova and operates a shelter where returnees receive emergency services, including medical and psychological treatment and counseling. We support the Center for the Prevention of Trafficking in Women, an organization of Moldovan lawyers who provide legal assistance to victims. Through programs of our Department of State and Department of Justice, we support a number of training programs for Moldovan law enforcement officials, to teach them to be aware of the trafficking problem, how to investigate it, how to deal with victims, how to deal with colleagues investigating the same cases in other countries, and most importantly, how to obtain convictions and put the traffickers behind bars. We have also undertaken efforts to prevent trafficking from occurring in the first place, including through educational campaigns to get the word out to vulnerable women that criminals can horribly exploit their dreams of a better life abroad. Additionally, we are attempting to address the root cause of trafficking: economic desperation. The U.S. government supports a number of extensive programs in Moldova to create job opportunities in rural areas. Some already focus on potential trafficking victims, and the U.S. Agency for International Development plans to begin soon a major new project in this area, targeting specifically the segment of the population most vulnerable to trafficking. It is slow work, but by working with the government and making it possible for Moldovans and their neighbors to see a positive future in their own countries, efforts like these will, we hope, someday remove the sense of desperation that the traffickers exploit.

Other donors are beginning to be active in fighting trafficking as well: for example, the EU funds a nation-wide hotline in Moldova and the OSCE employs a full-time anti-trafficking specialist who helps coordinate with the Moldovan government and the donor community.

The size of the problem suggests it will be years before we achieve full success in our efforts to create economic opportunity, and in the meantime the fight against trafficking must be carried out on many different fronts. It is a crime that crosses borders, requiring coordinated and complementary efforts in different countries, often countries with very different law enforcement capabilities. Governments around the world are increasingly recognizing the importance of the problem, but the traffickers are in many cases veteran criminals with the resources of organized crime networks at their disposal. They are able to take advantage of the crazy-quilt mixture of jurisdictions and bureaucracies, especially in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, to elude the law.

On the surface, one of the most remarkable facts about the trafficking phenomenon is that so many of the victims -- young women from countries like Moldova -- end up in the Balkans, in places like Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia, which, while somewhat more prosperous than Moldova, would hardly seem likely end-points on a chain of illegal trafficking. While statistics are hard to come by, it is clear that an ugly truth underlies this paradox: trafficking to Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia is economically viable because a significant portion of the clientele is the international community, including international peacekeeping forces, as well as international police and contractors. It is a bitter irony that individuals who have gone to war-torn countries to preserve peace have, by supporting the appalling business of trafficking, taken part in a horrible violation of human rights and contributed to crime and instability elsewhere in Europe.

I am here to ask you to send a strong, urgent message: we need to inform the troops from your country about this modern form of slavery and help them understand the circumstances from which these victims come. It is important that soldiers, police, and contractors no longer subvert their own humanitarian missions by contributing to the abuse of these women. Troops should be educated about trafficking in order to understand that a woman they might think of as only a prostitute is in fact an involuntary slave, not a willing partner in a business transaction. I understand a few countries have already confined their troops to barracks or otherwise restricted their access to trafficked women. If your country has, I applaud you. For those who have not, it is important that rules be established and vigilantly enforced and, as importantly, that the reasoning behind them be fully understood. The attitude that "boys will be boys" prevails all too often. That attitude would not survive if military commanders had seen, as I have, the women at the IOM shelter in Moldova who have made their way back from the Balkans. I have talked with these victims. They all have had their mental and physical health shattered by the trafficking ordeal. Some will never be able to lead normal lives again. All face ostracism, rape or even re-trafficking if they return to their villages.

I would suggest there's a need to help the next potential victim by joining the fight against this modern-day scourge. Please educate and set rules for your country's soldiers, police and contractors. Perhaps you could use the summer break to consult in your capitals about how to get this job done. You could then return in the autumn ready to put plans into action, starting with meeting in September with representatives of the IOM. I have heard that the Stability Pact has developed a good training manual and that the EU and the U.S. are putting codes of conduct in place for contractors. You might consider NATO-specific ideas such as working with the local police in the Balkans to identify and prosecute traffickers. I know that the steps I am suggesting will not instantly end the trafficking problem, but they would be meaningful, protecting potential victims and placing your country clearly on the right side of this extremely important issue.

The trade in human beings is one of the most pressing human rights problems in Europe and the world today. Human trafficking is the twenty-first century's version of slavery, and according to a U.S. government estimate 800,000 to 900,000 people annually are trafficked across international borders for sexual exploitation or forced labor. Considering all the money and effort my government and your governments invest in fighting injustice, misery, and violations of human rights around the globe, the scope of trafficking's humanitarian tragedy alone would be enough to warrant an international effort of the first order. As my government has declared: "The United States is committed to the eradication of human trafficking both domestically and abroad. It is a crime that is an affront to human dignity." The EU, the U.S. and the European Parliament have endorsed the Brussels Declaration for Preventing and Combating Trafficking, formulated last September here in Brussels. The OSCE has adopted a robust anti-trafficking action plan. It is thus very timely for NATO to engage in an anti-trafficking effort as well.

If we are compelled by our human sense of morality to fight against slavery, bondage, repeated rape, and all the other cruelties associated with trafficking, we are also compelled by an interest in global stability. By destroying family support networks, trafficking contributes to social breakdown. Trafficking promotes crime, deprives countries of human capital, undermines public health, subverts government authority, funds illicit activity, and strengthens organized crime groups. Trafficking targets in particular those societies that are already the weakest -- countries struggling to establish democracy, a market economy, or even a viable state -- and helps deprive their citizens of the benefits of the rule of law and the chance for a decent quality of life. As we have seen all too often, these troubled societies can give birth to civil wars, dictators, smuggling and proliferation of weapons, and terrorism.

Eradicating sexual slavery in every place and in every way where we have control, now, is both a wise strategy and an urgent humanitarian imperative.

Thank you very much.