AML CHALLENGES
the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP).
With well-meaning intentions and professional institutions in place, the main
problem of international and regional
organizations is still their effectiveness
in obtaining the cooperation of member
countries. Unfortunately, these organizations both lack the “teeth” to enforce countries to comply with newly created policies
and programs, and encounter bureaucratic
constraints thus negating their effectiveness. Naturally, these organizations are
also limited in their ability to provide generous financial incentives to countries that
comply with their programs.
U.S. definition
One of the leading voices among countries in the battle against human trafficking is The U.S. Department of State. The
U.S. law that guides anti-human trafficking efforts worldwide is the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).
The TVPA defines “severe forms of trafficking” as:
a. Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or
coercion, or in which the person induced
to perform such an act has not attained 18
years of age; or
b. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person
for labor or service, through the use of
force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of
subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
It is important to note that both the TVPA
and the U.N. do not require crossing borders
from one country to another to be a consideration in determining human trafficking.
The TVPA provides the U.S. Department
of State with basic standards for the categorization of countries in their compliance with the law. The Department of State
applies these standards when examining
countries’ approaches toward human
trafficking, categorizes them into different groups and uses the categorization it
performs as a “carrot-and-stick” tool in its
economic, social and diplomatic relations.
The categorization is performed by dividing countries into tiers: Tier 1 for countries
that fully comply with the law; Tier 2 for
countries that do not fully comply with the
law but have, however, taken significant
measures to meet its minimum standard;
a Tier 2 Watch List for countries that,
although they may maintain good intentions, significantly violate the law; and
Tier 3 for governments that do not comply
with the minimum standards of the law
nor show measures of intention.
www.ACAMS.org
Starting from 2001, the U.S. Department
of State publishes an annual report,
“Trafficking in Persons Report,” as part
of its international battle against human
trafficking. The report, which is delivered
to the U.S. Congress and is also published
by the Department of State, examines
and categorizes (based on tiers) foreign
governments’ efforts to eliminate human
trafficking in persons, based on the minimum standard of the TVPA. The countries
placed in Tier 3 are faced with social and
diplomatic constraints.
While good intentions in combating
human trafficking and organized crime
are in place, some countries’ actions to do
so do not necessarily follow. Moreover, the
current economic sanctions used by the
U.S. and the Western World against noncomplying countries are greatly limited,
due to various national interests, and thus
usually relate to the work of international
organizations such as The World Bank and
the International Monitory Fund vis-à-vis
the noncomplying states.
Human trafficking in East Asia
and the Pacific
Countries play different roles in human
trafficking. A country can be considered
a source country (i.e., serve as the place
from which people are being “exported”
to another country for economic or sexual
exploitation). A country can also serve as
a destination country, the place where the
economic and sexual exploitation of the
trafficked humans takes place. Another
role is of the transit country, a temporary
“stop” between the source and the destination countries.
We asked ourselves whether this division can be applied to East Asia and the
Pacific region, whether the division is
coherent and clear, and whether there
is an identifiable common ground (be it
economic, legal, social, etc.) for countries
in each group. To perform our analysis,
we relied on the annual reports provided
by the U.S. Department of State from the
years 2001–2008 and on humantrafficking.
org, a Web resource that provides valuable
and informative data on trafficking in East
Asia and the Pacific.
Who are the source countries?
Burma, Cambodia, China, East Timor,
Lao PDR, Mongolia, Philippines, South
Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam
are the primary countries from which
men, women and children are being trafficked for the purposes of mainly sexual
and economic exploitation. Most of these
countries also serve as a transit place due
to their geographic location of being a
neighbor country to the source and destination countries. In addition to external
trafficking, in Burma, China, Cambodia,
Lao PDR and Mongolia, internal trafficking
(especially of girls and women) from rural
areas to urban areas, takes place as well.
The dominant common ground for
being a source country originates in the
poor economic conditions of these countries’ inhabitants — poverty, economic
mismanagement by the ruling regime and
socioeconomic imbalance between rural
and urban areas — those are the main
grounds for becoming a source country
for human trafficking. In addition, in
countries where tourism is a prosperous
industry, such as Thailand, women and
children are increasingly trafficked for
sexual exploitation. All source countries,
except for South Korea, have been consistently identified by the U.S. Department
of State’s reports, from 2001 to the present, as noncomplying with the minimum
standards of the anti-trafficking law and
thus tagged many times under the Tier 2
Watch List and as Tier 3.
And don’t let the letter of the law fool
you. Altho ՝