PRESS BRIEFING ON FORCED LABOUR REPORT

 

According to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report, entitled “A Global Alliance against Forced Labour”, at least 12.3 million people -- one out of every 500 people -- were trapped in forced labour around the world.

Introducing the report at a Headquarters press briefing this morning, Lee Swepston, Senior Adviser for Human Rights to the Executive Director of the Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work Sector of the ILO, said it provided the first global estimate of forced labourers in the world, as well as of the illicit income from trafficking and illicit forced labour -- some $32 billion annually.  Joining Mr. Swepston was Djankou Njdonkou, Director of ILO’s New York Office, and Kevin Cassidy, Declaration Communications Manager.

The report, Mr. Swepston continued, was prepared as part of the follow-up to the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, adopted by the ILO in 1998.  It also contained regional estimates of forced labour, as well as the different kinds of forced labour, whether by trafficking or more traditional forms of forced labour, such as bonded labour and slavery.  In addition, it examined the transfer of forced labour into the hands of the private sector.  “These days, far more than in the past, it is the private sector that is exploiting forced labour.”

It was important to look at what could be done to combat forced labour, he continued.  There were a few places in the world -- notably Brazil and Pakistan -- that had taken courageous action to, first of all, admit that the problem existed, to identify the extent of the problem and then to start on a programme to eliminate forced labour.  Both countries had adopted in recent years national programmes to eliminate forced labour.

Exploitation often took place these days, he said, through trafficking, a growing problem around the world that came with the increased pressure on national economies, the weakening of national borders, the ease of travel, and the growing criminal element that exploited forced labour.

Also important was to have clear legislation, he added, stating that it was quite phenomenal how few countries had a clear definition of what forced labour was.  Was it merely terrible working conditions?  What were the degrees of compulsion that went into it?  How did one identify forced labour, as opposed to people who were in “really sorry jobs”?  Equally important was to give law enforcement the mandate to follow up.  There were very few places where forced labour was subject to penal sanctions or any kind of dissuasive sanctions.  Even where it was followed up by law enforcement, the number of prosecutions was low, the penalties were minimal, and the dissuasive effect of those penalties was almost non-existent.

While the problem largely existed in the developing world, he noted that 360,000 of the 12.3 million victims of forced labour had been identified in industrialized countries.  It was a worldwide problem, which existed in all regions and in all types of economies.

Asked what constituted bonded labour, Mr. Swepston said it occurred when a person got into debt, and when there were no forms by which a person could get credit legally.  One of the weapons in tackling that was the use of micro-credit.  As for why it particularly affected indigenous peoples in Latin America and Asia, he said it was because they were outside mainstream economic development.  There were no credit institutions and no law enforcement.  There was also an element of racial and ethnic discrimination that came into play.

Responding to a question on the factors leading to the large majority of forced labourers in Asia, he said that a large part of the problem was the existence of traditional systems of bonded labour.  It was a long tradition in South Asia, and in parts of the Pacific, to have bonded labour systems or, in some areas, traditional chiefdom assignments.  It was a cultural tradition that relied in part also on caste differences.

Expanding on residual slavery-related practices, he said the global estimate did not contain national numbers.  There was some idea of how much existed in some places, but that was mostly unofficial because countries were reluctant to sit down and count.  But there were places in West Africa, as well as in the Sudan, where slavery and forms of forced labour were traditional.

Mauritania, he pointed out, was one country with which the ILO had had continuing dialogue over the years, with some estimates putting the number of former and present slaves there at a significant percentage of the country.  While the country had laws and systems to combat it, there was no real count due to a reluctance to admit to the practice and to go after what was needed.  He added that conflict gave rise to that sort of practice, especially when law enforcement and social structures broke down.

Trafficking, he said in response to another question, was the transport of persons across borders for purposes of commercial exploitation, which should be distinguished from smuggling.  The main trafficking routes included from Asia to Europe and the United States.

As for what the ILO could do regarding its member countries, such as Myanmar, he said the situation in that country was purely internal; it was a longstanding exploitation of the national population, essentially by the military, with massive amounts of forced labour.  The ILO continued to pressure the Government.  The situation in Myanmar would not change until the Government decided it would change.

The ILO was prepared to help the country set up a system whereby it would be possible to have economic development in the countryside, and to have a reporting system for those exploited, where it was possible to report violations and keep the international eye on them.  There would be a discussion next month at the ILO Conference, where Myanmar would be called before the applications of standards committee to report on what they had been doing.

On how the ILO could advise law enforcement to identify forced labour as opposed to “bad jobs”, he highlighted the element of compulsion and the threat of penalty.  It was often accompanied by people whose passports and papers had been taken away from them.  It was also very much tied to discrimination, with women more subject than men, particularly in the area of sexual exploitation.  Forced labour was not only the result of poverty and underdevelopment, but contributed to it, he added, saying “it was a vicious cycle”.

To another question, he said forced labour was an isolated problem in the United States and occurred in pockets, such as among migrant agricultural workers.  “But a lot of this was out of sight.”  Countries themselves had not developed the methodology for looking at illegal work.  In the United States, most of those affected were from Central and Latin America, with an increasing number of Asian workers.

Touching on the prison labour aspect of the problem, he said there were different kinds of prison labour.  One was normal prison labour.  According to ILO Convention No. 29, if the work was done after a conviction in a court of law, and under government supervision, that was legitimate forced labour for prison.  There were two different kinds of situations.  China was one of them, with the re-education through labour programme, where people were sent to jail by the administrative authorities and removed from the national justice system.

There was also a growing phenomenon of “privatized prisons”, he said, in the United States, Europe and other Western countries.  “And here we’ve got a harder problem.  At what point can you say that a prisoner in a privatized prison, who is working in part to pay his bills for being in prison, is working under conditions that the international standards provide for, and not hired out without permission to a private enterprise?”  There were standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners, but they did not cover work.  And most people who were in prison were outside the national labour administration.  One of the recommendations for action, as a result of the present report, was for the ILO and the international community to start talking about the conditions under which people worked in jail.

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