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Jointly organised by the Bar Council Human Rights Committee and Embassy of the United States, a talk on “Modern-Day Slavery and Human Trafficking”, featuring Siddarth Kara, took place at 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm, at Conference Room 1 of the Bar Council Secretariat, on 21 Sept 2011 (Wednesday).

A renowned speaker in the field of modern-day slavery and human trafficking, Siddarth Kara is the author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, which was co-winner of the 2010 Frederick Douglass Award at Yale University for best non-fiction book on slavery.  He is also a Fellow with the Carr Center Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, United States of America.  A former investment banker and business executive, he first encountered slavery in a refugee camp in Bosnia in 1995 and started his research on the subject in 2000.  He has travelled to over 20 countries and interviewed over 1,000 former and current slaves of all kinds to understand the phenomenon of modern-day slavery.  He presently advises several governments and the United Nations on anti-slavery research, policy and law.  

During his talk, Siddarth Kara highlighted two main points: the need to take the victim-right approach in addressing human trafficking, and the effects and direct impact of economy on human trafficking, forced labour, bonded labour and other forms of economic slavery.  He stressed that, when responding to reports on human trafficking, authorities had to first identify offenders of the law.  He explained that the practice of detaining and/or deporting victims did not alleviate human trafficking activities as it left the perpetrators – the traffickers – unpunished.  Therefore, authorities had to exhaust all resources when conducting their investigation on victims of human trafficking, as it was often time-consuming and great effort was required to piece together the victims’ stories.  Siddarth Kara pointed out that time was of the essence in gathering the elements required by law to prosecute offenders, noting that sufficient time for investigation, especially when dealing with child victims, was acutely important.

Siddarth Kara elaborated that authorities had to respond to the victims’ human rights needs and maximise its ability to prosecute offenders.  He shared his belief that victims of trafficking should be given residency status, work status and protection, as well as any obligations under the law, to allow them to participate in the process of prosecution.  As the investigation process often required a considerable amount of time, Siddarth Kara discussed that victims of human trafficking should be granted their basic right to earn a livelihood and be safeguarded while investigation took place.  He added that the victims should not be incarcerated, but allowed to move freely with protection, in addition to not being deported.  

While discussing the connection between the economy and human trafficking, Siddarth Kara opined that the latter was driven by exploiters’ ability to generate immense profit.  Offenders who engaged – directly or indirectly – in human trafficking did so with the objective of maximising their proceeds by procuring cheap labour via human trafficking.  He explained that human trafficking was rooted in the slave trade during colonial times, particularly the trade of African slaves and the trafficking of Indians by British colonial masters to work in estates across the continents.  He concluded that the purpose of all these activities was the same: for businesses to maximise profit by minimising the cost of labour, which always incurred the highest cost. 

Siddarth Kara highlighted that victims of human trafficking were present in almost all sectors in the economy – commerce, agriculture, construction and entertainment – and revealed that the cost of procuring a worker via human trafficking was also getting lower.  According to him, based on a calculation method he had devised by comparing the cost of procuring and transporting slaves during the African slave trade era and the current cost in procuring someone through human trafficking, the average current cost was only about USD425.  He explained that he had come up with this figure by studying over 1,000 case studies of individuals to represent a statistic with 95% confidence interval. 

Siddarth Kara discussed that the penalties levied on the offenders were anemic and not severe enough to act as a deterrent, due to the fact that the risk of arrest and prosecution for offenders in almost all countries that had some type of anti-human trafficking laws, was low.  He then shared that he had come up with a system to design criminal laws for human trafficking that imposed high costs and risks on the offenders.

As the talk drew to an end, Siddarth Kara reiterated his main point that victims of human trafficking should not be treated as offenders.  Thus, responsible governments had to provide care and protection, in addition of allowing victims the chance to earn their own livelihood, while investigation took place.  If victims of human trafficking were deported, the likelihood of them being re-exploited, especially re-trafficked, was very high.  Therefore, legal systems had to offer compassion to the victims of human trafficking, in which governments had to demonstrate responsibility, regardless of the nationality of victims, as their own people might be trafficked elsewhere in the world.  As such, taking the victim-right approach would help alleviate human trafficking activities. 

During the question-and-answer session that followed, Siddarth Kara brought up the need for heightened regional and international cooperation in combating human trafficking.  A country could not deal with this issue in isolation as the problem transcended national borders.  He mentioned that even organised-crime groups like the mafia and gangs from different countries had strengthened their international cooperation.  As such, countries had to boost collaboration amongst themselves to fight organised-crime activities, which in many instances involved modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

When a member of the audience shared the view that offering more protection and rights for victims of human trafficking would encourage more victims, Siddarth Kara responded that it was not easy to provide that someone was a victim of human trafficking, citing once more that time was crucial in collecting all evidence.  However, at the same time, the human rights of the victims to earn an honest livelihood and receive protection against the alleged offenders were also equally important.  The basic human rights of the victims should not be denied while investigation took place.  He added that governments had a choice to either narrow or widen the protection offered to the victim: if narrowed, prosecution would be more difficult, but if widened, more victims would come forward and feel more secure about relating their situation to the authorities. 

To a query on the role of average individuals and non-governmental organisations (“NGOs”) in combating human trafficking, Siddarth Kara explained that consumers could play a very important role in influencing government policies in relation to the demand and supply of goods and services.  For instance, the huge outcry over “blood diamonds” had proven that consumers could pressure governments to change economic and foreign policies, which subsequently contributed to lessening political strife in African countries.  Siddarth Kara also related that the abolition of slavery began in 1787 in England, driven by 12 individuals who considered it immoral although it was considered a norm during those times.  This consistent effort resulted in England passing the British Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, hence proving that a small yet consistent movement could yield great results.  

Siddarth Kara concluded his talk by stating that NGOs should take up all opportunities to raise funds to conduct research on modern-day slavery and human trafficking, as more accurate research would help the government to craft better laws and policies to effectively address these issues.