Feds: Monitoring abusive diplomats is up to embassy chiefs
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
July 10, 2009
The U.S. State Department is placing the onus of monitoring the relationship between diplomats and the household workers they've often abused in the Washington area on the embassy chiefs who are known to turn a blind eye, according to a department report obtained by The Examiner.
"The Department will make it clear to all Chiefs of Missions that it will ultimately look to them to ensure that the treatment accorded the domestic workers of their employees comports with contractual and other legal obligations," the report said.
The department was required to issue the report on the feasibility of monitoring diplomats' employees because of a law passed in December. The law was pushed through Congress following a Government Accountability Office investigation that found 42 documented allegations of diplomats engaging in human trafficking since 2000, many in the Washington area. Of those, 19 have resulted in Department of Justice investigations in the past three years.
The GAO found that the Justice Department investigations were often hampered by the State Department moving too slowly to have diplomatic immunity lifted.
Despite the new law requiring the State Department to take a series of steps to correct those problems, the department remains inflexible on immunity.
"In light of the immunity enjoyed by diplomatic personnel," the report said, "the department is not in a position to directly monitor the actual daily treatment of domestic workers by diplomats."
The State Department also concluded it would not take steps to create a compensation fund for victims that was strongly suggested by Congress.
That is a "fundamental misunderstanding of the problem," said Vania Leveille, who works on human trafficking issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU suggested diplomats put money in a fund when they bring workers to the United States. Without a fund, "there's no way to hold diplomats accountable," she said.
Diplomats, Leveille said, are known to flee the country as soon as issues of human trafficking are raised.
For example, a Tanzanian woman is still waiting on her former boss, a Tanzanian diplomat, to pay the more than $1 million he owes her. The woman won the cash in a Maryland lawsuit after a judge concluded the diplomat enslaved her in his Bethesda home. Among the abuses listed: The diplomat made the woman shovel snow in her bare feet.
