Household workers enslaved by diplomats not just a D.C. issue
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
June 17, 2009
The Washington area is not alone in its struggle to crack down on foreign diplomats who hide behind immunity while they enslave household workers, a report released by the State Department said.
The annual human trafficking report released Tuesday found that France and Belgium are also among the countries trying to better handle the diplomats.
France, like the United States, is considered among the top countries in fighting human trafficking, the report said.
And yet, “Men, women and children continue to be trafficked for the purpose of forced labor,” the report said. “Often their ‘employers’ are diplomats who enjoy diplomatic immunity.”
In Belgium, home to many diplomats as the center of the European Union government, the trafficking of sex and domestic workers “continues to be committed by some members of the international diplomatic community,” the report said.
The issue has long been a concern in the Washington area. Last year, the Government Accountability Office issued a report citing 42 cases in which diplomats — the majority of whom live in the region — abused their household workers. In most of those cases, the diplomats are not brought to justice, slinking out of the U.S. before their immunity can be lifted and they’re prosecuted.
In 2008, a Tanzanian diplomat living in Bethesda fled the country just after his former employee won a $1 million lawsuit for the diplomat’s forcing her to work in horrid conditions, including shoveling snow in bare feet. The employee has yet to be paid, court records show.
Officials in the U.S., France and Belgium are fighting back, the report said.
The U.S. is implementing a law passed by Congress in December that requires constructing a database to better track diplomats’ workers. France is working to better identify victims. Belgium has taken to prosecuting offenders, including seven members of an Arab royal family accused of enslaving 17 girls while staying at a Brussels hotel.
Meanwhile, officials said the economic crises and the resulting growth of poverty have caused a jump in the worldwide trade of human slaves.
“Persons who are under economic stress are more likely to fall prey to the wiles of the traffickers,” said Luis de Baca, the U.S. ambassador for human trafficking issues. The report added 12 new countries to the human trafficking watch list, bringing the total to 52 of primarily African, Asian and Middle Eastern states.
