Former U.S. Ambassador Heather M. Hodges Speeches

Ambassador Heather M. Hodges' Remarks at the Opening of Anti-Trafficking Conference

November 17, 2003

 

Ambassador Hodges at the Anti-Trafficking Conference

Three years ago, a 17-year old Moldovan girl named Victoria had just graduated from school in Chisinau. Finding herself without money and without work, she jumped at a friend's offer to find her a job in Turkey. Victoria's friend drove her through Romania, but then turned west towards the Serbian border. At this point Victoria realized something was terribly wrong.

Her so-called "friend" took Victoria to the border, where she was seized by a group of Serbian men. They gave her a passport that said she was 18 and led her on foot into Serbia. There they raped her and told her that if she resisted, they would kill her. Victoria was now a piece of property that they owned - she had become part of an illicit trade that stripped her of any proof of identity and transported her to a place where she had no legal recourse, no agency to intervene on her behalf, and no one to turn to for help. Over the next two years, Victoria was bought and sold by different brothel owners ten times for an average price of $1,500. Eventually, Victoria became pregnant and, fearing a forced abortion, managed to escape into hiding.

Victoria was a debt slave. Her "debt" was the amount her owner had paid to buy her from her previous owner. Any payment for her services went straight to her owner. She was held in slavery until the money she supposedly owed had been paid to her owner, at which point she was sold again and began to work off her purchase cost again. Debt slavery fuels the terrible phenomenon known as trafficking- in-persons.

Despite the horrifying nature of her story, today we would call Victoria's experience average - even lucky. Of the thousands of girls that are trafficked every year, most never return and are never heard from again.

What is clear from this story is that traffickers prey on poor, vulnerable women. They operate internationally. They depend on poorly paid officials at borders and customs -- to look the other way, for a small fee.

What is also clear is that this is a violent crime, a crime that deprives its victims of their basic human rights. Those victims that survive -- and many do not -- are scarred for life.

We are all here today because we want to eliminate this modern form of slavery. We all want to catch the perpetrators, lock them up, and make the lives of vulnerable women and children safe and secure.

Moldova has made progress in the fight against trafficking in persons. According to the Ministry of Interior, in 2002 Moldovan police broke up 30 trafficking rings, and in the first eight months of 2003, it has already broken up another 20. These are encouraging developments.

This conference is evidence that the international community stands ready to help Moldova make further progress to increase the number of successful prosecutions and end this scourge.

Cross-border cooperation must improve. Source, transit, and destination countries must work together to find creative and effective solutions. And all of this should be done without putting the victims at further risk.

The problem of trafficking is a major priority of the U.S. government. The U.S. government is committed to working with Moldova and other countries represented here to fight it. President Bush demonstrated the importance of this issue in his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in September. I will read a portion of his remarks:

"There's a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable. The victims of the sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life -- an underground of brutality and lonely fear. Those who create these victims and profit from their sale must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery…

"We must now show new energy in fighting back an old evil. Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and more than a century after slavery was ended in the last strongholds, the trade of human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time."

I know that President Voronin, like President Bush, has made this issue a priority for his government. With this kind of top-level commitment, we believe real progress is possible. I hope we are able to achieve concrete results -- in the coming months and in the longer term -- in prevention, law enforcement, and protection. The problem is ultimately rooted in poverty and corruption, and we must fight both. It will not be an easy road, but I believe the combined efforts of governments, international organizations, journalists, and NGOs dedicated to fighting trafficking will ultimately prove stronger than the trafficking networks.

At this point, I would like to turn the floor over to the next speaker, who is well-known to all the Moldovan participants at this conference and to those of us in the diplomatic community here in Moldova. Valerian Cristea was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in 2001. In the same year he became the chairman of the National Committee on Combating Trafficking in Persons, an interagency working group that guides the government's anti-trafficking efforts. Although I have only known the Deputy Prime Minister for about a month, I know he is committed to fighting trafficking in Moldova. It is my pleasure to turn the floor over to Deputy Prime Minister Cristea.