Factory workers in the DRC.

The Role of Trafficking in Continuing Instability

These men were not trafficked, but are local nationals serving in the Civil Service Corps in the village of Omar Khatab, Iraq.

Fraud, Manipulation and Indentured Servitude

Laborers in transit, asleep in chairs, waiting at Dhaka airport, Bangladesh.

USAID’s ACT Program in Bangladesh

Expatriate workers slaving away under the burning Maldivian afternoon sun in Male', Maldives.

Addressing Slavery & Slavery Like Practices in Defense & Defense Contracting Industries

Bangladeshi migrant workers, listening to the instructions and orientations in Bangladesh.

Policing Labor Supply Chains

Fishing boats at Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand.

A conversation with E. Benjamin Skinner

E. BENJAMIN SKINNER is a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-day Slavery.

JIPO: Having devoted much of your professional life reporting on human and labor trafficking across the globe, what do you see as the current trend – is the problem of trafficking lessening or worsening?

Skinner: There are no concrete statistics on what the numbers are doing. That should be the first response to that question. These are not people who stand in line, raise their hands, and wait to be counted.  They’re in many cases victims that are convinced that their very survival relies on keeping their victimization hidden.  It is a very hard population to measure. That said, I think there have been some positive trends, like the fact that in the last 12 years, really since I’ve been working on this issue, there have been more than 100 countries that have passed laws against human trafficking.  Now all but, I believe, one American state has state-level laws against human trafficking.  There is a general consensus that this is a real phenomenon globally. There is a general consensus that slavery is a crime against humanity and must be resisted. That’s something that of course has been happening over the past 150 years.

There is an overall will to solve the problem, but as an official at the UNODC said, “There has never been a crime against humanity that has been so broadly talked about with so little resources put towards it.” I think the amount of effort put out by any one of those governments that have passed those laws and the amount of appropriations that have been put towards them is nowhere near equal to the amount, force, and monetary power that the other side (the traffickers) brings.

One of the statistics that I like to cite because it is shocking and shows a lot about priorities and the gap between rhetoric and reality in this country is that the amount of money that we spend on an annual basis to fight trafficking in human beings is less than we spend in a single day to fight the traffic in illegal drugs.  And that’s not to diminish the relative horror of smoking pot, but it is to say that a 15 year old that is smoking pot on a street corner should be considered less of a criminal and a 15 year old sold into trafficking should be considered more of a victim.

JIPO: You have traveled all over the world during your investigations. How broad of an issue do you see labor trafficking as and what are the “hot-spots” or most at risk areas for trafficking?

Skinner: Trafficking is one of those terms of art that can mean a lot of different things among well meaning people. My understanding of what trafficking is, in a nutshell, is the recruitment, transport or harboring of individuals for the purposes of extracting their labor through force, fraud, or coercion. That covers all manner of industry, including the sex industry.

I would say if you take a look across industries, and again going back to my original response, there is no concrete census on this, and I have not tried to measure this in any way, I have to rely on the work that other people do on this, and so the work of folks like Roger Plant at the ILO has been very instructive over the years. The last update on his report was in 2010, the ILO’s estimate was 12.3 million forced laborers worldwide and the vast majority of those are held in industries other than the commercial sex industry.  I would say, taking a look at the global picture, if you were to plot slaves on a map, the vast majority would be in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, on the Indian sub-Continent in other words.  And they would be held in some form of collateralized hereditary debt bondage, in other words they would have had to have had a loan at a certain point and the only way to get that loan is to offer themselves as collateral and work off that debt over a period of months, years, in some cases decades or even generations. That form of slavery is specifically prohibited by the national laws in the countries we are discussing, and yet the success of the slavery is apparent, in lieu of comprehensive law enforcement at the local level, and by local level I am talking of course for example in places like India, at the district levels and the village levels.

JIPO: The Obama administration has been aggressive in its focus on human trafficking, igniting a government-wide campaign against modern slavery,  and making sure that all agencies treat the fight against human trafficking as a priority. What are your thoughts on the Obama administration’s stance and efforts on preventing human trafficking thus far?

Skinner: Oh I totally agree that slavery is bad. It’s not who in Washington says they are against slavery, it’s how high up in their inbox it is.  Where does this stack up when they’re having immigration debate? How does this factor in when they are outlaying budget priorities?  When Congress cut off 8 billion dollars from the Foreign Aid budget last April, did the State department prioritize between Foreign Aid programs, or did they do an across the board cut, which meant cutting funds that had a disproportionate effect on their ability to operate out of the TIP [Trafficking in Persons] budget. The TIP budget was already criminally low, and there is no real intentionality that matches up with the rhetoric.

Now, I want to be very specific on this, because the TIP office themselves have been extraordinarily staffed.  There is no question that Ambassador CdeBaca , in my mind, is far and away the most qualified person, and this is nothing against his predecessors, it’s just the fact of the matter that he is one of the most decorated prosecutors that has put away more traffickers than anyone in the U.S.  He knows this issue inside and outward.  He knows what he is talking about and takes an extraordinarily vigorous attitude and is extraordinarily effective.  The problem is that there is not very much money.  From my perspective, there is very little excuse for this because of all the issues that are no-brainers, I mean you could get Ron Paul on this! When you can get a libertarian to sign up to an issue that involves government funding, and you don’t raise government money for it, there is a problem with leadership on this issue in Washington. Again, I don’t put the blame here on Amb. CdeBaca and the TIP office because they are constitutionally forbidden to go to Congress and raise money. It is the problem of leadership in the White House and it is the problem of leadership among the NGO community that care about this.

There have been a few voices that are going in the other direction on this and that have been helpful, but not helpful enough.  One of those is Holly Burkhalter at the International Justice Mission who has had her finger on the pulse of the funding debate and we are in appropriation season right now, and again she is this lonely voice calling for more resources from the Federal government. But, it has really been a big problem of leadership, not only in the White House, but in Congress as well. The fact that Republicans and Democrats can’t come together on a fundamental issue like the nation’s responsibility to free slaves, which is a principal that has been with us for nearly 150 years. (with the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation). They need to get past the bickering and realize that for slaves, delay is denial.

JIPO: Your recent investigation of the commercial fishing industry is a prime example of the complexity and prevalence of labor trafficking in an increasingly globalized world. Your findings could be shared across all industries as a case study in the labor risks inherent in complex global supply chains.

When did you decide to start the investigation of fishing industry practices in New Zealand and how did the investigation actually begin?

Skinner: We had a tip from a Western diplomatic source that this was a real issue.  We looked into it, and found that folks in New Zealand had been looking into it already, and in fact some very serious folks had been looking into it.  The University of Auckland Business School had put together a comprehensive investigation where they interviewed dozens of people who were survivors of trafficking situations.  Although, unidentified as trafficking situations by the New Zealand government, they fit the description of trafficking based on their accounts of their experiences.

This University got involved when one of the foreign charter vessels sank in calm waters in the summer of 2010.  The subsequent investigation revealed that several of the survivors told the New Zealand rescuers that responded to their S.O.S that they had been in forced labor and debt bondage situations while working. That prompted the University to the initial investigation. There were several follow up investigations in the local and national media in New Zealand, by a guy named Michael Field who just stayed with this subject relentlessly and doggedly. And yet by the time we got involved with it, it was sort of a low level discussion in New Zealand.

I realized that from my perspective as an American and from the global perspective, what was missing here were the critical links between the fish that were being caught on these vessels that were known or suspected to have resulted from forced labor.  We identified 10 out of 26 operation vessels that had at least one known allegation of slave labor against it in the period that we were looking at it.  We did intensive interviews with 6 of the vessels.  Five at first, and then we talked to more from a 6th vessel after the investigation was published. What we wanted to look at were the links between fish caught on those vessels and the American market.  What we found was when we did that it was a very complex and difficult investigation.

If you want to find out where your fish come from that you’re buying in the supermarket, a warehouse store or a restaurant, you may be able to find out the general part of the globe that it comes from. In most cases, it comes from a part of the globe other than the U.S. (in fact 86% of seafood is in the U.S. today is imported). But if you want to find out who the distributers are, who the importers are, what the specific name of the fisheries that process the fish once it was caught and landed, and particularly the name of the vessel it was caught and landed on, you can’t because these companies won’t tell you.  I think, stepping back that should be an issue of interest of anyone who wants to put these fish in their body, whether you give a damn about modern day slavery or not, that should be a topic of interest. It certainly was for us, which is why we got started on the investigation.

JIPO: When conducting this type of investigation, what were the risks that you encountered? How dangerous is the trafficking market?

Skinner: The risks that I encounter are really nothing compared to those who are aiding me in my investigation, particularly those who are bearing witness through me of their own experiences.  And I really can’t underscore this enough, I guess I am not surprised by virtue of the way people think about these things, but the risks are borne by those who speak up, who fly against everything they have been threatened with on the part of the traffickers and the part of others in their lives and talk about their own exploitation to me, trust me, and trust my assurances that I will to do everything in my power to protect them.  Frankly, if I am doing everything in my power to protect them and to protect confederates, such as drivers, intermediaries, informants, if they are all safe, then I will be fine.  Their safety is genuinely my primary concern here.

Make no mistake, we are dealing with very very violent individuals who take a very vigorous attitude toward protecting their business model and unfortunately, the source that I chose to write about, and he wasn’t the one I talked to most, I thought his story was compelling and was more willing to put himself out there. The person I chose to cover for the Bloomberg story was immediately targeted within 48 hours and was driven from his home by agents from the recruiting company who had gone to threaten him and threaten his brother to try and get him to retract his statements.  He immediately had to go into hiding and I coordinated with some local confederates that provided him with protection.  That was the first time in my experience where that happened, where someone was targeted as a result of this. This was also my first time doing a major supply chain investigation. In the past, I have gone after Nigerian networks in South Africa, their stock and trade mostly is crack, and they’re more worried about being busted on drug charges.  They didn’t care about being exposed for trafficking, because in South Africa there is no stand-alone law against human trafficking. In a situation like that, yeah they are scarier looking individuals, but in a sense the bar is a little lower in terms of my safety because they don’t really give a damn if people know or not if they are dealing girls, as long as I don’t say they are dealing crack.

JIPO: The workers you encountered were coerced into signing contracts that they could not read, did not understand, or were forced to sign before reading. As a result, these workers were forced in to, as you have stated, “modern-day slavery.” How can private companies, nongovernmental organizations and governments make sure that these types of contracts are not written or signed – anywhere along their supply chain, or by their sub-contractors or contractors lower on the supply-chain?

Skinner: I think first of all, by putting it in codes of practice, that’s a good first step.  But a code of practice can’t be the end of the discussion.  You need to do comprehensive auditing. In general terms, let’s say you have a company who is making banana crème pies.  You send out codes of conducts to the bakeries and distributors, you send out a CoC to all of these folks. You then have to find out where the wheat comes from, where the cream comes from, the bananas, how are the bananas sourced?  If I’m running a company I look at the weak points and I look at the areas where the elements of the products are coming from, in places of the world with high rates of corruption, with low per-capita income, that are listed on the Department of Labor annual list with goods made with forced or child labor.  I see, whoa, bananas from ‘x’ are an issue here, and at that point, I say this is a real challenge and I need to do some auditing.  You bring in a 3rd party auditor.

If I’m a private corporation, or even a public corporation, and my primary interest is maximizing profits for my share-holders, I’m also primarily interested in making sure that over the long term this is sustainable and part of that is not using forced labor because you eventually you’re going to get found out.  The dark alternative is somebody like me coming in sniffing around your supply chain and writing about you in Businessweek. And even short of that, there are criminal sanctions, there’s The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, there is a tariff act, the supply chain provisions in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA) the California Transparency in Supplies Chain Act. Any of these corporations that have compliance officers know this.  In many cases, they will do the minimum amount necessary. I think rapidly you’re going to find that the minimum amount necessary isn’t enough. A lot of companies that are doing the disclosures necessary under the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act are still going to get tagged. They’re still going to get hit now and then because they haven’t been as vigorous as they should be in terms of auditing all the way down the chain.

For me the big lesson is to understand the whole picture because most consumers in the modern economy do not have the capacity to go out and find out where the palm oil going into their fries or potato chips, where that comes from.  But a CEO of the company that is selling or distributing the potato chips does.  There is a real reliance, there is a relationship there.  Most CEOs of companies that rely on consumers purchasing their products will talk about how the consumer is king and how that relationship is essential and once the bond of trust is broken then the business model starts to fray at the edges, or rot from the core. I think going forward you are going to see more and more, I hope, CEOs saying “okay, I am responsible here, regardless if I am criminally culpable (and increasingly they will be criminally culpable) I am responsible for that relationship.”  They are the “guardian” of consumer trust and in order to be a responsible guardian they have to know what is in the supply chain.

JIPO: Your investigation uncovered that red flags in the commercial fishing supply chain were ignored by the major corporate buyers of the product. What is your advice for spotting red flags in supply chains, and how can these red flags be addressed immediately?

Skinner: Just to reiterate, look at Transparency International’s index in terms of corruption within countries, look at the Department of Labor’s annual list in terms of goods produced with force and child labor, look at the TIP offices’ rankings for countries based on how they’re doing in terms of monitoring and combating slavery, and then figure out where the points of contact are in your supply chain. And then go further.

The fact is, in this country we’ve had a number of high profile cases over the last 10 -15 years of goods being produced through slave labor and sold to American consumers, but they were produced on American soil, they said made in the USA, they were from places like American Samoa, using this same form of recruiter-driven indentured servitude. And there are traffickers who are sitting in jail whose crime was using slaves to manufacture goods that were sold to American consumers, and they were operating on American soil. So you can’t do this on the quick and dirty, you can’t say ‘OK, we don’t have any points of contact with low-ranking countries on Transparency International’s list, or low-ranking countries on TIP report annually, so we don’t have any exposure’.

I thought one American company’s response was quite instructive, their initial response was the “Department of Labor does not list New Zealand as a high risk country”. Well, sad to say I found otherwise. And about 10 days after our Bloomberg Businessweek story came out, a comprehensive ministerial report, which had been in the works for several months was released, and it was in many ways more damning than the Bloomberg Businessweek story.

So, as a CEO of a company you have to get ahead of the story. You have to have more information than the other people. There is really no excuse. If I’m a shareholder in one of these companies, there is really no excuse that I’m going to accept on the part of a corporate executive, for not having that information. For not knowing what’s in my supply chain.

There’s all this debate in this country over executive compensation, and that’s an interesting debate. I don’t get into it. But one thing I will say is if I’m paying a CEO a million dollars plus they damn well better know what the conditions are of the people in their supply chain that are at the bottom end of the pay scale. And they need to be responsive on those questions immediately.

JIPO: In your investigation of the New Zealand fishing industry you mentioned how often times corporate observers would report little to no incidences of abuse occurring on these fishing crafts.  What do you think is behind conflicting reports of those being abused and those observing the working environments, and what do you think needs to be done in order to increase the accountability from all points of view of these types of investigations?

Skinner: Here we are getting into an area where legitimately I would be speculating a little bit because we are talking about motives of people who were presented with much of the same information as I found in Official Information Act requests, etc and just responded differently.  I don’t want to get into speculating on motives.

But I will say this. I will say this. In very general terms, you can…Part of the problem lies in that initial question that you asked me and that I asked back to you, which is how do you define human trafficking? And if the question was, you know, talk to me about the problem of homicide in the world today and how do we solve it.  And I asked you what homicide is you would say one human being killing another. It would be very kind of straightforward.

With human trafficking, you go to a place like South Africa where they don’t have a stand-alone law against human trafficking. And I’ll talk to social workers in the Social Ministry, government employees, whose job it is to protect victims of human trafficking even if that isn’t a specific stand-alone law in the country, these are still victims of something, whether they’re child abuse or rape, and you’ll ask them what human trafficking is, as I do (this was an investigation I did in Time Magazine, published in January 2010), and they won’t be able to ID a victim of HT.

In one instance there was a case we encountered in the course of our investigation, a girl who said she was 15 years old who had been recruited from her township in Eastern Cape, who had been brought several hours to the north.  She originally thought she was going to work, I’m forgetting, it was either in bar or restaurant. The recruiter had sold her and her best friend for $70 in total (the equivalent of $70 in Rand) and a bag of crack. She was beaten up, she tried to escape three times, each time she was captured. Among her clients were police, who would very much participate in protecting her traffickers.

Her best friend who was sold with her, who I interviewed that night in a hospice, died a week afterwards. She had AIDS, she had tuberculosis, and she was three months pregnant.

When this young woman, this girl who claimed she was 15, she was working on the streets, asked for help, we – my photographer and I – we  helped her get into a shelter where she could be protected, anonymously, some 8 hours away from the situation. And obviously at this point we’re talking about a crime.  We reported the crime to a local police lieutenant who we trusted, (by local I mean away from that particular place because of course the police around Bloemfontein had all kinds of problems). We got a social worker who would be helping the young girl recover.  The social worker goes in and interviews her, and about 12 hours later, very triumphantly calls me up and says “I have wonderful news this wasn’t a victim of human trafficking because she went willingly”. And in essence this is the same argument that has been used over and over again by government and host countries that say “Oh well these people aren’t victims of human trafficking because they came to this country willingly, they knew the risks they were getting involved in, well in many cases they didn’t know the risks they were getting involved in, but that’s neither here nor there.  They’re claiming that because there is the desire to move at the outset, that they are somehow responsible or anyway not victims, once the true elements of trafficking come into play. The force, the fraud the coercion, the stress, the intimidation.

There is a reason why the Palermo Protocol is phrased the way it is phrased and that was specifically to address that misconception that modern-day slavery is exactly the same as old slavery, where people were taken in slave raids.

JIPO: The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act requires all retailers based in California with more than $100 million in global sales to publicly disclose their efforts to monitor and combat slavery in their supply chains. Are more states attempting to implement similar measures? Do you see more governments worldwide considering this type of legislation?

Skinner: I know of no other states following suit on this and they should.  I know that at the federal level, Carolyn Maloney, the congresswoman from New York, has been pushing for Federalization of the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act.  I think its HR 2759 if I’m remembering right. It’s in Committee right now. She got resistance from the Republicans on this, and it should be one of these bipartisan issues, we’re talking about slavery here. On this particular legislation the way it was phrased Initially, I think it was zero cost to government.

And you know, I’m not in an advocacy role, I’m not saying it was a perfect piece of legislation, I’m not saying I’m encouraging passage of it, but I think there is a general need for more than just SB657 [California Transparency in Supply Chains Act], there is a general need for other tools, for prosecutors at all levels to use. More to the point for consumers to use, in order to understand what’s in the products we buy.

JIPO: ISOA is a standards-based association supported by a Code of Conduct signed by all organizational members deploying staff in the field. During your investigation, you came across various standards measures, both from the private sector and the public sector. What do you see as the benefits of such codes of conduct?

Skinner: Basically, in general terms, COC is useful for when someone like me calls you up and you are a CEO of a major, multi-national corporation, with over a billion dollars in revenue every year, and you have supply chains that extend halfway around the globe. If your suppliers have a COC, you can say to me immediately, “ Hey, they signed this COC and we took them at their word”.  That is sort of the baseline, that’s the beginning. And its better to be able to give me that response than it is to say “we don’t know what is in our supply chain”. This gives you that much more leverage, beyond the obvious economic leverage of contract versus no contract, to go out to your suppliers and say, “hey you signed this COC, I’m not being told that things aren’t quite so clear here, what’s the deal” and you can have a conversation. And I think that that’s a useful tool. But is it the end of the conversation, the end of discussion?  No, absolutely not. Do I think it’s generally a good thing? Sure, it’s not going to do any harm.

JIPO: What conclusions have you drawn from your extensive investigations?

Skinner: Slavery is bad. I guess, to sort of echo the sentiment of that official in the UNODC press release last week,  in the current world, there is no crime that is more spoken about and more condemned by public officials and less focused on in terms of resources and in terms of real hard effort.

JIPO: In Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Public Protection Force (APPF), an Afghan Government security force, is currently transitioning in to replace private security companies as the only security providers to protect companies and organizations working in country. However, the Afghan Government has been reluctant to sign contracts to provide protection due to clauses regarding human and labor trafficking.  What must be done to make sure that all contracts ban the use of human trafficking, labor trafficking, and abusive working conditions?

Skinner: This is a tough one in terms of Afghanistan in particular because of the very complicated relationship obviously that the US has with Afghanistan. I was an election observer in Afghanistan, and the beneficiary of my PSD, they were private security military contractors, and they were extraordinarily professional, and they were terrific, and I’m sure they were great guys in their private lives. And I’m sure that’s how most of the professionals are.

But I think because of infamous cases and there is a real need for the industry to partner with non-profit organizations whose core missions might not look similar at all.  But I think particularly an industry organization like you guys, have a vested interest in making sure that industry officials understand their vested interest in protecting the brand of their field overall.  A big part of that is making sure the employees are doing the right thing by the populations among whom they work.  It was a little shocking to most Americans – most Americans will remember in the Iraq years, the way that PSC skirted even the most basic laws in Iraq and were held to a different set of standards and took advantage of that latitude in just a few cases. Now by no means can you extend this to the broader industry.

I think doing regular comprehensive self assessments and bringing in 3rd party auditors to say “How are we doing?” would go a long way towards taking away some of the negative connotations that the term PSC currently bears. And herein I’m not just talking about human trafficking. And certainly COCs are a key element of that.  As with other industries, you have to move beyond COC to real accountability and accountability involves truly independently third party auditors coming in and accounting.

The people of Touareg and the Touareg region.

Republic of Mali on the Brink of Collapse

ONE of Africa’s few irreversible democracies is in deep trouble. The west African Republic of Mali suffered a military coup in March, as well as a major loss of territory in its vast desert north to Touareg rebels determined to carve out their own independent state.

What is behind this major reversal of Mali’s democratic process?  In one sense, we can call it “Gadhafi’s revenge.” The late “Leader” of Libya did not trust most Libyans.  He relied mainly on members of his own clan and immediate family.  For that reason, he recruited soldiers from among nomadic tribes in countries along Libya’s southern border as his main fighting force. He kept his own Libyan army weak and disorganized.  During the 2011 uprising against his rule, Gadhafi relied on his African fighters to kill Libyan rebels without restraint. Thanks to NATO airpower, Gadhafi’s fighters were defeated.

Both African fighters and guest workers in Libya had to flee toward the end of 2011 back to their countries of origin, Mali, Niger and Chad. In all of these countries, there was a severe refugee burden that continues to this day. In Mali, returning fighters from the Touareg tribe came across the Libyan border heavily armed and looking for a fight with both the Malian military and the Mali Government.

During the fighting against the Mali army in the country’s northern regions during the period October 2011-February 2012, the Touareg rebels outgunned and outfought the Mali army. To make matters even more drastic, Mali soldiers taken prisoner were summarily executed. Needless to say, Mali army morale plummeted, and complaints were aimed at military headquarters and the political leadership in the capital Bamako for lack of appropriate equipment and supplies, and lack of support. The fact that the Mali military units ran out of ammunition early in the fight indicates that most of the money for arms and ammunition was most likely stolen by the military hierarchy.

In March 2012, military garrisons in Bamako saw their political leaders tied up totally in a presidential election campaign. President Amadou Amani Touré was completing his second and final five-year term and was essentially a lame duck.  Younger officers erupted in mutinous frustration at one military base outside of Bamako in late March, and proceeded to overthrow the regime.

While Mali’s current crisis was precipitated by the recent return of Touareg rebel fighters from Libya, the Touareg problem has a long history that has troubled all Mali governments since independence in 1960.  The nomadic tribes that inhabit Mali’s vast northern reaches—Toureg, Toubou and Fulani/Peul— have been second class citizens from the very beginning. In pre-colonial days the northern tribes dominated.  They controlled the trade routes from the fertile valleys of the Niger and Senegal rivers north to the Mediterranean coast.  They traded in grains, salt, gold and slaves.

With the advent of colonialism, the northern tribes were cast into virtual oblivion.  Modern transport systems replaced the camels, and the lucrative slave trade was abolished. Because of bad governance and dictatorial leaders, independent Mali’s economic development was blocked until the beginning of the 21st. century.  The northern tribes received little by way of education, public health and infrastructure. Needless to say, the northern tribes, especially the Touareg, entered a state of insurgency during the 1980s.  Various efforts were made at reconciliation and economic integration that succeeded for short periods.  Touareg fighters were integrated into the regular army.  But poverty and exclusion prevailed in the north.

With Mali’s adoption of a multiparty democracy in 1991, Touareg and other northern tribes were able to participate in parliamentary discourse.  But little was done for northern development. Most foreign assistance was concentrated in the heavily populated Niger valley to the south. Hence, when Touareg fighters returned from Libya, the die was cast for a resumption of insurgency. In addition to the rebels, most of  the Touareg officers and men who had been integrated into the regular army defected to the incoming fighters from Libya.

As of early April 2012, the Touareg fighters have captured the major northern cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. Several hundred thousand refugees have fled to the south. Having captured the major northern cities, the rebels have declared a cease-fire and announced the establishment of the independent Republic of Azawad.

The army is in disarray.  Having taken over the government, the young army officers did not know what to do next. Fortunately, the organization of West African states (ECOWAS) has demanded a return to a constitutional government. The military junta has agreed, and it looks like a transitional civilian government will be formed to bring about elections under the leadership of the President of the National Assembly. The elections that had been scheduled for May 2012 will likely be held toward the end of the year. The outgoing President Amani Touré has officially resigned to make everything constitutional.

Meanwhile, what is to be done about the rebel takeover of the major northern towns, and the establishment of the independent “State of Azawad?”  Mali is effectively divided into two parts. Events in the north are especially troubling because the Touareg fighters have been heavily infiltrated by Islamists from the Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), and by Jihadists from within their own tribe known as Ansar e-Dine. As the Toureg fighters have taken over towns, the jihadists have taken over civil administration. These folks are also profiting from the West African drug trade, from hostage taking and from the general dissatisfaction of the population.

While the Touareg fighters are happy with their declaration of independence, the Islamist fighters want to continue south to take over the rest of Mali. They are threatening to move into the heavily populated areas in order to impose Sharia law. The tourist trade, which depends on facilities in the ancient northern towns, has been suspended in the normally important cool season. Mining companies producing gold and exploring for oil are likely to suspend operations out of security concerns. The United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is in a panic because the northern city of Timbuktu is a world heritage site, and therefore in danger of destruction from warfare.

The Organization of West African States (ECOWAS) says it has 3,000 troops available to help the army of Mali retake the north. The French have said they will not send troops, but will be able to help with logistics. The distances are great, and the supply lines will be very long.  Everything will have to be moved by air.  The longer the secessionist rebels and their Islamic allies are allowed to dig in, the harder it will be to dislodge them. Time will also allow Islamist fighters to come in from Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Pakistan. Refugees keep moving south to escape the invaders. If ECOWAS had a tough time in Liberia in the 1990s, Mali in 2012-2013 will be a much greater challenge.

U.S. Congress

Translating Policy Initiatives in to Successful Compliance

From the Editor's Desk

A Bi-Monthly Review of ISOA’s Activities: March-April 2012

Spring is always a busy time, but add the early onset of warm weather, and things certainly heated up. The U.S. Presidential election picked up steam as the Republican primary finally shook out the leading candidate, and Congress presented several bills pertinent to ISOA members. The first iteration of efforts to implement some of the Commission on Wartime Contracting recommendations was released, followed shortly thereafter by twin bills in the House and Senate on labor trafficking. Talks about the drawdown in Afghanistan kept up their usual volume, while Iraq took some of the spotlight as it continued to take control over governmental functions on a large scale. The issuance of visas is still a problem, and companies and NGOs from all over the world  continue to see slow progress. Conflict erupted in hotspots in Syria, Mali and Sudan. Amid discussions of sequestration in the U.S. Department of Defense budget starting in 2013, international calls for intervention to quell these conflicts fell on mostly deaf ears, except for continued attention from the United Nations.

SPOTLIGHT Standards, Ethics & Compliance

ISOA was founded 11 years ago in April 2001 with the ISOA Code of Conduct, a document created by, now ISOA President, Doug Brooks in coordination with NGOs, human rights advocates and local people in Africa in order to ensure high standards for companies working there. Today, our Code of Conduct defines ISOA’s efforts to foster a global partnership of private sector and nongovernmental organizations committed to providing the highest level of service in their critical support in fragile environments worldwide. To this end, ISOA tracks, responds to and participates in various standards processes and important issues regarding our code. March and April were particularly active for ISOA’s compliance efforts.

Human Trafficking

There has been a significant amount of movement on human trafficking issues in Washington over the past two months. President Obama’s Interagency Task Force To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons met in mid-March to report on progress at all USG agencies to address the issue. Twin bills were also announced from the House and Senate addressing trafficking. The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of State testified on human trafficking and abusive labor practices involving Third-country nationals hired to perform services under contracts or subcontracts to the federal government on overseas contracts. ISOA and the ABA had begun in February to plan a labor trafficking conference for 1 May—and the climate in DC was certainly ripe.

International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers: Draft Charter

The long-awaited release of the ICOC-PSP Draft Charter was met with careful coverage by ISOA. Our Private Security Companies Committee met to review the new document, and welcomed Mark DeWitt from Triple Canopy for a webinar. ISOA subsequently coordinated industry comments on the Draft Charter. We await next steps in the coming months.

Fundamentals of Ethics & Compliance Seminar

ISOA Member Steptoe & Johnson hosted a members-only seminar in their Washington office on ethics and compliance in March. The comprehensive event was a must-attend for compliance officers and was a great opportunity to share experiences and best practices

Interested in sponsoring a unique event, advertising in an ISOA publication or both? Contact Jason Kennedy at jkennedy@stability-operations.org for more information.