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United Nations: Reforms and Finances (last updated February 9, 2002) (back to top) Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has become a more active player on the world stage, getting involved in conflicts such as the fall of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. As of January 2002, the UN maintained 15 peacekeeping operations worldwide, the largest being those in Sierra Leone, East Timor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kosovo. At the same time, the UN has also seen its relationship with the United States, its largest single contributor and debtor, become more complicated and confrontational, most visibly in the area of finances. In recent years, the United States has withheld contributions to the UN's budget in order to force organizational reforms, changes in how the United States' share of the UN's budget is calculated, and to prevent the funding of groups that encourage or conduct abortions. The UN system is composed of several different bodies, programs and agencies. The entire system expended about $10 billion in 1997, but its most controversial aspects are the UN's regular and peacekeeping budgets. The UN regular budget (about $1.25 billion in 2000) and the UN peacekeeping budget (about $1.8 billion in 2000 after peaking at about $3.4 billion in 1994) are funded by regular assessments of member states. The UN is particularly dependent on member states, since it has no reserves, capital, or borrowing powers. Like all other members, the United States is assessed a share of the UN's regular budget and a share of its peacekeeping operations. As the country with the largest share of the world's economy, the United States has been assessed the highest share of any country, but these rates have dropped due to recent reforms; the regular budget assessment was previously 25 percent but dropped to 22 percent in 2001, and the peacekeeping assessment was previously around 31 percent but will drop to about 25 percent by 2004. The next largest contributors to the regular UN budget are Japan (about 20 percent), Germany (about 9.5 percent), France (about 6 percent), the United Kingdom (about 5.5 percent) and Italy (about 5 percent). Such changes in assessment rates were the result of several years of fighting between the Clinton administration and conservative Republicans, particularly Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), and then negotiations between Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and other UN member states. The debate also involved the United States' non-payment of assessed dues, a debt that began during the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s over policy differences and has continued ever since. By September 2000, the United States was still the UN's largest debtor, owing $1.9 billion ($430 million for the regular budget, and $1.5 billion for peacekeeping and international tribunals) for past and current assessments, two-thirds of the total due. Such an amount is about one one-thousandth of the United State's total federal budget, which in 2000 was about $2 trillion, with far more spent on defense spending ($295 billion) and on net interest payments ($223 billion) (for more on the federal budget, go here).     North Atlantic Treaty Organization (last updated May 14, 2002) (back to top) Created by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an alliance committed to the collective defense of its member countries in Europe and North America. In the 1990s, it has also taken a more active role ensuring stability through Europe, as seen by its actions responding to the 1999 crisis in Kosovo. There were originally 10 European and two North American countries in NATO. Between 1952 and 1982, four more European nations joined the alliance. In 1999, three more countries joined, bringing the number to 19. Nine countries in Eastern Europe expressed interest in joining NATO in 1999, and were participating as of 2000 in NATO's Member Action Plan, which helps would-be member countries prepare for membership. NATO's original 12 member countries were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland all joined together in 1999. Beginning in the early 1990s, Russia and the Ukraine have become involved with NATO and cooperated with them on several security-related programs, though neither country is actually a member of NATO. Russia suspended its participation in some of these programs for a year in protest over NATO's military involvement in Kosovo, but has strengthened its ties with NATO since then. On May 14, 2002, NATO and Russia formed the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council, a body where the NATO members and Russia will work as equal partners in areas of common interest. Sources: NATO is on-line here. A May 14, 2002 press release on the first meeting of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council is on-line here. World Trade Organization (last updated: July 14, 2001) (back to top) To some, it is an international organization that promotes free trade and settles disputes between nations. To others, it is the most visible component of a conspiracy to undermine United States sovereignty, environmental protections, and/or development in the Third World. The conflict between these different views came to a head in Seattle in December 1999, when the member countries of the World Trade Organization met in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a new round of trade negotiations dealing especially with the politically difficult issue of agriculture. Protesters with different agendas but one common enemy took over the city, leading Seattle's mayor to declare a state of civil emergency, and the WTO talks ultimately collapsed without agreement on major issues. Founded on January 1, 1995, the World Trade Organization is the outgrowth of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international agreement that reduced participating countries' tariffs and set rules for trade. The original GATT was negotiated by 23 countries in 1946 and took effect in 1948. Countries then took part in seven more rounds of multilateral negotiations, using the multilateral setting to achieve and package tariff reductions that might have been impossible otherwise. These rounds grew in size, scope and length; the last round, the Uruguay Round, involved 123 countries, covered trade from toothpaste and genetic structures to telecommunications, and lasted seven and a half years from 1986 to 1994. Even broader in scope and has more formal mechanisms to create rules and resolve disputes, the WTO is an official organization that implements and enforces the GATT and other agreements. Whereas the GATT dealt mostly with goods, the WTO also covers services and traded intellectual property consisting of inventions, creations and designs. Under WTO agreements, countries cannot normally discriminate against trading partners. Countries must treat all partners as "most favored" trading partners, meaning that if a country offers a trade benefit to one trading partner it must offer it to all other "most favored" partners. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the WTO, at least from some critics' perspective, is its dispute-settling mechanism. As members of the WTO, countries agree to settle trade disputes through the WTO's court-like resolution process instead of taking action unilaterally. Effectively, countries accuse another for having protective or discriminatory policies, and if successful in their complaint, the other country must change its policy accordingly. This becomes controversial because countries have different environmental and labor standards, and laws or rules promulgated for reasons not necessarily related to trade can be struck down in the name of free trade. Two cases in particular have caught attention in the United States. In both cases, pro-environment laws or rules were struck down as anti-trade by the WTO. In 1991, the WTO struck down a provision of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act that was designed to protect dolphins from tuna-fishing operations (dolphins are trapped in nets designed to catch yellowfish tuna unless the nets are specially designed to be "dolphin-safe"). Under the act, if a country exporting tuna to the United States could not prove that it met the US's dolphin-protection standards, then the US government would embargo all imports of fish from that country. The WTO ruled that the US could not ban imports simply because an exporting country had different policies; holding otherwise would allow countries to impose trade restrictions unilaterally. A few years later, Venezuela (and later Brazil) complained that the United States was applying rules that discriminated against gasoline imports. The US's Environmental Protection Agency had implemented a rule in 1993 that requires gasoline refineries to make cleaner gas; refineries were judged based on past performance and when past performance could not be determined, they were judged on 1990 data for all oil refineries. In May 1996, the WTO ruled that the US rule was discriminatory and did not fall within certain exceptions for environmental reasons. The United States adopted a new rule in 1997. These and other rulings do not necessarily mean that the WTO is anti-environment or anti-labor, but it does mean that pro-environment policies in the United States have to be designed in ways that do not overly discriminate against other countries. In the dolphin case, for example, the WTO upheld other provisions that required tuna products to meet certain standards before being labeled "dolphin-safe," thus allowing for a consumer-based approach that could accomplish the same goals more indirectly. Beyond dispute-settling, WTO decisions are made by the membership as a whole through ministers or officials. The WTO does not delegate power to a board of directors and reaches decisions generally through consensus and also by a majority vote based on a "one country, one vote" principle that gives the United States, France, and Zimbabwe equal voting rights. Within the WTO, some countries have formed formal alliances to have a more consistent and powerful position. Most prominent are the European Union (also known as the European Communities) and the Association of South East Asian Nations; some countries have also formed the Cairns Group to promote greater liberalization of agriculture policy. The WTO currently has more than 130 members. In order to join, countries have to make commitments to open their markets and abide by the WTO's rules and must negotiate with certain member countries such as the United States. That more than 30 other countries (including China, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia) are currently negotiating for membership says something about the benefits of WTO membership. WTO proponents say that developing countries benefit by having rights and obligations due to their participation; the alternative would be trying to form relations individually with much more powerful countries. Also, WTO proponents say that developing countries can take advantage of the obligations by using them as cover for imposing changes that may be unpopular and politically risky in the short-term. Sources: The World Trade Organization is on-line here. Paul R. Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld, International Economics: Theory and Policy (Fifth Edition) (Addison-Wesley, 2000). Stephen Dunphy, WTO talks collapse; no accord reached, Seattle Times, December 4, 1999. The Seattle Times' coverage of the December 1999 WTO protests is available on-line here; The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's is available here. International Criminal Court, war crimes (last updated April 11, 2002) (back to top) Despite the opposition of the United States, the treaty creating the International Criminal Court will take effect July 1, 2002, having received sufficient international support. The ICC will have jurisdiction over war crimes committed by individuals in participating countries, and thus provide a permanent enforcement system for enforcing international norms and holding individual violators responsible. In the wake of the First World War, nations began to prohibit certain methods and ways of conducting warfare through treaties and conventions. In 1948, the United Nations adopted a convention defining genocide as a crime under international law that must be prevented and punished. However, these laws, conventions and protocols lacked a regular system for their enforcement and for holding individual violators responsible. War crimes have been prosecuted internationally only through specifically convened mechanisms, such as the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II, and the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, which were created by the United Nations Security Council on an ad hoc basis and are still in place today (for more on the prosecution of former Serbia leader Slobodan Milosevic, go here). On July 17, 1998, 160 nations passed the Rome Statute on the Internal Criminal Court, thus beginning the process towards establishing a permanent international court where individuals "without any distinction based on official capacity" could be prosecuted for the following four broad crimes:
Land Mines (last updated March 27, 2002) (back to top) An international campaign to stop the use of anti-personnel landmines culminated with the Mine Ban Treaty that was signed by 120 nations in Ottawa in 1997. The United States refused to sign the treaty at the time because there was no exemption for using landmines to defend South Korea. Nonetheless, the United States has funded international demining operations in countries such as Afghanistan since 1988, and it has been destroying all of its non-self-destructing anti-personnel landmines except in South Korea and for training and research. Landmines are explosive devices that are designed to detonate by the presence or contact of either a person (anti-personnel mines) or by a vehicle such as a tank, truck or tractor (anti-tank or anti-vehicle mines). Some mines are designed to self-destruct or self-deactivate after a set period of time (these are sometimes called "smart" mines); the United States maintains stockpiles of both "smart" and non-self-destructing landmines, but it has promised to destroy all non-self-destructing landmines except those for use in South Korea and for research and training. Aside from the ethical and strategic considerations in using landmines in war, landmines pose a severe problem to civilians even after war has ended. Civilians in heavily mined areas can be injured or killed by landmines, and heavily mined areas are thus unavailable for agricultural use until they can be demined. There are an estimated 50 to 100 million landmines laid in the world, primarily located in developing countries such as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Egypt, and Mozambique. According to estimates by the Landmine Monitor, there are now about 15,000 to 20,000 new victims (either injured or killed) by landmines a year, a decline from earlier, long-standing estimates of 26,000 casualties a year. The following table, based on the State Department's "Hidden Killers 2001" report, shows countries which had the highest reported number of casualties due to landmines in 2000.  The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (Last updated: 6/13/01) (back to top) The United States conducted the first-ever test of a nuclear weapon in July 1945. Less than a year later, the Acheson-Lilenthal report recommended the creation of an international authority to control nuclear weapons and to use inspections to contain them. In the decades since then, countries have negotiated over and considered various treaties to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. On an international level, countries finally completed the negotiations of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 and made it available for signing beginning September 24, 1996. President Bill Clinton signed for the United States that very day, as did the representatives of 69 other countries. That signing ended just the first of three phases before the treaty is fully effective. The CTBT is now in the two-part preparatory phase. First, participating countries build an international monitoring and verification regime through sensor stations that will monitor the environment through four methods (seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide) to ensure that no one is violating the treaty; the United States conducts its monitoring through the Department of Energy's Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Research & Engineering program (NEMRE). Second, signatory states must ratify the treaty; this is where the United States and many other countries have stalled. The Senate, which is the only body constitutionally authorized to ratify treaties signed by the president, voted down ratification on October 13, 1999 with a 51-48 vote (2/3 vote is required to pass). Some of the opposition to the CTBT is a response to tests by countries such as India and Pakistan, which conducted tests in 1999. As of June 2001, only 76 states have ratified the treaty. President George W. Bush reportedly is willing to let the treaty continue to stall and has no plans to push for another ratification vote. Once the verification regime has been established and assuming the CTBT is eventually ratified by the necessary countries, which does include the United States, then the world moves into Entry-into-Force phase. The CTBT allows countries to sanction states that violate the treaty but in vague terms. Even though the Senate did not ratify the CTBT, some have argued that its general policy of preventing countries from nuclear testing does still bind the United States until the United States makes clear its specific intent to no longer become a party to the treaty. In any case, regardless of how binding the CTBT may be, the United States has not tested a nuclear weapon since the fall of 1992, when Congress initiated a short-term moratorium. President Clinton extended the moratorium while in office and re-affirmed commitment to it after the Senate vote, and Bush has so far continued the moratorium into his administration. Sources: The Department of Energy's Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Research & Engineering Program. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization's Preparatory Commission. Foreign Aid (last updated January 7, 2003) (back to top) The United States has long given money to assist the development of smaller countries as well as to achieve its own foreign policy objectives. In 2001, the United States spent roughly $11 billion on foreign aid specifically contributing to the development of smaller countries (commonly known as official development assistance, or ODA), less than 1 percent of its annual total budget and about 1/30th of the United States' annual defense spending. Nevertheless, polls show that the American public greatly overestimates how much is currently spent on such development assistance and would support larger amounts than is actually spent. For example, a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in 2000 found that the mean estimate for how much of the federal budget was spent on foreign aid was 20 percent and the mean estimate for what people thought more appropriate was 10 percent. President George W. Bush has proposed a measure which would increase the amount of U.S.-funded development assistance by 50 percent over three years, resulting in an annual increase of $5 billion by 2006, and would tie aid allocation to successful efforts to reduce poverty and improve economic growth. Bush has described such development assistance as not only moral, but also as a measure to ensure international security; his proposal to increase development is part of his administration's National Security Strategy, which was published in September 2002. The United States began giving foreign aid with the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and to combat the spread of communism, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 then turned the focus of aid more towards less-developed countries. The level of overall aid has generally declined over the years, falling as a share of the United States' gross national income from 2 percent during the Marshall Plan to roughly 0.1 percent today.
 
Russia : Nuclear Weapons and the Threat of Proliferation (last updated May 15, 2002) (back to top) When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there were an estimated 30,000 nuclear warheads in the country, with about 6,000 of them in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan. Since then, the United States has sought to reduce the Cold War nuclear threat through bilateral security treaties and through cooperative-threat reduction programs that dismantle nuclear weapons and prevent their proliferation. In November 2001, Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin pledged to cut the U.S. and Russian stockpiles by roughly two-thirds over the next decade so that each side would have less than 2,200 warheads each. The two presidents then announced on May 13, 2002 that they would sign such an agreement on May 24. One complication to these negotiations had been the Bush administration's plans to develop a national missile defense system and to thus abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (for more on missile defense, go here). Prior efforts to reduce each side's nuclear arsenal since the Cold War's end were done through the START treaties. The START I treaty that was signed in 1991 required the parties to reduce their nuclear arms to 6,000 warheads on each side by December 2001, and all parties reportedly met this requirement. The START II treaty that as signed in 1993 required the reduction in warheads to about 3,500 warheads on each side, in two phases; this treaty was ratified by the United States in 1996 and by Russia in 2000 but never implemented. Even with the continuing reduction of warhead arsenals, a new threat of loose nuclear weapons and accidents has risen dramatically. According to a February 2002 report by the CIA, Russian nuclear facilities have weak security and there have been a handful of reported incidents where weapons-grade nuclear material was stolen from such facilities over the last 10 years. Another source of concern has been preventing Russian scientists and technology from spreading to countries such as Iran and North Korea which reportedly seek to develop nuclear weapons. In 1995, Russia agreed to finish the construction of a light-water nuclear reactor in southern Iran, though Russia did back away from building additional infrastructure that the United States said would enable Iran to accelerate its efforts to develop its own nuclear weapons (for more on the Iran reactor situation, go here). On several non-military fronts, the United States has launched several programs to work with Russia to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons and material spreading beyond Russia's borders. The various programs, now numbering 30 programs with a total annual budget of about $800 million, address different aspects of Russia's nuclear situation, including the destruction of weapons, the securing of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the shift of military scientists to civilian work, and the redevelopment of the ten nuclear cities that formed the backbone of Russia's nuclear complex. The main program is the Department of Energy's Cooperative Threat-Reduction Program, which began in 1992 and is popularly known as the Nunn-Lugar program after its founding senators. Through a variety of projects, this program focuses on destroying vehicles for delivering nuclear weapons and on securing former nuclear weapons and components. Other programs, some of which are funded through Nunn-Lugar, include:
Debt Relief for Poorest Countries (last updated May 14, 2002) (back to top) The high level of debt owed by the world's poorest countries is a serious constraint on their ability to pursue sustainable development and reduce poverty. Recognizing this problem, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund launched in 1996 the Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), which seeks to help poor countries reduce debt and to use the resulting savings to reduce poverty. The HIPC Initiative was modified in 1999 to provide more debt relief to more countries faster. As of March 2002, 26 countries (22 of them in Africa) had taken the economic reforms and poverty-reduction policies required by the enhanced HIPC Initiative and were receiving relief which would amount to about $40 billion over time, about half of their total debt. With this reduction in debt, the participating countries reportedly will spend 30 percent less on debt service than in the late 1990s and will now spend more on social services than debt service. According to an April 2002 status report, on average, the 26 participating countries will now spend more than three times on social sectors than they did on debt service in the same period. Social spending as a share of government revenue on average will increase from 37 percent before HIPC relief to 55 percent after HIPC relief. Some, such as Bono of the rock group U2, have urged the international community to go even further and completely cancel the debt of poor countries, which would free up more of the countries' scarce money even faster. Critics of this idea, such as the IMF and the World Bank, have responded that the HIPC Initiative is already freeing up resources, while also implementing broad, necessary reforms and keeping creditors and the international community involved. The HIPC Initiative operates in two stages. First, a poor country seeking to participate must work with the World Bank and the IMF to implement economic reforms and poverty-reduction strategies. If the country still faces an unsustainable debt burden at the "decision point" which marks the end of this phase, then it will qualify for assistance. During this first phase, countries are still eligible for traditional assistance and debt relief from donors, multilateral institutions, and bilateral creditors such as the Paris Club. Once a country has passed its decision point, it must continue to implement reforms. During this second phase, bilateral and commercial creditors are expected to reschedule obligations coming due, with a 90 percent reduction in net present value. When a country implements pre-agreed key reforms, a moment called the "floating completion point," the country receives the bulk of HIPC relief. As of March 2002, 22 countries had reached their decision points and were receiving some HIPC relief. Four countries (Bolivia, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda) had reached their completion points. Sources: The World Bank has information on the HIPC Initiative here, and the International Monetary Fund has information here. A March 2002 factsheet on what has been achieved thus far is available on-line here, and the Status of Implementation report dated April 12, 2002 is available on both sites. A July 2001 response by the IMF and World Bank to the total-debt-cancellation idea is on-line here. Fast track authority (last updated August 2, 2002) (back to top) From 1974 to 1994, the President had "fast-track authority" to make international agreements recipriocally reducing United States' barriers against foreign trade; Congress agreed to limit its oversight powers over such agreements and to follow expedited procedures that would set mandatory deadlines, allow no modifications, and limit debate. Fast-track authority, sometimes called "trade-promotion authority," lapsed in 1994 and was not renewed or extended for eight years. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have called the power essential to opening markets for the United States and reassuring trading partners that negotiated agreements would not be modified subsequently, and Bush finally won Congressional approval for renewal during the summer of 2002. Nevertheless, trade agreements can still be and often are negotiated and implemented without fast-track authority. Fast track was invoked only five times in the 20 years that presidents had such authority, and Congress has implemented at least six trade agreements since 1999, even without fast-track. The five times that fast-track authority has been invoked are:
U.S. arms sales to other countries (last updated April 7, 2002) (back to top) The United States sells arms to many countries around the world, but Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest customer. From FY 1991 to 2000, Saudi Arabia bought about $30 billion worth of military arms, including aircraft, defense weaponry such as Patriot and Hawk missiles, and armored vehicles. Taiwan was a distant second with about $12 billion over the same period, followed by Egypt, Turkey, Israel, South Korea and Japan.    Refugee and asylum overview (world and United States) (last updated October 2001) (back to top) Refugee and asylum policies are concerned with allowing immigration for humanitarian and political reasons, largely to protect people from persecution, and differ in where the applicants are: refugees are outside the country and brought in, whereas asylees come to the United States seeking such protection after they arrive. By contrast, immigration policy, at least in the United States, is usually based on economic, family-reunification, and political concerns. Worldwide, there are about 20 million people each year who are "of concern" (1 out of every 269 people worldwide, or 0.3 percent of the world population) to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the international agency charged with helping refugees, asylum-seekers, and people who have been displaced from their homes for fear of persecution. Of the 22.3 million people of concern to the UNHCR in 1999, 11.7 million were refugees. About 2.5 million people were refugees who were returning to their countries of origin, 1.2 million were seeking asylum in another country, 6.9 million were considered "internally displaced persons" and other people who had moved somehow but did not fit into the other categories. For several years now, war-torn Afghanistan has stood clearly as a country with the most severe population movements. In 1999, Afghani refugees numbered 2.6 million of the 11.7 million refugees (about 22 percent), which was about five times that of the next largest group, Iraqi refugees. Moving beyond refugees alone, other countries with large populations who are of concern to the UNHCR are the former Yugoslavia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, and the former Soviet Union. United States policy towards refugees has been to bring roughly around 80,000 to 100,000 refugees into the country a year (in fiscal year 2001, that year's 80,000 spots were allocated with 25% to Africa, 25% to Eastern Europe, 21% to the former Soviet Union, 12.5% to Near East/South Asia, 7.5% to East Asia, 4% to Latin America, and the remainder as needed). Allotment of refugee openings is based on geographical region, with the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and Vietnam providing the most refugees in 1998. The United States also grants asylum to roughly 15,000 people already in the country each year. Asylum grantees are determined on a more individual case basis, and the distribution by country of origin can vary widely from year to year. In 1997, Iraqis comprised the largest group of people being granted asylum, but people from Nicaragua were the largest in 1998.  Prostitution and trafficking (last updated January 24, 2002) (back to top) An estimated 50,000 women and children are brought into the United States each year against their will for the sex industry, sweatshop labor, domestic servitude, and agricultural work. This is just a small portion of the extent of trafficking of women and children worldwide, as estimated by organizations including the Central Intelligence Agency, which estimates that about 700,000 to two million women and children are trafficked each year. According to a November 1999 analysis by Amy Richard of the State Department, about 700,000 to two million women and children are trafficked globally each year, with about 50,000 (about 7 percent) trafficked into the United States (30,000 from Southeast Asia, 10,000 from Latin America, 4,000 from the former Soviet Union, and 1,000 from other operations). The average age of the trafficking victim is 20. The United States and the international community has addressed the problem of the involuntary transportation of women as trafficking since the beginning of the 20th century. In the early 20th century, 12 countries, including the United States, ratified the International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade, which urged governments to prohibit "procuration of women and girls for immoral purposes abroad," and the United States thus passed the 1910 Mann Act, which forbids such transportation. In the mid-20th century, 49 nations ratified the UN's 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. In November 2000, the United Nations promulgated a protocol specifically defining "trafficking in persons" for the first time and calling for measures against global trafficking such as providing victim protection and implementing law enforcement measures against traffickers (the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, otherwise known as the "Protocol on Trafficking in Persons"). Neither the convention nor the protocol are yet in force. The United States joined 80 other countries in signing this protocol in December 2000 but has not yet ratified it. The protocol was criticized by some in the United States as legalizing prostitution, though the protocol clearly stated that it did not weaken existing laws within each signing country and simply recognized that some countries had laws allowing for some kinds of prostitution. Whether or not the United States ratifies the UN protocol, it has strengthened its own anti-trafficking laws and enforcement in recent years. In 1998, the Justice Department established the Worker Exploitation Task Force, which coordinated prosecution of traffickers. Among other things, the task force has secured convictions in cases such as US v Cadena (1998), in which about 25-40 Mexican girls and women as young as 14 were forced to work as prostitutes and sex slaves in Florida and the Carolinas, and US v Kwon (1998), in which Chinese and Korean women were offered waitressing jobs but then forced to work at karaoke clubs where they submitted to customers' sexual demands. One problem faced by prosecutors was the lack of strong laws that could deter trafficking, including an involuntary servitude law that the Supreme Court said did not cover some trafficking situations. Enacted in October 2000, the Violence Against Women Act of 2000 (PL 106-386) created a new crime of forced labor that captures slavery-like practices, criminalized trafficking, and increased penalties for such crimes. It also required the Secretary of State to report each year on the extent of trafficking and anti-trafficking efforts, and increased Sources: Many resources are available via the Protection Project, on-line here. Amy O'Neill Richard, International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A contemporary manifestation of slavery and organized crime (Center for the Study of Intelligence, November 1999), available via the Central Intelligence Agency here. The State Department's first annual trafficking in persons report is available here, and a February 2001 fact sheet on anti-trafficking efforts is available here. Testimony of Ralph F. Boyd, assistant attorney general for civil rights, "Implementation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act," November 29, 2001, before the House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations, available here. The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States, a hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Government Printing Office, June 28, 1999). International Trafficking in Women and Children, a hearing before the Senate's Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Government Printing Office, February 22 and April 4, 2000). Information on the anti-trafficking protocol can be found here and through the United Nations, on-line here. A summary of the Violence Against Women Act of 2000 is available here. Child Labor in Developing Countries (last updated November 21, 2001) (back to top) Statistics on child labor in developing countries are hard to come by, as the practice is often illegal and secret. Even so, surveys by the International Labour Office's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) have determined that there were about 250 million children aged 5-14 years old employed in economic activity in developing countries as of 1998, or about 20 percent of the total child population of the same age and region. About 120 million worked full-time. According to the IPEC, child labor is most concentrated in absolute terms in Asia, which is the most densely populated region and has about 61 percent of the world's working child population. However, Africa has the highest rate of child workers, where two out of every five children aged 5-14 (41.4 percent) work; one out of every five children (21.5 percent) work in Asia.  |
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