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November 9, 2008

Human trafficking in Brazil, Moldova Catholic Relief Services works against cruel labor ‘recruiters’

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

The faces of human trafficking in Brazil, the largest country in South America, and in Moldova, a tiny nation in the former Soviet Union, could hardly be more different.

But a part of the solution to the problem in both countries is for Americans — especially young people — to become informed and insist on change, according to Catholic Relief Services staff members who work in both places.

They visited Chicago at the end of October after participating in a meeting about human trafficking in Washington, D.C.

In Brazil, the problem is usually one of wage slavery, in which poor workers are forced to work for very little or no money in substandard conditions, said Richard Hoffman, a CRS country representative in Reafe, Brazil.

The typical situation is one in which a recruiter convinces a poor laborer to come to a different part of the country, where there is a job waiting, promising the worker money to send back to his family.

But when the worker gets there, his documents are confiscated and he finds himself in debt to his employer, charged exorbitant rates for his transport to the job, his shelter, his food, his clothing, as inadequate as those goods might be.

Such tactics have been used by makers of charcoal, pig iron (which is used to make steel), as well as cattle ranchers and sugar cane growers.

CRS used a grant from the federal Trafficking in Persons program to work with other non-governmental agencies in Brazil to raise awareness of such schemes among Brazilian workers, to encourage people to notice and to report companies that might be using slave labor and to help connect workers rescued from slavery to find paying work.

In Moldova, a country about the size of Maryland with no energy resources, the problem is one of sex slavery, said Michael McKennett, the head of office for CRS there.

While no one knows exactly how many Moldovan women end up in the sex trade in Western Europe, England or the United States, it is thought to be more than the number from Russia and Ukraine combined.

Women are willing to believe promises of jobs in other countries because they see no prospects in their own country, McKennett said. Recruiters — usually women — help them get the documents they need to travel, but pass them on to their owners, usually members of organized crime in other countries.

CRS was asked by the U.S. Department of Labor to work on programs to prevent women from falling into the trap.

“With women, they aren’t kidnapped off the street,’ McKenna said. “They make the decision to go — but they are duped.”

CRS has been working to teach girls how to recognize recruiters’ schemes and to have a more realistic idea of what life is like in other parts of the world. They also help young people recognize the assets they have at home, such as shelter, family and social networks, a spiritual foundation.

“They realize they aren’t as poor as they thought they were,” he said. “They just lack income.”

To help them find income, CRS connects them with job training for positions in the garment industry, making sure at the same time that the factories they end up working at meet international human-rights standards. Moldova, located on the edge of Europe and has relatively low-cost labor, is well positioned to sew for the high-end garment industry in Europe.

“The people who get these jobs can make $200 a month, when many people are living on only a few dollars a month,” he said.