Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power at a UN Security Council Meeting on Trafficking of Persons in Situations of Armed Conflict

Watch Speech

Let me join others in thanking our guest briefers: Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson, Executive Director Fedotov, and Mr. Grono, thank you for your briefings and for your efforts in the real world to combat human trafficking.

Nadia, I cannot imagine how painful it must be every time you are asked to recount your experience. No human being should be forced to endure what you and your family have gone through. Ever. And your being here and speaking so bravely to all of us is a testament to your resilience and your dignity – and it’s of course the most powerful rejection of what ISIL stands for.

We’ve been here now for two hours and 15 minutes and it is worth remembering that in that time women and kids are living – and others – are living in circumstances just like those that you’ve described. As we sit here, they are being terrorized and they are dreaming of their escape; desperate to get out but trapped by brute force and nothing more than that. We have been talking about ISIL in the Security Council since at least early 2014, but Nadia you have humanized the stakes in a way that I think it’s been extremely important for people to here. And I don’t think anyone who was here to hear you will ever forget what they’ve heard and what you’ve been through. We are truly in awe of your courage.

I also agree with the comment that was just made that, at a time when refugee admissions and the flight of individuals is being politicized, and refugees are being caricatured in different ways, your experience and your testimony is such a powerful rebuke to those who would caricature this whole population. I mean people are fleeing for their lives, their fleeing terror and conflict and sexual violence, and we should never forget that.

Today we as a Council are meeting for the first time on the issue of human trafficking in conflict. Historic as this is, it is a bit baffling that the Council has not taken on this issue before. We have, up to now, met on trafficking of arms, oil, antiquities, natural resources, wildlife. But this was our first session on the trafficking of human beings.

And almost everywhere we see conflict in the world we do, as others have said, see human trafficking. Human trafficking thrives in conflict, and conflict is exacerbated by human trafficking.

It’s no coincidence that the illicit trade in weapons, drugs, stolen antiquities, and other illegal goods tend to follow similar routes by those used by traffickers – human traffickers – and be carried out by the same criminal networks. These illicit activities sustain armed groups, terrorists, and criminal networks and threaten international peace and security. In addition, traffickers often force their own victims to commit crimes – such as participating in terrorist acts, transporting illegal weapons, producing illegal drugs – and these crimes themselves, of course, further undermine our shared security. We’ve seen how the governments, armed groups, and terrorists that treat people as property often show similar disdain for the rules and norms that ensure our shared security.

Yet despite persistent efforts to eradicate trafficking in persons by the UN and other international bodies, governments, and civil society groups – this crime persists. The statistics, as others have noted, are staggering; according to the International Labour Organization, at least 20 million people worldwide are victims of forced labor. An estimated 5.5 million of them are children. Five and a half million children.

Making matters worse, as Mr. Grono observed, the taboo against slavery is being actively and willfully challenged by ISIL and Boko Haram, who don’t just carry out widespread human trafficking, they brag about it on social media and in propaganda materials. ISIL distributes women and girls to fighters as spoils of war, systematically rapes them, and sells them in markets like cattle. Boys as young as four years old are forced into “cub” training camps, where they are reportedly given dolls on which to practice beheadings. It’s barbaric.

ISIL has even gone so far as to issue guidelines to its followers on how to treat their slaves, providing a twisted justification for the most depraved acts. The guidelines state: “It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of.” And they tell followers, “it is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty.” In other words, raping female slaves is authorized, it is acceptable, it is encouraged. When we try to describe evil like this, we find ourselves groping for language; words fail us and we are amazed, Nadia, that you were able to speak about the unspeakable and find words. And, again, we thank you for that.

The stories of Boko Haram’s depravity are also shocking. On October 2nd, the group reportedly forced four girls and a boy to blow themselves up in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri. Three of them attacked a mosque during evening prayers. Fifteen people, including these kids, were killed, and more than 35 were injured. Witnesses estimated that the bombers were as young as nine years old.

Martha, age 14, was abducted by Boko Haram along with her two sisters in September 2014. She was taken to one of the group’s camps and she later told a reporter, “They told me not to walk around outside, and when I did they would beat me. They told me not to talk, and I would talk, so they would beat me. They told me not to sing; I would sing, and they would beat me.” She was forced to convert to Islam, assigned a new name, and married against her will to a fighter. Martha said she was forced to carry extra ammunition for Boko Haram fighters on two of their operations. “They wanted me to kill people,” she said, “but I could never bring myself to kill anyone.” She said, “Boko Haram members tried to force my sister to kill an old man. When she refused, they shot her instead.” One night, Martha and two other girls escaped into the bush. “I am still struggling with the memories,” she said.

For groups like ISIL and Boko Haram, slavery has become one of their most versatile weapons of war – used to instill fear, to inflict suffering, to recruit followers, reward fighters, convert people of other faiths, reward combatants, generate revenue. And they are learning from one another’s worst practices. It’s a grotesque race to the bottom.

So what can we – and by we I mean all UN Member States, all civilized communities – what can we do to root out this scourge? Of course we must condemn these vile crimes and those who commit them. And we must continue to document the horrors, so that one day those responsible can be held accountable.

We must also commit ourselves to ending the conflicts that provide an ideal climate for human traffickers, and of course we must commit ourselves to eradicating the groups that use human trafficking as a weapon of war. To that end, under President Obama’s leadership, the United States has organized a coalition of 65 countries to degrade and destroy ISIL, and spurred efforts at the Security Council to curb the flows of foreign terrorist fighters and the illicit funds extremist groups use to fuel their terror. The session that U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew will chair tomorrow, when many other Council finance ministers will join him, will aim to strengthen Member States’ efforts to cut off ISIL’s financing. Similarly, we continue to provide security and counterterrorism assistance to the governments of Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Benin to aid their fight against Boko Haram.

We are also continuing to partner with African countries to take on the Lord’s Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, who remains at large. The Lord’s Resistance Army has been decimated in recent years, but every day it exists and Joseph Kony is at large is a day where children, women, civilian communities everywhere are at risk of abduction. And the abductees, as you all know, are forced then themselves into abducting others – in some cases you have children being asked to abduct and kill other children. It’s monstrous. And so that effort, too, is essential.

Beyond these efforts to end the conflicts in which human trafficking thrives and to go after the worst perpetrators, we must also ask what each of our governments can do to ensure that we are not ourselves helping to fuel the crime of human trafficking.

First, we must work to ensure that our own practices – from procurement to distribution – do not themselves contribute to human trafficking. This means taking steps to require government contractors and subcontractors to prohibit activities known to contribute to trafficking, such as – ourselves – making it illegal to charge workers recruitment fees that can lead to debt bondage. By putting in place such requirements and protections, governments can show they are practicing what they preach when it comes to cutting modern slavery out of supply chains and we can each model best practices for the private sector.

Second, we have to teach people how to actually see the victims of trafficking. This can be extremely challenging. Some victims of trafficking go out of their way to avoid being identified, out of fear for their safety or that of their loved ones, out of fear of being deported or otherwise criminalized. And when the victims of trafficking are seen, they are seen too often as criminals – people see only the crime that these individuals have committed and not the force, fraud, coercion, and terror that led them to do so.

Learning to see trafficking victims demands sensitizing people at all levels of government and across the spectrum of agencies. And it demands engaging partners outside of government, like faith-based organizations, business owners, teachers, healthcare providers, those that are most likely to come into contact with victims.

Consider one of the populations at highest risk of trafficking: internationally displaced persons, namely refugees fleeing conflict areas. As we all know, nearly 60 million people are currently displaced by conflicts, more than at any other time since World War II. Yet aid workers, peacekeepers, and other groups who come into close contact with these vulnerable individuals often lack training to spot the signs of trafficking; and even those with the training often have extremely limited resources to assist victims who are identified. This is a massive gap and we must all work to fill it. I credit Jordan, which has taken in more than 628,000 Syrian refugees, as we all know. But Jordan also recently built its first shelter dedicated exclusively to housing and assisting trafficking victims.

To give another example: in the United States, the Department of Transportation and Homeland Security have teamed up to train some 50,000 airline employees in how to safely identify suspected instances of human trafficking and alert law enforcement authorities in real time.

Third, we need to spur more robust and innovative solutions. Others have rightly highlighted the enormous disparity between the $150 billion in profits estimated to be generated annually by forced labor, and the amount spent by OECD countries annually on anti-trafficking development assistance, which is less than one-tenth of one percent of the amount that traffickers are taking in.

But we don’t just need more resources, we need resources to be more victim- and survivor-centered. Time and again we’ve seen that incorporating victims and survivors into the policymaking process yields better solutions, and they can offer the kind of perspective that Nadia offered us here today. To this end, the U.S. government will soon be launching the first-ever U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking – made up exclusively of survivors – to help inform and guide our federal policies and programs to combat trafficking and empower victims.

Let me conclude. On December 6th, 1865, the United States adopted the 13th Amendment to our Constitution, abolishing slavery. Before it was adopted, generations of men, women, and children were enslaved in this country in the most deplorable conditions. People were born, lived, and died in chains. And it took fighting a brutal civil war – in which more than 600,000 people lost their lives, one out of every 50 Americans – for this practice to be abolished. Even after the war ended and the amendment was adopted, as we know, the practice of forced labor endured in other forms, and the legacy of slavery is still felt acutely in our nation to this day.

Speaking on the 150th anniversary of the amendment’s adoption, President Obama – appropriately – quoted President Abraham Lincoln: “In giving freedom to the slave, we ensure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve,” Lincoln said. Lincoln was referring to efforts to emancipate slaves in this country, but his words can just as easily be applied to this Council today. Right now, we find victims of human trafficking in every one of our countries. We eat food that they harvest; we speak on phones built from minerals that they mine; we wear clothes that they make.

This Council is built on the premise that the peace and security of our nations is bound up in one another’s. But as Lincoln understood, so are human rights. Every one of us here knows in our core that human trafficking is wrong. We know that modern slavery is inhuman. We know that no one should ever have to endure what Nadia and so many women and girls and others are enduring right here as we sit and as we discuss.

And if we know that, then what Lincoln told Americans so many years ago also holds true for us, here, on this day. Our freedom, our dignity, is bound up with the fates of millions of victims of trafficking like Nadia – victims who possess tremendous dignity and courage. We ensure our freedom by fighting to give them their freedom.

And I thank you.

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