Photo by: Katie Mastroianni
Claude d’Estrée, director of the Center for Rights Development and expert on modern slavery and human trafficking, has been appointed delegate and “rapporteur” to the United Nations Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking.
d’Estrée, who is also a visiting professor of law at the Graduate School of International Studies, will serve as a chief delegate to the Vienna Forum for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC). He was also chosen to serve as “rapporteur” for the International Organization for Migration, which is a Geneva-based governmental organization that works to provide humane treatment for migrants.
“This convention is the beginning of a truly worldwide abolitionist movement,” said d’Estrée.
The Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking will take place Feb. 13-15 with more than 1,000 delegates representing governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
“I will try to operate with both international-level groups and grassroots-level groups to get people on board and recognize what’s going on,” said d’Estrée.
In order to stop human trafficking d’Estrée stressed the importance of education.
“The first step is to educate the public, police and legislatures and then to mobilize society on an international level which is what we are doing in Vienna,” said d’Estrée. “The cost of investigating human trafficking is by far the most expensive compared to drug and gun trafficking.”
d’Estrée first became interested in human trafficking when working at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. in 1998. As d’Estrée began learning more about human trafficking and its components, his interest grew.
People are smuggled from all over the globe, from Asia, Eastern Europe and Ukraine to South and Central America, said d’Estrée. He said that often victims pay the smuggler a fee for job placement in a foreign country
only to find themselves in bondage and exploited.
According to d’Estrée 75 percent of the victims of human trafficking and slavery are women. Forty-nine percent are sent into the sex slave trade and the other 51 percent are agricultural workers.
d’Estrée discussed the presence of slavery in the United States. Each year, 14,000-17,000 people are trafficked into slavery in this country. The number of people enslaved in the country ranges from 50,000 to 100,000, said d’Estrée.
d’Estrée also addressed the underground sex-slave activity in Denver.
There are many closed brothels and spas that cater to men of the same ethnicity as the women who work there, d’Estrée explained. The women live in apartments with four to six women in each, and no money is exchanged at the apartments because the men buy admittance elsewhere.
“The women turn about 25 tricks a day, and by tricks I mean they are raped 25 times each day,” said d’Estrée, since the women are being held against their will. “They save condom wrappers as their receipts, but sometimes the smuggler will come and take them all.”
These condom wrappers are the only way the enslaved women can attempt to pay back the debt they owe for the cost of their journey from their home country.
d’Estrée went on to talk about another kind of trafficking called domestic trafficking, which is done by legal means.
Domestic trafficking is a form of domestic slavery, where a family may call someone in their homeland for a maid or someone to help out around the house. Upon arrival, the person’s documents are taken and they are enslaved.
d’Estrée is also an ordained Buddhist monk who has been recognized by the Dalai Lama of Tibet as a master teacher. He was appointed as the first Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University.
Part of d’Estrée’s job at the Vienna Forum is to coordinate a worldwide inter-faith response to human trafficking.
To hear an interview from Feb. 5 with d’Estrée conducted by Colorado Public Radio (KCFR), Colorado Matters, go to http://www.kcfr.org/.
