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DE RUEHC #0535 1622254
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O 112219Z JUN 09
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TO AMEMBASSY MBABANE IMMEDIATE 0000

UNCLAS STATE 060535 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KTIP ELAB KCRM KPAO KWMN PGOV PHUM PREL SMIG WZ
SUBJECT: SWAZILAND -- 2009 TIP REPORT: PRESS GUIDANCE AND 
         DEMARCHE 
 
REF: (A) STATE 59732 (B) STATE 005577 
 
¶1. This is an action cable; see paras 5 through 7 and 10. 
 
¶2. On June 16, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. EDT, the Secretary will 
release the 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report at a 
press conference in the Department's press briefing room. 
This release will receive substantial coverage in domestic 
and foreign news outlets.  Until the time of the Secretary's 
June 16 press conference, any public release of the Report or 
country narratives contained therein is prohibited. 
 
¶3. The Department is hereby providing Post with advance press 
guidance to be used on June 16 or thereafter.  Also provided 
is demarche language to be used in informing the Government 
of Swaziland of its tier ranking and the TIP Report's 
imminent release.  The text of the TIP Report country 
narrative is provided, both for use in informing the 
Government of Swaziland and in any local media release by 
Post's public affairs section on June 16 or thereafter. 
Drawing on information provided below in paras 8 and 9, Post 
may provide the host government with the text of the TIP 
Report narrative no earlier than 1200 noon local time Monday 
June 15 for WHA, AF, EUR, and NEA countries and OOB local 
time Tuesday June 16 for SCA and EAP posts.  Please note, 
however, that any public release of the Report's information 
should not/not precede the Secretary's release at 10:00 am 
EDT on June 16. 
 
¶4. The entire TIP Report will be available on-line at 
www.state.gov/g/tip shortly after the Secretary's June 16 
release.  Hard copies of the Report will be pouched to posts 
in all countries appearing on the Report.  The Secretary's 
statement at the June 16 press event, and the statement of 
and fielding of media questions by G/TIP,s Director and 
Senior Advisor to the Secretary, Ambassador-at-Large Luis 
CdeBaca, will be available on the Department's website 
shortly after the June 16 event.  Ambassador de Baca will 
also hold a general briefing for officials of foreign 
embassies in Washington DC on June 17 at 3:30 pm EDT. 
 
¶5. Action Request: No earlier than 12 noon local time on 
Monday June 15 for WHA, AF, EUR, and NEA posts and OOB local 
time on Tuesday June 16 for SCA and EAP posts, please inform 
the appropriate official in the Government of Swaziland of 
the June 16 release of the 2009 TIP Report, drawing on the 
points in para 9 (at Post's discretion) and including the 
text of the country narrative provided in para 8.  For 
countries where the State Department has lowered the tier 
ranking, it is particularly important to advise governments 
prior to the Report being released in Washington on June 16. 
 
¶6. Action Request continued:  Please note that, for those 
countries which will not receive an "action plan" with 
specific recommendations for improvement, posts should draw 
host governments' attention to the areas for improvement 
identified in the 2009 Report, especially highlighted in the 
"Recommendations" section of the second paragraph of the 
narrative text.  This engagement is important to establishing 
the framework in which the government's performance will be 
judged for the 2010 Report.  If posts have questions about 
which governments will receive an action plan, or how they 
may follow up on the recommendations in the 2009 Report, 
please contact G/TIP and the appropriate regional bureau. 
 
¶7. Action Request continued: On June 16, please be prepared 
to answer media inquiries on the Report's release using the 
press guidance provided in para 11.  If Post wishes, a local 
press statement may be released on or after 10:30 am EDT June 
16, drawing on the press guidance and the text of the TIP 
Report's country narrative provided in para 8. 
 
¶8. Begin Final Text of Swaziland,s country narrative in the 
2009 TIP Report: 
 
-------------------------------- 
Swaziland (TIER 3) 
-------------------------------- 
 
 
Swaziland is a source, destination, and transit country for 
women and children trafficked internally and transnationally 
for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, domestic 
servitude, and forced labor in agriculture.  Swazi girls, 
particularly orphans, are trafficked internally for 
commercial sexual exploitation and domestic servitude in the 
cities of Mbabane and Manzini, as well as to South Africa and 
Mozambique.  Swazi boys are trafficked for forced labor in 
commercial agriculture and market vending.  Some Swazi women 
are forced into prostitution in South Africa and Mozambique 
after voluntarily migrating to these countries in search of 
work. Chinese organized crime units acquire victims in 
Swaziland and traffic them to hubs in Johannesburg, where 
they &distribute8 victims locally or send them on to be 
exploited overseas.  Traffickers force Mozambican women into 
prostitution in Swaziland, or else transit Swaziland with 
their victims en route to South Africa.  Mozambican boys 
migrate to Swaziland for work washing cars, herding 
livestock, and portering; some of these boys subsequently 
become victims of trafficking. 
 
 
The Government of Swaziland does not comply with the minimum 
standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not 
making significant efforts to do so.  The government believes 
that trafficking probably does occur, but does not know the 
extent of the problem.  Its limited resources were directed 
towards other issues because the government does not judge 
trafficking to be an &important8 problem, a judgment which 
significantly limited the government,s current efforts to 
eliminate human trafficking, or to plan anti-trafficking 
activities or initiatives for the future. 
 
 
Recommendations for Swaziland:  Enact and implement 
comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation; prosecute 
trafficking offenses under existing laws; train law 
enforcement officials to recognize human trafficking 
situations; proactively identify victims; institute a formal 
system to refer victims for assistance; work with NGOs and 
international organizations as appropriate, to better 
determine the nature and extent of Swaziland,s trafficking 
problem; implement a comprehensive law-enforcement 
record-keeping system; and conduct visible campaigns to 
educate the public about the dangers and risks of trafficking 
in Swaziland. 
 
Prosecution 
----------- 
The government made no effort to investigate or prosecute 
trafficking offenses during the year.  While Swaziland has no 
law specifically prohibiting trafficking, existing statutes 
prohibiting acts such as kidnapping, forced and compulsory 
labor, confiscation of passports, aiding and abetting 
&prohibited immigrants8 to enter the country, brothel 
keeping, procurement for prostitution, sex or solicitation of 
sex with an underage girl, and employing children under the 
age of 15 could be used to prosecute trafficking offenses, 
but were not.  Under traditional Swazi law, many such cases 
are resolved within the chiefdom via customary, rather than 
civil law, and cases reviewed under customary law are not 
generally reported to civil authorities, or the media.  As 
plaintiffs in these cases tend to be reluctant to bring 
additional civil or criminal charges against the suspected 
offender, the government has no information whether any of 
these cases do or could involve trafficking.  A draft bill 
now in its fourth year of review -- the Sexual Offenses and 
Domestic Violence Bill -- would criminalize sex trafficking 
and mandate psychological services for victims.   It has not 
yet been presented to parliament.  In the past year, law 
enforcement officials made no effort to proactively identify 
cases of children trafficked for labor. 
 
Protection 
---------- 
The Swaziland government made inadequate efforts to protect 
victims of trafficking over the reporting period.  There were 
no government programs which provided services specifically 
to victims of trafficking, and the government continued to 
depend on NGOs to provide shelter, referral, counseling, and 
other care for victims.  A government-run center in Manzini 
provides medical and social services to victims of abuse, 
which would be made available to trafficking victims. 
Swazi law did not protect victims from prosecution for crimes 
committed as a direct result of trafficking.  Under the 
Immigration Act, a person entering Swaziland for the purpose 
of prostitution, even as a victim of trafficking, is subject 
to deportation, although it is not automatic.  The government 
did not provide legal alternatives to the removal of foreign 
victims to countries where they would be at risk of hardship 
or retribution. 
 
Prevention 
---------- 
There were no government-run anti-trafficking campaigns 
during the reporting period.  In late 2008, the Ministry of 
Home Affairs, Gender Unit again worked with NGOs to organize 
the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign, 
which addressed human trafficking and other abuses against 
women and children.  Movement across the borders with South 
Africa and Mozambique are not well-controlled; undocumented 
crossings of illegal migrants and trafficking victims are 
common.  Although the authorities lack the personnel to 
patrol Swaziland,s borders adequately, they claim that they 
made some efforts to monitor them for trafficking during the 
year.  The government also made some effort to reduce demand 
for commercial sex acts during the year. Swaziland has not 
ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
¶9. Post may wish to deliver the following points, which offer 
technical and legal background on the TIP Report process, to 
the host government as a non-paper with the above TIP Report 
country narrative: 
 
(begin non-paper) 
 
-- The U.S. Congress, through its passage of the 2000 
Trafficking Victims Protection Act, as amended (TVPA), 
requires the Secretary of State to submit an annual Report to 
Congress.  The goal of this Report is to stimulate action and 
create partnerships around the world in the fight against 
modern-day slavery.  The USG approach to combating human 
trafficking follows the TVPA and the standards set forth in 
the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in 
Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the 
United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized 
Crime (commonly known as the "Palermo Protocol").  The TVPA 
and the Palermo Protocol recognize that this is a crime in 
which the victims, labor or services (including in the "sex 
industry") are obtained or maintained through force, fraud, 
or coercion, whether overt or through psychological 
manipulation.  While much attention has focused on 
international flows, both the TVPA and the Palermo Protocol 
focus on the exploitation of the victim, and do not require a 
showing that the victim was moved. 
 
-- Recent amendments to the TVPA removed the requirement that 
only countries with a "significant number" of trafficking 
victims be included in the Report. Beginning with the 2009 
TIP Report, countries determined to be a country of origin, 
transit, or destination for victims of severe forms of 
trafficking are included in the Report and assigned to one of 
three tiers.  Countries assessed as meeting the "minimum 
standards for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking" 
set forth in the TVPA are classified as Tier 1.  Countries 
assessed as not fully complying with the minimum standards, 
but making significant efforts to meet those minimum 
standards are classified as Tier 2.  Countries assessed as 
neither complying with the minimum standards nor making 
significant efforts to do so are classified as Tier 3. 
 
-- The TVPA also requires the Secretary of State to provide a 
"Special Watch List" to Congress later in the year. 
Anti-trafficking efforts of the countries on this list are to 
be evaluated again in an Interim Assessment that the 
Secretary of State must provide to Congress by February 1 of 
each year.  Countries are included on the "Special Watch 
List" if they move up in "tier" rankings in the annual TIP 
Report -- from 3 to 2 or from 2 to 1 ) or if they have been 
placed on the Tier 2 Watch List. 
 
-- Tier 2 Watch List consists of Tier 2 countries determined: 
(1) not to have made "increasing efforts" to combat human 
trafficking over the past year; (2) to be making significant 
efforts based on commitments of anti-trafficking reforms over 
the next year, or (3) to have a very significant number of 
trafficking victims or a significantly increasing victim 
population.  As indicated in reftel B, the TVPRA of 2008 
contains a provision requiring that a country that has been 
included on Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years after 
the date of enactment of the TVPRA of 2008 be ranked as Tier 
¶3.  Thus, any automatic downgrade to Tier 3 pursuant to this 
provision would take place, at the earliest, in the 2011 TIP 
Report (i.e., a country would have to be ranked Tier 2 Watch 
List in the 2009 and 2010 Reports before being subject to 
Tier 3 in the 2011 Report).  The new law allows for a waiver 
of this provision for up to two additional years upon a 
determination by the President that the country has developed 
and devoted sufficient resources to a written plan to make 
significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the 
minimum standards. 
 
-- Countries classified as Tier 3 may be subject to statutory 
restrictions for the subsequent fiscal year on 
non-humanitarian and non-trade-related foreign assistance 
and, in some circumstances, withholding of funding for 
participation by government officials or employees in 
educational and cultural exchange programs.   In addition, 
the President could instruct the U.S. executive directors to 
international financial institutions to oppose loans or other 
utilization of funds (other than for humanitarian, 
trade-related or certain types of development assistance) 
with respect to countries on Tier 3.  Countries classified as 
Tier 3 that take strong action within 90 days of the Report's 
release to show significant efforts against trafficking in 
persons, and thereby warrant a reassessment of their Tier 
classification, would avoid such sanctions.  Guidelines for 
such actions are in the DOS-crafted action plans to be shared 
by Posts with host governments. 
 
-- The 2009 TIP Report, issuing as it does in the midst of 
the global financial crisis, highlights high levels of 
trafficking for forced labor in many parts of the world and 
systemic contributing factors to this phenomenon:  fraudulent 
recruitment practices and excessive recruiting fees in 
workers, home countries; the lack of adequate labor 
protections in both sending and receiving countries; and the 
flawed design of some destination countries, "sponsorship 
systems" that do not give foreign workers adequate legal 
recourse when faced with conditions of forced labor.  As the 
May 2009 ILO Global Report on Forced Labor concluded, forced 
labor victims suffer approximately $20 billion in losses, and 
traffickers, profits are estimated at $31 billion.  The 
current global financial crisis threatens to increase the 
number of victims of forced labor and increase the associated 
"cost of coercion." 
 
-- The text of the TVPA and amendments can be found on 
website www.state.gov/g/tip. 
 
-- On June 16, 2009, the Secretary of State will release the 
ninth annual TIP Report in a public event at the State 
Department.  We are providing you an advance copy of your 
country's narrative in that report.  Please keep this 
information embargoed until 10:00 am Washington DC time June 
¶16.  The State Department will also hold a general briefing 
for officials of foreign embassies in Washington DC on June 
17 at 3:30 pm EDT. 
 
(end non-paper) 
 
¶10. Posts should make sure that the relevant country 
narrative is readily available on or though the Mission's web 
page in English and appropriate local language(s) as soon as 
possible after the TIP Report is released.  Funding for 
translation costs will be handled as it was for the Human 
Rights Report.  Posts needing financial assistance for 
translation costs should contact their regional bureau,s EX 
office. 
 
¶11. The following is press guidance provided for Post to use 
with local media. 
 
Q1:  Why is Swaziland placed on the Report and ranked on Tier 
3? 
 
¶A.   Swaziland was placed on the TIP Report because there is 
evidence that it is a country of origin, transit, or 
destination for victims of severe forms of trafficking.  The 
government of Swaziland does not comply with the minimum 
standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not 
making significant efforts to do so.  The government believes 
that trafficking probably does occur, but does not know the 
extent of the problem.  Its limited resources were directed 
towards other issues because the government does not judge 
trafficking to be an &important8 problem, a judgment which 
significantly limited the government,s current efforts to 
eliminate human trafficking, or to plan anti-trafficking 
activities or initiatives for the future. 
 
Q2:  What is the nature of the trafficking problem in 
Swaziland? 
 
¶A.  Swaziland is a source, destination, and transit country 
for women and children trafficked internally and 
transnationally for the purposes of commercial sexual 
exploitation, domestic servitude, and forced labor in 
agriculture.  Swazi girls, particularly orphans, are 
trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation and 
domestic servitude in the cities of Mbabane and Manzini, as 
well as to South Africa and Mozambique.  Swazi boys are 
trafficked for forced labor in commercial agriculture and 
market vending.  Some Swazi women are forced into 
prostitution in South Africa and Mozambique after voluntarily 
migrating to these countries in search of work. Chinese 
organized crime units acquire victims in Swaziland and 
traffic them to hubs in Johannesburg, where they 
&distribute8 victims locally or send them on to be 
exploited overseas.  Traffickers force Mozambican women into 
prostitution in Swaziland, or else transit Swaziland with 
their victims en route to South Africa.  Mozambican boys 
migrate to Swaziland for work washing cars, herding 
livestock, and portering; some of these boys subsequently 
become victims of trafficking. 
 
Q3:  How can Swaziland show progress in its anti-trafficking 
efforts? 
 
¶A.  The government could enact and implement comprehensive 
anti-trafficking legislation; prosecute trafficking offenses 
under existing laws; train law enforcement officials to 
recognize human trafficking situations; proactively identify 
victims; institute a formal system to refer victims for 
assistance; work, with NGOs and international organizations 
as appropriate, to better determine the nature and extent of 
Swaziland,s trafficking problem; implement a comprehensive 
law-enforcement record-keeping system; and conduct visible 
campaigns to educate the public about the dangers and risks 
of trafficking in Swaziland. 
 
¶12. The Department appreciates posts, assistance with the 
preceding action requests. 
CLINTON